Snow gum flowers

Yackandandah

My mum has been visiting for the holiday season. Between Christmas and New Year, we escaped to the mountains. We stayed in the mountain town of Yackandandah in NE Victoria and spent our time tasting cheese (in Milawa) and visiting wineries as well as escaping the heat of the valleys by walking on Mt. Hotham …

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar

Doha, Qatar

 Doha was hot; 47C in the shade. The weather for the day was marked on a board by the pool of our hotel (Swiss-Belhotel) each morning,”Very hot and dusty”. The hotels and skyscrapers of steel, glass and concrete have grown from the desert. At their foundations is sand and rubble where pavement might be when …

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Belgium

I miss living in Europe. I love, love, love that you can walk from your house to the train station and in a few hours be having lunch in a different country. Thank you, Eurotunnel, for the Chunnel. Since neither my parents or Ross had been to Belgium we decided to spend a few days …

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Portugal

We departed from Seville by (hire) car, sad to leave our friends but eager to travel east and to The Algarve. We crossed the border and stopped and enjoyed the change in scenery on the other side of the river from plains to sharp little hills dotted with small terracotta and white villages.  

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Spain

Seville is more than 2000 years old and was important to the Romans, the Moors and the Castilians but it is important to me because I have a dear, wise and charming friend there. We had a wonderful time in every way that is important; we talked, we laughed, we saw beauty, we learned, and …

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London

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. -Samuel Johnson As to London we must console ourselves with the thought that if life outside is less …

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Hemel Hempstead

  Hemel Hempstead is a town on the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire, England. It is 38.6 km to the north west of London and part of the Greater London Urban Area. The first recorded mention of the town is the grant of land at Hamaele by Offa, King of Essex, to the Saxon Bishop …

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Kangaroo Island

  Spring was busier (mainly because of the bees) that I would have wished for this year and we didn’t manage many weekends away, but with other a couple of months between holidays, I guess that  there really isn’t too much to complain about… Two days before Christmas we quit town and drove to South …

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Nowra and Jervis Bay

Just got back from a week on the New South Wales South Coast. We drove the coast road to Eden on Saturday and then spent a couple of nights camping on our way up to Jervis Bay where we stayed in cabin for a four nights while we climbed. Or more to the point, we …