Update

I finally managed to upload several pictures of our NZ trip early December. You can find pictures from the Milford Track as well as Routeburn Track. Enjoy!

Surfing in Lancelin

As mentioned before this Monday is a public holiday because Australia Day fell on a Saturday :)
So we had to use the great weather and wave forecast and drove up to Lancelin (about 1,5h north of Perth). We spent the morning on the beach surfing, relaxing and enjoying live! We had lunch in the local pub and drove back home in the afternoon - life can be hard ;)

Happy Australia Day!

There are Aussie flags everywhere! On cars and boats, balconies, kids running around waving them - Aussies are generally pretty proud to be Aussies! Also mostly in a nice way :-)
We had a rather quiet but typical Australia Day with lamb on the barbie and watching the fireworks afterwards.
Another thing worth mentioning about Australia Day is the fact that this public holiday fell on a Saturday this year. And there is this sneaky rule that if a public holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday the following Monday is declared a public holiday. I mean a public holiday can't be omitted! ;) So this year everyone celebrates Australia Day on Saturday PLUS the following Monday is a public holiday as well! I love this system!

John Butler Trio and The Waifs

Two Western Australian bands - great music for 3,5h! That is kind of the summary of last nights concerts in the Freo Arts Centre.
The Waifs were on stage first and played lots of their old songs, which was really great. Because as I said earlier I prefer their old songs. The lyrics tell stories of (Western) Australia which I prefer over the new more American based stuff.
To be honest I never heard of the John Butler Trio before but probably listened to some of his songs on Ian's ipod. But they are such a great live act! The crowds cheered to the 15min guitar solo followed by the 15min drum solo. They are such great musicians! It was a very nice night!

Swallows

... little friends in front of my office window.

Summer Barbies

I love them! Now that temperatures rising above 30C everyday we usually don't feel like cooking inside. And BBQ's are soo easy and delicious! I mean they are very easy for me as I only cater for the drinks while Ian makes up these wonderful recipes.
The other day we had friends over for a dinner BBQ. We had grilled prawns and scallops together with fresh tuna and King Snapper surrounded by grilled capsicum, asparagus and garlic butter filled field mushrooms. Simply delicious!

Home Sweet Home

After travelling for more than 6 weeks we finally arrived back in Perth. For know I have enough of sitting in an air plane, riding trains or driving around in the car. But I think this won't last for long and the travel bug is going to get me again soon :-)
But unfortunately when we came home it wasn't at all sweet. Someone had broken into our house between Christmas and New Year :( But it could have been worse... it is actually hardly anything missing. They 'just' stole Ian's Ipod, work mobile and maybe some alcohol and DVD's. So considering all the stuff they could have taken... it wasn't that much!
The worst thing was probably that they turned the house upside down and emptied all the drawers, cupboards,... basically made a big mess! But we haven't actually seen this because when we came back our friends had already cleaned up the mess! What great friends we have!

Snowboarding in France

Just like last year we went snowboarding in La Plagne - a rather biggish ski area in the French Alps, about 1000km from where my parents live. And just like last year we were 12 people - mostly my old friends from uni and we stayed in the same apartments like last year up at 2000m. So in the morning we could ski or snowboard directly from our balconies down to the gondola and up the mountains.

It was again great fun! We stayed in 3 apartments (4 people each). Every morning someone would go and get fresh croissants and baguettes for all of us and we would have breakfast in the dedicated "Frühstückszimmer" (breakfast apartment). We met for lunch up on the slopes and had diner in the dedicated diner apartment. The 3rd apartment would then be the party room where we played games and drank lots of wine, beer, vin chaud (Glühwein), ... :-)

We managed to pack all our luggage including ski / snowboarding gear and food for 12 people for the whole week into 3 cars - and believe me that wasn't at all easy!! :-) On the way to the ski area we climbed up 21 ziczacs and cheered with every degree that the temperature dropped along the way.

The snow conditions were much better than last year. We had much more snow - it actually snowed the first couple of days and we had only one really bad day when it was too warm so the snow mixed with rain and we had to stop at lunch time because our clothes were soaking wet. Thursday was probably my favourite day because it snowed over night and we had sunshine and blue sky the whole day! The view from the top of the glacier up at 3200m was just incredible.

But skiing in France is somehow different from skiing in Austria or Germany. They are well... not that efficient maybe... The lifts open quite late and close rather early. We also waited a whole day for them to prepare the slopes up at the glacier - they never finished. But they make up for that with their food! The hot chocolate in every hut up on the slopes was sooo yummy!! I also had two of my favourite deserts again - crème brulee and mouse au chocolate *yum*.

We also got self-made herbal schnapps for free twice! Ian likes to shuffle snow and volunteered to help the people in the ski huts clear the paths. Which they thanked him with a glass of their favourite schnapps :-)

So all in all we had again a really great time and we are looking forward to go there again next year :-)

New Year 2008

This year we spent New Years Eve with a couple of Ian's friends near Travistock (near Plymouth). This is right at the border of the Shires Devon and Cornwell. We stayed together with two other families (including kids :-)) in a huge cottage with a big kitchen and living room with a fire place. Really nice! It was in fact a very relaxing way of starting the New Year! Just what we needed :-)
We did a couple of walks through the Dartmoor, visited the Eden Project and had a look at Plymouth. The only down side of this trip - Plymouth is a 5h car drive away from Stansted airport, so we had to get up very early to catch the 10am flight!