Day 8: Hiroshima to Nagasaki – 2nd April 2023 Firstly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful baby sister Bek 🙂 In pretty much every city and town we go, we visit the supermarket. Not necessarily to buy things, but to understand more about the location and its culture. The way supermarkets are laid out tells you…
Author: Sara
The trains are not always on time!
DAY 7: Osaka to Hiroshima Saturday 1st April 2023 Toilets. Let’s talk about Japanese toilets. Fancy toilets. Heated-seat toilets. Toilets with washing options (front or back). Toilets that sing to you, or even have piped running water music so that your next-door neighbour can’t tell if it’s you or the toilet making the noise. Never…
You Only Live Twice
DAY 6: Osaka and Himeji Friday 31st March 2023 25,000 steps on Thursday should have led to a sleep-in, but the prospect of a great buffet breakfast helped us to rise early, regardless of my aching legs. Breakfast did not disappoint, with a large selection of Continental and Asian foods on offer, including my choices…
Food, Glorious Food
DAY 5: Nagoya to Osaka The time has come for me to take control of all dining decisions. It’s a fair call. Dave can decide historical monuments, museums and even transport routes. But really, after choosing an Australian themed (but American-owned) steakhouse for dinner on Wednesday night, it was time to get back to the…
You were given one job…
DAY 4: Hakodate to Nagoya (29th March 2023) I’m so glad we visited Hakodate and after a 15,000-step day on Tuesday, I was very much looking forward to a day mostly spent sitting comfortably in a Bullet Train! Our next stop was Nagoya, a large city (approximately the same size as Brisbane) about 430km south-west…
It’s all about Balance
Day 3 – HAKODATE I had an “OMG, I am so excited” moment when we woke up and looked out the window of our hotel on day three on our Japan holiday adventure. I had slept well and after much research was really looking forward to getting out of the hotel and exploring Hakodate. Dave…
The end of the line!
DAY 2: Tokyo to Hakodate As I mentioned yesterday, the reason we stayed near Tokyo Central station was so we could easily get to the Japan Rail Office in the morning to exchange our vouchers for rail passes and book seats on our first train. It seems that the queues of day one were to…
Please join the Far Queue!
DAY 1: Melbourne to Tokyo Nihon e Yo-koso. Welcome to Japan! It’s now mid-morning on Monday and we are already on our first Bullet Train! The countryside is whipping by as we travel at more than 200km/hr on the Hayabusa 19 from Tokyo to Hakodate. Hakodate is a small city on the south end of…
Konnichiwa
Hello Blog readers… long time no chat! Well to be honest, it hasn’t been that long, but I have good news! In a week or so Dave and I are heading off on a 14 day trip to Japan! This has been in the planning for quite a while. We had booked and paid for…
Finishing with food, of course!
ATHENS: Friday/Saturday 9th and 10th September 2022 DAY 1: Friday 9th Disembarking the ship in Lavrio early on Friday morning was super easy, and we picked up our suitcases at the portside terminal and then easily negotiated a taxi to take us the one-hour drive into Athens. Often negotiating taxi fares or routes is problematic…
Our Greek Island Odyssey
Greek Islands: Monday to Friday, 5-9 September 2022 The promise of a four-night, six-island journey around the South Aegean on a cruise liner with some of our closest friends had been keeping me awake at night with anticipation and is the perfect final phase of our European vacation. To take up where we left off…
Hydra has my heart
HYDRA (YDRA) 2/3/4 SEPTEMBER 2022 (part 3) It was just what we needed… rest, sunshine, warmth, good food. Hydra was all we had hoped it would be and perfectly timed after a couple of tiring weeks on the road, traversing central and eastern Europe. As you know, we started our five night sojourn on Hydra…
Hold your horses!
HDRA (IDRA): THURSDAY 1st September. ‘Hold your horses’ It’s the saying Harriet (of Harriet’s Hydra Horses) used, with a wry smile, each time she wanted us to stop on our four hour guided horse trek from Idra town to Palamidas beach, about five kilometres south-west along the coast. The day started early, as the agreed…
Ahoy me hearties!
HYDRA (IDRA): 30/31st August (VERSION 2) Blah Blah Blah… Yesterday (when I was in my philosophical mood) I wrote a long post about how I’ve worked hard all my life and how as a result of some significant health and well-being issues earlier this year, I’m learning to put my well-being first… I have decided…
First, Second, Third
THESSALONIKI: 27/28 August 2022 I’m sure many of you would have heard that the Melbourne Greek diaspora, at 425,000 (2021 census), is the third largest Greek population in the world. It takes no guessing that coming in first is Athens, the capital of Greece, with 3.15 million. But who knows which city comes in second?…
Why bother blogging?
BITOLA, NORTH MACEDONIA 26/27 August 2022 FLORINA, GREECE 27 August 2022 A couple of people have asked me why I take up valuable holiday time to write blog posts. There are many reasons, not least of which is to keep a record to help us reminisce. We feel incredibly privileged to travel, especially after a…