Aussie Millions January 09

The picture is of the twelve apostles in southern Australia a couple hours outside Melbourne. I won a satellite on Cake and Amanda and I were able to take a vacation and visit a place we may not have gone to otherwise. What a great experience it was. We took a red eye from LAX direct to Melbourne hoping for less crowds...WRONG...every seat was booked and this was a 15 hour flight. I usually like an aisle seat but got the window on this one, bad move. I had Scotty Nguyen sitting in the seat directly behind me with his girl/wife (?) and their two kids. One of the kids had to sit in our row next to Amanda and she became a nanny for the flight, although he did great and was a good traveler. We crossed the dateline so we completely skipped a day but arrived safely and took a cab to the Crowne Plaza Hotel. For those of you not familiar with the Crowne, it is a HUGE place, with hotel, casino, mall, movie theatres, dance clubs, and many places to eat. It was THE PLACE TO BE, and literally thousands of people were there every day. It is located right next to the Yara River and there is a very modern urban feel there in Melbourne. Mind you, January is summer there and it was definitely warm, but not too bad. We were lucky because after we left, it got really hot (over 115) and they also had the worst fires in decades soon after we left. We had dinner the first night on the banks of the Yara on a boardwalk restaurant called the Waterfront. This boardwalk is a very wide and cool walking area through the city and next to the river, great for people watching. It was almost sunset (8:45) and we were enjoying our meal and the scenery and then at 9, we heard this whooosh and fire started shooting out of these metal towers along the river. There were about 9 of them and it turned out to be a planned choreographed show. How sweet is that ? A great start to our trip. As far as poker goes, I made it through day one with a short stack and day 2 started at the feature table with Patrik Antonios. My first hand I get A K suited in early position, and I push all in, Amanda is freaking out, but no callers and I chip up a little. I ended my day top pair and a flush draw but got beat out and the Open was over. I did pick up about $1500 in cash games though and that pretty much took care of food and excursions. A couple interesting (to me) notes...you don't tip in Australia, of course i didn't find out till day 3 and was keeping everyone happy there for awhile. Also, when you go to a fast food place, NO one picks up their trash, they just leave it there for the porters, keeps em in a job I guess, just found that interesting. The Australian Tennis Open was in town while we were there and we went over to check that out too at the Rod Laver arena. Very fun. On one of our excursions, I ran into Jim Worth or krazykanuck and his girl and hung out with them and ended up having dinner with them that night. I very much enjoyed his poker stories as he has had many more experiences than I have had. I knew of him because of seeing him in Aruba but had never met him. We ended the day with a great dinner near the river and some wine and topped off our wonderful trip to down under.