Melbourne and Sydney/Bondi

Tassie was my real vacation treat, but I enjoyed other days, weekends mostly while down under.

I was with a work colleague in Melbourne for Australia Day (national day for BBQing :D ) and we grabbed the chance to get tickets to the Australian Open, quarter finals, for a Nadal-Murray game ... cool huh? my first tennis game live ever ... and then goes Nadal and gets injured and retires :( Oh, we also drove a couple laps around the Albert Park F1 circuit ... how cool is that! :)

[Me inside the Australian Open space]

[Celebrating Australia Day during the match]

[Nadal got injured and retired ... would have lost anyway]

[Albert Park F1 Circuit, pit lane]

On another day we went to Philip Island, a couple hours drive from Melbourne ... beach destination for city people (we had a "swim" in the south pacific! what a surf!); host of the Moto GP championship (also check, visited :D ) and most touristic of all, home of the Penguin Parade. Though in other places (like Tassie, New Zealand, ...) you can get maybe closer and even make pictures, here you get really looots of penguins. An average night, some 1000 penguins may come out of the water at sunset and go "home" for a sleep. We didn't see that many, but a good 400, in big groups of 60 or so ... nice cute little penguins :) Tip: don't go for the cheap general admission ... pay extra and get a private tour, you'll sure see more and much closer.

[Here we had a swim ... ]

[The Penguin Parade ... not my photo, you are not allowed - they say penguins go blind with the flash]

Last I wanted to get some Bondi beach surf experience ... the famous surfing beach just outside Sydney. Had everything ... a hotel next to the beach, a full weekend, summer ... except for the leftovers of hurricane "Olga", which dropped in a day more than half the water expected for the whole month, including horrible winds. So, not much done. Next time better ... next time

[Bondi Beach ... after the storm, next day]

[Bondi's Ocean Pool and Bondi's Surf and Rescue :)]

Cesc