europe calling!

our dear friends, mish & gav's wedding in the uk in august 2010 gave us the perfect opportunity to spend two fabulous weeks in europe! 

greco loving
i can’t believe that i never went to greece when i lived in europe. it’s an amazing place: history, food, wine, the islands and sexy locals. 

first stop was the party island of mykonos! we knew it would be fun, but weren’t prepared for just how beautiful it was. when the ferry pulled up, one of my besties, jaimee, was there to greet us after flying in from london a couple of hours earlier. over the next few days we lazed it up on the beaches, danced till our feet hurt in mykonos town and created the most amazing tv concept known to humanity – stay tuned! 

a little bit of mykonos magic

jaimee & piero and the view from our apartment

jaimee headed back to london and piero and i ferried it to santorini. the island was stunning! people tell you it’s beautiful, but it’s one of those rare places that exceeds your built-up expectations. we had a fabulous two nights watching the sunset, exploring the white washed villages, swimming in the med, walking on the volcano and... getting engaged!!! for more deets, see: the proposal. 

minutes later, we were engaged!

the view of the caldera (and a lazzzzzzzyyyyy dog!)

following an unforgettable two days in santorini we headed to athens and my god, it was fantastic! we had an amazing hotel with a restaurant and a funky roof top pool with stunning views of the acropolis! this was europe as it should be (bar the pending economic doom). 

while in town we explored the acropolis – simply breathtaking seeing it up close and finding out more about athen’s history – and enjoyed the food and wine on offer. while at the acropolis museum, I read a great line that has stayed with about why post-golden-age-athen's invaders didn't destroy the city: the brilliance of its past guarenteed its future. am sure that probably doesn't mean much to may of you, but for some reason, it has stayed with me. 

aaaaahhhh, i adore this view! this was the bar next to the rooftop pool of our athen's hotel.

ancient athens on a beautiful day

greece was, simply, an amazing week.

rule britannia 
next stop was that little island where we met: the uk! i have two great loves in my life: piero & london. heading back to the motherland is always an exciting experience. 

city hall, where i used to work, and the shard, which was being built while i was in london

the olympic rings on tower bridge

as it was the olympics, the airport was teeming with people but the airport was incredibly efficient (god i love britain, it turns it on when it really – and only when it really - has to). we touched down in newcastle and headed to the pre-party for mish & gav’s wedding. it was a fabulous night catching up with mates and watching the funniest surprise mock-bollywood dance sequence by some of mish & gav’s family and friends. 
the next day we explored newcastle before heading to morpeth to catch up with my family who live there. it’s always fantastic seeing the hunters, they’re such a close family who always make laugh.

and then it was time for the wedding! and what a wedding it was! for more info, see: to gav & mish.

mish & gav dancing the dance of life

sardinian sunshine 
following newcastle, we headed to sardinia (via one night in london where we checked out jaimee & damo’s new pad and caught up with the aussie girls!) to catch up with piero’s family. as always, my time in italy can be best summarised by one word: food! 

my favourite experience in sardinia was when piero, his brother andrea, brother-in-law davide and myself went out on a boat on the med for the afternoon. swimming in the mediterranean is fabulous – it’s warm, the water is so clear you can see the bottom and, unlike, oz, it’s hard to get burnt. 

a beautiful day, on the beautiful isle of sardinia

journey back to where it began
our final stop was a weekend in london. for friday night, we explored the surprisingly-fantastic cafe-hub in hackney and caught up with my old work chums at victoria park, watching the olympics on the big screen. we crashed at our friend’s, marta & dave, isle of dog's apartment and enjoyed a good ol' chin wag. 

dave, marta, piero & me hanging out in their flat

the next day, we d-r-l-ed it to tower hill and took in the sites of an unbelievably sunny london – walked across tower bridge, through potters fields and down my favourite street in the world, bermondsey high st. we caught up with nat at one of my fav pubs in the world, the woolpack, before heading to jaimee and damo’s in balham for an afternoon of lazy drinking in their back garden. 

piero outside the woolpack

in the evening, we headed to a pop-up bar on the southbank (during the olympics in london, it was all about the pop-up bar) and met the aussie girls, luc, keith & kris. for dinner, we headed to soho – loved the new w hotel near piccadilly – before jumping into a cab and heading to our old favourite, the two brewers club in clapham (it wouldn’t be a weekend in london if we didn’t head there). 

the gang at jaimee & damo's

and finally, on sunday, we continued our (never-ending) farewell-from-london tradition and met our mates for drinks at the volunteer, our old local when we lived at marylebone. 

while swung by the flat of dreams (sans mish & gav who were on their honeymoon) to drop off and pick up a couple of things. it was weird being back there – all so familiar but unfamiliar. i found myself taking a snap from the living room window of the fish n chips shop opposite, it’s not a beautiful view or anything, it’s just a very ‘my london’ view.

and with that, we were on the heathrow express, ready to return down under.  

let’s play catch up

i may not have blogged but the last 6 months have been busy! here’s a little snapshot...

travel

for christmas, piero, emily and i drove up to brisbane to spend it with our families. my brother and his family also headed to brisbane so the highlight was, as it seems to always be at family events these days, seeing my adorable ever-growing, nephew jack.

on the way back to sydney, we stayed at the gold coast and caught up with old friends jayde and peter and his wife thimitra – it felt like schoolies all over again (just no wheez this time!). 

paul visited from the uk and we headed to melbourne  to visit jayde, simon, pauline and kelly and check out the australian open. we returned to our fav madame sousou, lushed it up at the hellenic repulbic and gave birth to the famous-five-like-but-even-more-daring bfff-club.

a little bit of kareoke with paul, piero, kelly and jayde

rod laver arena

piero had always wanted to go to tassie so in feb we headed to the apple isle for a fantastic holiday. tasmania is gorgeous and has some of the best food and wine in australia. we flew in hobart,  checked out the salamanca markets and mona (eat your heart out europe, this is the most amazing gallery ever); drove to port arthur (the sheer beauty of this place slaps up against his horrific past); stayed overnight at freycinet national park (wineglass bay was well worth the hike!); guzzled it up in the wine region tamar valley (i think it was here i finally convinced piero that chardonnay was the new sauvignon blanc); and then ended it in launceston where we stayed in a converted hospital, visited cataract gorge and dreamed of mishail at black cowbistro. 

on route to mona

a bit of wineglass bay action

hanging with a naughty nun at the launceston wine festival

for easter, we joined good friends cynth & gez in the mclaren vale – a wine region outside of adelaide. my god, it was fabulous fun. we basically ate like pigs and drunk like drunks. highlights were the lloyds (the food was amazing) samuel’s gorge where we stumbled across a wine-season-launch and lunch at tapestry winery overlooking their vineyards.

we stayed at port nourlunga and this is what we woke up to every morning

is it ever 10am yet?

they were shooting some models outside samuel's gorge 

a fitting wine tour company

and most recently, we spent a night at the stunning blue mountains and checked out the three sisters, took the slightly-scary-totally-amazing-world’s-steepest funicular railway up the cliff and swung past the janolin caves. i hadn’t been to the blue mountains since i was a kid so it was a bit of a walk down memory lane.

visitors

we have a new place and have been dead keen to show it off to our friends. fortunately, we haven’t been short on people taking up the offer!

paul from the uk arrived first, he stayed with us twice on his oz trip – firstly at the roundabout and then at the new abode. paul was a fantastic guest who allowed me to show off our new city: bondi beach, darlinghurst and messina gelato.

jason, piero and paul at messina gelato

my brissie friend michael - our most frequent quest - swung by sydney for australia day. what should have been a few quiet drinks at the green park before coming home turned into one our most memorable nights. 

michael hiding behind from piero from this dude who kept following him at the bar

luciano arrived shortly after for a fantastic couple of weeks timed with the mardi gras. we threw a mardi gras party on our balcony, watched the parade, partied at the sweat-pit-of-an-after-party which featured kylie, and then recovered on bondi beach... bliss! luc stay ended with a booze-up-cum-dance-sesh in the rain at the beresford hotel – it truly was like old times in london.

the hen on a journey. first night at the st.george open air cinema 

balcony party with luc working in hard in the background over the bbq

a classy end to the post-parade party: one luc, two drag queens and three wheelie bins

taken outside our flat just after we'd scoffed our gelati

while luc was in town, steve came down from brissie with his fiancé vicky! it was great spending time with steve again – we met in grade 1- and getting to know his g/f. i’m already looking forward to their wedding up north!

luc, piero, cynth, vicky and steve at bondi italian

my brother, loan and jack then turned up next and stayed with us for a few days. it’s so good having my brother and his family stay with us as they l-o-v-e sydney and their passion is infectious. we headed to rushcutters bay yacht club for lunch, wandered around the streets and enjoyed a messina gelato (or two).

andy, jack and me on the balcony while piero cooks

preparing dinner in our kitchen 

jack playing with his present in his favourite corner

after my bro’s family, i then flew mum down for mother’s day. mum was born in sydney, lived here for a bit as a child and then again after marrying dad so we tracked down the hospital where she was born (now a hotel), drove to the house she rented with dad and then tracked down her childhood home using the few memories she had as a clue. it was a fantastic journey that delved into her past. we also headed to manly for mother’s day lunch, completed a barista training course, discovered a chinese tea house, lunched it up at seafood markets and, of course, i introduced mum to the delights of messina.

after our barista training 

at the victoria dining rooms

at the chinese tea house

although they didn’t stay with us, michelle, ben and ted joined me for afternoon tea on our balcony when they were in sydney. mish and i studied together and uni so it was great catching up with all the brissie goss!

no more drama... just some fun memories

a group of us took the eurostar to paris one saturday night. we thought it was one of those fabulous-because-we-were-young-and-in-london moments. we wandered the streets of pigalle looking for a club and stumbled across les folies pigalle: a former theatre now decorated like a 30s bordello. it wasn’t the paris that i was expecting, but the best travel is rarely expected.

the place was heaving with 20-to-30-something frenchies, tourists, repressed people who go outrageous on the weekend and a huge number of drag queens and transvestites. there was an upstairs area that overlooked the dance floor which was pumping out your typical dancey-rnb-pop-funky-house mix.

and there were the most bizarre stage shows. a young woman came out and stripped to her underwear and a man did the same. an older woman – probably the age i am now as i write this – came out and stripped all the way and i remember thinking that she must have gone all the way to make up for the fact that she was the older, less pretty one.

and then the main show started. half-way through, cynthia leaned over to me and said ‘it reminds me of aerobics oz style’. a large drag queen dressed in lycra whirled around the stage as mary j bilge belted out no more drama from the speakers. the drag queen and her boyfriend then had an o-t-t argument complete with american-reality-tv-style hand movements before a policeman came and arrested him. for some reason, a nun was then on the stage holding a crucifix which the drag queen grabbed and held above her head as she closed her eyes and mouthed no more drama.

the night ended with us in a random cafe trying to stay awake as we waited for the morning return train to london.

sorry for the ramble. i felt the need to share this as the lycra-crucifix-drag-queen imagery is once again dancing around my head as mary j blige’s no more drama is playing in the background.

it’s hammer(ilton island) time

a weekend on a tropical island.

it’s an emotive phrase. andrea from italy said it was a must on his to-do-in-australia list. dave from the uk said much the same thing.

for me... mmeeehhhh... not so much. you see, growing up in hot-and-sticky-brisbane, i dreamt of europe. i had a map of the world on my wall and i used to lie on my bed and stare at the old continent. i wondered what it looked like, what all those languages sounded like and i imagined all the battles that those countries had fought against each other over the centuries. it was completely foreign to me. it seemed so magically wonderful.

for my friends from italy and uk - and i guess most of the world’s population - however, it is the tropics that are foreign.

while andrea and his mother, maria pia, were in town, we spent four days on hamilton island – a resort island in the whitsundays off the coast of queensland.

without the urging of foreigners, i think i would have quite happily lived me life without going... but that would have been a mistake.

hamilton island is beautiful. absolutely stunningly beautiful. i won’t lie and say the resort was perfect (seriously – fix your food offering people), but it was a magical four days. 

where are the kangaroos?

our sydney friend jason promised us and our italian guests (maria pia and andrea) a tour of kangaroo valley, south of sydney. mentally i ticked the ‘show our foreign guests some wild kangaroos’ box.

it was then with some surprise i heard jason say: ‘oh, you wont see any kangaroos. cows. lots of cows. but not any kangaroos’. i felt like i had been missold.

i was wrong. kangaroo valley was magnificent! i was gobsmacked by just how beautiful this part of the country was. it was lush. it was green. it was beautiful in a way that reminded me of england.

having travelled to new places in australia since i’ve been back, i realised how much of my country i just don’t know. i think i just always assumed that australia looked like the south-east corner of queensland where i grew up.

come to think of it, i didn’t see many kangaroos growing up either.

the waterfalls

on the way to kangaroo valley 

bundaberg dreaming

when i was in london, i moved flat/house/pad 9 times. i hate it. i hate packing up my stuff. i hate unpacking my stuff. i hate carrying large, heavy, odd-shaped objects through smaller, rectangular doors.

given this, i was surprised then when i found myself telling my brother i was heading up to bundaberg to help him move house. in fairness, i think he was surprised too.

i can’t say i enjoyed the moving, but it was a great weekend. i got to see the first house my little brother bought, i got to spend time with my gorgeous nephew jack and i caught up with my brother, sister-in-law and mum (who decided to join in the house moving fun).

now, back in sydney, i get to see what changes they’re making to their house through the medium of facebook. and best of all, when my sister-in-law texted me to tell me jack took his first step, i knew exactly where he did it.

andrew, loan, jack, mum and dave

coming together

sometimes, it all just comes together.

the players: piero’s mamma (maria pia) and fratello (andrea) are visiting from sardina. they have our spare room. crashing on our living room floor are our london friends dave and marta.

further up north, jaimee has touched down in brisbane for a mad 10-day visit of family, friends and home.

touring victoria are cynthia and gez – part of the london gang who now live in sydney.

the challenge: i want to catch up with jaimee, but i’m entertaining guests in sydney. gez and cynth want to catch up with mutual friends dave and marta but are holidaying in victoria. and piero needs to show his family some australian countryside.  

the solution: move everyone to the hunter valley wine region. and add a few more friends to boot!

i hired a 7-seater and drove piero, maria pia, andrea, marta and dave to the hunter. on the way, we picked up jaimee fresh off her flight from brisbane.

on saturday, cynth and gez arrived to take part in the day’s wine tasting. that night they headed back to sydney with jaimee who got her 9pm flight back to brisbane to continue her whirlwind adventure down under. perfect!

along the way we were joined by good friends emily, katie and melanie.  

was it worth that much coordination? i think the pics answer that!

the hunter valley highlights:

• we stayed at splinter's guest house in pokolbin
• we ate at botanica and mojo’s
• wineries i would rate are: scarborough, mistletoe and ernest hill.
• heading there, we drove the tourist route from sydney and on the way back we went via lake macquarie (the actual lake that is, not the town), the entrance and showed our european mates something they don’t always see: the pacific ocean.



heading south

‘melbourne or sydney... melbourne or sydney,’ was the focus of our where-to-live-in-oz debate.

like many visitors to australia, piero had been wowed by sydney’s gorgeous harbour, enviable weather and world-class city beaches. like many brisbanites (and countless others who grow up in a city which is not their country’s biggest), i’ve always been weary of sydney’s brashness but loved melbourne’s more subtle charms of style, reserve and understatement.

in the end, we reasoned that as brilliant as melbourne was, its  offerings were similar but on a smaller scale to what we-had-and-were-leaving-behind in london. sydney, however has one trump card that london (god bless it) and melbourne just don’t have: fantastic weather. after seven years of random weather, we wanted sunshine.

fortunately, choosing to live in one of our preferred cities hasn’t ended our love affair with the other, especially when it’s only a one hour flight away. last weekend we took advantage of the short distance and flew south to melbourne to stay with our friend jayde.

the weekend reminded me of exactly why i love melbourne. the funky cafes burst with character while serving up first-class food, the people appear to be effortlessly cool and stylish, and the city itself is picturesque while being small enough to saunter around in a half-day. i found myself wondering, should we have chosen melbourne? 

and then it rained. and then it was cold. and then it rained again. and i remembered exactly why i was so happy to be in sydney . 

some of the great places we visited that get the patata-seal-of-approval are:

• madame sousou cafe for a fabulously parisian brunch 
• shou sumiyaki sake bar and grill for a cook-it-at-your-table japanese bbq
• de clieu cafe for the most amazing bacon and eggs i've ever had
• charcoal lane - a high-quality, aboriginal-themed mission australia restaurant that is all about enabling aboriginal and disadvantaged young people to gain work experience