Trekkin

Day 10 – Tuesday 31 May 2016

The Palace of Versailles took a long time to get to this morning, the Paris traffic jam was worse than usual as the train workers had gone on strike and it was raining. Then, on top of that, there was a car accident on the road we were on, so the trip to Versailles took 3 times longer than expected. The Palace of Versailles was originally started as a hunting lodge for the king, which then was built into a small palace, then extended into a larger palace & then extended into the very large palace it is today. The gardens are very large and elaborate, with fountains & statues complemented by hedge plantings & pathways. Unfortunately the rain is still with us, so out with the wet weather gear & umbrellas to walk the 200 metres from the coach.

The palace is very elaborate & built on a grand scale, even the stables across the road are larger & more elaborate than most mansions. The first thing to strike you is the gilding of the fence and the elaborate gilding on the roof of the palace, very fancy indeed. Inside there are large paintings on all the walls & ceilings, with elaborate decorations in the corners of the ceilings. The associated chapel has the most beautifully painted ceiling to go with the rest of this beautiful building. Walls are covered in marble & each room we walked through appears to be stunning in its own way. The King’s Sitting Room & Bedroom were also designed & built to impress, they certainly do that. And then we got to the grand mirrored room – this is the most impressive room we have seen in any building, it is very long, with mirrors on both sides & painted ceilings, the photos do not do it justice, it is indescribably impressive. Louis XVI & his wife, Marie Antoinette lived a lavish life style until the peasants revolted against them because they had no bread & Marie Antoinette’s famous reply “ïf they have no bread they should eat cake”. In this room the Treaty of Versailles was signed to end the First World War.

We only went for a very short walk to see the gardens, the rain was coming down & the wind was blowing umbrellas. We wished it was a nice day as we missed out on seeing a very special & beautiful garden, something we could perhaps come back to see. Although, looking at the queues on a miserable wet day, I would hate to see it on a good busy day.

Our next stop was Dijon, a few hours down the motorway through lots of lush green fields & lots of wheat growing. Lots of water laying in the fields & the small creeks were overflowing as we drove through the heavy rain. At Dijon we visited a winery, the Chateau Marsannay for a small tour & wine tasting. The owner was very informative and spoke English well, even joking at times, as he explained the region & the winemaking process, before showing us the cellar with lots of French Oak casks full of different types of wine from Pinot Noir grapes. Next we had a taste of a sample of 6 of his wines, ranging from rosé to 4 different reds, finishing with a white. After he explained how to taste the wines, we listened intently as he explained the complexity of the flavours & smells. He also explained how important the type of soil is to each wine & in his vineyard pointed out 4 different soil types in 4 different plots of grape vines, all with different soil characteristics. As we finished he told us we could also keep the tasting glasses, very nice indeed. Let’s hope that they will survive the journey.

A short drive from the Chateau Marsannay into the centre of Dijon & our hotel where we checked in, tidied up & dinner at the motel. I was expecting more of the regions speciality, although we did get Burgundy Beef, a stew cooked slowly in red wine. We had a nice chat at dinner & got to know some of our fellow travellers a little better.

Day 9 – Monday 30 May 2016

Hooray, a sleep in this morning, we didn’t leave until 8 am. It is raining & cold, more like almost winter not summer. We are all excited because for most of us Monet’s garden was on the bucket list.

Monet’s Garden at Giverny was our destination this morning. Our Italian driver is amazing the places he gets us through. Parisian drivers are crazy, there doesn’t seem to be any rules, they just go whichever way. Paris is an absolutely beautiful place, beautiful architecture, lovely wide roads in some places with trees, quaint street cafes, the place seems big, airy & buzzing with life. Other places the streets are very narrow & twisty with barely room to get a car through, let alone a bus.

We arrived about ½ hour later than planned at Giverny due to peak hour traffic, it was still raining. I think the rain maybe added to our experience but it didn’t stop us (we are hardy Aussies). What a treat, seeing Monet’s Garden. The house & gardens have been recreated from his paintings & one of his gardeners kept a very detailed diary – it is awash with colour, blues dominating. The lily pond & bridges are just as they were in Monet’s time. A railway line used to run through the middle of Monet’s Garden (now a road) & the soot from the coal fired steam engine used to settle on the lily leaves in the pond, he had the servants wash the soot off the lily leaves every morning.

Monet’s House is intact & a museum, furnished with Japanese & period furniture as well as examples of Monet’s art all over the walls in each of the rooms. The place was packed with tourists, it was shoulder to shoulder & all very slow walking inside the house, I would hate to be there on a warm, sunny busy day. The very large gift shop was Monet’s painting room, with examples of two of his very large water lily paintings across two of the walls. We then we walk around the very small town of Giverny, all quaint & old original buildings.

The bus journey back to Paris was full of sleeping passengers, worn out from all the walking again. We only had a short turnaround & then it was off on a boat cruise on the River Seine with Bateaux Mouches, the largest riverboat company in Paris. Unfortunately our boat was full of very loud & pushy Chinese tourists, putting a further dampener on the cold, wind & rain. The river was in flood, so had a strong current running, we moved downriver fairly fast & banged into the waves heading back upriver. However, the scenery did not let us down, passing many famous & beautiful landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, Notre Dame Cathedral, a number of different palaces, lots of old mansions and a few other museums.

The boat trip took a bit over an hour then on the way back to the hotel the bus took us on a short driving tour to get closer to some of the buildings we saw from the boat. The Louvre Museum is absolutely massive & a stunning old building, formerly a royal residence & built in the 13^th century. Another highlight was getting up close to the Arc de Triumph, what a huge structure that is & the traffic around it is absolute bedlam, there are 12 intersections running off it with the most impressive being the Champs Elysees, 2 miles long. The top end of the Champs Elysees is surrounded on either side by very expensive high end shops. At the other end it terminates in a square called the Place de la Concorde, originally the home of the guillotine that claimed thousands of victims lives including Marie Antoinette & her husband, King Louis in 1792. There is also an Egyptian obelisk in the middle of the square.

An Eiffel Tower dinner in the restaurant is the agenda tonight, the weather is still very bleak, raining, cold & very windy. The wait to catch the elevator up the tower was slow & tedious, with 2 security checks plus a ticket check & sharing the elevator with lots of others. Our tour director told us that numbers of tourists are way down, the lines are usually hundreds deep. Our seat in the Eiffel Tower Restaurant was right next to the window, looking straight up the middle of the tower. The tower was lit up & looked stunning. The food was delicious, a prawn entrée followed by the best chicken dish I have ever tasted, I am not a person that usually likes chicken but this was superb. Desert was a fruit meringue, the meal was accompanied by champagne & wines. Getting down the tower was a lot quicker. The tower was lit up with a set of sparkling lights in addition to the normal lighting, it did look spectacular.

Day 8 – Sunday 29 May 2016

Another early start, 5.30am for a 6.45am departure, with a great breakfast in the grand ballroom. Today is overcast with a light haze, threatening rain as we drove through the Kentish countryside down to Dover, admiring the lush green grass & the fat sheep. The sides of the road are covered in white daisies mixed with other flowers, it is very pretty. Our driver did a superb job finding his way through the countryside so much so that we arrived early at Dover & were able to catch an earlier ferry to Calais in France across the English Channel. After passing through French customs Tereza & I were fortunate enough to be picked out for a security search of our bags along with 4 others on our bus. We didn’t have long to wait & we drove onto the ferry in the bus and had a relatively easy crossing of the channel, though it was very windy on deck. The misty haze was still around so the white cliffs of Dover were not as clear as we would have liked.

The motorway to Paris is great allowing for fast passage, the speed limit is 130km/hr. As we left Calais we passed a large camp of refugees with a high fence & a collection of police vans full of police strategically located nearby. The fields of France are very green, with lots of wheat fields and large patches of green forest. We kept on seeing cemeteries near the side of the motorway filled with headstones of soldiers who died in the First World War. Our tour director told us that there are hundreds of cemeteries in this part of France with millions of men dying in this region. It is all so very peaceful now & is unbelievable that so much senseless & needless death occurred so close by.

The misty haze stayed with us & eventually it started to rain as we neared Paris. The driver did a great job navigating through the many convoluted streets of Paris to deliver us to our hotel for the next 2 nights, the Pullman Montparnasse (4.45 pm we also lost an hour by crossing over the channel). We only had a short time to refresh & organise ourselves for our night out at a Parisian cabaret, the Nouvelle Eve. The drive there was interesting, passing by so many amazing & interesting buildings, the French certainly do have a lot of style. Our tour guide is very knowledgeable about the history.

The Nouvelle Eve is fairly close to its more famous cousin, the Moulin Rouge, though smaller & more intimate. We were placed at a table right next to the stage with Tereza’s shoulder right against the stage. Our dinner was superb, starting with a pate for an entrée followed by one of the most delicious steaks we have ever tasted, chateaubriand. This was followed by a delightful small cheese platter (fromage) then followed by a very tasty meringue. We were served wine, beer soft drinks, juices & champagne both before & after dinner. The young women & young men danced so well – such athletes & so energetic. (Their legs were whooshing past my face). The girls wore more often than not just a G string, they were beautiful & it was all in good taste. A lady sang some beautiful haunting French songs. A couple of jugglers & an acrobat were exceptionally good, very funny & even more so when they included some people from the audience to participate. One of the dancers picked out 3 men from the audience – Ron was one of them – she taught them to dance & then they had to compete, the audience had to choose by clapping. They were hilarious. Ron didn’t let the Aussies down, even though he was a lot older, he came second. The winner’s prize was a topless dancer who pulled him behind the curtain & he ended up with a face full of red lipstick. The cabaret was a great way to finish a long tiring day.

On the way back to the hotel the bus got stuck in a very narrow street as it was trying to manoeuvre past a fire engine. The 2 drivers worked out a strategy & we drove off.

Day 7 – Saturday 28 May 2016

Off to the Royal Horticultural Gardens Wisley this morning so up at 5.30am to pack bags & organise for a 7.45am departure after breakfast. The traffic wasn’t too bad out of London & the journey to Wisley only took around an hour. We read the map of the Wisley Gardens & planned our walks on the bus so that we could see what we wanted as soon as we got there. We waited around 15 minutes for the doors to open then walked slowly past the Canal & Loggia to the walled gardens. There is a diverse range of plants, a lot in flower & a lot that we had never seen before. Next was the wild garden, dominated by a multitude of magnificent rhododendrons in all manners of colours with some of them 20 metres tall. The understory was also very colourful with all manner of plants in various stages of flowering.

The very large glasshouse at the bottom of the gardens which holds tropical plants with one section in the glasshouse artificially heated & fine misting sprays to keep the humidity levels up. Some of the orchids & other tropical plants had magnificent floral displays & again all colours you can imagine & some that you could not even comprehend as being real. Another part of the glasshouse had a very good display of cactus with lots of them in flower, a lot of them very curious indeed. The lake in front of the glasshouse supported a community of birds, one very tame duck with a clutch of 4 very cute ducklings.

We wandered back along the section of garden called the Seven Acres, more rhododendrons in flower & more lakes & came across a bird of prey display being held in the field near the café. The men conducting the display trained & cared for injured birds of prey as well. The most impressive bird on display was the largest & most powerful owl in the world, a Siberian Snow Owl. They also displayed an African Buzzard, a very awkward & ungainly looking bird, surprisingly large though. A small barn owl was also very impressive. We had to be back on the bus by 12 so missed seeing the flying of the other 3 birds of prey they had with them today, a kestrel, a falcon & a Falklands Island Eagle, disappointing. We didn’t get to see all of Wisley Gardens as it is a very large garden but all that we did see we enjoyed.

We then headed to Sissinghurst, a National Trust Estate & this time the traffic was very heavy & very slow. This is a Bank Holiday long weekend & also the kids are having a week holiday, the road we were on is the primary road from London to Dover for people wanting to catch the ferry to France for the weekend or go to the coast. The roadworks along the way compounded the problem so we got to Sissinghurst Castle a lot later than was planned. Sissinghurst is dominated by a tall 16^th century tower and the scattering of old houses & buildings complement an absolutely beautiful series of gardens established in the 1930s. We explored the old Oast House first, formerly used for drying hops, now displaying an interesting history of the couple that developed the current gardens. We explored thoroughly the very beautiful gardens surrounding the castle, totally enjoying the different nuances & displays & arrays of all manner of plants & flowers.

We then walked around the estate, past the old moat & around the lakes before returning to the main house. The old library is a conversion of a former horse stables & is left as the gardening couple originally used it, complete with books, sofas, chairs & tables. I took the opportunity to climb to the top of the tower, built in 1530 & felt all 75 of the steps up the narrow wooden spiral staircase, my legs were shot by the time I got back down. However, the view from the top was worth it, providing a great overview of the garden layouts and the surrounding countryside. Some of the rooms in the tower also had interesting displays, including another library room with another large collection of books.

The café had a speciality of serving scones with clotted cream & jam so I indulged with a coffee & relaxed the legs before the walk back uphill to the bus. Spa Hotel at Royal Tunbridge Wells for our overnight stay was only a short distance. A magnificent old building dating from the 1700s & after unpacking in our beautiful & large old room we went for a walk around the gardens of the hotel. More beautiful & very colourful rhododendrons, with a nice lily covered lake at the bottom of the garden complete with wharf. Dinner in the grand ballroom was superb & a great opportunity to get to know better our fellow travellers.

Day 6 – Friday 27 May 2016

Chelsea Flower Show today, so again breakfast at 6.30am & on the bus by 7.20am. The bus had to battle with the morning London commute traffic & closed roads so we had to cross the Thames River to south London, drive along a bit in less congested traffic (it was still very congested) then a roundabout with at least 3 sets of traffic lights around it – never seen anything like it. Ron couldn’t stop being grateful that he didn’t have to drive. London is such an amazing city – buildings are old & traditional & so many new buildings are popping up everywhere – steel & glass. Everywhere road work is in progress to accommodate for the enormous amount of traffic. We thoroughly enjoy our walks around the city but once again we just haven’t got enough time to see it all.

The Queen will be most upset with us because this time around we didn’t even get to Buckingham Palace.

We were in the gates around 8.10am just after the gates opened. What a clever move that turned out to be, by 11 am the place was a sea of people. At the entrance was a display of animal sculptures from driftwood, they were life size & very well made. Probably my pick of the sculptures.

We explored the main pavilion first, a huge & very high marquee that housed the flower exhibits. We had a lot of room to ourselves with hardly anyone in there and spent a lot of time admiring the bonsai trees (we were very impressed & proud because they know about our arboretum & where we have a wonderful house for our bonsais). Masses of flowers & myriad of colours. Some people are very talented at grouping plants. By the time we finished looking through the pavilion thoroughly it had started to fill with more people & we no longer had the opportunity to photograph from any angle. We then moved outside to the display gardens. There was such a big crowd starting to form, especially where the film/TV crews were. Some of the gardens are magnificent, others we could leave. Then there were some we would like to take home. The creativity of some of the garden designers is amazing. We do not know if the Australians had a display or not, these gardens were not identified enough for us cheapskates who didn’t want to fork out 10 pound (A$20) for a program.

We stopped for lunch around 11.30am at one of the many food stalls (without queueing) & managed to find a seat close by. At 1pm the food stalls had queues 20 or 30 long & not a seat anywhere.   People were sitting on the grass anywhere they could find a spot without getting trampled. The crowds had really started to get uncomfortable now (a wall of people walking at you they didn’t sort of have a 2 way walk way) & it was a real pain to walk anywhere or see anything. I could see a bit because of my height, poor Tereza was staring at the endless sea of people. One big plus, we managed to not lose each other. Inside the main pavilion was cooler (yes it was hot & sunny today) & a little less crowded (may be because it was lunch time) so we walked through it again & spotted a few things we had missed, then made our way out & back to our bus pick-up point by 1.30pm. We found some of our fellow tour members waiting & chatted with them until the bus arrived, then it was a slightly less congested drive back to our hotel for another hot bath. Our legs are certainly screaming about all the walking.

Chelsea Flower show is only a 5 day event – started on Monday & Saturday will be the last day. The area will revert back to the grounds of the old soldier’s nursing home.

Tonight was a dinner cruise on the Thames River & departed the wharf at 7.15pm on a long, low & wide river ship. We went upriver first for a little while before turning & sailing all the way downriver to the barrages that stop London flooding. It was interesting seeing all of the different old & new buildings hugging the riverbanks, including the London Eye, the Millenium Stadium & the Shard, which is a very tall new building that dominates the skyline, plus all the boats. The many bridges contributed to the interest. During our 4 course dinner we got to know a little better some of our fellow tour members, with one at our table celebrating her birthday today. The sun appeared very briefly before setting at 9pm & then the lights of the city added another dimension to the view. During dinner we also had a women singing supported by a saxophone player & a pianist, they were good, some people danced. All too soon we were back at the wharf and back at the hotel by 10.30pm to our motel.

Day 5 – Thursday 26 May 2016

No more lazy starts, breakfast at 6.30am then a long slow walk to the British museum today, straight along Oxford Street, then left at Bloomsbury Street. We got there after only an hour of walking, so found a bench in Bloomsbury Park & rested our feet, enjoying the gardens in flower & the birdlife until the museum opened at 10am. What a large imposing building, the front of British Museum is huge & very impressive. After the mandatory security check we stepped inside & were amazed at the high glass roof over the very large courtyard. The first piece of history that we saw inside as we walked through the door blew me away – the Rosetta Stone – extraordinary. This was in the very large hall of large Egyptian artefacts, some of these are very large & the level of detail extraordinary. I don’t know how they managed to move them. Then followed the halls of Assyrian wall reliefs – again the level of detail and quality of work challenges my mind, the amount of time it must have taken to carve them from stone.

Next was the Greek hall and the highlight of this was the Elgin Marbles, wall friezes taken from the Parthenon in Athens. The scale of these and the detail is again extraordinary, the stone carvers were amazing people. It is very fortunate for history that Elgin did take custody of the wall friezes because over the next 100 years the amount of damage by vandals & souvenir hunters is scandalous. The comparisons of casts taken from friezes that Elgin took versus what they looked like after 100 years says it all. Now 300 years later the variation is even more marked with the effects of weathering & acid rain.

The museum is a mecca for school groups from all nations & at times the noise from the kids was deafening in French, Japanese, Arabic or English, the kids were equally as noisy. Then we would walk into another gallery & we were the only people in it, for a short time anyway. Another thing we were amazed by was the intricate detail, the quality of work & design of the ancient goldsmiths, made even more incredible that the pieces were created thousands of years ago. The written languages created by so many different civilisations thousands of years BC was another eye-opener, just to realize that there was such a depth of advanced civilisations so long ago. Seeing objects 8,000 years old reinforces how insignificant we all are.

We walked through gallery after gallery, up & down flights of stairs we wore our legs & feet out. We stopped for lunch before moving into the clock gallery & another feast of technology wonderment, some of these people were just so clever. A few more amazing galleries & we still didn’t want to go, but we were exhausted. I felt humbled that I didn’t commission a 22 carat gold font for the christening of my grandson, like the exquisite example we saw. The long slow walk back to our hotel seemed to take forever, a bit over an hour this time. A short rest then it was time to meet our tour director, (he is about our vintage, sounds very intelligent & he speaks all the languages where we are going, he promised us a very beautiful tour) & the rest of our tour group (they all look about our age too) for drinks at the hotel bar, then back to our room. I ducked out for a takeaway pizza ($36) from Pizza Hut

across the road, as that was the easiest. After that another hot bath for both of us to soak away our tired legs then bed by 10pm. Another long but amazing day.

Day 4 – Wednesday 25 May 2016

A very lazy 8am buffet breakfast to start, then off for a walk through Hyde Park and past the Serpentine Lake to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Along the way we passed some very expensive real estate, a 3 bedroom apartment on Kensington Road, Knightsbridge, overlooking Hyde Park can be yours for a mere 18.5 million British Pounds. If that is too much you could settle for a 3 bedroom terrace nearby for 8.5 million British Pounds, or if you can’t quite get that sort of money together you could rent a 1 bedroom unfurnished apartment for 4,700 British Pounds per week.

The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) is an amazing place & we recommend if you get to London it is a must see. The V&A is focused on art and has amazing displays of sculptures, including 14 Rodins, paintings, jewellery, furniture plus silver & gold tableware, religious artefacts and musical instruments, even a Stradivari violin (a shame it is not being used by a talented violinist). It is amazing, the skill of the artists leaves you wondering how they ever achieved anything so good. A highlight was seeing one of Leonardo Da Vinci’s original notebooks. The museum is so big it took us from 10am – 2.15 pm to barely skim through it, we really need to spend some days going through it. It is a place we want to go back to when we have more time.

On our walk back we stopped into Harrods to see what all the fuss is about. My goodness, if ever you want to spend some serious money, this is the place to do it at. Harrods is very large & is full of the high-end brands, covering jewellery, handbags, clothes, food & perfumes. If you ever want to spend some serious money on food, you can buy some Japanese Wagyu beef for 480 British Pounds (A$960) per kilo. Or you can go cheap & buy Australian Wagyu for 295 British Pounds (A$590) per kilo. There was an exquisite butterfly necklace & broach set at Tiffany’s but we were in a hurry & Tereza didn’t have the time to try it on (they had no price on it & if you have to ask how much it costs usually you can’t afford it). We left Harrods empty handed but only because we were in a hurry.

We continued our stroll back through Hyde Park, stopping to watch some red squirrels, then walked along Park Lane in Mayfair (Monopoly players will know these names). Here you can get a 4 bedroom terrace house for a mere 16.5 million British Pounds, they don’t look anything special from the outside. We stopped at the Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane for Queen Elizabeth’s 90^th Birthday Celebration High Tea. This establishment is very swish, you need to be sitting down when you are reading the prices for afternoon tea. We had a couple of glasses of champagne, an endless pot of very nice tea from a huge selection on offer plus finger sandwiches, scones with jam & clotted cream & to finish it off a selection of exquisitely (some decorated with gold leaf) presented (tiny) delicious sweet treats. We were even treated to the Queens favourite biscuit (so we were told & who are we to question this?). We spent about 2 hours indulging & found it very hard to stand up, we are blaming it on all the walking & so much food, not the champagne. What is Ron doing? My afternoon tea (a person who up until now did not drink coffee or tea) standards have been raised, I am expecting this sort of indulgence every time now!

Back to our motel & more indulgence with a long hot bath to round the day out & soak our weary feet & legs after so much walking.

The Amba (old Thistle) hotel is getting refurbished, the dining room is still the old one, the rooms are finished. The WOW factor is it’s closeness to the city & things tourists “must see”, then there is the price they charge for the rooms (expensive).

Day 3 – Tuesday 24 May 2016

Up at 5.30am, shower & we were first at the buffet when it opened at 6am. The buffet is huge & looks good with seating for hundreds of people. There was a good selection of all styles of food, primarily Asian style. The breakfast we had was great & we headed off to the airport terminal before 7am. There were very long queues getting into the departure areas, with separate queueing to get into the area to start with, then immigration, then security, always with seemingly a lot less people than I think is required to process everyone in a timely manner. Our plane boarded on time, but then we were delayed sitting in the plane for half an hour as some people did not board & they had to unload their bags. Some 13 hours & 3 or 4 movies later we arrived in overcast balmy, 15C London, it is still a very long way, even after overnighting in Hong Kong.

In London the Customs queues were even longer & slower than Hong Kong, if that is possible to comprehend. The baggage carousal had stopped and all remaining bags taken off by the time we were cleared through. Our driver was patiently waiting for us & chauffeured us safely to our hotel near Marble Arch. For those into Monopoly, it is on Oxford Street across from Park Lane. After check-in we went for a stroll to Marble Arch, then back down along Oxford Street. The traffic was at a near standstill & we walked past a double-decker bus that was in the middle of Oxford Street surrounded by police, it looked like a female pedestrian had been hit by the bus. Continuing past the accident we turned off down Molton Lane, now a shopping mall closed to traffic, full of high-end fashion. We stopped at the “Spread Eagle” pub for a quit pub dinner on the first floor washed down by a “London Glory” craft beer.

A slow walk back on the other side of Oxford Street, past Selfridges also Marks & Spence & back to our hotel. It is currently 9pm & still daylight outside. There are a lot of people wandering around Oxford Street (we can see them from our window) & the shops seem to be open still.

We have been awake for more than 24 hours, the brain is starting to get a bit fuzzy, but we want to stay awake until normal bed time (like now) to adjust our bodies clock to London time.

Day 2 – 23 May 2016

A 6.30am wake-up and a short 100m walk for a 7am check-in at the airport. A couple didn’t like their bulkhead seat allocation, I was fairly happy to change with them as there was more legroom. In immigration my new passport played up a bit so a manual check through before the security line. It always amazes me the things that people carry through in their bags.   A woman before us had large tubes of moisturisers and other make-up products binned, causing a fair delay in our line. Then Tereza went through the scanning machine & had to be frisked by a guard, apparently the wire in her bra caused the issue. We wandered around the duty free shops before a light breakfast then more browsing.

The flight to Hong Kong was uneventful, a few bumps over the south China Sea. The on-board meals were O.K. and Tereza spent most of the flight finishing reading her book & I read the Financial Times whilst listening to the in-flight classical music. The new noise-cancelling headphones I bought work really well. Our landing in Hong Kong was a bit bouncy, but safe. It is a really long, long walk from the gate to the airport train to take us to immigration, baggage area & arrivals is another fair walk from the train. We have never seen so many people going up on one escalator – we are spoiled in Australia. We walked even more to the flybridge to our hotel for the night, the Airport Regal – a huge place 1300 rooms. Check-in was easy & it was good to take the shoes off & relax in our room, slippers & bathrobes provided with all the toiletry one needs after travel. A 5.30am start in the morning. They told us breakfast starts at 6am in the hotel. We are on the 10^th floor, the room is nice, we even have a view of a harbour, part of the city lights look good, but that is about all we will see of Hong Kong, it is only rest break for us. I really must be getting old, I found the flight very long, it was just under 10 hours (tomorrow it will longer, about 13

hours) we used to make the whole leg of the trip to Europe & America in one hit.

Day 1 – 22 May 2016

A very pleasant start with James, Venetia & River taking us into town for our bus trip to Sydney. Young River is now reacting to us & is very cute, it was a little sad waving goodbye & missing out on our grandsons (and children) for a couple of months. The Murrays bus trip to Sydney international airport was uneventful & a very relaxing way to travel, we both dozed off a few times on the way. Our motel was only 100m away from the bus drop-off and we were in our room 3 ¼ hours after leaving Canberra.

We caught the train into Circular Quay & had a stroll around the harbour before boarding the tall ship Southern Swan for a twilight dinner cruise for a couple of hours on Sydney Harbour. These beautiful wooden tall sailing ships are very rare, only about 150 left in the world, Australia has about 15. The one we were on was built in Denmark from Danish oak, in 1922 – imagine sailing the 7 seas in one of these little ships. The lights of the city were all coming on as we departed Circular Quay & both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House looked spectacular. We were treated to a magnificent full moon rise over the harbour, accompanied by a very bright planet Mars. The sail back to Circular Quay was very pleasant with the square sails drawing the last of the sea breeze & pushing us gently along. The food tasted good (or were we just very hungry) & we enjoyed the pleasant roll of the ship & the lights of the city, as well as the very busy harbour traffic with an endless number of Sydney ferries churning past us at speed.

We strolled back to the railway station & then train back to the airport, with a quite drink before back to our room with a view of the main runway & the constant movement of aircraft. A very pleasant start to our next European adventure.