Greg and Deb’s Circumnavigation of Australia- well almost, Day 3 Perth

We had a lazy start to our day, relaxing at our bnb, so comfortable.

Late in the morning we headed over to P and A’s place, and were immediately grabbed by H to go and play trains with him. He has a wooden train track set up on his bedroom floor, and we spent lots of time driving the train around, knocking down wooden block Towers that magically appeared on the tracks. And then using toy diggers and cranes to make everything right again, until the Towers were knocked down again, on repeat. 🙂
J came in to add to the fun. H set limits on what J could and couldn’t do, and J was “mostly” compliant. Deb tried to distract J from the trains by reading him a book while she built Towers and rescued trains from the devastation. So much fun. Continue reading

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Greg and Deb’s Circumnavigation of Australia- well almost. Day 2

We started our day early, with coffee and tea with P, A, H, J and Chip as well at Mullaloo Beach. Walking into the cafe, we got the best, melt your heart greeting from young H, waving and calling out to us. Big hugs were had with everyone, so good to see them all so happy and well.

After a while H asked me to go for a walk with him, he had something to show me. So off we went along the foreshore path (after watching very closely for any bikes or runners – H insisted!). He took me along the path for a short while until we took some steps towards the beach and another path lined with mosaic tiles mounted on rocks. He showed me all his favourites, mostly the sharks, and a big Red Back spider. It was good to know he knew all about Red Backs and not to touch them. He laughed and joked about having all the sharks, and other sea creatures in his bath at home.

Eventually, Deb P, A, J and Chip came to see where we were. By that time H had taken me to a playground, we had tested the slippery dips, played pirates and jumped around on all the stepping stones. So much fun, precious time.

It was time for H and J to head to child minding and P and A to get to work. We’ll catch up with them all again tonight for dinner.

We headed off to Joondalup Centre to pick up a few things from the shops and headed back to our bnb in Connelly to relax a bit, and begin to get into holiday mode.

We had a very relaxing afternoon winding down. It was so good just not doing anything.

Around 5:30pm we met P, A, H and J at the Craigie Tavern for tea. We had a fun night. Lots of laughs, time with the little ones and to top the evening out Pat won the meat raffle, about $100 of meat. BBQ at their place tomorrow evening!!

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Greg and Deb’s Circumnavigation of Australia- well almost, with a detour to Bali in the middle.

DAY 1. First stop Perth.

Greg and Deb’s Circumnavigation of Australia- well almost, with a detour to Bali in the middle.

See what happens when we got invited to youngest nephew’s wedding in Bali!
Naturally we were up for the adventure!!

We dropped Louis off to his dog sitters, did our final bit of packing and were in the Qantas lounge by 2pm waiting for our flight, and Greg got his mandatory bourbon and Coke to signify the start of our holiday, and Deb had a G&T.

First stop, Perth.
We arrived around 5:15pm, got our hire car, (we booked a mystery car for the first time with Europcar, we finished up with an MG5 Sedan), our bags eventually turned up and we were at our Airbnb in Connolly around 7pm.

For directions to get here we tried to use Google maps on voice, but all the directions were being given as we got to where we had to turn, NO WARNING! So we reverted to Maps by Deb 2.0, and the skilful direction got us here safely, after a couple of user errors. Lol

It’s nice to get to a familiar comfortable place to stay. Exactly how we remembered it, very comfy and nice provisions.

 

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It all started with a wedding invitation……. it evolved into a holiday with a bucket list tick.

We got a invitation from our nephew to go to his wedding at the start of June in Bali.

Of course we said yes, and immediately thought of what else might be possible.

Inside 15 minutes or so we had a mud map for a great looking holiday, almost circumnavigating, Australia.

This is just a teaser, stay tuned and all will be revealed.

We leave on 9 May 2024.

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Day 55 & 56 The Flights home

We boarded our flight from Heathrow at about 9:10pm, it’s roughly a 6.5 hour flight to Abu Dhabi. I settled into my seat and looked at my onboard screen. It was about 00:30am, in Abu Dhabi and 35C.
Deb pointed out the Steak Sandwich in the “Gourmet Quick Dining” area of our menu, it comes highly recommended by our fabulous Travel Agent Jenni. So that is a must once we are in the air.
The steak sandwich was good considering we are 10km in the air!
I got some pretty good “sunset “ pics from my seat Continue reading

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Day 55 10 July 2023 London It has been fun, but it’s time to go home.

Sad to say, but we woke for the last time (this holiday) in London. Tonight we board the first of three flights to take us home.

We had a nice surprise early today, we got a video from Laura of Aidan walking, such a happy boy & mum. A beautiful way to start our day. ❤️

Continue reading

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Day 54. 9 July 2023 London Westminster to Temple

We decided to have an “early” walk before breakfast this morning. We got away from the hotel at about 7:45am. The streets were empty, no cars anywhere and very few people out. The streets had barricades around them, we got the idea something was going on. But we loved our quiet London, just for us.
We walked south along the Thames towards Westminster. There was little wind and the light was pretty soft, so we got some reasonable photos. We walked past the London Eye (across the river from us) Continue reading

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Day 53 8 July 2023 Cambridge to London on the Thames.

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A lazy morning, midday check out, train to Liverpool St Station, London at 1:03pm
We got to the station via an Uber at about 12:30pm. Our train made 8 stops to London, much better than the all stops we had coming up. The train looked new and was pretty comfortable. We got destination and stop announcements coming into and leaving each station, free wifi and a clean train = winning.

The countryside is all farming outside Cambridge, mostly grain crops with a bit of dairy. It got more suburban as you would expect, the closer we got to London.
We got to Liverpool St Station without any issues around 2:20pm and hopped on a Circle Line train to Embankment Station and strolled to our hotel, The Royal Horseguards.

We got to the Horseguards at about 3pm, checked in, got the bag I dropped off on Wednesday, and went our room.

We have an 8th floor Riverview room, with views over the Thames to The London Eye and the Hungerford and Jubilee Bridges, and the Thames beyond them. A nice view to finish our time here.

For dinner we went to The Clarence, Whitehall, a pub close to our hotel, Continue reading

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Day 52 7 July 2023 Cambridge

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We had a special day today, we were shown around Cambridge by Deb’s first cousin once removed, Eleanor. Eleanor did her Law degree at Cambridge, and graduated last year. She came up here especially for us from London. It was so good to get here insight into the University and to see where she lived and studied during her time here.

But I get ahead of myself. Earlier in the morning I went for a walk around “town”. I managed to get a little bit of video of The Corpus Clock, a strange looking device gifted to the Corpus Christi College by its creator Dr John C Taylor OBE.

The clock has no hands and the time is given by the position of lights on its metallic disks, it is gold plated and has a “grasshopper escapement mechanism. It’s so interesting to watch. Continue reading

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Day 51 6 July 2023 Mayfair to Cambridge

Finished tidying the flat and were out by 8:30am. We got a little lost getting to the train station but we got there. A quick train to Liverpool St Station and a 30 minute wait for our train to Cambridge.
We were away from Platform 3 on time at 9:28am.

We were lucky enough to be sitting across the aisle from three 20’s “boys” loudly talking and playing games on their phones and a person behind us coughing, and 9ne of the boys wasn’t well at all.
It seems like our train is an all stops to Cambridge. Hearing aide off for me and ear plugs in for Deb. Nasal spray for us both!!! Continue reading

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