Every Christmas my family packs up and heads to the Grandparents to celebrate the holidays with the family. The last Christmas I had at home I remember getting just what I wanted, a 3 ft my-size Barbie—that says how long ago that was. This year my mom had the idea to go to Australia instead of doing gifts, or grandparents. Great choice. Traveling is high on the priority list in my family right in front of seafood and good wine. This trip had all of it.


We first arrived in Brisbane after a 16hr flight, and met up with one of my dad’s distributors for a late business lunch. When we got back to the hotel everyone passed out, but I wasn’t tired and went to the hotel bar/lounge to get some good Australian wine, and finish my book, The Brief and Wondrous Life or Oscar Wao. (Good book, but boring at parts) The next day we took a city tour and found out about the famous (in Aus) XXXX Brewery. The vote was unanimous, and after lunch in china town, we grabbed a taxi to the brewery. When I was in Dublin I did the Guinness Storehouse tour, which set the bar pretty darn high and was probably a bad choice as a first beer tour. Especially since Guinness is the BEST. Anyway, this tour started out with us sitting on a revolving stage surrounded by wax figures and a speaker system to make them talk. “Already worth it,” my sister said as the first wax person started giving us the history. It ended with 4 free half pints of beer, which I used 2/4 on their stout (pretty good) 1 on the bitter ale, and 1 on their new summer ale (too light, yuck). This was the first time my family has drank together. It was more fun than weird like I’d been expecting..



more later. gotta go bowling