Happenings Abroad ..

Aussie Rules

2011-10-01T01:36:00.004+01:00

We currently find ourselves in Australia - NZ's wealthy cousin just across the ditch.

We arrived via two flights, the first a domestic Chinese flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong and then our last long haul flight (for some time, probably) to Sydney.

In each of these airports, the proportion of Kiwis seemed to increase, from a few in Shanghai, to quite a few in Hong Kong (mostly transiting from somewhere to home, or vice versa) and finally heaps in Sydney - for obvious reasons.

The flight from Hong Kong to Sydney was all but empty, so we snagged a whole row to ourselves and in theory should have had a comfortable flight as there were two seats for Milly to lie flat on, and the flight was through the night time.

Unfortunately for us, we hadn't been particularly good with adjusting to the time zone change in Shanghai (+7 hours) and had mostly just stuck to European time - staying up until the small hours and sleeping in till past midday.

This had seemed like a good idea at the time, as we'd been able to go out in the evening with Milly and not have to worry about her bedtime, but halfway to Sydney and at about midnight China time - with a fully awake toddler, we started to wonder if we shouldn't have been a bit stricter on trying to adjust?

Milly did finally fall asleep, in my arms approximately 15 minutes before we touched down at 6am local time - oh dear.

We were collected from the airport by Claire's brother, and then made our way to his house, where we were staying for the next few days. It was only about 7:30am and Claire, Milly and I were all suffering due to having no sleep for over 24 hours.

We decided that rather than sleep (which we desperately wanted to), we would all stay up as long as possible in an attempt to beat the jet lag and acclimatise to local time as soon as possible.

For Claire and I it wasn't really a problem, but poor little Milly didn't understand why Mummy and Daddy wouldn't let her have a proper sleep? We let her have a couple of naps - but kept waking her after a few hours to ensure she'd have a proper sleep in the evening.

I'm not sure what poor Steve and Elaine (Claire's brother and sister-in-law) thought of us that first day, a couple of zombies and their weepy daughter - but the trick seemed to work and after a good 14 hour sleep all three of us felt refreshed and ready for to get out and make the most of our time in Sydney.

Steve and Elaine have a daughter called Zara, who is about three months younger than Milly - which meant a couple of things; the house was filled with toys - Milly couldn't believe her luck; and our desocialised daughter was forced to spend time with someone her own age - shock horror!

As it turned out, Milly and Zara got on famously - having sized each other for a couple of hours they started to play with each other, shared snacks and read stories together - all very cute and reassuring to see that Milly could actually spend time with other children - phew.

Whilst in Sydney, we took the girls to Taronga zoo - which you reach by ferry from Circular Quay. The zoo itself is situated on a hill, so you catch a cable car to the top of the hill, and then walk down it checking out the animals whilst you descend.

The girls had a great time, running around and squealing in delight at the animals - highlights of the visit included elephants kicking about a ball, and being splashed at the seal show - all in all an excellent zoo which I would highly recommend if you're ever in Sydney.

That night I went out to meet an old friend from London at a pub in Newtown to watch the AFL (Aussie rules football) final between the Swans, a local team and Hawthorne - a team from Melbourne.

I'd never watched any AFL before, but had a quick run through of the rules and then we were away. It's quite a frentic game, where it seems fortunes can change quite quickly, for example your team can be attacking and then 5 second later concede a goal. I found it all quite confusing, which only got worse as the beer intake increased.

Also on the screens at the pub was the All Blacks V Japan in the rugby union world cup - we hadn't seen much evidence of the world cup being on whilst in Sydney, but as was explained to me - union is probably the 4th sport in Australia, after AFL, league and cricket.

Unfortunately the Swans lost the final, it wasn't really a final anyway - it was a quarter final, but the Australians have bucked tradition and call the games between the last 8 the final, the last 4, the super final, and the last two the extreme ultimate final - or something like that. The more time we spend in Australia the more I see evidence of the locals doing or calling things differently to the rest of the world - not for any particular reason, just to be different it seems.

After a couple of days, it was time to say goodbye to friends and family in Sydney (apologies to all those we didn't get a chance to catch up with, it was a flying visit - next time!) it was back on a plane for a three hour flight to Cairns, where my Dad and Step-mum live.

Cairns is an interesting city, it's technically in the tropics, so doesn't have the traditional 4 seasons and instead has two, the wet and dry seasons. We've arrived at the end of the dry (cooler) season, and the temperature here has been a lovely balmy 30 degrees - would hate to be here if it was any hoter!

Milly has had a great time hanging out with her Grandad, who is just a big kid at heart and has no problems throwing himself on the ground, or making silly faces, or singing silly songs to get her attention - a match made in heaven it seems, it's been nice to see them get to know each other a bit more.

Whilst in Cairns we've been all action, we've been here before but as it is quite a touristy city - we hadn't even scratched the surface of what the city and surrounding area have to offer.

On our first day, we headed up into the tablelands and a safari park, where we had breakfast with the lions - an area where you can have a full english in a cage surrounded by dozing lions - who they then feed in an attempt to make them do something other than sleep - a tactic that worked.

Milly loved being up close to the Lions, pointing and squealing with delight - much better than reading about them i books, mummy and daddy!

The next day we took a drive down to Innisfail and Tully - the areas hardest hit by tropical cyclone Yasi earlier in the year. Despite the cyclone being eight months ago, there were still numerous buildings without roofs, or with obvious damage from the cyclone. There was also lots of businesses for sale - with people having had enough. All very sobering, especially considering we're now about to enter the next cyclone season, and as the locals say - it's not if, it's when…

The following weekend, we took a trip up to Cooktown, a town situated where Captain James Cook beached the Endeavour in 1770 and stayed for two months as they repaired the hull, which had been damaged whilst coming in over the reef.

The road to Cooktown was an adventure itself, it wasn't sealed and we had to ford three rivers - proper crocodile dundee stuff.

Cooktown itself was a fascinating place, very quiet with a couple of hotels and pubs and a single supermarket.

There was also a small museum, where you could learn about Captain Cook's visit, as well as learn a bit about the history of the town - which had been a gold town in the 1800's and had once had a population of 18,000 - before the gold dried up and the people moved away.

Another interesting fact was that a good portion of the 18,000 inhabitants were Chinese, with boats arriving from Hong Kong each week - whilst immigrants from that part of the world seem the norm to both NZ and Australia these days, I'd never really considered that it had been going on in great volumes as early as this - as I say, very interesting.

Having returned back to Cairns, we studied the weather, and then having selected a suitable day - we booked ourselves onto a boat trip out to the great barrier reef. We're told that the main weather factor that will effect your trip is wind, and that a lot of wind will limit visibility underwater.

It seemed we were in luck, and the day that we ended up going out there was very low wind. Having left Milly to be looked after by Grandad (our first day apart from her in four months!), we jumped on our boat and made the two-hour trip out to the outer reef.

On arrival at the reef, we disembarked onto the floating pontoon that the company that we travelled with have permanently parked just off one of the reefs.

Claire and I were pretty quick off the mark, quickly getting our snorkels, masks and fins - and were first into the water.

Snorkelling took a little bit of getting used to, it felt really unnatural to breath whilst having your head in the water, but after about 5 minutes - I got used to it.

We spent about 45 minutes snorkelling around the reef the first time, which was absolutely amazing - the pontoon was moored at approximately 10 meters depth, with lots of larger fish swimming around underneath - possibly taking cover from the sun?

About 20 meters swim from the pontoon, you arrived at the reef proper, with all sorts of hard and soft coral and literally thousands of tropical fish swimming around. The colours were amazing, luminous greens, bright yellows, and deep blues. The depth of the coral changed as you swam over it - from 50cm at parts, then descending down to 5 or 10 meters depth only a few meters away - forming large underwater caverns and trenches to explore.

In all we spent 3 hours on the reef, went for 2 snorkels and one semi-submersible boat ride, had lunch and a couple of cold australian beers on the sun deck, before jumping back on the boat and heading back to Cairns to meet up with Grandad and Milly - who had also had a lovely day, no tears or grumbles to report - which was good news.

The trip to the reef wasn't cheap, but it we felt it was definitely money well spent - as we were snorkelling around we looked enviously at the people scuba diving below us - and we both agreed that next time we'd have to have a go at that as well.

So, that about brings you up to date on our travels, tomorrow we jump on a plane destined from Auckland and the end of our long summer holiday. Back to the real world of trying to find work and buying a house.

On that note, I have a couple of interviews lined up for next week, but I suspect my high salary expectation might become something of a stumbling block to getting into work - you've got to try and not undersell yourself though, right?

Trip in numbers:

Days since I last did a days work: 116

Money left over in our summer holiday travel fund: £80 - great budgeting there then!

Hasta Luego, Europe

2011-09-13T09:33:00.003+01:00

Now then, first off - apologies for the length of time between updates - I've been too busy enjoying myself to post - sorry! ;-)

Since last blogging, we've spent time exploring our surroundings in Galacia; the towns of Vigo and Pontevedra; as well as looking up and down the Rias - a Spanish word which describes something like what I would call a fjord - large cuts into the coastline of north east Spain - which the area is famous for.

Another thing that the area is famous for is seafood - something which I enjoyed immensely - being a pescatarian (someone who eats fish, but not meat) - I sometime struggle in restaurants around Europe - but not here. The food highlight for me was a festival of the sea in Combarro - where I feasted on razor clams, mussels, and octopus - all washed down with a glass of abarino - the local white wine which was very good.

Having said goodbye to our little cottage in Soutemayer - we made our way up to A Coruna where we had lunch with friends, who then showed us around the city - culminating in a walk up to a 2000 year old roman light house.

After A Coruna we spent a night in Bilbao and then Bordeaux - both of which I would highly recommend for a visit - the first because of the Guggenheim museum, a Frank Gerry building which is worth seeing from the outside even if you don't bother going in (I didn't, Claire did) and the second because it's a beautiful old French city with all the charms of Paris without the millions of tourists.

Next stop was Disneyland - where we'd booked a table at a restaurant that specialised in character meet and greets - so Milly could spend some time with her best mate Mickey.

Before dinner, we spent about 6 hours in the Park, originally I wasn't sure if we'd be able to fill the time - but it wasn't a problem, there were plenty of rides that Milly could go on, and she seemed to eventually like them - even if she was a bit cautious to begin with.

At dinner, it's fair to say that Milly wasn't overjoyed to see her TV heroes close up - she refused to hug any of the characters, but did just about touch Donalds hand when he offered it to her. It was a different story when they were off interacting with the other children though - she'd watch them excitedly from the other side of the room - and as a result ate next to nothing of her €18(!!!) set menu.

The next day we packed up our car one last time and jumped on a ferry back to Blighty - it was a journey of mixed emotions, as the last time we'd been on a calais to dover crossing was about three weeks after we arrived in the UK the first time - so lots of memories of then came rushing back into our minds.

Once back in England we set about selling our car, which we did with not too much hassle, selling to a Romanian couple - which is a bit of a coincidence as one of the people we sold our house to was Romanian also.

The next few days were spent meeting up with and saying goodbye to our friends - and whilst it was nice to be back in London (which still feels like home), it was quite sad to be saying our goodbyes - as this time it felt pretty real.

Next thing you know, we were headed to Heathrow and jumping on a plane to Shanghai - where we are now.

Despite all our fretting, the flight was relatively uneventful. The flight was full, but we managed to nab a spare seat which meant that we took turns watching movies whilst the other one sat with Milly whilst she watched TV/coloured in/slept.

We've been in Shanghai for two days and we're really enjoying our time here. The locals are treating Milly like she's some sort of rock star - pointing and occasionally coming up and asking to take pictures - it must be the blue eyes and blond hair.

The town itself is quite interesting, situated on a river it has a past history of being an important trading outpost with the west. Because of this the architecture on one bank of the river is reminiscent of some of the grand old buildings in Europe, whilst the other side is more recent - almost futuristic - with it's multitude of neon skyscrapers, ten lane roads, and elevated walkways for the literally tens of thousands of people who seem to be coming and going (see above).

Trip in numbers:

Total miles driven: 8,506.9 (or 13,611.04 km)Length of Beard: 1mm - I shaved it pretty promptly upon arrival back in the UK - but not before Milly and I recreated the photo on the Ferry from three months ago, which you may have seen previously in this blog:

Spain's Best Kept Secret

2011-08-19T21:04:00.004+01:00

Since my last blog post, we've left France and continued our journey through Spain to the region of Galicia - where we've been for the last week.

Highlights of that journey included the walled city of Carcassonne, which Milly took great delight in walking around and shouting "Castle!" whilst pointing at anything that looked vaguely stone wall or turret-like.

We also enjoyed our time in San Sebastian - one of Spain's trendy holiday spots on it's north coast, and a bit of a foodie paradise as it's best known for it pintxos bars - similar to the tapas bars your find around the rest of Spain (and the world) - I'll leave the detailed description of them to Claire.

Having left the castles and exotic bar snacks behind us we then travelled inland towards out final long term destination.

As we travelled we started to notice the odd person walking along the roadside. Curious as to why they might be doing this, we consulted our trusty lonely planet to find that we were driving the route of the Camino de Santiago - a 40 day(!) pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela - where the apostle James (look him up) is said to be buried.

Can't say that I'm particularly interested on walking anywhere that is going to take 40 days, but fair play to the literally 100's of people we've seen walking the roads - some in small groups, but many by themselves - I suppose a pilgram has to do what a pilgram has to do?

Nearing the end of our third long drive, we were fast approaching our final long term stop destination. With each stop, we've tried to make sure that they've all been a little different - the first was a beach holiday, the second a city break, and now the third - an old stone cottage in the countryside about 20 minutes from the nearest major city.

On arrival, about 30 minutes later than planned (stupid GPS took us to the wrong side of a river, and then suggested we swam - I hate TOMTOM!), we were greeted by the owner, who didn't speak any English - which combined with our lack of understanding of the Spanish language (I'm limited to being able to order drinks in bars) - meant that the introductions where somewhat awkward.

Once we were settled, we took the time to explore our surroundings. The cottage is on 25,000 square meters of land bordered by a river on one side.

The grounds are planted with various fruit trees, of which I think the owner said we could help ourselves to - we have been anyway - so far we've sampled apples, pears, peaches and grapes - all of which Milly loves.

The owners live down near the river, and there are swings and a trampoline near their house which we are free to use - Milly can't believe her luck being constantly near such fun things as these.

Finally, the owners have a boat and several kayaks - which they have made available for us to use - see above for photographic evidence of Milly and I out on the river.

It's funny, before arriving I was a little apprehensive about coming here for two weeks - the thought of being isolated out in a countryside cottage filled me with a little bit of dread - how was I going to fill my time? But now that we're here, I'm really enjoying the space and sense of privacy - it feels like we've got the whole place to ourselves and we're loving it.

We've now been here just under a week, and having no trouble filling our days by exploring the surrounding towns and villages.

We've been into our nearest town, Pontevedra - where there is a week long festival going on - complete with fun fair rides and side shows - it seems that every other attraction has a Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald or Pluto painted on it - so this has proven to be hours of fun for Milly - who walks around shouting "Look Daddy, Mickey!" or similar.

We've also been up to Santiago de Compostela to see what all the fuss is about - it appears that there is quite an impressive church there, which was full of Brazilians when we visited - complete with Brazil flags and drums - you would be forgiven for thinking you were at a football match, expect for all the dudes in robes at the front reading from what was presumably the Bible in Spanish?

We also met up with some friends, who took us down to a walled town called Valença in Portugal for lunch - a lovely fish stew which I'm sure Claire will describe better than I can in her blog.

We'd expected the weather to be terrible when we got here, mostly because people we know from the area had warned us that it wouldn't be good - referring to it as the "Spanish Ireland" - but so far it's been great - the first day it rained, but ever since it starts foggy in the morning but then it clears and temperatures have been around the low 30s every day.

There don't appear to be many other English (or any other nationality) tourists around, in fact we've gone days without encountering anyone else who speaks English.

This hasn't been a problem though - the locals almost seem apologetic that they don't speak our language, and we've had some people go to great lengths to accomodate our monolinguistic ways - including a shop keeper who dragged his sister down from her flat above the shop to help interpret our requests - all very humbling - mental note: must try harder to learn at least one other language.

There do seem to be a lot of local Spanish tourists though, making me wonder if Galicia isn't Spain's best kept secret? What with all the great food, good beaches, excellent weather and interesting towns - perhaps our espanyol amigos don't want us to know how good it is, so they can keep it for themselves? just a thought ;-)

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 6702.5

Length of beard: 3.5cm - I've been looking at some recent pictures of myself with the beard, and I'm starting to think I suit it - perhaps I should persevere.

Beers drunk since starting this blog entry: 3 (burp!)

On the Road Again

2011-08-10T20:18:00.005+01:00

It's now been four days since leaving Ostuni. We've made our way north, along the east coast of Italy.

We spent the nights in Chieti and Ravenna before arriving in Milan - a city I know quite well, as Disney Italy is based here, and I've been backward and forward to the Italian office a few times in my time at Disney.

Whilst driving north, it quickly became apparent that we were heading the wrong direction. The traffic heading south was three lanes bumper to bumper and often at a standstill, the great summer exodus from northern to southern Italy was well underway. As we were travelling north, we fared quite well traffic wise - with only the odd car bothering to make the journey north alongside us.

As we approached Milan, the trip odometer rolled over 5000 miles. To put that into context, that's almost half way to NZ from the UK - had we driven in a straight line we'd probably be somewhere in China about now.

The stop in Milan was very pleasant, we took the opportunity to stray into central Milan (our hotel was in the outskirts) and catch up with some of my ex-colleagues. It was lovely to see everyone and Claire and I both enjoyed having adult conversations with people other than each other.

Milly was also in good form, and took the opportunity to perform her latest party trick - which is to force her hand as far down her throat as it will go until she wretches, whilst grinning wildly. All fun and games, except this time she pushed it a little two far and a little bit of sick came back up all over Daddy - the fashionable Milanese sat around us were less than impressed - but luckily Milly seems to have learnt her lesson and hasn't tried a repeat performance.

Having said our goodbyes in Milan, we then proceeded west towards the French Riviera.

Crossing the border from Italy to France was a bittersweet moment - in our decade in the northern hemisphere, Italy is probably the country we've visited the most and it was sad to think that it's probably some time until we'll be back - we will be back though, mark my words.

That pretty much brings you up to date with our travels, we are currently in Provence in France. A cute little home in a tiny village called Pierrefeu du Var (thanks Julie!) - deep in what appears to be Rosé country - my all time favourite summertime drink (see above for the before picture, rest assured this bottle didn't last long).

We've got a couple of days here, to give Milly (and myself) a break from the driving. Filling our days hasn't been too difficult, today we took a walk through the vast wine vineyards that surround the village - as it's summer all the vines are green and heavy with ripe grapes - Milly in particular has enjoyed counting grapes as we go along... "one grape, two grapes, three grapes" and so on, you get the picture ;-)

Tomorrow we hit the road again, Carcassonne first, than across the border to Spain and San Sebastian, Leon and then our next long term stop in Galicia - where I'm told the white wine is excellent - oh dear!

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15 5345.6

Bear Lengthy 3cm - but I think it's days are numbered

Heel of the Boot

2011-08-03T08:53:00.004+01:00

We are now fast approaching the end of our stay here in Ostuni (pictured right). Again, we've had a lovely time - three weeks is an excellent length of stay to ensure that you really get a feel for the place that you're staying in.

Unlike Crete, Ostuni has been much more of a city break, albeit a quaint medieval city - we've had shops and services all within walking distance - so in theory have been less reliant on our car.

The town has been particularly lively, but this is because it's August and bang smack in the middle of the peak summer holiday period - meaning lots of people, wether it be in the town proper, or at any of the surrounding beaches - more on them later.

As it is peak holiday season, the central square in town has been transformed into a temporary stage - and every night bands or staged performances take place to entertain the crowds - all very interesting and not something we've witnessed in Italy before.

I suspect the reason we've not seen it before, is because we've always taken the advice of all the travel guides, and avoided travelling to Italy in August - now I'm starting to wonder if that was the best idea? Sure, it's very busy and I can only imagine the places that are more pure beach resort are heaving, but the atmosphere around town is excellent, and there is entertainment every night - it's a bit of a trade off, but it's certainly not been unbearable.

We have been making our way down to the local beach at least every other day. Milly is a proper little beach bunny now and loves to spend time playing in the sand or the shallow water.

The beach that we tend to go to the most has a car park near the road, and then a little train service that runs people backward and forward to the beach. The rides on the train are a real highlight for Milly, to the point that when she's asked if she'd like to go to the beach, she responds: "Come on mum, dad. Train!"

The weather when we first arrived was blisteringly hot, much like when we were travelling through mainland Greece - but it cooled a little the second week and now it's settled into a pleasant 30ish degrees every day.

The second week even brought a little rain, which we'd not seen for a while - we took the opportunity to go on day trips whilst the weather wasn't as nice, and have explored much of Puglia, or the "Heel of the Boot" as it's sometimes known - due to it's appearance on the map.

Our travels have taken us to Lecce, Monopoli, Albarobello, Gallipoli (not the one in Turkey) and Matera.

Milly particularly enjoyed Matera, an ancient city where the dwellings are carved into the rock along two ravines. What was it that she enjoyed you ask? Was it the awesome outlook, or the ancient history, or the good food? No, it was the thousands of steps winding their way up and down the place, which she happily stamped up and down for hours whilst mummy and daddy were looking around.

Speaking of food, the eating here as been excellent - unlike in Greece, we've predominantly eaten at home - this is because all the local cheese, bread, fish and produce stores stock all weird and wacky italian food that you'd either not find in a UK supermarket, or it would be prohibitively expensive.

The problem now is that we only have four meals remaining until we go, and we still have a list of things we'd like to make as long as your arm. We're considering inserting another meal into the day - perhaps between lunch and tea (I do like to eat lunch early, so there is a large gap) to ensure we can squeeze in another couple of dishes?

The good food is also having a somewhat adverse affect on my waistline, if we continue eating as we have been - I'm going to have to consider purchasing new trousers.... oh dear, diet in Galicia? My understanding is that the food is excellent there as well - whatever will I do!

We've been going down to the play area in the nearby park, and Milly is starting to socialise with the other children a little - but her best friends are still Mickey and Minnie. We have a couple of small Mickey and Minnie toys, and she plays with them for hours on end.

Also, this being Italy, Mickey and Minnie are everywhere - either on peoples shirts, or ballons, or on comic books in stores - you can't get away from them.

The other day, we were going out to get a gelato from the local store - we coaxed Milly out of the apartment by asking her if she'd like an ice cream - the response was pretty emphatic and moments later we were on the street walking towards the local gelateria.

As we walked along the road, Milly noticed an inflatable Mickey and Minnie in a shop window: "Look dad, Mickey and Minnie" she said.

"Oh Yeah" I said, "We'd better go get that ice cream though, ay?"

"Bye Mickey, Bye Minnie - ice cream!" she said, very cute :-)

On Saturday, we need to pack the car once more, and then we're off on our next road trip - having spent three weeks here, we're all looking forward to getting out on the road again.

Our travels will take us North through Italy to Milan, then west through the Cote d'Azur in France and then along the north coast of Spain to our next long term stop in Galicia - lots of adventures to had along the way, we can't wait.

Finally, for those that are interested in some of the places we've been visiting, or some of the food we've been eating - I suggest checking out Claire's blog and also taking a look at her flickr photostream.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 4308.2

Length of beard: 2.5cm

La Dolce Vita

2011-07-26T13:54:00.005+01:00

Ah yes, here we are - now over half way through out stay in Ostuni, Italy - as well as half way through our European trip - and I can happily report that life is in fact good.

Since my last blog post, we've left Greece and made our way to Italy via another overnight ferry from Igoumenista to Bari.

Unlike previous overnight ferry journeys this trip wasn't as comfortable, as approximately three months ago when looking to book our ferry journeys I was tempted by an "airplane style seat" sale which meant that we'd all be transported for less than £100.

Three months ago, that sounded like a pretty good idea - but sitting on a dock at 11:30pm with a screaming toddler waiting for our boat to arrive (three overnight ferries, three delayed departures - I think I've spotted a pattern) and I was beginning to wonder if it had been a prudent purchase or not.

Once on the boat, we were lucky enough to secure two seats near the front of the cabin, which meant we could setup our travel cot and put Milly down - which sorted out our screaming toddler problem.

Unfortunately the lights on all night/blaring TV showing Greek soap operas/large Greek man snoring problems were tougher to sort out, and as such I suspect I only had about half an hour sleep between 3 and 4 in the morning - ouch.

The next morning we disembarked onto the port at Bari - the sun was shining and the Italian coffee and pastries were tasty - despite our lack of sleep life was good once again.

An hours drive later, we arrived at our next long term destination, Ostuni - an ancient walled city set at the top a hill approximately 6 miles from the coast.

Having collected the keys to our apartment, I then proceeded to lump all our bags out of the car and then collapsed - exhausted with my days efforts even though it wasn't yet midday.

Over the course of the next few days Claire, Milly and I took our time to acclimatise ourselves to our surroundings. Our apartment is right next to the communal park - which has a children's play area - much to Milly's delight.

Within a block there are some excellent local food shops - a bakery, a green grocer, a cheese shop and a fish store - all of which offer fresh, cheap, local produce and whose services we have been making the most of to ensure that we've eaten like Italian kings since we arrived.

Once we were comfortable with our immediate surroundings, I also attempted to purchase a prepaid mobile phone sim which would allow us to connect to the internet - something that we'd done in Greece and had been really useful - both for keeping in touch with friends and family and researching places we'd like to go.

Whilst the initial purchase was quite straight forward, unfortunately the actual connecting to the internet proved problematic - and without going into specific details - it eventually took seven days of daily visits to the mobile phone store and €60 before we were finally connected - like David Cameron, had I known at the start what a hassle it would have been I think I would have happily not bothered - oh well, you live and you learn?

Ostuni is a lovely city - like Crete it closes down from about 2pm till 5pm - but once it opens back up again it is extremely busy - it seems that the locals like nothing better than to go out walking the central streets after dark - to help facilitate this the main streets are blocked off to traffic, enabling you to walk around freely.

With having Milly, we haven't been able to go out later than about 9:30, but from what we've seen - it only gets busier later on - the picture above is an example of the main square at about this time - with the cathedral in the background.

Our friend Kristyn has joined us for this second week, which has been nice - it's allowed us to take turns looking after Milly whilst the others go out and do adult things - like shopping or going to a bar for a drink - tonight Kristyn has kindly offered to babysit whilst Claire and I go out for dinner - just the two of us - a rare treat indeed.

With just over a week remaining in Ostuni, it's sad to think that our time here will soon come to an end - I know that the swift passage of time has been a recurring theme in my posts - but it really doesn't feel like 7 weeks since we left our lives in London.

Despite the fact that it's all going a bit too quickly for my liking, we are having an amazing time - and as the Italians would say... la dolce vita - life is good.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 3751.6

Beard Length: 2cm - although I did trim the moustache and daggy bits this morning, turns out that having a beard isn't nearly as much fun as I thought? Let's just say gelato and moustaches don't really mix - although I am determined to preserver with it....

Glasses broken since leaving London: 10+ - for whatever reason no glass seems to be safe since departing London for Europe - it's not that Milly is particularly responsible for all breakages either - both Claire and I have contributed - hopefully breaking a glass isn't the same as breaking a mirror?

Goodbye Crete, Hello Ancient Greece

2011-07-13T19:04:00.004+01:00

Since last posting we've left Crete and made our way back to mainland Greece.

We were sad to leave our little beach home at Almyrida - it's funny how quickly you can get attached to a place and I suppose also a way of life, which has been fairly relaxed for the past month or so.

We had a lovely time in Crete and would highly recommend a visit - highlights included Francois - the cafe downstairs which was extremely good value and the staff treated us like family, lovely seafood - always fresh and cooked on the grill with a squeze of lemon and herbs - yum, and finally swimming in the Sea of Crete - which was always warm unlike the Tasman sea back in NZ.

You'll be pleased to hear that Milly did eventually start to enjoy swimming in the Ocean, and was even going in unprompted and unaccompanied by the end of our visit - shame it took over 2 weeks for her to come around, she can be quite stubborn at times if she wants to be.

Having said our goodbyes, we packed all our worldly possessions (at least those that aren't on a boat making their way back to NZ at the moment) back into our car and got the overnight ferry to Athens.

Our plan for the next week was to do some of the sightseeing that we'd never gotten around to, namely all the ancient wonders that Greece has to offer - which meant that Athens was our first stop.

Our ferry arrived into Athens at 5:30am - so we went and parked the car up and made our way to the Acropolis - having done our research we'd read that it was best to go first thing in the morning or last thing at night to both miss the crowds and the searing heat of the midday sun.

When we arrived at just a little after 8 - it seemed we weren't the only one who had arrived early intent on beating the crowds - whole bus loads of "crowd beaters" appeared to be in the queue for tickets in front of us... to make matters worse, it wasn't particularly cool either - with temperatures already in the low 30s - trust us to arrive just at the start of a heatwave.

Despite the crowds and the heat, Claire Milly and I made our way up the Acropolis to marvel at the Parthenon and other assorted buildings at the top - and marvel we did, when we weren't chasing Milly around - who had decided that the roped off areas were obviously THE place to be, and would make a beeline for them whenever mummy or daddy weren't looking.

Having had a look around, we descended back to central Athens and went to Syntagma Square, where all the riots have been taking place, to watch the changing of the guards.

Again, everyone and their tour bus seemed to have gotten there before us, so we got a few sneaky pictures and departed - walking past the protest camp as we made our way back to the hotel.

The next day we wanted to go to the ancient agora - where the normal folk would have hung out back in the day rather than the posh fellers that would have been swanning around up at the Acropolis.

This time, rather than setting off early, we spent the day in the hotel making the most of the aircon before heading out in the late afternoon.

We arrived at the ancient agora at about 6pm - and this time there was barely a soul to be seen. The place didn't close for another two hours so we could walk around at our liesure taking in the sights.

Again, Milly did her best to evade her parents and get into those places that only little folk can. The staff/security people were particularly watchful of her, and there was one woman who had a lovely habit of blowing a whistle anytime Milly went near anything - charming.

Suffice to say, Claire and I didn't spend as much time as we probably would have liked - but the thought of our child doing some sort of damage to a 3000 year old temple (the one in the picture, for example) made us cut our losses and head into the old town looking for somewhere to dine.

The next day we set off in our car on our way to the site of ancient Olympia. Another thing that Milly seems to come to terms with is the long car journeys - this one was 4 hours and we didn't hear a peep out of her the entire time - result! She does spend most of her time in the back watching Mickey Mouse - which probably isn't terribly good for her, but at least she isn't screaming?

Having arrived at modern Olympia, we checked into our hotel, and walked down the road to the archaeological site. Next to the site there was a museum, with all the artifacts that have been recovered - so decided to head into there first to discover some of the history before checking out the actual site.

Again - we arrived in the afternoon - and again, the site was more or less empty - with most people having departed on their tour buses back to the cruise ships earlier in the day.

Milly again was running around causing mayhem - wanting to touch the statues and things like that - so Claire and I struck up a deal whereby we took turns looking after Milly whilst the other one looked at the Museum - which worked out well.

Whilst Claire was in the Museum, Milly and I were outside playing in the water sprinklers, and when I went into the site, Claire and Milly stopped and had an icecream at the cafe - all very civilised and very low risk for any ancient relics that just happened to be lying around.

Having looked through the museum (which was fascinating), I then made my way down to the actual site - which was stunning.

As I walked through the ruins, with the late afternoon sun setting over the hills and the sound of cicadas singing in my ears, it didn't take much imagination to envisage what the place would have been like 3 millennia ago.

Whilst none of the buildings are complete, the foundations, some of the floors, and even some of the pilars are still standing - and you really get a sense of what it would have been like all those years ago when you walk around.

Once I'd been around once, I dragged myself away - back to the cafe to pick up Milly and take her back to the hotel so Claire could take her turn to marvel at the sights.

Today we left the hotel in Olympia, and made our way to Delphi - the third ancient site that we wanted to visit - we arrived in the early afternoon again, and as we're here for two days - Claire went to the site this afternoon, and I'll go and take a look tomorrow.

The day after tomorrow, it's a five hour drive to Igoumenitsa and one last ferry to Italy.

We've had an amazing time here in Greece, and it will be sad to leave, but we look forward to our time in Italy next and all the adventures that await us there.

Trip in numbers so far:

Miles since N15: 2962.4 - although 600 of those were driving around Crete

Beard length: 15mm - a frightening amount of my whiskers are grey - not a good look, I'm contemplating shaving the lot off in an act of denial....

Observations from Crete

2011-06-29T12:19:00.007+01:00

We're fast approaching the end of our second week in Crete, and I must admit that being unemployed and homeless has agreed with me so far.

We've not been up to a heck of a lot, but I thought I'd record some memories of a few of the things we've done and some general observations of Crete so far:

Souda Bay War Cemetery

We went to the Souda Bay war cemetery last week, where 2000 soldiers (500 of which are New Zealanders) who died in the Battle of Crete are buried. The cemetery was immaculately kept, graves all in rows with freshly cut grass and ach grave having individual plantings. Most of the graves are unmarked, with the inscription: "A soldier of the 1939-1945 war - known unto God"... All very sobering.

Today we indadvertedly retraced the route that allied forces took when retreating when the Germans started to overwhelm them on the north coast, from Chania to Hora Sfakion. An amazing drive that quickly climbed 1000m into the white mountains before descending down to the coast on the other side. The roads were fairly decent, albiet very windy - but it's hard to imagine making the same journey on foot 70 years ago, with the Germans in hot pursuit.

Knossos Palace

Earlier this week we too a trip east to Knossos Palace, a 4000 year old Minoan palace built by King Minos - probably most famous (at least to me) for being the setting of the minotaur in the labyrinth story.

The site was discovered 100 years ago by an English archaeologist called Arthur Evans, who excavated it, and then went about restoring it - including adding whole floors to building, painting frescos, and generally making it easier to appreciate the scale and grandeur of the complex.

I'm sure that some creative license would have been used, and I'm not sure that you'd get away with reconstructing a site like this these days - but in my opinion it made the visit interesting on two fronts - firstly, it offered some insight into this fascinating ancient civilisation, and secondly told the tale of when archeology was really in it's hey day - in my mind I imagine the Evans bloke probably being a bit like Indiana Jones - hopefully with a whip and everything - all very interesting.

Cretan Fire Water

The LPG (lonely planet bible, as it was disparagingly referred to by a disaffected hotel owner in Turkey once) has a whole section dedicated to Ouzo; where it comes from, how it's made, how you should drink it etc. It also briefly mentions that you won't see much of it in Crete, where they drink Raki instead - the only description they offer Raki is three words: cretan fire water.

As it happens, I've managed to drink my fair share of Raki whilst being here - as it is common practice to deliver a small bottle filled with the stuff along with the bill when you've had a meal out (dinner and lunch, doesn't seem to happen with lunch for some reason? I might write a letter).

The drink itself is probably an acquired taste, but I quite like it - it's peppery, a little like tequila, and is definitely best sipped. I'm not sure that I'd go as far as to recommend it, but definitely worth a try if you ever find yourself eating out in this part of the world.

Greek Drivers

I'd read online that greek drivers were the worst in Europe, and having now spent over 2 weeks driving amongst them - I'm happy to report that this isn't the case.

Having said that, they do seem to operate under slightly different rules to the rest of the motoring world, I'm not sure if they're officially the road rules, but everyone seems to abide by them.

On the open road, the verge is used almost as if it was an additional lane for slow traffic. If you are going slow (or at least slower than the car behind you) it is common practice to pull over onto the verge (without slowing down) and allow the car behind to pass without having to stray too much into oncoming traffic.

Unfortunately, it's not always possible to completey stay out of the oncoming lane, so conversely when driving along not only do you need to be prepared to pull over to allow faster traffic past, you also need to be able to get out of the way of oncoming traffic who are overtaking in places where they really shouldn't be.

It all sounds quite chaotic, but it seems to work - I'm doing my fair share of overtaking as well as being overtaken - and have taken to driving like a Greek with gusto.

Jet Fighters and Submarines

We've seen some fairly impressive military equipment whilst being here, we've seen one submarine, one aircraft carrier, and the frigate in the picture above - which appeared to be carrying two smaller boats on it - all sail in and out of Souda bay.

In addition to this, there seems to be an airstrip on the opposite side of the bay which is constantly in use - with fighter planes taking off and landing all throughout the day.

We've questioned a few locals as to what all the activity is in aid off, and it turns out there is a NATO base in Souda bay, and it's where they're flying the planes that are bombing Libya from.

Ironic that the airstrip must be only a couple of miles from the cemetery mentioned in the start of this blog - will we ever learn?

This is the life

2011-06-26T15:17:00.001+01:00

Just stopped in at our local taverna for a beer and icecream... I could get used to this!

Island life

2011-06-24T06:10:00.006+01:00

We've now been in Crete for almost a week, and we're starting to acclimatise to island life.

Our routine goes something like this:

Go to the bakery to buy fresh bread for breakfast
Have breakfast (bread, tomato, olive oil)
Do one or all of the following till lunch: play with Milly, go to the supermarket, or go for a walk.
Have lunch (either eat in or eat out - depending on budget)
Put Milly down for her afternoon nap
When Milly wakes, go to the beach for a swim
Have dinner (eat in or eat out)
Put Milly to bed
Watch TV or read a book
Sleep

Not the most arduous life, I'm sure you'll agree - it's funny in that we're actually doing so little, but time is flying past - almost too fast, slow down a little time - we're not in a hurry to get anywhere.

Our apartment is lovely, as mentioned previously - it's actually two single room apartments with a shared entrance way - together they are bigger than our old flat in london, although we're mostly living in the front apartment, and only sleeping in the back one.

The apartment has a lovely big breezy "indoor terrace" - which, as you can see in the picture above, has amazing views of the harbour - and the boats coming in and out into Souda port - which is good for Milly, as she has a fascination with boats and loves to point them out and count them - lucky old her.

We've spent a lot of time in the indoor terrace, it offers shelter from the sometimes overbearing sun (I'm not, nor have I ever really been a big sun fan - although I am working on some sort of tan, only so that the Europeans don't point and laugh when I take my shirt off at the beach, like they have on previous holidays) and is close enough to the nightlife that Claire and I can feel like we're amongst it, with a glass of vino in hand and music on the stereo, once Milly has gone down for her night sleep.

Almyrida is also lovely, it's quite small and seems to be almost exclusively setup to cater to the tourist crowd. There is a single road that runs parallel with the beach, with accommodation on the mountain side of the road, and tavernas and bars in the strip between asphalt and sand on the other.

The power has gone out twice in the evenings in the past week, once when we were at home (thank goodness for the macbook battery life) and again last night when we were out for dinner. It must be a fairly regular occurrence, as it was greeted with a cheer from our fellow dinners and the restaurant switched over to generator power within a matter of minutes.

We've been going for daily swims, well trying to at least - it seems that Milly has no real desire to go in the water - and is quite insistant that she shan't go in - she had been quite stubborn about the whole thing - I wonder where she gets that from?

Wednesday was somewhat of a landmark day though, Claire and I managed to coax her into the water and then we spent 15 minutes splashing in the surf - something that we repeated yesterday, and will be looking to do again this afternoon.

Speaking of Milly, her talking is really coming along now - she's pretty good at letting you know what she wants these days, and can respond with an "OK daddy" or "no daddy" when asked if she wants something, and every now and then will chime in with a "thank you daddy" when given something, all very cute.

Today we're going to head back to Chania - a town 30 minutes up the road, and the capital of this particular area - we went the other day and noted it had a beautiful Venetian port, an area we're going back to explore.

We're also going to try and seek out the Battle of Crete cemetery, which is somewhere in Souda and where Greek, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died 70 years ago attempting to stop the Nazi's invading are buried.

Trip in numbers so far:

average temp in over the past 5 days: 32°C

number of clouds seen since arriving in crete: 0

approximate beard length: 3mm

approximate time that Milly wakes every morning: 7:20 (despite all our efforts to make her sleep later, including letting her stay up at night, reducing her daytime naps - little minx!)

And, relax.....

2011-06-18T14:35:00.006+01:00

Since my last posting, we left the lovely Ioaninna - a city in our opinion that is well worth the visit.

We then headed 3 hours east, to Larissa - Greece's 4th largest city.

We'd put our hotel's address into our GPS and when we arrived we kept getting directed down pedestrian streets. Having circled and tried several different routes I was about ready to throw the GPS out the window. The hotel website cited on site parking, how could it be in a pedestrianised area?

I parked up. left Milly and Claire in the car, and set off on foot - GPS unit in hand. It turned out the hotel was in the middle of the central town square - and it did indeed have parking. When I questioned how one might park, I was simply instructed to mount the pavement and drive slowly - only in Greece, ay?

For what we saw of Larissa, it was a lovely city - the central area is completely pedestrianised (other than people trying to find their hotels) and almost entirely made up of cafes and bars, which the Larissans sit around at drinking iced coffee, which appears to be the drink de jour in Greece so far.

The next day, we set off again for what was our final car journey before our first extended stop. The GPS (we're friends again) was telling me that it was 3 hours to the port in Athens, and we had 7 hours to get there - which meant we stopped a couple of times en route.

The drive itself was interesting, we ended up driving through the mountain pass where Leonardis and 300 Spartans died trying to hold off he Persian army - as immortalised in the Frank Miller comic 300.

We also stopped in a little coastal town who's name we did not catch (all the roadsigns are written in Greek, which has a different character set which I have not yet managed to master) - which was hosting a world rally championship race that day - the race of the gods apparently? lots of noisy cars and sweaty men tinkering with them - very exciting.

That evening, we approached athens at approximately 6:30pm, and inadvertently got caught up in rush hour traffic - which was like nothing I'd seen before - 3 lanes of chaotic traffic undulating, merging and swerving, whilst idiots on motorbikes with no helmets zigzagged through the cars.

When we finally reached the port I could not believe that we'd made it without a scratch, never again - or at least not for a couple of weeks.

The ferry ride was fairly uneventful - we sailed at 9pm and went to bed not long after that - to be rudely awoken at 5:30am when the ferry docked.

Our apartment is a 20minute drive from the ferry terminal - we'd arranged with the owner to collect the keys from George, the person who ran the taverna situated below the property.

When we arrived in Almyrida, George was not there - hardly surprising as it was 6:30am.

We spent the next hour and a half kicking a ball around on the beach, before making our way back to the apartment, collecting the key from George, and letting ourselves in.

One final car unpack, and we were here - it was a strange feeling, for the last two weeks - or even longer - we've been working hard at finishing work, or packing our house, or driving across Europe - it was a strange feeling not having anything that needed doing - it was finally time to relax.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach - I was pleased to see that there were other German and English visitors, so I wasn't the only translucent person trying to catch a tan - phew.

This evening, we've just put Milly to bed and I'm sat in the front room looking out the window at the Mediterranean wash in and out on the beach and the hubbub of the people in cafes and restaurants on the street.

I can feel the light tingle of sunburn on my skin, nothing particularly painful - just my body letting me know that I'm alive - and life is good.

It turns out that our two bedroom apartment is actually 2 one bedroom self contained units with a shared entranceway, so if anyone out there is at a loss for things to do in the next three weeks - come on over, one of the budget airlines flys to Chania, and from there I can pick you up in our car - life doesn't get much better than this, but don't take my word for it - find out for yourself.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 1986.8

Not hot heat

2011-06-15T19:33:00.006+01:00

Well, we've made it to mainland Greece - hooray! It turns out the Greeks are revolting - literally! Albiet most of the protestations are occurring 300 miles away in Athens... if your not sure what I'm talking about, turn on the news!

Since my last blog post, we've left Trieste - we meant to stop in to Miramare Castle - but Milly fell asleep on route - so we decided to make the most of her slumber time and pushed on for our next destination - sorry Eugenio, next time!

Some four hours later we arrived at Camping Panoramico on Fiesole - just outside of Florence. This was a last minute change to our itinerary - as we'd originally planned to go through the Baltic states, but had a change of heart having read some grim stories of terrible roads and crime in Albania.

We'd actually stayed at this camp site in Fiesole once before, back in 2003 - and had said at the time that we'd like to come back at a later date with kids - and here we were, keeping true to our word.

We'd noticed the first time through that the camp site offered cabins, which were cheap and offered all the things that we look for in accommodation - EG have beds and somewhere to wash. Being a campsite, it also had bonus facilities that a normal hotel wouldn't - such as a laundry - which we made full use of!

We were booked in to stay in Fieole for two days, so we headed down to Florence on the second to remind ourselves of what it had to offer.

Having been here before, we had no burning desire (or money) to go to any of the museums, but we thought we'd just pop down and soak up the atmosphere - which we did, as well as leak money - it seems that your average Florentine (is that what you'd call someone from Florence?) is adept of separating stupid foreigners from their hard earned euros.

Having arrived back at the cabin that evening, we settled in to our dinner of bread and cheese - which has become a bit of a staple during this trip.

Over the course of the two days, we got to know the couple staying at the cabin next to us quite well - their names wer Balint and Nora, both from Budapest - funny, I thought my days of spending time with Hungarians were sadly now over - but it turns out this wasn't the case - they were very impressed with my Hungarian vocabulary: hi, thanks, and cheers! - non of which I can spell, so I won't bother here.

Having said goodbye to camping panoramico (we'll be back, again!) we set off towards Ancona and our ferry to Greece.

Another 4 hour drive, and we seem to have stumbled upon a pattern that is working for Milly - set off about 11, and she'll sleep for the first hour, then Mickey Mouse and Handy Manny for the next 90 minutes followed by a stop for lunch, and a final 90 minutes in the car - by the end of which she's just starting to grumble and we're reached our destination - hooray!

We jumped in the ferry, and after a small delay we were off! On the boat we bumped into a large group of elderly english gentleman wearing heavy metal tee-shirts. Having struck up a conversation with them it turned out that they were Iron Maidens roadies - who had set out in advance of the band playing in Athens in two nights time (the band flew separately).

The all seemed like nice guys and were impressed that we'd driven so far from London - having chatted to them I did wonder if I'd missed my true calling in life - I like wearing band tee-shirts, drinking beer, and plugging in musical equipment - maybe I should have been a roadie? maybe a career change I can think about upon arriving back in NZ.

That brings us to today, we were awoken at an unreasonable hour by a "hiya" from the wee one who must be obeyed, after an expensive breakfast of dry croissant and cold coffee we packed up our cabin and awaited being let back into the car to disembark.

Once back on the road, we had a short one hour drive to where we are now, Ioannina - which seems like a holiday resort, but one that is deserted at the moment due to it not being school holidays?

We checked into the hotel (with free WIFI - hooray!) and then headed out to explore the city - had lunch on the bank of lake Pamvotida (more bread and cheese) and took a boat ride out to the island in the middle of the lake - which was your stereotypical greek village, with small cobbled streets and white washed buildings - nice to be able to tick that box so early into the trip.

For a while now, I'd been concerned about the temperatures in Greece, specifically driving in them in our little car with no air conditioning - but so far all my fears seem unfounded - whilst it was quite warm when we arrived this morning, it wasn't anything that an open window couldn't handle - and this afternoon we've been subjected to torrential rain! which has certainly helped to cool things down a bit.

Everywhere we've been today, the news has been on the TV - today is a day of national strikes, and it seems there are major protests going on down in Athens - it doesn't seem that there's anything similar going on in Ioannina - other than locals watching what's happening on TV with interest - but it does make us feel pretty lucky to have arrived today, as apparently all the ports are closed?

This evening we decided to go out to a Greek taverna and treat ourselves to a meal that wasn't cheese and bread. We had a lovely dinner - greek salad, fried local cheese and courgettes, chicken souvlaki, and grilled trout - but you'll see by the picture above that Milly only had eyes for the chips! a girl after my own heart.

Trip in numbers so far:

Miles since n15: 1613.8

Length of beard: must be almost 2mm now? I've got no real way of measuring

Meals of cheese and bread since we left the UK: too many!

Not sixteen, nor going on seventeen

2011-06-11T18:51:00.006+01:00

I'm not really much of a sound of music fan, so it might seem strange to folk that I've partaken in a fair amount activity that you would normally only do if you were a SOM fan - for example, I've been to see a sing along version, I've been to Frohnburg Castle - the building they used for the exterior shots of the Trapp family mansion, and on this trip - I've been to see the gazebo at Hellbrunn Palace - where the love scenes from the film were shot.

The day started off well, we packed and headed off about 10 - it was a two hour drive to Salzburg and Milly slept most of it.

It was a lovely day when we arrived at Salzburg, so we parked the car up and headed into the central city - with the intention of going to the information center and asking about where we could go out of the city that had nice grounds where we could have a picnic and Milly could have a run around.

When asking the attendant, Claire also expressed an interest in Sound Of Music sight seeing tours, so the person recommended the aforementioned Hellbrunn Palace - a 30 minute drive in the right direction - we needed no further encouragement, off we went.

The grounds of the Palace were indeed lovely, we had some bratworst that we'd brought at the grocery store - so we fried that up and Milly and Claire had that whilst I was relegated to cheese and bread, the sacrifices a veggie makes, ay?

The gazebo was in the grounds, and does look like the one from the movie - we needed to join an orderly queue of American tourists to wait our turn to get our picture taken - luckily one of them offered to take a picture of us, this is what you see above.

In the grounds there was also a childrens playground area, so Milly had a chance to run around and let off some steam there for a while.

At about 4pm we decided we needed to head off, the GPS was telling us it was a 4 hour drive to Trieste, our next destination, and the hotel check in closed at 10pm - time to get our skates on.

Milly drifted off to sleep almost as soon as we hit the road, and off we went - an amazing drive on a motorway that cut it's way through the Alps - with long bridges and tunnels ensuring that there were no slow windy roads required.

About an hour into the journey, we hit some major traffic - which ground to a halt and sat stationary for about 30 minutes, no idea what was happening but everyone around us all got out of their cars and walked around, stretched, chatted to other motorists etc - making us think it was some sort of regular/expected experience? After a while we got going again with no visible signs as to why we stopped?

Milly woke up during this stop - and was really not interested in being in the car from that point, which was a problem as we had about 3 hours driving left to do.

She's been so good this trip, we have a little portable tablet computer and it's loaded with movies for her to watch, so she's spent a lot of time in the back watching Mickey Mouse or Handy Manny - but even they weren't managing to console here this time.

We drove for a while with a miserable kid in the back seat, eventually stopping at a motorway services in Slovenia to stretch our legs and cook up the rest of the bratworst and some 2min noodle style pasta for us to have for dinner.

Milly loved being out of the car for this brief period, but then hated going back into it when we had to set off again, at this point it was getting quite late and we still had 90 minutes of driving ahead of us.

We pushed on, poor Milly grizzled in the back, and finally we arrived in Italy.

It was funny going through the border controls - both Austria/Slovenia and then Slovienia/Italy - these big imposing structures that you needed to drive through that were now essentially unmanned shells - you'd imagine that at one point before Slovenia being in the EU it would have been a different story.

Trieste is just over the border from Slovenia, so once we were in Italy it was a quick drive to the hotel - we arrived at about 9:30 and were greeted by a pleasant man who spoke very little English - what he did speak he was reading off of a card - but he seemed to know who we were and gave us a room key, so result!

Once in the room we had showers and let Milly play with her toys for a while before putting her to bed, poor little button - we were all so exhausted we all went straight to sleep and then didn't wake again until 7am - which is about as close to a sleep in as we get these days!

Today, we didn't need to drive anywhere as we're here for two nights - hooray!

We went into Trieste on the tram (or hotel is in Banne, on the outskirts of Trieste) and checked out the city - which is very lovely.

We spent the day wandering around the pedestrianised streets letting Milly run and play as much as possible - she seems to love the big Roman style fountains in the middle of the Piazzas - going up and down the steps and running around them - she must have done this for hours.

We had lunch in one of these Piazzas, I had Pizza and claire the Pasta - and Milly shared both of our dishes.

In the afternoon Milly fell asleep in her pushchair, so Claire and I took the opportunity to have a glass of Prosecco each in one of the waterside bars - friends of ours got married today in the UK - so we felt that something bubbly was in order, and Prosecco, the town that the wine comes from, is just up the road - so it seemed like the right thing to do.

Tomorrow, we've got another 4 hour drive ahead of us, to Fiesole near Florence. This time we're going to try not stopping and heading straight there - hopefully making the most of Milly's nap times - we'll let you know how it goes.

Trip in numbers:

Number of miles since N15: 1100.2

Length of beard: 1.5mm

Number of countries travelled through on 10/6/2011: 4 (Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy)

Vegetarian in Bavaria

2011-06-10T08:04:00.005+01:00

Having left Antwerp, we headed for Cologne - Milly slept for about an hour but then woke up screaming, I'm not sure she's enjoying all the time in the car - poor wee thing.

After another hours driving we arrived at Cologne, managed to find a park right near the city centre, paid for a couple of hours parking and set off.

For what we managed to see in a couple of hours, Cologne appeared to be a pretty city, with an amazing cathedral. We ended up spending most of our time walking over and then returning on a railway bridge - taking our time to point out all the trains and boats along the way.

We then jumped in the car and headed to Mainz, not much to report about from here - our hotel was on the city outskirts and we never left it to look around.

Probably the only two things worth mentioning was that the hotel appeared to be exclusively occupied by tradesmen (other than us), and that the lobby vending machine served beer! result, I love Germany.

We're currently in Munich, about to start the now familiar routine of packing up and loading the car.

We went into Munich central last night and had a look around, we ended up in the hofbrauhaus - the most famous beer hall in Germany - with litre steins and oompah band and everything - see Milly and I 'Cheers'-ing in the picture above.

We treated ourselves to a bought meal (we've been surviving on bread and things we can cook on our camping stove up till now) - claire and Milly had bratworst and I had kasespatzle - a sort of macaroni cheese - the only vegetarian item on the menu, I think I'd struggle spending more than a day here, if I wanted to have any variety in my diet!

Today we're making our way over the alps to Trieste. We're going to stop in Salzberg along the way and see if the hills really are alive with the sound of music.

Trip in numbers:

Miles since N15: 785.5

length of beard: 1mm

Three countries in one day

2011-06-07T22:06:00.001+01:00

We're currently holed up in a budget hotel in the docks area of Antwerp.

Yesterday, we left Crescent road for the last time at about 10am, and hit the road headed for Canterbury - a lovely city that seemed to be overrun by teenage Europeans.

The drive was fairly short, so we had some time to look around the city centre - Claire wanted to go to some farmers market at the north of the city - but it turned out to be closed on Mondays - great timing!

We then headed back to the hotel - a travelodge which was a unique combination (for travelodges that is) of being in a characterful building and right in the centre of town.

That evening we attempted to go out for dinner to celebrate the sale of the house, which had just completed that afternoon - but were somewhat thwarted by a screaming 1 year old throwing a tantrum. Non-the-less we persevered and had a somewhat hurried meal at a restaurant specialising in pies - I had the fish and claire the chicken - a fitting last meal in old blighty.

The next day we rose before 6 to pack the car and drive the 25minutes or so to Dover - we were booked on an 8am crossing and I didn't fancy missing the ferry.

Milly loved the ferry crossing, she seemed to particularly like being outside - like in the picture, where you can see us on deck with Dover castle in the background.

An hour later we arrived at Calais and headed of towards Belgium.

This was my first time driving a right-hand drive car on the right side of the road, but as yet no major concern with this - albeit most of the roads so far have been motorways - so it would be pretty hard to accidentally end up on the wrong side of the road.

We arrived in Antwerp at about 2pm, checked into our hotel, and were pleasantly surprised to see that the room had it's own shower and toilet, we were expecting shared washrooms - as is fairly common in France. I'm sure that when booking some of the hotels it mentioned that they had this, we must have that to look forward to.

Having checked in, we then proceeded out to explore Antwerp, we took the tram into town and went to a coffee shop that had been recommended by a friend, before wandering around the old town for an hour or so.

Most of the stops between here and Trieste have been selected because they're approximately 4 hours drive in a straight line from where we've come from to where we want to get to - so it's been a pleasant surprise to find that Antwerp is a lovely city, and well worth the visit.

This evening we cooked ourselves a cheap dinner, pasta and pesto - which Milly ate with gusto - before settling down and watching some TV on the computer.

Tomorrow we're headed for Mainz, but we think we might stop over in Cologne for lunch - to break up the trip a little.

Finally, our trip in numbers:

237.5 miles travelled since we departed N15.
0.5mm the length of my new beard.

Last night in London

2011-06-05T21:55:00.003+01:00

Well, we're all packed up, the house is all clean and tidy, and Claire and I are now sat on camping chairs in our front room making the most of what's left of our reliable broadband.

It's been a whirlwind few days since I left work - lots of catching up with friends, packing possessions into boxes, getting rid of furniture items via freecycle and scrubbing the house from top to bottom - positively exhausting and I'm now definitely ready for a holiday.

Tomorrow we'll do one last journey to the recycling centre, a quick whizz around with the vacuum cleaner, and then we'll hit the road - a relatively small drive tomorrow - only 90 minute or so to get to Canterbury - if we time it right Milly might sleep the whole way - strangers things have happened before.

All packed up

2011-06-02T12:10:00.003+01:00

After a late night furiously filling boxes with all our earthly possessions, I think we're finally done packing everything that's being shipped back to NZ.

16 boxes and 8 odd shaped packages later and that's about that, still loads of stuff still cluttering up the place, spose it's all for the tip now?

Right, better get on with tidying and packing the bags we're taking around Europe with us.

PS: I hate moving house... never again!

Packing is for chumps

2011-06-01T09:55:00.001+01:00

Milly has decided that packing is for chumps. She's going to leave it to mummy and daddy and concentrate on watching telly instead...

Europe - Here We Come

2011-05-29T22:19:00.003+01:00

Less than a week until we leave the UK on our European summer adventure - it's like being in a Cliff Richards movie.

Unlike Cliff Richards - we're spending our last days finishing work, boxing up all our earthly possessions (16 boxes last count), creating and updating inventory and budgetary spreadsheets, spending time with our friends, doing all those things in London that we've been putting off until another day for the last ten years and generally finding it hard to believe that our time here has almost come to an end.

I wouldn't say that I'm glad to be leaving, and whilst I'm looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and family in NZ - I also wouldn't say I'm particularly excited about returning - if anything I'm apprehensive about what kiwi life might have in store having not experienced it for 10 years.

One thing on the horizon that is very exciting is our 3 months jaunt around Europe.

We're setting off on Monday the 6th of June in our 1.1 Litre Peugeot 206 - with an itinerary that takes in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, as well as extended visits to Crete in Greece, Puglia in Italy, and Galicia in Spain.

At the end of all that, we're back in the UK for a week (coincidentally when the football season starts again - shhhh, don't tell claire) before finally heading back to NZ via China and Australia.

Farewell London - we've had a swell 10 years, and we really are sad to be going, but look out Europe - here we come!

Turin, Italy 2005

2005-10-31T16:00:00.000Z

La Mole Antonelliana
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

The UK is great, Europe is even better, and Italy is the cream of the crop - which is why Claire and I recently decided to take advantage of the ridiculously cheap flights and spend a long weekend in Turin.

We flew out of the UK at on a reasonable 9:20am flight (usually the cheap ones are at 4 in the morning or something stupid like that, we lucked out this time) and arrived in Turin at about lunchtime.

Having arrived we headed straight to our swanky hotel, the Art Hotel Boston which had a special "Torino Weekend" rate which included a pass which got us into any museum or on any public transport all weekend for free!

After settling into our luxurious room we headed out to checkout the city, heading straight for the main shopping streets of via Garibaldi and via Roma, which were bustling with fellow shoppers all out looking for a bargain - most shops seemed to be peddling woman’s fashion and leather shoes, which suited Claire down to the ground.

After browsing the shops for a couple of hours, and making mental notes of where we wanted to return to tomorrow, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our next exciting Italian cultural experience, going to see the local football team Juventus!

We jumped on the bus and headed out to Stadio Delle Alpi, along with a couple of local supporters and handful of other Brit football tourists (ironically it’s cheaper to get a flight and a ticket to the football in Turin than it is to get a ticket to the football in London).

Once we arrived at the stadium and FINALLY got through the gates (took 30 minutes to get through the queue, missed the first 15 minutes of the game!) we took our seats and watched the remainder of the game.

The Fans were a noisy lot, they spent most of the game singing songs, banging drums and waving their flags. At the end we didn’t know what the final score was - we saw Juventus score (a great solo run from Del Piero resulting in a goal) but as there was nothing resembling a scoreboard in the ground, and we’d missed the first 15minutes – we couldn’t be sure...

The next day we headed back to Via Garibaldi to find that most of the shops were now closed (!!) but luckily the streets had been filled with local produce and the local food market was in full swing!

Claire and I spent ages wandering up and down the stalls buying loads of yummy Italian food, but the end of it we had a block of parmesan cheese, polenta, olive oil, pesto, honey etc etc - all in large quantities and at ridiculously cheap prices - we've been eating like Italian kings ever since!

That afternoon we went to the Museum of Cinema, which is situated in the Mole Antonelliana - the world’s tallest stone building.

The Mole is an interesting building in itself, originally built as a synagogue, construction was fraught with problems (apparently it’s not very clever to build tall buildings out of stone) but the end result is quite spectacular.

On entering the building you’re ushered downstairs to the basement and into the queue for the elevator to the viewing platform at the top of the building.

After a brief wait (nothing like the wait for the lifts in the Empire State!) you get into a glass elevator and go whooping up through the ceiling and into the main chamber of the building. It was an amazing first view of the museum, but I must admit the thought of being suspended by tiny steel wires whilst hurtling skyward and being able to see the ground below gave me a touch of vertigo... eek!

The viewing platform above was nothing to write home about (mainly due to not being able to see anything through the smog), but the rest of the museum was very good, taking us from the origins of cinema, through to some of the groundbreaking movies of last century - everything was presented in a very interesting and hands-on way, this was potentially the best museum I’ve ever been to, it’s well worth the visit if you ever find yourself in northern Italy.

That evening we wanted to go out for a slap-up meal, but unfortunately all the posh restaurants in Turin close on a Sunday night, so we had to go to the local pizzeria instead - luckily the food was still amazing - this seems to be a trend actually, I think you could stop at the grottiest service station in the back of beyond in Italy and the food would still be amazing, they certainly know what they’re doing food-wise.

The next day we headed back home, we actually got to stay in Italy a little longer that we expected, due to a four-hour delay, I do love airport departure lounges - luckily it was Italy, and they weren’t that concerned about us wandering backwards and forwards through security.

Stay tuned for more updates soon, as we’re off to Paris next month, on another European weekend break - Hooray!

Here are the pictures, for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/1176127/

Reading Festival 2005

2005-08-30T12:45:00.000+01:00

the main stage
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

Claire and I have been going to Glastonbury for a couple of years now, but I’ve always secretly harboured a desire to go to at least two festivals per summer - and this year we’ve finally managed to fulfil that dream!

The second festival this year was Reading, a three-day event situated a mere 25minute train ride away from London Paddington station (home of Paddington bear, of course).

I was lucky enough to get some guest/VIP tickets through work, which meant we had access to a backstage bar (good, cos there were seats - standing for three days straight can be tiresome), guest camping area with hot showers (there was a queue, but you can’t have everything) and proper flush loos that were cleaned daily - hooray!

Reading was quite different to Glastonbury, there’s less arts and crafts, not as many nice food places, loads more drunk 14 year olds, it’s set in a town instead of rolling green hills, there’s about a third less people etc.

Another key difference between the two festies is that all the stages are much closer together, which had its advantages, such as you can skip from the main stage to the second stage in about 5 minutes as apposed to about an hour at Glastonbury, making it much easier to see more bands. It also had its disadvantages, mainly that the sound bleeds between the stages so you can quite often hear the second stage from the main stage - basically the sound at Glastonbury is much better.

The last difference is that the camping is outside of the main arena, and they don’t let you in till about midday and kick you out at about midnight - luckily reading town center is about 15min walk away, this means there is a mass exodus to Reading every morning (and I imagine each night?) to stock up on supplies at the supermarket, buy cheap food at the cafes (everything was ridiculously priced in the arena) etc before heading back to the arena about lunchtime.

Saw some great bands over the course of the weekend, including: The Arcade Fire, Queens of the Stone Age, The Coral, The Pixies, Clor, 9 Black Alps, Maximo Park (they just walked past my desk as I typed this), Foo Fighters (who I’m not a massive fan of, but did put on a good live show) and probably a bunch more that I can’t remember.

The festival has a lot more metal bands that Glastonbury - so got the opportunity to see some great comedy bands (I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to be funny, but they are) such as Turbengro, sort of a cross between Black Sabbath and the Village People - look them up, they’re hilarious .

Iron Maiden headlined the final night, but Claire and I decided that it would be best to escape early to avoid the queues for the trains on Monday, a decision we may come to regret - but I notice that Iron Maiden released a live DVD called death on the road or something equally as silly, so I could always just buy that and pretend we were there.

Anyhoo, Claire and I had a belter of a weekend - it was a bit dreary and overcast on the Friday, but it fined up in the evening and then basically the rest of the weekend was beautiful and sunny, we didn’t end up taking many pictures - but here are the ones that we did:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/848916/

Glastonbury 2005

2005-08-30T08:32:00.000+01:00

umbrellas ..
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

Oh man, it's been ages since an update again - anyhoo, here's our pictures from Glastonbury which was held in late June this year.

As you might have heard, we had torential rain with the entire expected rainfall for the month coming down in the early hours of the friday morning - threatening the start of the festival and leaving the site looking more like a dirty swimming pool than a farm.

Despite the water and mud everywhere, we still managed to have a great time. Claire and I were joined by claire's sister Laura and her fiance (now husband) steve, and our friends Josie and Becca.

Highlights of the weekend were the killers, coldplay (who I usually hate, but must admit did quite well headlining the saturday night), the futureheads and brian wilson pulling out some beach boys favourites in one of the few sunny moments during the festival.

Anyway, here's our pictures from the event, enjoy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/534667/

the home of football ..

2005-07-03T13:52:00.000+01:00

the home of football ..
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

While I'm at it, may as well put these ones up, this is our the streets around our flat when arsenal won the FA cup this season (04/05):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/375478/

Cheers ..

2005-07-03T13:27:00.000+01:00

Cheers ..
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

sorry about the lack of entries lately, I've been busy.

To tide you over, here's some pictures from a trip to Suffolk that we went on recently.

We were joined by Claire's sister Laura and her boyfriend Steve.

enjoy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/299745/

Carters Steam Fair - 10 April 2005 ..

2005-04-11T14:11:00.000+01:00

The Carousel ..
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

Carters Steam Fair parked up in Highbury fields this weekend.

A quick bit of research revealed that this was a unique steam fair with most of the rides being refurbished 1950's vintage models.

Obviously, this sounded like it was worth investigating - so we grabbed our very own Carter (Merlin) and headed down.

Had a couple of goes on the dodgems and the "dive bomber", admired the vintageness of it all and then headed to the pub.

More photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/224902/

righto...

France and Austria Skiing Holiday - 22nd to 28th March 2005 ..

2005-04-04T22:02:00.000+01:00

On the top of the world ..
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

It wouldn't be a OE (overseas experience, for the non-kiwi of you out there) without the obligatory european skiing holiday. Claire and I were lucky enough to be invited to join Claire's Dad and his wife Dawn on their latest european skiing jaunt... it would be fair to say we didn't have to consider long before saying YES!!!!

We left a grey London town on the tuesday to fly into a grey St Ettiene at about 4pm, we were greeted of the plane by Neal and Dawn, it was the first time we'd been picked up from an airport in europe (they'd hired a car)... I could get used to this!

It took about an hour or so to drive from St Ettiene to Villard de Lans, the ski resort they were staying at. The journey route took us through the french countryside, and finally zigzagged it's way up the side of the french alps, we arrived in time for dinner and then chatted until late.

The next day the weather was beautiful and we decided it was a good idea to hit the road again and see some of the french countryside. We toured around the vecors? region, stopping to buy cheese from a local cheesery (they can't be called that?) admire the walnut groves, and to stop in at a french "grotto", effectively a hole in the side of the mountain that opened up into the most amazing underground caves - you'll have to take a look at the photos, it truly was amazing.

The next day, the weather looked like it was setting in, but we decided to hit the slopes anyway. After mucking about for a couple of hours trying to find "pantalon pour le ski" (ski trousers, no way were we going out on the slopes in jeans) and hiring skis etc, we finally made it up the mountain...

I'd attempted to ski once before on Mt Ruapehu, been up there for half a day and pretty much mastered the "ski plough".... I figured that was the basics and it really didn't look like there was much more to it? after about 15 minutes on the mountain and about 3 fairly spectacular falls.... I decided there was.

At this point I decided that I had to go back to the basics, retreated to the "bambi" fields and proceeded to practice the snow plough (I thought I had it mastered?) for the rest of the day. Luckily the bar was just at the bottom of the bambi field, so every time I felt disheartened, I could quickly dash indoors for a quick pick-me-up.

The weather wasn't helping much either, it had gone from slightly overcast and dreary, to can't see 1 meter infront of you and rainy... this wasn't putting off claire or her dad, they both had a great time tearing up and down the slopes.

We called it a day at about 3pm and went back to the chalet, to talk about the days skiing, eat, and sleep.

The next day the weather was much better, we headed to another slope nearby (autrans), and promptly split up, Claire, Dawn and Neal headed straight to the top of the mountain, and I went straight to the baby slopes to keep workin on that snow plough which was causing me so much trouble.

It was a beautiful day, and there was absolutely no-one on the ski field, we prettymuch had the entire place to ourselves, I'm told that skiing doesn't get much better than this.

After about 15min on the baby field, the poor guy operating the skitow told me that he thought I was good enough to graduate onto the green (beginner) slopes, and after some persuasion I headed over that way (as soon as I left he turned off the ski tow and went back to the office to kip).

He ended up being right, and by the end of the day I'd mastered the green slopes and was having a ball zinging down the mountain... skiing was fun again.

The next day we had to pack up and leave for Austria, we had a "suggested" journey guide that said it would take approximately 10 hours. However, on our map we could see a much more direct "scenic" route, which we decided to take.....

....1 alpine range, 1 accidental detour in Verona, about 5 service station stops and 15 hours(!!) later we finally arrived in the ski resort of Zell am See, where we were to stay for the remainder of our holiday.

The next day we awoke to take in the sights of Zell am See, turns out it's quite a pretty town, situated on the side of a frozen lake, in the foothills of the Austrian Alps... very nice, have to come here again.

We headed straight up the mountain again, as it was Claire and I's last full day in europe for this trip and Claire was eager to get out there and try the austrian slopes.

It was much busier on the ski fields today, as it was easter Sunday - the Australian guy we hired our skis off told us that there were 10,000 people on the mountain today and at least 5,000 of them had been to him..... OHoh....

we headed to the top of the mountain and had lunch and admired the views before attempting to ski down, the snow today was much "quicker" I was told and I found out just how quick it was on my first attempt at skiing that day which ended in a very spectacular high speed fall.

I wasn't having much fun with all the people and quickly packed it in, heading to the bottom of the mountain and the bars to wait for the other skiiers to finish.

Afterwards we joined Dawn's sister and her family for dinner, who were also staying in the same resort - before retiring for the night.

The next day we drove to Salzburg, where we were flying out of that night, and had a look around. The weather had packed in again and it was raining heavily.

After a brief and very wet walk around the city we headed to the Visitors center to see what there was that was dry that we could do.

There was a Sound of Music tour that Claire desperately wanted to do, but unfortunately it only started at two times during the day, and we'd just missed it.

Luckily, they had a rough map of locations on the flyer for the tour, so we examined our map of austria and headed out into the countryside to do our own.

We managed to find the building that was the Von Trappe family home, and if it wasn't so overcast we would have seen the hills that were alive with the sound of music.

We stopped off at a little austrian pub for dinner on the way back to Salzburg airport to have a final dinner - then we headed to the airport, said our final goodbyes and headed back to London town.

More pictures of our week skiing in europe can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/196387/

Having now caught the skiing bug (sort of), I'm determined to not let it beat me, and I'm already planning our next skiing trip for 2006, look out european ski fields, you've not seen the last of us yet ..

New York City - 5th to 13th Feb 2005 ..

2005-02-16T04:15:00.000Z

Dusk in NYC ..
Originally uploaded by Dave Malpas.

Claire and I recently returned from a holiday in New York - we were there for a week, Laura (Claire's sister) and her friend Dean were also there for the fist three days.

Instead of the usual multipage spiel, this time I thought I'd just list the highlights, which are as follows:

Happy Hours - most bars and clubs had happy hours that started at 4pm and went to 6 or 7, not very good for your average Manhattanite, but perfect for your average kiwi on holiday... $5 for a cosmo! That's less than a pint in London... bring it on!

Basketball at Madison Square Gardens - we went and saw the Knicks play the Heat at Madison Square Gardens. The Knicks lost (apparently that's nothing new, I overheard another person say they'd won 3 of their last 20 games), but we still had a great time. Madison Square Gardens is an amazing venue, and to be there for a playoff game was a real treat.

Table Service - Everywhere you go you get table service, doesn't matter if it's a diner, restaurant, bar, or club - you don't go to the counter, you take a seat (or wait to be shown one) and a waiter will come and take your order. Obviously this is so they can justify the whopping tips that everyone has to pay (20%), but it seemed very civilised, and quite different from trying to fight your way to the bar in London.

Friendly People - Everyone we came across was incredibly friendly and polite, this could of course be down to the previously mentioned compulsory 20% tipping policy in NY, but again was quite contrasting from stinky old London. I could never get in the last word; I'd like to think of myself as quite a polite person - and I say thankyou for everything - in NY my thankyous were ALWAYS greeted with a "you're welcome"... How nice.

Broadway Shows - everyone's heard of Broadway, and everyone's heard of broadways show. We get a lot of the same shows in London - but in Broadway the bigger shows ALWAYS have some big name off the TV starring to pull in the punters. We went and saw The Producers, by Mel Brooks - it had two guys out of Spin City as the main characters, was a great laugh and a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

The view from the Empire State Building- we went in just before dusk, queued for the tickets and lift for an hour, and by the time we finally got up there - it was dark. Still, the view was amazing (as you'll see from the photos), we ended up spending about an hour checking out that famous skyline from the top of the empire state.

Single Slice Pizza (pie) - you can buy this on pertty much every street corner, they con you by charging twice as much for fancy toppings, but a slice of tomato and cheese on the way home at night does it for me everytime....

Bagels - if single slice pizza was my meal of choice in the evenings, bagels were what I was eating in the mornings, lightly toasted with a schmeer (of cream cheese) - yum

Shopping - the shopping was so good!!!! The US$ is really weak against the pound at the minute, so £1 was getting us $2. I ended up spending not much, and getting heaps!!! We're talking £15 for jeans, £15 for shoes, £20 for a nice bag, £20 for a nice sweater - the list goes on and on,

The Architecture - New York is a city that exploded skywards in the last 100 or so years, visitors can't help but walk around staring upwards when they first arrive, I mean - I've seen skyscrapers before, but never ones that are 100+ storeys, and so many of them right next to each other - it really is a sight to behold. Also, there are some serious Art Deco influences in Manhattan, every second building seemed to have an elaborate art deco foyer, I can only imagine what the decor would be if you went further... truly amazing.

Anyway, that's it - but you don't have to take my word for it - here's some pictures of our trip:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drivebytourism/sets/201299/

And here's some basic videos (been reading the camera manual) for those that can be bothered - they're not so spectacular, so don't panic if you can't see 'em:

http://dmalpas.bulldoghome.com

Righto, that's your lot.