Australia

300 days, wow. I remember in the early days of the trip and writing these posts, thinking it would be forever until we hit the 300s. But we just chugged along and here we are. One of my big lessons from this year is how valuable it has been to commit to something every day…

We set off at 10 and drove 3.5 hours back to Perth. Millie watched movies on her iPad and Nick and I spent most of the time talking about how much the area feels like Texas. It was an easy and pretty drive. We arrived at our hotel and checked in. The lady working at…

Another slow start but by Noon we were on our way. I love our lazy mornings and try to have a little moment of gratitude for them each day. I know these will feel far away when we are home and needing to get off to work and school. Our plan for the day was…

We did very little today, but it was very relaxing. It felt like a weekend, except that in our current upside down world we don’t have weekdays or weekends. Millie slept pretty late again and woke up in a great mood. At 9 we put on some clothes and walked a block away to Margaret…

Somehow we all slept until 9 this morning. Millie got into our bed at 5 and then we were snuggled and cozy until 9. I was shocked when I saw the time. We had to be out of our Airbnb at 10 so it was a bit of a scramble, but we made it. We…

I slept terribly with the worst headache of my life. I don’t typically get bad headaches but last night the pressure in the head was bad enough that it woke me up every time I moved. When Nick and Millie were awake at 8 I was a zombie and requested to stay in bed. I…

A very monarchical day today, apparently. Our first stop was Kings Park, which is Perth’s large Central Park. Within it is the Rio Tinto Naturescape, which looked amazing. It had all sorts of climbing structures and areas for kids to play. Unfortunately when we got to it we were faced with this sign: Nick and…

It just rolls off the tongue—“Rottnest”—doesn’t it? To make matters worse, it is actually Dutch for Rat’s Nest, because early settlers thought the Quokkas that inhabited the island were rats. More on them later. We tried and failed to get moving this morning. Millie learned how to make coffee for us which was a real…

Freo is short for Fremantle, which is where we are staying. Australians are incapable of finishing any word and shorten everything into slang. We can barely understand what anyone is saying. We enjoyed a lazy morning. I enjoyed having a simple breakfast that I could serve myself while wearing my pajamas. I can’t believe I…

I’ll start where I left off. We didn’t board our flight until after midnight. This once again broke Millie’s record of being the latest she’s ever stayed up. It could have backfired but worked in our favor; by the time we were on the flight she could barely keep her eyes open and passed out.…