Australia and the US are pretty similar, but in our two weeks in Australia, there were a few things that we were used to finding in the US that we missed.

• I mentioned how the pedestrian signals make sound in Australia, which is great, but they didn't count down. In Seattle, most pedestrian signals count down so you know how much time is left (though they often don't give you enough warning), but in Australia we didn't know how much time was left before the lights changed, which made it hard to judge if we still had time to cross or should wait.


• It's nice not having to tip at restaurants, but on the flip side of that, service was not as attentive. It wasn't negligent, but it was slower-paced. At times it would've been nice to have had more attentive service.


• Furthermore, when we went to restaurants, getting a big bottle of room-temperature water for the table to share was common practice. It was nice having water there, and I didn't mind not having ice. The only problem was that they hardly ever brought us more. As if four people are supposed to share a single 1.5 liter bottle of water throughout an entire meal after spending all afternoon out walking around the city.


• Furthermore, drinking fountains are uncommon in Australia. We often got thirsty and, well, there just wasn't anywhere to drink from or to refill our water bottles. How inconvenient.


• Credit cards were not accepted nearly as much. Some places didn't accept them at all and most places had a minimum charge of $15 or so. As someone who charges basically everything so that I don't have to deal with cash and can accrue points with my credit card, not getting to charge stuff like normal was an annoying adjustment.

Overall, though, there didn't seem to be that many things that we're used to in the US that we couldn't find in Australia, but it would have been nice if these few things had been different.