As randomly mentioned, Kristy and Oscar joined me on Friday in Sydney for the Labour Day long weekend. Jason, Louise, baby Adam (who Oscar nicknamed “Ambo”) were our generous hosts.

Jason’s brother Richard is staying with them at the moment too, and he generously cooked all our meals for the weekend. It was amazing; his fajitas were a definite highlight! I’m told he does parties and weekends so long as you pony up for the airfares, and by my reckoning, it would be well worth it!

Whenever we go away with Oscar, his first night’s sleep in a foreign location/cot can only be (generously) described as “rubbish”, and consequently, we had a tired little boy on our hands on Saturday. To his credit, he did manage to stay pretty sparky for our morning visit to The Woo to meet Lisa and Damien’s new baby, Michael.

I’m sure that most of his spark came from the fun he was having playing with Damien and the fan, not to mention his excitement at being able to say Lisa’s name over and over again (“LEE-tah! LEE-tah!”).

Sydney is world renowned for dining, and not only because of Richard’s fajitas. We also enjoyed an amazing lunch at The Boathouse at Summer Bay Palm Beach, about an hour’s drive (hence an hour’s nap for the kids) from the city.

Their menu was so good that it was tough to choose just one thing, and every meal that came out while we watched from the queue made me change my mind! I finally settled on the fish ‘n chips though; it was a generous serving and deliciously prepared. Highly recommended!

Being Oscar’s first trip to Sydney, we figured we should get at least a couple of photos of him with some of Sydney’s famous landmarks, so on Sunday we took a boat ride from Kirribilli (where the PM lives) into Circular Quay. Ben’s awesome photo of Ted with the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge in the background convinced us that Mrs Macquarie’s Chair was the vantage point that we were searching for, but time was working against us; there was no way we were going to make it all the way around Farm Cove before sunset.

To save ourselves a bit of time, we decided to catch the choo choo train instead of walking. Asides from the speed advantage, this was beneficial for three reasons:

• We got to have a (brief!) tour of the botanical gardens, and learn a bit of its history;
• Kids under two ride free; and (most importantly)
• The kids loved it!

We jumped off the train on the other side of Farm Cove and did our best to get a photo to signify the occasion.

As predicted, the sun had well and truly set by the time we got back to Circular Quay for our return ferry ride across the harbour. Our best option for getting back to the cars was to jump off at Luna Park and then walk, which was a huge bonus for me as it meant I could take a photo of the city lights.

The rest of our three days seemed to fly past in a blur of chasing kids, parks, and just chatting with the Lowes (who we hope to see in Brisbane sometime soon – hint, hint!). It was a great weekend though, and I have to admit that I could easily see myself living in Sydney… if only I could convince all my Brisbane friends to relocate, and the real estate down there wasn’t so tooting expensive!

Photos in the Labour Day in Sydney album on Google+

This amazing recap of our holiday in Fiji is jointly brought to you by Ben and Michelle, Louisa and Steve, and Gerrod and Kristy

G: There were a lot of problems with our recent holiday to Fiji.

L: Ok that’s a little “glass half empty for me”, but I’ll play along…

G: Well, lets look at the evidence! To start with, our resort got pummeled by a king tide on the day before we flew out, which caused flooding to 30 of its rooms. Our fears were alleviated by our travel agent (and even from the resort itself) that everything was fine, but it still put us a little on edge.

K: Ok, it may have put you a “little” on edge, but it put me a LOT on edge.

G: Things didn’t get better on the night we arrived, when the fire alarm – combined with a very urgent message of, “Please evacuate the building immediately” – had Kristy and I convinced that we were about to get whaled by a tsunami. As it turns out, it was only a false alarm which they suspect was caused by someone smoking in their room, but once again we felt as though our holiday may have started on the wrong foot.

L: Still laughing at my imaginary visions of Kristy bolting for higher ground. On the other hand Steve and I were waiting around in our room praying that the kids didn’t wake up with the super loud alarm and watching what everyone else was doing. We ended up not evacuating, lucky it was a false alarm I guess…

M: The Priebes also assumed it was a ‘burnt toast’ kind of alarm and waited it out from the comfort of our bed. Kristy vowed that next time something like that happens part of her escape plan will involve entering our room and saving Ted (from his overly relaxed parents)!

K: Your imaginary visions can be no funnier than the real thing. Bathrobe streaming behind me, I was yelling things like “wear closed in shoes!” and “forget the passports, just run!” And boy, after that level of stress, did I feel like I needed a holiday!

G: But by far, the most unfortunate of all was the sickness! Almost all of our party of ten managed to get some form of virus while we were away. For the most part, it was your everyday cold-and-flu type of symptoms – sore throats, running noses, dry coughs – more than likely caused by our bodies relaxing after the stresses of work. But poor old Ben took it all to the next level, contracting gastro on day four, which almost took him out of action completely!

L: Almost all. All except Louisa, Oliver and Ethan I think. Obviously not enough stress in our camp

M: And the suckiest bit? That we’re still dealing with gastro, passed on to the nine month old. We’re fast running out of clean clothes, sheets….mattresses. Ugh. At least we were home before this fun started.

K: Oscar and I are still suffering, though we wisely saved the worst of our sickness for Brisbane. You forgot to mention that the kids weren’t booked on the return flight for some reason. It’s a good thing none of them look Fijian or it might have appeared to be a really poorly organised attempt at child smuggling!

G: And so, was our holiday a failure? Goodness me, no! In fact, I think it was quite the opposite – a fantastic, week-long escape from work! And it was warm and sunny nearly every day, and the glorious blue skies made an excellent backdrop for the palm trees.

L: I thought the Shangri-La Resort was excellent too. It had at least 5 different restaurant eating options, 4 pools, a park for the bigger kids, beautiful views of the water and the rooms were nice too. I really liked the layout and the fact that there were so many easy options around.

M: It was a great resort, and my expectations of the beach were very much exceeded.

G: We had practically no agenda, and given that we were all a little under the weather, we were forced to just slow down and relax – so that’s exactly what we did! Most days were spend lazing by the pool, taking the kids for a swim, or enjoying a meal (or a cocktail!) in one of the resort’s restaurants. It was a great way to spend a week!

K: The pool side relaxing was definitely awesome! And the resort staff were terrific. Within a day or two many of them had learned all the kids names and greeted us with a jovial “Bula!” each time we passed by. And having live guitar/ukelele ensembles at each restaurant was a treat, especially for the littlies who were transfixed.

K: It’s such a shame though that it’s impossible to get a country’s real flavour without knowing a local. If you ask to visit a regular village they want to take you to a theme park with dance performances and kava drinking. Or a palm furniture factory.

L: A major highlight of Fiji was the babysitting services that were offered. For about $5 AUD an hour we hired a babysitter to look after the kids and we did this for many lunch times + evenings. It really made it a good break and meant that we had some adult time too!

G: We did manage to venture from the safety of our resort a few times, though. Our best trip was to Kula Eco Park – effectively a small zoo, only a short drive from our resort. They had quite a few native animals on display, some of which were extremely friendly!

L: We also did a few things around the resort including a Banana boat ride, a short sail on a catamaran and lots of swimming. We could have done with some more time to experience that elusive sunset cruise, snorkelling and tennis and to suck up some more of that free internet access.

K: And don’t forget the weird coconut oil massage! I lay there for ages trying to identify the smell and wondering why I felt like I was about to be baked in an oven. They must have lathered about a litre on each person, including a generous serving in Ben’s eyes.

G: All too quickly, our week in Fiji was over and done with, and we very reluctantly left at 5 AM on Saturday morning (our flight was crazy early!).

L: I hearby vow to never get up at 4am for a flight again!

L: All in all I think our first joint overseas trip with families was a good achievement. It’s a shame that sickness clouded the trip but on the bright side the kids all did well on their first holiday together and it was a great break from day-to-day!

M: We had some fun times in a glorious setting with great mates.

M: And I hereby vow that next time I’ll leave the boys (and the double case of ‘man-flu’) at home! Girls trip anyone?

Easily my favourite thing about Melbourne is the fact that since the weather is cooler, it means we get to dress Oscar up in some wicked outfits. Especially, I loved this little beanie that Kristy bought for him, which totally made him look like a cat burglar.

To be fair to the rest of Melbourne, I quite liked it as well, but it just couldn’t compete with Oscar in his beanie. One thing I had been greatly looking forward to was the food, and (needless to say) the coffee. If my understanding is correct, it’s near impossible to find bad coffee in Melbourne. In fact, when I called Ben and asked, “Hey bruz, where can I buy an awesome coffee in Melbourne?”, he told me exactly where to go: “Anywhere”.

We didn’t find this to quite be true; Bill and I had a very average coffee while waiting for Kristy and Wendy to finish their shopping at MNG, despite the fact that the store was advertising themselves as a coffee shop! Pah! Thankfully though, we had a lot of really good coffee in Melbourne. My two favourites were at Jasper Caffeine Dealers on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, and the Cakehole Cafe on Acland Street, St Kilda.

Similarly, we dined on some amazing food during our time in the city. Jason had recommended a great noodle house on Swanston Street, where Kristy and I each dined on a giant bowl of noodles for about $9 each. On another evening, we enjoyed a fantastic Italian dinner at Trunk, which was just around the corner from our apartment – the chili pasta with seafood was fantastic! The fish ‘n chips that we had from Sea Salt on Degraves Street was some of the best fish ‘n chips that I’ve ever had.

And (once again a Jason recommendation) the kransky on a roll from the Queen Victoria Markets, drenched in tomato sauce, hot english mustard, and hot chili sauce, was a total winner for lunch…

… especially when it was followed up with a couple of American style jam doughnuts, served by the surly men in the doughnut caravan just outside the food court!

Of course, we didn’t spend the entire trip just eating food and drinking coffee – though that sounds like an awesome idea for a trip to me! Since it was my first time in Melbourne since I was but a wee lad, we did a lot of walking around the city, checking out the sites, and, you know, just being cool. We were super lucky with the weather – for nearly the whole time we were there, it was blue skies, warm (for Melbourne), and sunny – absolutely perfect walking weather. And, we found that Melbourne was a very walkable city indeed, with nice wide, pram-friendly footpaths, especially down at the Southbank by the Yarra.

That giant building you see there is Eureka Tower, host to Eureka Skydeck 88, which is the highest viewing platform in the Southern hemisphere, and also includes a unique attraction called The EDGE. Basically, once you’ve paid your $17.50 (or so) to access the viewing platform, you can then pay an additional $12 to go into a glass cube which extends three metres out from the edge of the building. We decided to give it a try, but in retrospect, it’s a total waste of money; not only do they try and hype it up to be some sort of thrill ride (which it really isn’t), but the view is definitely no better than what you get outside of the cube. Worst of all, they don’t even let you take your camera in with you!

Perhaps its only saving grace are the super-lame wrist bands that they give you for “surviving” your experience. Admittedly, I had no interest in wearing one to advertise the fact that I’d been taken for twelve of my hard-earned dollars, however if I ever find myself sitting through an entire U2 concert without ripping my ears off, I’ll probably put all three of them very, very proudly.

Still, so much as The EDGE is totally not worth the money, the Skydeck totally is. Scattered around the deck are a number of kaleidoscopic-like tubes, each of them labelled and pointed in a fixed direction to show you a specific landmark. It’s a great system! Apparently on a clear day you can see up to 70km in any direction, and I reckon that we probably weren’t far off it when we were up there. Here’s the view we had of Melbourne city, with Flinders Street station bang-on front and centre.

Speaking of Flinders Street station, probably the one complaint I had about Melbourne was their public transportation. Yes, they have an awesome network of trains and trams to whisk you about, but as a visitor, I found it far too difficult to figure out. One morning we ventured out to Kensington where we met Justine and Tim for brunch – both of whom seemed to sneakily escape being photographed for our entire meal, even though they had the opportunity to pose next to the biggest pancake ever created (which as you probably guessed, was ordered by Kristy).

Just for a sense of scale here – there’s three whole bananas chopped up on top of that thing.

Anyway, back to the transport – we found that when we needed to buy a ticket, there were no maps nearby to direct us as to how many zones we’d be travelling through. Also, all of their ticket machines (save for the ones down in the bowels of the inner-city stations) only took coins. Their timetables were confusing – though we were certain we were looking up the correct line, the station that we needed to stop at wasn’t listed! And finally, all the staff members that we talked to were quite rude – yes, our question may have been a bit obvious to them, but how on earth were we supposed to know that “All tram stops are in zone 1″?

Still, that’s a pretty minor complaint to what was otherwise a fantastic trip (and to be fair, if we were locals, we’d probably know the transport system quite thoroughly, and we’d also probably have ourselves a Myki card). If I could convince everyone I know to move to Melbourne, then I think it would be a really awesome place to live; but we’ll stick to Brisbane for the time being, and keep Melbourne as a destination instead. Hopefully it won’t be quite as long as last time before we can visit again!

Some photos from our trip in the Melbourne gallery on Picasa.

On the day of Nathan and Kelly’s wedding we ventured out to Werribee Park to explore the grounds a little and visit the original mansion house, built in the 1870s. It’s been extensively restored and is the largest private residence in Victoria. If you’re interested in the history of the place there’s an overview here. Admission was $7 which, in my book, makes it one of the best value attractions I’ve ever visited.

This is not at all Gerrod’s kind of thing, so Mum and I went in to check it out while the three men (Dad, Gerrod, Oscar) enjoyed a stroll and a coffee outdoors. Turns out that Mum and I were so impressed we went outside to fetch Dad so he didn’t miss out (deciding it still wasn’t Gerrod’s thing). Mum and I even dressed up in period costume, which was an absolute hoot!

If you’re ever in the area, I’d highly recommend you check out the mansion and impressive grounds!

Aubain and Ingrid decided that they couldn’t come all the way to Australia without seeing Sydney, and so on Monday and Tuesday of their visit, I did my best to show them around a city that I myself am pretty unfamiliar with. Here’s some highlights from our trip:

The Pylon Lookup

I first heard about the Pylon Lookout from a work colleague of Kristy’s in the UK, who said it made for an excellent value visit when time and budget are limited (in comparison to the Bridge Climb). As it turned out, the lookout entrance was not where I had thought; rather than going to the bottom of the pylon and then walking up from there, you actually have to walk along the bridge then enter from about half-way up the pylon. The views from the top were well worth the $9.50 entrance fee!

And, since we had to walk a third of the way along the bridge to get to the entrance, we decided to finish what we started such that we can now all cross “Walk across Sydney Harbour Bridge” off of our bucket lists.

Fish ‘n Chips at Manly Beach

Our timing for the 30 minute ferry ride out to Manly beach couldn’t have been better, as the weather over Circular Quay had started turning very “Sydney”. We were glad to be escaping towards the coast where the sky looked much more “Brisbane”!

We all enjoyed the view from the boat, though after a long day of walking we all also enjoyed a brief kip in the afternoon sun.

After heavily talking up all the merits of chicken salt to Aubain and Ingrid, I was disappointed that the fish and chip shop we ordered from used plain salt instead. Plus, they didn’t even have any bread for me to make a chippy sandwich! What gives?

Drinks at The Opera Bar

I have to admit, I can’t think of too many places better suited to enjoy a sunset than at The Opera Bar.

We arrived just as the sun was considering its descent below the horizon, and secured ourselves a good spot for some beverages. We also met up with a gaggle of Sydney locals – Charlie (who used to work with Aubain and I in London), Lisa (of New York fame), and Jason and Louise (who need no introduction).

Taronga Zoo

We had a number of recommendations to check out Taronga Zoo, not only because it’s an awesome zoo full of animals from all over the world (including this weird hybrid giraffe camel thing), but also for it’s spectacular views back over Sydney harbour.

We were not disappointed! Those animals are on some prime real estate! Favourites for me were the platypus (because they always seem to be hiding in zoos, but the one at Taronga was happily doing circles in his tank), and the koalas (because they’re so lazy and yet so cool).

Food and Drink

Sydney often gets rated as one of the best places to dine in the world, and though we weren’t exactly seeking out world-class dining, we thoroughly enjoyed the food that we did eat (save for the chicken salt disappointment mentioned earlier). Our favourites were:

• The coffee at Chrysler – specifically, the one at the bottom of the Pitt Street mall.
• Modern Australian dining at Bills Surry Hills. Charlie and I had the chili prawn pasta, and it was excellent; The gingersnap biscuits with ice-cream dessert was also a total winner.
• Brunch at Blackbird Cafe in Darling Harbour – a top recommendation from the concierge at Aubain and Ingrid’s hotel.

All in all, it was a busily wonderful two-day tour of Sydney, and it was a number of days before my feet finally recovered from all the walking!

A huge thanks especially to Jason and Louise who so kindly let me crash their spanking new house in Rose Hill Roseville… what I hadn’t realised when I called them up and told them that I would be staying with them, is that they themselves hadn’t even stayed in the house yet! It was like a proper hotel soft opening!

Photos in the Sydney photo album on Picasaweb or on Facebook.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to edit some of the video footage that we recorded last year, and haven’t done anything with. It’s slow going – finding spare time isn’t an easy thing to do, and for some instances there is a lot of footage – but it’s very satisfying once it’s complete.

In this light, here’s a video of our trip to Cinque Terre in May last year. We did a lot of walking! And don’t forget – Kristy was five months pregnant at this point!

Music:
The Getaway Plan – Where the City Meets the Sea
Rise Against – The Dirt Whispered
Jimmy Eat World – A Praise Chorus

If a picture paints a thousand words, how many is a photograph worth? Or does that count as a picture, too? Truth be told, I only need one word: “Busy”. That’s what Hong Kong is.

Now admittedly, this was taken near Times Square, but it could realistically have easily been pretty much any random Hong Kong street, at any time of the day. There are people everywhere, and for the most part, they’re very… assertive. I say “assertive” here instead of “rude”, because even though they tend to bustle and shove you around – and they could certainly learn a thing or two about queueing from the English – I think they’re actually quite polite at heart. For example, people absolutely leapt up on the subway system to offer Kristy a seat the moment she boarded, which was a stark contrast to the tube in London.

This trip was a bit different to my last trip to Hong Kong – last time I was here by myself, and only for one day! This time, we had a three night stop-over to do a better job of breaking up the long haul back to Brisbane home. One thing that didn’t change though was that we once again met up with John and his family – including baby Susanna who is only 1.5 months old!

Similarly, John’s brother Quentin met us for a delicious Dim Sum lunch. I’m very pleased to report that Dim Sum (“Yum Cha”) is pretty much the same here in Hong Kong as what it is in Australia!

Finally, the other constant for both trips was I found it incredibly difficult to find anything “local” for breakfast. On advice from some locals, we sought out some congee one morning, but we couldn’t find any places that served it before 11:30 AM! One other day we once again resorted to Maccas, and once again I somehow ended up with two sausage and egg muffin meals instead of the muffins by themselves. Still, bonus OJ – no complaints!

The weather looked threatening since the moment we got here; thankfully though, the storms held off for most of our trip – except for Saturday night when we got a huge thunderstorm, but we were safely back at the hotel before it hit. We were exceptionally lucky with the weather on Saturday morning, when John took us on the “I can’t believe the angle this thing runs at” tram car up to The Peak, where we had exceptional views over Hong Kong and Kowloon.

We really were blazing the tourist trail, doing both the tram up to The Peak, as well as the cable car to Ngong Ping to see the giant Budda. He’s big. Real big. High five!

We were a little discouraged when we got to the base station this morning and found a giant queue, but it turns out you can pay an extra HKD$50 (or so) and get “upgraded” to a Crystal Cabin (i.e. clear-bottomed) cable car. It’s totally worth the money, simply because there’s practically no queue on the Crystal Cabins – it’s like the Ngong Ping version of a Fast Pass! The clear bottom on the cable car doesn’t really add much value otherwise, though I guess it’s a bit of a novelty.

I didn’t find the shopping quite as compelling on this trip, though this is probably due to a number of factors. Firstly, it’s hot. Really, really hot. I don’t know how it compares to Brisbane heat these days (forgiving the summer/winter difference) but the humidity makes the prospect of wading through crowds, fairly unattractive. Secondly, our baggage was already overweight when we left the UK; thankfully the girl at the “I’m upgrading you to Premium Economy” desk (thanks again Dave!) waved the £30 extra charge for us, though it made us fairly reluctant to buy anything extra in HK.

As it turns out though, we’re now sitting in the Qantas club lounge in Hong Kong airport, because we’ve once again been upgraded – this time to Business class! Admittedly, I requested this upgrade on Frequent Flyer points, but this is the first time I’ve actually landed it as well! Anyway – this means that we each get 10kg extra luggage allowance, but since we only found out that our upgrade had been approved on the day of the flight, it didn’t leave much time for shopping, so we’re flying out with (roughly) what we came in with. Still, the shopping here is certainly plentiful, and I’m thinking that perhaps we should plan another trip to tidy up our wardrobes sometime next year! Not sure how I’m going to fit that one into the budget, though…

Anyway – they’ve just called our flight, so I guess it’s time to board! Photos to come once we’re home in Brisbane. Hear that? “Home”. In Brisbane. What a trip.

We were once again cursed by the weather on our Cornwall trip – it rained every day until about 2 PM, after which time the sun did its best to break through the clouds (though it didn’t always succeed). Still, you have to take the good with the bad, so we did our best to see as much as we could!

On Wednesday, we headed out to Falmouth, which is on the southern part of the coast. The town itself was ok – nothing too spectacular, though we loved the little store called “Kit”, and had we have had more room in our suitcases, I suspect we would have gone a bit crazy with some purchases. But by far the highlight of the town was lunch at Risk Stein’s fish restaurant, where I had the best fish and chips that I think I’ve ever eaten.

The fish was sea bream, which has such a delicious flavour; not to mention that they use “beef drippings” (whatever that means) in their deep fryer, which gives a very “Sunday roast” flavour to the chips. It was just amazing!

In the afternoon, we headed to The Lizard, which is the southern-most point of the British mainland. We were lucky to have the best weather of the whole trip for the 40 minute walk out to the viewpoint and back!

The coastline was beautiful, and it was probably one of the nicest villages that we saw for the whole trip, simply because it was a bit quieter, and not quite so touristy.

We polished off our time in Cornwall with an early dinner at Senor Dick’s in Newquay. We managed to get to bed by 9:30 PM, which was a good thing, as the alarm was set for 4:45 AM to get an early start on the 5 hour drive back to London!

A few years back, Mom threatened us by saying: “Don’t bother coming home until you’ve seen St Ives”. And, I have to admit, that the number one reason we decided to spend our last days in England in Cornwall was simply to prevent Mom greeting us at the airport, only to send us right back again!

Once again, we had trouble finding a park – school holidays is not a good time to be in Cornwall – but finally we did, and we hiked down the hill to the beach. It was a lovely town, and walking through all the narrow streets and then emerging at a scenic viewpoint reminded me a lot of Corniglia.

We had planned our meals for the day quite badly, and somehow we managed to miss out on lunch. So come 4 PM, we found ourselves famished, and wandered into a little beachside restaurant called The Hub. We were desperately hoping that the kitchen wasn’t closed, and we were extremely pleased when our waitress assured us it wasn’t. The news just got better when I saw crab fettuccine on the menu, which I promptly ordered, and then thoroughly enjoyed!

“Thoroughly enjoyed” is actually an understatement; before it was served, I had said to Kristy, “This fettuccine had better be good; I feel like my whole life has led up to this moment, for me to eat this crab infused pasta”. Yes, it really was excellent, and yet so simple! I’ll be making that one when we get back to Australia. Anyone want to volunteer to come and try it?

Kristy had read about St Michael’s Mount in the Lonely Planet guide, and it sounded like something that was well worth a visit, so we ducked out to see it after the Minack Theatre. We were a little discouraged at first because parking was quite difficult – we tried two different carparks before finding one that would let us in – but finally we got a spot and headed out to the beach.

Basically, there’s two ways to get to St Michael’s Mount; the first, and by far the easiest, is by boat.

For the more adventurous souls though, there’s also the option of walking over – though this is obviously recommended only at low tide. There were loads of people attempting it while we were there, even though I suspect the tide was on its way in.

Unfortunately, this was as close as we could get to the castle, given the amount of time we had available. Had we have had more time up our sleeves, and perhaps more appropriate clothing on (Kristy was in jeans and a jumper, absolutely adoring the English summer weather!), I would have loved to wade over and check it out!