It was a very long trip from Sydney to Venice, took about a day and a half. Needless to say, we arrived at Hotel Ala in Venice rather sweaty and exhausted but a nice shower solved the majority of our problems and off we set about exploring Venice for the next 3 days. Some herbal Nytol and melatonin at night helped get us on the right sleeping schedule and our jet lag was fairly non-existent. Yipee! Our experiences and thoughts on Venice can be summed up as follows: • Lots of walking and getting lost in the streets, which was a [View Full Entry]

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Our feelings on having our own children are no secret to any of you, that however does not stop from appreciated some of the beautiful children our dear friends have had. We had a beautiful Saturday afternoon hanging out with our friends and little buddy ETHAN, the newest addition to the Dutt household. On the way back to the cars, Kimmy and the girls broke off to visit the baby stores with Ethan. When the emerged Kimmy told me that we had bought a gift for Ethan, a little blue stuffed toy that squeaks. (why are baby toys and dog toys [View Full Entry]

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We’ve not had much blogging opportunities since leaving Sydney so for once I’m writing this blog much later than I do normally. I will try to remember all of the highlights and fun! Food &Wine: I’m starting with this because it was fabulous. Three meals stand out in my mind from our last week in Sydney. The first one was early in the week when Shane made us all an amazing feast of tuna steak starters, t-bone steaks, creamy mash and vegetables. And I made banana cake too for dessert but the steaks took the cake (haha)! Sommelier Kramer chose a [View Full Entry]

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We got back from the Whitsundays and we succeeding duping the traffic controller and did a pick-up in the drop-off departures zone. Living on the edge we are! We drove south last night to our weekend destination: the Southern Beaches. I’m awake early on Saturday morning (as per usual) and sitting in the lounge chair in the penthouse in Gerringong we’ve rented that has terrific views over the town and the beach. It’s a good transition from the views we had in the Whitsundays before going back to the city. ‘Cause where we’re staying in Sydney is so rough you kn [View Full Entry]

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Ok, we don’t want to leave Australia. We flew out Monday morning for Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, where we stayed until today (Friday). Accommodation: beautiful. Weather: perfect. Activities: sooooooo much fun! Food: pretty good. We’ve heard many of our Aussie friends talk about the Whitsundays and when I asked Son what her favourite place in Oz was when she was here years ago and she also said the Whitsundays, I know we had to book to come. Trusty old Tripadvisor helped us pick our hotel of choice in Airlie Beach: Sea Star Apartments. Just look at our picture [View Full Entry]

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From the title of this blog I imagine you are all expecting this to be about our Aussie hosts and us getting lost on new adventures in the land down under. NOT QUITE! Don’t mistake this for a rant but we have had some unbelievable experiences in taxis here, we thought that they were worth a mention. FIRST RIDE, NEWLY ARRIVED IN THE COUNTRY Sydney airport, friendly taxi stand man says, “we have been waiting for you, here is your taxi.” He was joking of course because that was his job, but it still made us appreciate friendly service. We tell [View Full Entry]

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We know we’ve been a bit slack with the blogging but it turns out it makes a difference when you don’t have easy internet access. Sorry about that. We write our blogs most of the time in Word and then publish them online when we can. We don’t have too much of an excuse for last week: we were pretty blog-lazy. I have to say thanks to all of you commenting on our blogs, we love it! It was a beautiful week in Sydney last week and spent our time golfing (well, if you call 3 holes in 1 hour golfing), [View Full Entry]

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09:00 Wake up feeling good. 10:00 Breakfast at Il Solito Posto, ate the best croissant since Janie and I lived in Nice. 10:30 Pop by the Dan Murphy's (wine & beer shop) to pick up some wine to bring back to Sydney. 11:00 Back in hotel room, pack up and write a blog. 12:00 Check out of Stamford Plaza and walk along the Southbank. 13:00 Visit the Royal Botanic Gardens--it's a gorgeous day and the gardens are beautiful. 13:45 Stop for lunch at the Arts Centre and sit in the sun. Eat prawns, salad and borek. 15:30 Hotel shuttle arrives, then [View Full Entry]

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We woke up in the morning and decided that we should go by our Antiparos rule: it's never a bad thing to eat at the same place if the food is amazing. So we went back to The Quarter on Flinders Lane for breakfast, tried something different from the menu and it was still very good. Yum, good start to the day! Shane and I originally wanted to hire a car and drive down the Great Ocean Road today but we decided the weather was too dismal for us to truly enjoy what looks like a stunning coastal drive and there [View Full Entry]

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After grabbing a quick swim in the morning, we headed for another of Maja's recommendations for breakkie: cafes on Flinders Lane. We found one called "The Quarter" and had a great meal. We love how you get turkish pide with breakfast in Oz, it's so tasty! Next we headed to the Queen Victoria Market, which is massive. Everything you could ask for was available there. At around 2:30pm the sales started. Now, we are knowledgeable about getting good end-of-day deals at Borough Market but it's nothing compared to Queen Victoria Market. Every fish and meat counter was calling out to people, [View Full Entry]

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