Family Trip to Melbourne

A week and a half in Melbourne was perfect for our first family overseas holiday. Great company, great food, and lots of adventures!

We spent the first weekend at Lorne and I came to some conclusions:

• We should definitely have a lot more Hennessey get-togethers
• Chocolate ice cream is always the best option
• Cards Against Humanity has been added to my wishlist
• My husband is actually a Disney Princess

Back in Melbourne we spent a lot of time at various playgrounds, checked out Melbourne Zoo, played in Jem's Kombi, made our compulsary visit to the aquarium, and Owen and I escaped one evening for our first date night in forever!

These wild ones are already looking forward to our next trip!

Our Recent Adventures

We made this short video to save everyone from having to sit through hundreds of holiday photos from our trip:



Everyone we've shown it to has liked the ending the best!

Melbourne (Last Stop!)

On our way back to New Zealand we made one last stop in Melbourne to visit my sister Sorrel and brother Delaney. It was great to see them and spend some time sampling the fare at some of their favourite places to eat.

Sorrel had also organised a day trip to visit some wineries out of the city, although Owen, Delaney and I were all keen to visit Bonnie Doon instead. Sorrel didn't understand the appeal of the serenity and we were overruled (I don't think we helped our cause by singing the "We're Going to Bonnie Doon" song!)

We also decided to check out the aquarium (mostly so I could see the sharks). The penguins were really interesting too, and I always like to take a peek at sea horses and puffer fish.

And then it was time to head home...

Back to Malaysia

Our stopover in Kuala Lumpar on the way back home was a lot less exciting than our first one. This time I was feeling pretty jet lagged and spent most of the time sleeping. I also decided to ignore advice about trying to stay up as long as possible to better adjust to the time difference. This meant that by 2am I was wide awake (which meant that Owen was too, even though he'd been more sensible about when to sleep).

We decided to go up to the sky bar to watch an approaching thunder storm, and of course when we got there it was closed and we were the only people around. Sitting in the dark watching the city lights and listening to the thunder turned out to be one of my favourite parts of the whole trip.

Visiting Rome

Rome was the last stop of our trip in Europe, and one of my favourite places. I'd been looking forward to exploring a lot of the historic sites, but hadn't realised the scale and just how much there was to see.

In between visiting the Vatican, Colosseum, Forum and other sights we made frequent (and I mean really frequent!) stops for gelato.

The Colosseum was the most interesting for me - I always like walking round ancient sites which were actually in use back in the day (I'd much rather visit an old castle than a museum, and ancient temples beat galleries any day).

We both threw a coin in the Trevi Fountain, so we'll be coming back one day!

A Quick Stop in Athens

We arrived into Athens quite late at night, and luckily found our accommodation quite easily (usually the most stressful part of travelling for me). It had a really good view of the Acropolis from the rooftop bar.

The next day we went on a walking tour of the city, which took in a lot of the ancient ruins and a few modern sights as well. My favourite part was the changing of the guard:

And it was interesting to see in person some of the buildings I'd read about doing Classical Studies at school. We left the tour early to explore the Acropolis before it closed, then decided to take a break from walking in the heat.

The next morning before an earlyish flight we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Temple of Hephaestu, and then it was on to the Eternal City.

These are all Owen's photos again, he's got a good eye, right?

The Greek Islands

Visiting the Greek Islands was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. We were travelling with a group of friend, and it was so good to catch up with some of my favourite people living on the other side of the world.

Our first stop was Mykonos, which was my favourite. We stayed at a really nice place by the sea and spent a lot of time lounging around the pool. The rest of the time we were adventuring on four wheelers around the island and exploring the town. The whole island was beautiful with the classic white washed buildings with blue roofs everywhere.

We took a ferry on to Paros but could only stay for one night before continuing on. We made the most of our time by going out for a nice meal at a restaurant by the beach, and the next morning wandered around the town before our next ferry ride.

We spent our last couple of nights in Santorini. In between all the time we spent riding around on four wheelers (again!) we went on a boat trip, rode on some donkeys, visited ancient ruins, ate a lot of gelato, and had a few hours relaxing at one of the beaches.

Owen took all these photos, apart from the one he's in!

A Train Trip to Brussels

For Owen's birthday we decided to visit a new country and took the Eurostar over to Brussels for a quick trip. I much prefer travelling by train than by plane, and although most of the trip was spent riding through the Chunnel it was still nice to see a bit of the countryside, especially in Belgium.

After the initial hassle of arriving in a new place with no real idea of where we had to go/how to get there/why our card wasn't working/how we were going to pay for everything now, we got to our hotel and then quickly headed back into town to explore.

High on the list of things to do was trying some Belgian beer (Owen) and sampling a few different kinds of Belgian chocolate (me). With our mission completed we headed back to our room for a rest and to find out some good news (which turned out to be the best birthday present ever).

The next day we thought about hiring some bikes so we could take in more of the city, but decided that walking would be a lot easier... we were wrong. What looked like a nearby park on our map turned out to be across the city and involved a lot more walking than planned! It was still a good way to see a different part of Brussels and when we got back into the old town there was time for a bit more exploring before we had to be back at the train station for the next part of our journey.

Back in the United Kingdom

London
It was strange arriving back in London. When we left a couple of years ago I couldn't wait to return, and at first it didn't take long to get back into my London groove (listening to White Stripes on the tube, walking really fast, keeping an eye out for foxes). But I realised pretty quickly that things were different now: I had absolutely no wish to move back there, and wasn't even that motivated to explore the city. Honestly I was pretty surprised (I used to really love London), but I guess I'm much more settled in New Zealand than I'd thought!

Although I was done with London, it was still fun being back in the UK. We were staying with Troy, Willow and our new nephew Jenson (who was a big motivation for taking the trip) and spent a bit of time exploring Hertfordshire were they lived. This included visiting a museum, getting caught in a hail storm while exploring Roman ruins, and having a meal at a pub located in the exact spot as an eating house from a couple of thousand years ago!

Wales
Since we missed out on visiting Wales during our last trip, we decided to spend a night camping. We borrowed Troy and Willow's car, one of the tents from our France and Italy roadtrip, and made our way into Wales. Our first stop was the Breacon Beacons National Park, where we went rambling to a waterfall. I was really hoping that we'd come across a badger but we didn't have any luck (the fact that it was the middle of the day on a popular walking track probably didn't help...)

We carried on to the village of Tenby by the seaside which was very pretty and definitely worth a visit. We had dinner at a pub within the old town walls, then headed back to our camping ground. It was almost deserted at that time of year and I have to admit it was a bit cold spending the night in a tent!

Visiting some castles was the top of our list for the next day, so we entered the location of one in the Navman and it took us on a wild adventure. At one point it directed us down a narrow road which I was pretty sure was someone's driveway, and then took our little car through a ford.

We eventually made it to the castle which was a lot of fun to explore. There was an cavern under the castle, and even though we didn't have a torch I was determined to explore it. I made Owen go with me and use the camera flash to try and light our way. It wasn't as effective as I'd hoped, so after hitting my head and tripping over I was forced to concede defeat and return to the world above.

Bath
On our way back from Wales we made a quick stop at Bath to check out the Roman baths and try some gelato (I sure ate a lot of gelato on this trip!). It was pretty crowded so we explored the baths in record time, and made our way back to Hertfordshire.

[These photos are mostly taken by Owen again]