Summertime in San Francisco Part 1

Again....it's been a while. Back from a fantastic trip to blighty, we're going to get back into this blogging game. It was amazing seeing all our family and friends again and we had some lovely times up and down the good old UK. Except for those bloody mary, garlic vodka shots.

We'll come back to our UK visit, but first a quick post about our latest favourite place on the planet - San Francisco - where we stopped off for 2 nights on our way back to Oz.

After yet another comedy flight with United (although this one ended up in our favour) we arrived late afternoon and headed to our hotel in North Beach.

San Francisco greeted us with this spectacular view of a double rainbow from our bedroom window. Wowzers.

A luminous welcome

Our lovely room in Hotel Boheme

Our hotel was beautiful and cosy and just a few metres from some notable SF spots e.g where FF Coppola wrote The Godfather screen play and the City Lights Bookstore where the beat generation had it's birth. Plus lots of Italian restaurants...always a good thing. We ventured out for a couple of drinks and some pizza and started planning the next day.

The next morning we started with a massive danish pastry and a walk to see one of the most crooked, steep streets in the world - Lombard Street. Walking there we encountered some additional fairly steep streets.

Quite slopey

Our first view of Alcatraz

San Francisco seemed to us a bit like New York....you've seen it so many times on film you think you've been there before. Also after loads of people had told us San Francisco would be damp and chilly, we had wall to wall blue skies the whole time, not one glimpse of the famous fog.

Hopping on the cable car we had lots of amazing views of the city.

Lombard street and the Coit Tower in the distance

Downhill in cable cars

Blimey, it's hilly

The drivers were entertaining and thankfully very competent on what seemed like impossible hills. We rode to the downtown area and hopped on a train to Mission. Lots of central and south american immigration have given this area a distinct look and feel. Apart from anything else, we'd read it was an amazing place to get a burrito. And so it was....

We went to La Taqueria...and it was A-mazing.

Mission is also home to some amazing, colourful murals. Some have been there years and some are much more recent, but most are around a social or political theme. But are also very beautiful.

Now we just need to find a Bencove....

June is full of commemorative dates for us. Both birthdays, plus Ben's well planned proposal in Seville. Last year we added another few significant dates - our wedding anniversary and our Australian arrival. With all these Dates of Note so closely packed, we decided to take advantage of the June public holiday weekend (no Jubilee celebrations for us, but we do get her majesty's birthday off each year) to head North. 
We've not been north before except in aeroplanes to Queensland so were looking forward to seeing some of New South Wales, north of Sydney. Location and accommodation were selected by Ben under his own initiative whilst I was back in Europe. Just thought he would like that recorded.
We didn't get off to the best start. An unintentionally merry evening with Ben's work colleagues on Friday night, meant we didn't quite make the 8am start we intended. It was more like midday by the time we joined the hideous snaking queue of traffic heading out of Sydney. 

Leaving Sydney via the Harbour Bridge

A series of bad decisions or sheer bad luck saw us making numerous gaffes around which direction was best and where to stop for food. A detour via Gosford was a particularly dark period in the journey as we sought lunch. I'd never even entered a KFC before and all my opinions were confirmed. I don't think even Ben enjoyed it on this occasion, looking at my sour and doleful face tucking into the 'salad special' - an iceberg lettuce, carrot strands and a cherry tomato. Go Greenpeace I say. 
After that things improved enormously - we turned off the highway after Newscastle and drew into Anna Bay. I was hoping my namesake town wouldn't be disappointing. And phew!!! We pulled up the car and stumbled up a sandy path through the sand dunes to find a stunning deserted beach that was simply breathtaking in the late afternoon light......

After watching the sunset we headed to our little bolthole in the nearby gum trees and spent the evening cooking some food and enjoying some of the wine we'd over ordered from our Barossa valley trip. 


The next day saw a fun packed list of activities:

Riding a camel. Anna Bay has some of the largest sand dunes in the Southern Hemisphere

We climbed a summit and saw a humpback whale from the top

Found another stunning and deserted beach

Moved some flotsam

Were happy

And some of us got very wet feet

It's been a while.....

We can only apologise loyal readers (are any of you still out there?). Where does the time go? So I thought I'd ease us back in with some photos of our recent road trip from Adelaide in South Australia, through the Barossa Valley wine region all the way to the outback of Broken Hill. We took a couple of days around the Anzac Day public holiday to do our first proper Oz road trip. 700km, pretty small by Oz roadtrip standards, but very varied. We saw mile after mile of vineyards in lovely Autumn hues, dusty, straight and empty roads and lots of red earth. Oh and some wild emus. 

Adelaide is a lovely city - it feels sedate, intelligent and relaxed. This picture, however, is of a stripclub. It had pretty lights.

Whilst in Adelaide we watched the Anzac Day Parade. Both of us had a good blub at the WW2 Veterans and were generally impressed by the size of the parade with Adelaide not even being Australia's second or third city. 

The next day, after Ben narrowly avoided mowing down the nation's sweetheart (a blind contestant from Australia's The Voice) we headed out on a very pretty drive to the Barossa - a couple of hours drive from Adelaide and one of the best wine producing regions in the country. We stopped off in Tanunda - settled by Germans way back in the 1880s looking to pursue their religion without persecution. It still retains subtle influences of it's German origins - the odd Lutheran church and a fine trade in Bratwurst. And so we started our wineries stumble....

After sampling quite a lot of wine, we had a lovely meal (with more wine) and bedded down in our first Aussie motel. 

The next day was a 3 day state - starting out in South Australia, passing along the Murray River where we stopped off in Wakerie and Renmark for some baked goods and another pie.

Ned Kelly Pie. Heart attack territory.

Passing into the state of Victoria along a very long straight road, we eventually wiggled up back into New South Wales stopping off in Wentworth for the night. Wentworth sits at the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers and was a nice little town with a scenic view of the meeting of the two rivers complete with laughing kookaburras.

2 fat kookaburras sitting in a tree...

I inevitably struggled to find some vegetarian food and we had a cracking night watching the locals line dancing in the local RSL (working mens type place). And Ben discovered another new size of beer to go with the schooners, midis and pots - the thimble of beer.

An unimpressed smile

The next morning we stopped off at the impressive Perry Sand Dunes just outside the town before starting the final 300km to Broken Hill. Not sure why the sand dunes are there. Weird.

We continued to Broken Hill down some even more empty roads. Just the occasional massive truck full of mining related stuff trundling past us and the odd flattened kangaroo by the side of the road. Broken Hill was the centre of the Australian mining boom and is still an active mining town today - silver and minerals - but a thriving art scene has also sprung up. It's a fascinating place so I might spread it across a few more blogs. I'll finish this one with a picture of us out at a sculpture park in the desert at sunset. It was stunning. Nothing but desert as far as you could see and the setting sun bouncing off all the red rock. Which is why we look like we've had a bad accident with some fake tan. 

oompaloompa

Visitors visitors!! (part one)

First of all, an apology to our loyal readership for the gap in posting. 2012 has been busy so far!! We have been blessed with lots of lovely visitors over the last few months with yet more to come with Mr and Mrs Weatherley Senior arriving soon!
The fun started in December with lovely Gary arriving for Christmas and New Year. Aside from forcing Gary into a 16 hour train journey through the outback when he was still very, very jet lagged (sorry Gary), there were lots of fun activities to be had in and around Sydney.

We decked the halls with boughs of faux pine. All very surreal in the warmth....

And spent Xmas day on the beach. You may wish to shield your eyes....

Lawrence of Arabia and the whitest man in Australia..... 

Shrimps were cooked on the BBQ

And after a serious oven malfunction....so was our Christmas dinner...

Ben and Gary had an interesting, if not entirely compliant with public safety laws, go at deep sea fishing.  All our stuff arrived from the UK and had been very well catalogued indeed by my Dad. And I mean very well. Right down to a description of the illustration on each mug.

We went to the very lovely wedding of our friends Luke and Mia on Cockatoo Island - a former shipbuilding island in the middle of the harbour - with lots of interesting old buildings and lovely views. Ben wore a red tie.

Ben and Gary enjoyed jumping outside the Opera House. Nobody is sure why.

And we had an amazing view for the New Year's Eve fireworks from the lovely Shark Island - another little island in the harbour. A picnic, friends and the best view in Sydney.

Gary then left us for a few days to dive in Queensland (apart from embarrassing himself with an inside out back to front wetsuit it sounded amazing). And the lovely Hamza arrived fresh from a very exciting journey around Malaysia....cue another Opera House shot....