I am gonna miss you!

If you know me well enough, you know I absolutely love food. I love cooking, trying new things and sitting at the table eating and talking about food. It might be cause I am Italian or it might be cause I was a starving child in my previous life, not sure yet!

A lot of travelling has also been about food, I completely fell in love with Asian food (yes, I do miss you, my lovely pizza but... noodles, c'mon!) and I can't wait to go back to have some more rice/fried crickets/curries/whatever...

But one thing I am gonna miss about Australia is VEGEMITE: this spread that looks like Nutella but it's thick and savoury, it goes perfectly on toast with cheese, or avocado... or anything, really! I have heard that they also sell it in the UK... so guess where I'll be heading soon :) just for a bit of spread!

I am dreaming of a sunny Christmas!

And, yes, it's that time of the year again! After last Christmas in Thailand (and the Thai massage as a Christmas present to myself), here we go with another hot Christmas.
No definite plans just yet, maybe beach, maybe pub... but surely no Christmas jumpers!

BUON NATALE to everyone, wherever you are - I hope I'll see you all again soon!

Window view

Take 1.15 FJD (roughly 0.50euro), one "town" to get out of and one hostel to get to.

One bus, one route... on the beach. Oh, yes. The local bus goes on the beach, just for a little bit, just to make the westerners smile but it’s pretty weird.

Happens only in Fiji.

Some weird museum...

Sometimes, when you’re traveling, you come up with the weirdest things... From a McDonald’s right next to a Hindu temple (ooooh yes!), to a Cable Car Museum.

Wellington is situated on a few hills, so to go up to the botanical gardens (yes, beautiful but could we stop the rain, please?) you have to take this cable car. As the city is pretty old (we’re talking  1800’s, here!) they obviously changed the cable car a few times... and they well thought to make a museum out of it!

Not only they have old cars in display, they also show you a video of repairing them... silly me thinking of getting stuck in the hostel streaming new episodes of Jersey Shore when there’s so much to see out there!

Adrenaline!

When I first started thinking about coming to New Zealand, there were two things I mainly wanted to do once over here: bungy jumping and whale watching.

New Zealand is the place where bungy was invented so I thought it made sense to jump the Nevis, 134m and 8.5secs of free fall while I am out here and I personally don’t know many other places where you can go and look at three sperm whale diving in the ocean and take pictures of them.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is white-water rafting. I am not big into outdoors and I’d rather go partying than go hiking but this is definitely one of the best thing I’ve done so far: we jumped on the boat, all geared up... helmet and wetsuit as the water was freezing. Not only we paddled hard (my whole body was aching the next day) but we jumped off a couple of cliffs and went down grade V rapids and I believe I am totally an adrenaline junkie now!

Rugby world cup? Anyone?

As I was landing in New Zealand, the flight attendants handed me the card to get my visa and to enter the country... I love the kiwis already!

On the road...

That's it - the end of this chapter is very near.
I am going out to St Kilda for a few drinks tonight but then that's it in Melbourne for me, the place where my life has been filmed for the last 7months.
It'll be hard to say good bye, pack all my stuff in my small 65L backpack (panic), download the pictures from the camera and move on. And that weird feeling, when you say goodbye, because you know some people, some places, some emotions, some memories will never come back, will never be the same... I thought I was well used to this but this overwhelming feeling is always there when you're just about to leave again, like an old actor who's getting ready to go on stage...
I have so much to look forward to, some new adventures, meeting new people, seeing new places (shouldn't really complain since I am going to fecking Fiji!) and I know every thing will be allright once I get on that plane to New Zealand... but for now I just want to breathe it all in and I have the right to feel a bit emotional!