SWAA: Hyden and Perth

And now finally, the last instalment from our South Western Australia Adventure.  Brace yourselves, it's a big one!

After our long drive from Denmark, we arrived in Hyden around 3:30pm and went straight to the main attraction of the area and the purpose of our massive detour: Wave Rock.  I was a bit sceptical that the rock would be impressive enough to merit the extra hundreds of kilometers, but in the end it was pretty cool.

Someone had to do the surfing stance!

Next we headed just a few seconds down the road to the far less impressive "Hippos Yawn".  I'm not really sure what made this so special other than the name, but it led us to take some silly pictures.

The obvious - us yawning

Ryan getting eaten by the hippo

For some reason because I was wearing a red shirt Ryan really wanted me to be a uvula.  Didn't really work, but it was funny to try!

And that was it!  All of the attractions in Hyden in less than an hour.  That night we stayed in the hilariously out-dated Hyden Hotel/Motel.  For dinner the hotel offered the "exotic" option of selecting your meat for dinner and then grilling and seasoning it yourself on a massive grill in the dining room.  For some reason this made me really grumpy, which was compounded by the buffet "salad bar" they had (comprised of pasta salad, potato salad, and coleslaw) along with some weird cooked sides.  Even though dinner wasn't great, they had a really nice lounge room with a massive fireplace.  It was really cold that day so instead of hanging out in our room we brought our board game and a bottle of wine and enjoyed a few hours by the fire.  It was a great way to end a disappointing evening.  To be fair to the restaurant, I think if you go to many country towns in Canada you would end up with the same country style cooking, but I think I was just spoiled by our fine dining in wine country.

The next day, September 28th, we got an early start for our drive to Perth.  The drive wasn't very exciting, but we did pass some random tourist attractions (most notably the dog cemetery) and some really beautiful orchards in bloom.  The day before we had called many hotels in Perth to try and find a room, but we were very unlucky.  We ended up with one above our budget, so we were expecting it to be really nice.  It was called the Somerset, located right downtown Perth, and it was a huge letdown. 

Since this was to be our last day of the trip, and our only time in Perth, we got right out on the town to do some exploring.  For me, Kings Park was the only thing in Perth that I had any interest in seeing.  It is one of the largest inner city parks in the world, and it had fantastic views of the city.  It's also where their botanic gardens are located, so we got to see a great show of the wildflowers in bloom.

During our walk through the park we also found this "tree top walk" which was nice.  It wasn't nearly as high as the real one we did in Walpole though!

The downtown was more modern than Adelaide, but about the same size.  Surprisingly it had a lot of designer stores, which Adelaide doesn't have.  That evening we did a short walk around downtown Perth and decided to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant.  That was the best decision all day, since the food was awesome!  We started with delicious cocktails (the winner was Ryan's "Japanese Slipper" made with equal parts Midori melon liqueur, Cointreau, and lemon juice), entrée of scallops, and our mains were an Asian shrimp salad and a pizza (brie, bacon, chicken, cranberry sauce, mozzarella, and spinach - great combo!).

The next day, September 29th, our flight didn't leave until 5:30 pm so we spent the morning shopping at some outlet stores and lounging/napping in King's Park.  We THOUGHT it was the perfect end to our trip, but then things went horribly wrong.

When we tried to do the auto check-in at the airport, the machine abruptly said "please see attendant", which has never happened to me before.  When the guy at the counter looked confused, I jokingly said "haha we probably missed our flight or something stupid" and he unfortunately said yes.  Turns out we missed it by an entire day! 

I know, I know, this doesn't seem like something I would do.  To be honest, there were so many signs pointing us to our real flight but somehow we brushed them all off.  First, and most obvious, was when Virgin emailed me a flight confirmation on the 27th.  I looked at it and said "huh, that's weird, they usually send it 24 hours ahead, I wonder why I got it 2 days ahead"!  Next, when we picked up our car rental the woman tried to confirm our return on the 28th.  I immediately corrected her and extended it to the 29th.  And finally, the trip just felt like we had loads of extra time on our hands.  Now, Ryan isn't completely blameless.  He emailed his boss saying we would be back on the 29th, but of course he meant he could start work again on the 29th.  For some reason I guess that date was stuck in my head, and he never corrected me and neither one of us looked it up.

Anyways, having seen enough episodes of The Amazing Race I knew that there were ways of getting flights at the airport.  First we decided to wait and see if the 5:30 flight back to Adelaide on Virgin (our airline) was full.  There were still 6 people who hadn't checked in at 4:55pm, but unfortunately by the 5:00pm deadline 5 had showed up.  After checking other airlines we found it was impossible to get any flights out since Qantas baggage handlers were on strike already causing flight cancellations, and the Grand Final in footy was the next day in Melbourne and people I think were being diverted through Adelaide.  Luckily the guy at Virgin got us on the morning flight out, and took pity on us so he didn't charge us a cent! 

Without going through all of the details, suffice it to say we decided not to sleep in the airport and instead got the closest, cheapest hotel we could find.  Ironically, that night was far better than the first one we had in Perth for half the price!  We stayed at the All Seasons Hotel and ended up in an "upgraded" room due to limited availability.  We asked what the difference was for the $20 more, and they told us that our room would have a window.  I kid you not, this is what it looked like:

In case you can't see, the window has glass, but then that's a wall with a picture of SYDNEY Harbour!  Seriously, that made our day.  There was actually a tiny skylight in the window so it made a difference in the morning to have some natural light, but hilarious beyond belief.

Yet again, we had a delightful night of board games, wine, and room service potato wedges, and that really was the perfect way to end a fantastic vacation.