Originally Posted by Mike Jacoubowsky

I'll have to give some thought to what it means to be a "large provincial town." Perhaps I like LPTs?

My thoughts regarding Brisbane were probably highly skewed by its extensive cycling facilities. And my thoughts regarding Sydney were skewed by an overprice underperforming restaraunt in The Rocks, and the mistake of going up the Tower of Oz at night. Completely worthless; they had so much lighting behind you that you couldn't see through the glare on the windows. And we compounded the mistake by doing that silly tour of Australia "ride."

Shopping in Melbourne? The DFO outlet near Bourke Street was pretty strange. Virtually no signage at all, just escalators leading up to it, all tucked away in back of the street. But I'm certainly willing to go back; we saw very little of Melbourne, spending not much time there at all. It was basically just the end-point of our trip.

With four more days we would have hit up Cairns, and in retrospect, I easily could have spent four more days away from the business. But not sure the pocketbook could have survive much more of Australia. This wasn't one of my dirt-cheap runs through France. I'd be spending US $60/night at Etaps in France, vs $130 or so to keep my wife happy in OZ.