Mazda Australia did everything they could to stop us, but we managed to put an order in for a new Mazda 3 to be delivered in April when we get back from New Zealand. I know at least two of you reading this are car nuts, so the full saga is below 🙂 (Oh and the website is still farting around so you may get “page missing” errors on some of the links below. Continue reading “Our new car :)”
Coming to America!
So our original Canada/Alaska September tour departure was cancelled, and we have been shifted to August, which I am not happy about, but whatever. We’re going, and that’s that.
Tour finishes on 30 August, whereupon we catch the Amtrak Cascades from Vancouver to Seattle. We have booked this apartment for our stay. The actual address is 2133 5th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121, if you want to stalk us 🙂
We fly on 6 September (First Class, woo hoo – it was cheaper than premium economy, go figure!) to San Francisco, where we stay until 15 September here. Address is 199 New Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94105. Hope it doesn’t suck.
We’re off to New Zealand on March 12 to do this tour (not staying for extra time.) We were thinking of going whale watching in Western Australia between these trips, but the earlier departure kind of fucks that up. But we will probably go somewhere, possibly back to the Blue Mountains. Buying a new, bigger car in April specifically to make it easier for us to do longer trips, so we have to make use of it, don’t we 🙂
A very Sydney Christmas Part 2
We’ve been back since last week, but I am very slack.
Here are the photos which should have been in the first post. Continue reading “A very Sydney Christmas Part 2”
A very Sydney Christmas
Ah yes. The most exciting city in Australia, if not the world. This was supposed to be a post full of pictures to make you jealous that you are not here with us, but someone who is a dumbass (that would be me) brought the wrong adapter to transfer photos from the camera to the iPad, so they will have to wait until we get back. Never mind. The professional writer will do her best to stun you with her words. ::cough::
Sognefjord
So this is what we did yesterday. We caught the train from Bergen to Myrdal, then the Flåm railway to Flåm. From there we took an express boat along the Sognefjord back to Bergen, a boat journey of 250km and five and a half hours. All in all it was nearly nine hours of trains and boats, but it was simply fucking amazing.
Bergen
I have to break the report on Bergen into two post because no kidding, the scenery is so amazing and we took soo many phots, I’m afraid I’ll break wordpress if I post it all in one.
Oslo
Well, we’re on our last night here, and I’m just getting around to posting about our first. I suck.
Oslo is lovely. It’s beautiful and easy to get around, and makes good use of its bounteous coastline and many hills. The architecture, whether civic, commercial or domestic, is pretty much all atrractive, with many stunning buildings, most of which I haven’t photographed, because other people will have done a better job of it.
Continue reading “Oslo”
Turku
The Lonely planet website describes Turku thus
This one-time capital of Finland has a very historic feel, being the country’s oldest city. While hardly any mediaeval buildings remain, a visit to the doughty castle and superb archaeological museum will stimulate your imagination into populating the riverbanks with bustling crowds of merchants receiving and dispatching Baltic cargoes
While its guide book called it ‘intriguing’. We thus had high hopes for the place, which were sadly dashed because very little remains of Turku’s visual heritage thanks to multiple fires and so on.
Tampere
Today we made a dash northwestwards to the strangely popular lakeside city of Tampere.
Helsinki
Helsinki is great, but it helps we have had more glorious weather – to the point of getting sunburnt!
It’s not a beautiful place like Stockholm but it is stuffed with beauty, great architecture and amazing public art