Life is a journey......

Photos: Sail Croatia

katfox — Tue, 3 Sep 2013 00:55:00 GMT

Photos: Lovely Ljubljana

katfox — Mon, 2 Sep 2013 23:45:00 GMT

Photos: Budapest

katfox — Mon, 2 Sep 2013 23:34:00 GMT

Photos: Czech Republic and Vienna

katfox — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 05:13:00 GMT

Returning Lilly Pad via Maison Murray

katfox — Thu, 22 Aug 2013 04:59:00 GMT

Fact: We traveled 7,125.9 kilometres, spent €811.62 on petrol, €303.88 on tolls and have had the time of our lives.

Well.... it was a long day of driving, but we've had much practice over the last few weeks and are experts in the art of entertaining each other in these times. We've nailed Johnny Farnham's "You're the Voice" - with hand actions, we've delved into the deepest of conversational topics, which always starts out with "so, do you want to talk or something?" Followed by "yeah, when do you want to stop for food?". Alternatively we would speculate about our lives when we return to Australia and what we should be when we grow up. Don't worry mum's and dad's it will happen.

Kim had provided us with excellent directions and a tip to stop in at a village called Monpazier for a look. After we arrived at the village we decided that we wouldn't mind owning a Mansion in the Perigord, lets just say it's not a bad place to find yourself, with it's beautiful villages it has a special feel to it. We decided to have dinner there as Kim wasn't quite ready for us. As it happened we had found ourselves sitting next to an Australian couple who had just arrived, we can't seem to get away from Aussies! We had a nice chat and found out that they owned a house in the centre of the village and come over for a few months every year, they've got the right idea!

We started heading to the Murray Mansion with Kim's description but no real idea what we were looking for? We went through some very small villages and what seemed to be some people's properties pondering whether we had past it as our directions seemed to diminish but we kept going as we had faith in Kim. Ok so in the end it was hard to miss it there were 2 choppers, 5 houses and a beautiful pool.

At around 11pm we said our goodbyes and happy 30th's with Kim, uncertain of when we will be seeing each other again. We hit the road and continued our journey up to Lille, we had no idea as to where we might sleep the night?? We found haven in a service station, it was the best sleep on the trip, not to mention the cheapest!

We continued our journey back toward Lille and spent our last night in Lilly Pad at a cute little caravan park in northern France. We gave Lilly Pad a thorough clean and gave our neighbours (a family from the Netherlands) our beloved beach umbrella and some other useful items, they were very grateful. That evening we drove into a nearby village for drinks and dinner, our last steak in France. Back at camp we were enjoying a few beers and reflecting on the amazing time we'd had in our van when Hilary heard rustling in the bushes, we got the old i torch out to search for the source of the rustling. Our lovely neighbours noticed what we were doing and joined the search....... Aha found it.... Our neighbour announced "it's an a hole". We promptly responded "ahem, a what?". "An a hole", ok so we heard correctly. Upon further investigation we found it to be a hedgehog, we will not forget the Dutch word for it any time soon :)

We returned Lilly Pad to her home in Lille, but not before we almost flooded her, oops! Note to self, do not drive through a drive through car wash when your car has a window that doesn't close. It was a chaotic few minutes as Hilary launched herself into the back and with the only towel we had we tried desperately to block the water flowing in. Luckily the damage was minimal.

Time for our next adventure! Thank you Lilly Pad for the amazing memories.

Photos: Berlin on bikes!

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 08:03:00 GMT

Photos: Barcelona and surrounding beaches

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:55:00 GMT

Photos: Sunny Santa Pola

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:51:00 GMT

Barcelona and surrounding beaches

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:39:00 GMT

Liddle Fact: Antoni Gaudí was a Spanish Catalan architect born in Reus, in the Catalonia region of Spain. Gaudí's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família.

After a little bit of coaxing and the promise of a coffee on the beach, Kate managed to have Hilary up and in her running gear by 9am, a very early start. We jogged along a lovely path near the beach spotting the cafe we would return to for our coffee. After 5km, a tad sweaty, we sat at the cafe on the beach and ordered ourselves dos espresso, dos aqua and dos orange juice. The barman checked around 4 times that we wanted the OJ, we were certain, turns out he had to do it manually (oops). This did not stop him from asking us to stay when we went to leave - so lovely! We strolled back to our camper along the beach, stopping momentarily for a quick dip, our energetic morning was very rejuvenating.

Next on our agenda was Barcelona! Hilary having been there before had the insider knowledge and proved to be an excellent tour guide. She knew exactly where Zara, H&M and the boutique shops in the old town were. So yes, more shopping. We also admired some of Gaudi's work and explored the endless cobbled streets. And we couldn't resist a few more tapas!

We continued up the coast with our sights set on a campsite that boasted 4 private beaches in its description. We were not disappointed. Set on a hill overlooking the ocean the campsite had a wonderful atmosphere. We meandered down a somewhat steep hill to The Beach Club to enjoy dinner and a hard earned sangria at a table right on the beach. We tackled a mighty steep climb back to the campsite, we wandered into the bar and found that there was some live Spanish music and Flamenco dancing which a large crowed had gathered to watch which was very unexpected.

As always we awoke and devised a great little plan.... today it was to seek out another beach cafe. We descended the steep hill to one of the beaches, it was the smallest and we hope would link to the beach with the cafe. As we emerged from the dense palm trees at the bottom of the steps what first caught our eye was a full frontal of a man and woman and then we had a good look around, has it a guess where we had found ourselves? We politely asked a couple whether we could access the other beach, without looking of course. To cut a long story short we walked around, we walked back, we walked up, we walked down, to no avail, the cafe's on the beach open at 11.00! We'd worked up an insatiable appetite, we returned to the campsite to find breakfast being served 20 metres from our camper. We then joined the nudie's on the beach to work on our all over tan.... Just joking!

Granada and the South coast to Alicante

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:37:00 GMT

What may be factual information: The serving of tapas is designed to encourage conversation because people are not so focused upon eating an entire meal that is set before them. Also, in some countries it is customary for diners to stand and move about while eating tapas.

From Gibraltar we headed to Granada with a quick stop off at Marbella for the most amazing lunch which entailed fish, chicken and ravioli. We didn't stay long as it was full of tourists and the beach was nothing to write home about.

We arrived in Granada to a tiny campsite with a cozy feel to it, with its mosaic tiles and luscious foliage. We quickly jumped in the pool as it had been a hot day driving, we then hit the showers as with all the swimming it had been a while.

The city was easily accessible by bus right at the doorstep. We hot tailed it at around 9.30, dinner time these days, into Granada to relish in our first real Tapas. With the reward of a delectable tapas with every drink order it was hard not to gulp the Spanish wines down.

The next morning we drove into to town to find the bus station for kimmy to make her way to Madrid. Hilary and Kate enjoyed a rather large tortilla each and some espressos whilst Kim sorted her bus. We then said short goodbyes as we would be seeing Kim again in a few days! It was a brilliant week Kimmy, thank you!

With just the 2 of us back in Lilly Pad we drove from Granada along the coastline stopping for lunch at an outdoor cafe on the beach with the locals and our first traditional paella. As per usual we could not resist a dip in the ocean before hitting the road again, so a swift change into our togs and we were in...... And even more swiftly we were out! Hilary had felt something brush against her hand and then her thigh, as we emerged from the water there it was, the warning sign by way of a flag with jelly fish pictured on it. Lesson learned! We probably should have also taken note that no one else was in the water.

We continued up the coast and randomly selecting a campsite to stop at in a sweet town called Santa Pola. Camping Bahia was home for the next 2 nights.

Beach umbrella and sarongs in hand we walked the 10 minutes into town and sort out Carmen, a restaurant recommended by the man at the campsite. We immediately could see that we were the only foreigners in the town, the restaurant was a local hangout with some interesting pastries that we couldn't resist. We spent a total of 4 euros on our pastries and coffee and felt like we were getting the authentic Spanish experience.

This Spanish experience continued as we arrived on the beach. It was packed with Spanish people of all ages, shapes and sizes. We especially liked the little old ladies flaunting their skinny legs and round bellies. There were old men playing cards and dominos under umbrellas, families and boobies it was mayhem in the best way possible. We snapped up a hammock each under an umbrella and settled in for the day next to 2 gorgeous older ladies who desperately wanted to speak to us. With the hammock attendant playing interpreter we finally communicated that we were Australian. They queried whether there was sun in Australia?? We came to the conclusion, after being offered sunscreen, that they were very concerned about our skin, bless!

We played a game of makeshift charades with our new found friends to arrange for them to mind our possy whilst we went for lunch at a local spot right on the beach, mere moments away.

The atmosphere at the bar/restaurant was hustling and bustling with elderly men standing at the bar wearing only their budgie smugglers having beer and tapas, sangria and wine at every table. We ordered Calamari which was divine and couldn't go past some more paella. We had certainly become accustomed to the Spanish way of life.

We returned to our lovely ladies snoring away, our spot was all ours still, they'd made our day :)

Monkey business in Gibraltar

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:03:00 GMT

Liddle fact: Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. It has an area of 6.8 square kilometres (2.6 sq mi).

We had received an email from Cheryl about their trip to Gibraltar. It went like this....

"We went to Gibraltar. Monkeys, great air strip interesting and using pound as currency"

We could not make heads or tails of the email?

We had also all heard of Gibraltar before but weren't sure why? Our curiosity got the better of us and we decided to check it out and see what all the fuss was about!

We tried putting Gibraltar into Mio, but she couldn't pick it up? With our past experiences with Mio we started to get frustrated with her, yet again! Ok, so this time it wasn't Mio's fault, the misunderstanding was that Gibraltar is not in her Spanish maps as it turns out Gibraltar is not in Spain! Who would have known that? Apparently not Hilary, Kim or Kate.

We passed through customs with ease, the men were very chatty... We were told by one officer that they were excited as they didn't get many women through. We drove through, that's right, through, the middle of the air strip..... First penny dropped (pardon the pun) on Cheryl's email.

From there on in it was revelation after revelation.... As we wondered through the Main Street of Gibraltar we saw English pubs with names such as The Horseshoe and The Royal Oak, the street names were classically English and prices were in pounds, there was even a Royal Mail post box and bobbies walking around! We were back in London, although it was a tad warmer and a lot less busy. We were still baffled by the monkeys as there had been no sightings, we started to think that everyone was having a laugh and joking about this monkey business.

We did a few laps of the country, in total it took 15 minutes to go around it. At times Lilly Pad had to suck her sides in to fit through the tiny streets but thankfully she made it unscathed. We raced around the island to catch the sunset, which wasn't an issue and once again witnessed another radiant sunset.

We decided to camp on the island as we wanted to climb to the top of the Rock in morning, we suspected if we were going to see any monkeys at all that we would need to go there. We found the perfect camping spot in a car park which was very quiet overlooking the beach, thankfully there were other campers already there.

The next morning we set off on our walk up the mountain. Woo hoo.... we finally sighted our first monkey, we all got overly excited and were thankful that it was in fact true:) It was a steep steady climb in the heat but we still decided to take the path called the Mediterranean Steps and once again it was the least populated due to the level of difficulty. It was certainly the better path to take as it was spectacular!

Finally after the gruelling stairs we had reached the top and oh what a view. We were right there were monkeys a plenty! They were everywhere, there were even some very adorable baby monkeys. They were very friendly, jumping onto the roofs of the passing vans and cuddling up to the drivers who obviously coaxed them with bananas :) once we had soaked up the view we quickly descended the mountain via the road, in fact we ran down in only 25 mins when it had taken us 1 1/2 hours to climb.

Having felt as though we'd explored every inch of Gibraltar it was time to leave the tiny place, so we joined the long customs queue....

Terrific Tarifa

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 07:00:00 GMT

Fact: You can see Morocco from Tarifa, when its not too cloudy.

The view of Morocco as we drove into Tarifa was terrific! As we approached Tarifa we were a little taken aback by the proximity of the mountains of Morocco. We had Africa on one side of us and the glowing red sunset above the clouds behind the wind turbines on the other. Picture perfect!

Our visit to Tarifa was brief, we wandered along the beach and around the small town. We had a delightful swim, finding the water a little warmer than the Portuguese coast and soaked up some rays the European way (we felt we were overdressed). The beach had a different feel to the other beaches we had been to, it felt tropical, with palm trees and white sand for miles.

We pondered whether we could squeeze in a fleeting trip to Morocco.... We couldn't, so it's on the list!!

Southern Portuguese adventures with Kimmy

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 06:57:00 GMT

Fact: Cape St Vincent is a headland in the municipality of Sagres, in the Algarve, southern Portugal. It is the south-westernmost point in Portugal. The cliffs rise nearly vertically from the Atlantic to a height of 75 meters.

After a rather long swim and relax at a beautiful beach just outside Lisbon Kim and Hilary hit the road again to meet Kate at Faro airport. When we reunited we shared the tales of our adventures, with all that had happened you would have thought weeks had gone by (it was however, only 3 days!!)

The next day we had a relaxing morning which entailed breakfast and coffee while catching up with friends and families via our various means of communication, we also managed a Skype date with Hannah to view the baby bump! We then finally got on our way, it was nice to have the 3 of us in the front of the car with some good tunes. At times we gave up on Mio for directions and decided to do it the old fashioned way. Kim being confident with her navigational skills took charge, however, her quick judgments never seemed to take us the right way!

We had not driven far when we decided that it was time to stop in Lagos for a swim and some lunch. We immediately found a great little cruisy cafe which had hammocks, couches and a lovely garden and was playing some reggae music. After we had eaten too much once again (we need to stop ordering on very empty stomaches) we did a quick change into our bikinis and hit the beach! It was refreshing to jump into the clear aqua water and escape from the heat.

We returned back to the car and changed into our clothes in the underground car park pondering whether the security cameras could see us?

With some local knowledge under our belt of some secluded beaches we headed towards the west coast with the idea of potentially parking and camping on the beach. We stopped briefly to admire the views from the sheer cliffs of Sagres on our way through. Then after a few wrong turns and some bush tracks we arrived at this beautiful coved beach just as the sun was setting. Thank you Salvador and Pedro, Kim's Portuguese friends, who informed us of this place.

The secret beach was called Vale Figueira shhhhhh .....don't tell anyone else;) There was a total of 7 others on the beach; some local fisherman and some others in a camper van who later approached us to query how 3 Aussies had found out about their secret camping spot.

We watched the sun setting over the water then set up camp for the night. It wasn't the most relaxing sleep we had had in Lilly Pad there were some early morning fisherman making all sorts of noise and some cops shinning lights into our window in the wee hours of the morning. This was soon forgotten when we woke the next day to the sounds and views of the ocean. After a swim and some exercise on the beach we headed for the south coast of Spain.

Eating Portuguese Tarts in Lisbon and London

katfox — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 06:16:00 GMT

Fact: Portuguese tarts are a delightful pastry filled with custard

Fact: It is possible to get by with the clothes on your back in London

Kim and Hilary said goodbye to Kate and sent her on her way to London for the wedding. Hilary had her own tour guide, Kim to show her the sites as Kim had been to Lisbon before. The tour included a spectacular view of the whole city, graffiti art in an underground car park, some very cheap espressos, green wine and a touch of live music. It didn't take Hilary long to see why Kim loved the city!!

Kate left Hilary and Kim bound for London. It was a simple journey, or so she thought.... it started with a 2 hour delay in Lisbon, that's not all bad, there is plenty of shopping after all. She landed in London at 12.30am, thinking her biggest hurdle would once again be customs, this was not the case. Customs was a breeze! It was when she got to the baggage carousel and waited..... And waited..... And waited..... Nothing! Kate stood contemplating attending the wedding naked, meeting Dave's family for the first time, good first impression right? All was fixed with a quick call to Cheryl, who put things in perspective, she was not being deported and all would be fixed with a quick shop. The wedding was fantastic! Kate wore a maternity dress from a charity shop (thank you Dave for being the fashion adviser). There certainly is a tale to tell of the first meeting of the family. After a lovely weekend Kate returned to the girls in Faro.....

Photos: Terrific Tarifa

katfox — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:25:00 GMT

Photos: Monkey Business in Gibraltar

katfox — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 09:13:00 GMT

Photos: South Portugal

katfox — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 08:14:00 GMT

Photos: Lisbon

katfox — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 04:58:00 GMT

Indulging in San Sebastián

katfox — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 03:55:00 GMT

San Sebastián, and the Basque Country as a whole, are very well known for their pintxos! They are related to tapas, the main difference being that pintxos are usually 'spiked' with a skewer or toothpick.

The campsite was up the mountain with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside and the ocean. Once we arrived we suddenly got very confused as to where we were?? There were more Aussies and Kiwis than Spanish people! We could hardly understand them from their thick accent. Well.... the Kiwis anyway.

The next morning after a slice of tortilla (potato omelette Spanish style)for breakfast we walked down the mountain to the beach. After a swim and a laze around we decided to have lunch at a cafe on the beach. We were quickly reminded of the laid back nature of the Spanish people and decided to embrace this taking a 2 hour lunch break with some sparkling wine (no wonder they have to have a siesta!!)

After lunch it took a little while to get going so we slowly strolled through the streets and came across some great little boutique dress shops, which was very handy as Kate needed a dress for Dave's brothers wedding the next weekend. The ladies in the shops were overly helpful offering their assistance zipping and unzipping, finding shoes and complimenting in broken English, so sweet.

After testing every shop in San Sebastián we returned to the first shop and bought the first dress that Kate tried on (always the way!!) Kate looked stunning with her Spanish tan against the bright satin yellow dress.

With shopping bags in hand we headed to the best place for Pintxos in town "Bar Zeruko". Hilary fought her way through the crowds to the bar to gather our culinary delights. Although we were unable to identify the bite sized pieces we were consuming our taste buds were excited and very pleased. On reflection of our day we decided that it was one of the most indulgent girls day out we had in a while; beach, long lunch with bubbles, shopping and tasty nibbles with some fine wine:)

Thank you San Sebastián!

All we can say for day 2 in San Sebastián is that another great day was had..... Topped off with a beach picnic - we could have done without the full frontal view of a not so attractive hairy, naked man who emerged confidentially from the water and greeted us. Needless to say appetites were lost!

Photos: San Sebastián

katfox — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 03:22:00 GMT