We spent the last of our 30+ hours driving in Australia by coming up with our “Best ofs”. Just thinking about what was best was so much fun, because it was often so hard to pick!
- Best overall: Masu (Auckland), hiking Chancellor Dome, diving the Great Barrier Reef (!!), Sydney NYE at the opera house
- Best cocktail: Masu, The Attic/Black Pearl (Melbourne), Palmer & Co (Sydney), The Everleigh’s mezcal Last Word (Melbourne)
- Best coffee: Seven Seeds/Brother Boba Budan (Melbourne), domainAyr (Auckland)
- Best winery: Batch in Waiheke Island
- Best dinner: Masu
- Best breakfast: Avocado toast at Seven Seeds
- Best dessert: Masu’s miso pavlova, Public’s pavlova with Elisse and Scott, Sydney Opera House’s mini pavlovas
- Best birthday: Max’s!
- Best view: Sydney Opera House, Chancellor Dome, Queenstown Gondola
- Best night’s stay: The Waters near Abel Tasman NP (NZ)
- Best mayorship: Great Barrier Reef
- Best boat: Our boat for our Abel Tasman NP day trip
- Best beach: Whisky Bay in Wilsons Promontory NP (AUS)
- Best kangaroo beach: Maloneys Beach
- Best track: The track around Punakaiki (NZ), Lilly Pilly Gully in Wilsons Promontory NP
- Best Christmas dinner: In Sydney :)
- Best relaxing experience: hanging out with Elisse and Scott with lots of New Zealand wine, cheese, and accompaniments
- Best moment of terror: right before stepping off the Kawarau Bridge near Queenstown
- Best car: Bandicoot (runners up, Franz and Fernz)
- Best museum: Christchurch art gallery, Australian currency museum!
- Best art exhibit: Andy Warhol / Ai Weiwei at the National Gallery of Victoria
- Best veggie burger: Curtin’s rooftop bar & cinema (Melbourne)
- Strangest purchase: Cash only contacts from Sydney’s Chinatown, possibly illegally.
- Best beer: The pints at the Green Dragon, in front of the fireplace with Pickles the cat
- Best unplanned decision: renting scooters on Waiheke
- Best drive: The magical eucalyptus forest approaching Pebbly Beach (AUS)
- Favorite animals: Puha and all the kangaroos
- Best city: Melbourne, Christchurch
- Most “we’re really here!!” moment: Watching the kiwis in Rainbow springs, seeing the Sydney Opera House for the first time (at night!)
- Best idea for our bar: Coconut washing a whiskey, putting a smoky scotch in a spray bottle
- Best “aha” moments: When we realized Nelson hops are from Nelson, when we realized that “pumpkin” actually means “(butternut) squash”
- Best travel gadget: Max’s five port USB charger with the ANZ plugin
- Best “wow, it all came together so perfectly” moment: Having no dinner plans in mind for NYE but realizing as we got to Central Station that one of Sydney’s famous, amazing Thai places was right around the corner and would probably be empty, which it was!
- Best/silliest driving issue: Kristan’s mental understanding of a “left turn” as a turn across traffic instead of a turn in the left direction so that she kept saying “I need to make a left turn” when she was actually going right.
- Best photograph: Chancellor Dome (see above)
Other Key Stats from our Trip
- Total photos: 6535, approx 125GB
- Foursquare checkins: 316 (View all)
- Mayorships: 19 (Max’s 11 and Kristan’s 8)
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