the hills are alive

Hi all. We have just arrived back from our first ever ski trip to Les Arcs in the French Alps (Jane took the photo above). Not a bad place to learn to ski I say. We went to Les Arcs specifically to visit my (Jane's) brother Mark who is working there as a chalet host. He fixed us up with some free chalet accommodation and lent us lots of his skiing/boarding gear so that we didn't have to hire it all. It turned out really well. Neither of us have ever had a great desire to learn to ski but the opportunity was hard to turn down considering how beautiful the mountains and the snow were.

Chris snowboarded and I skiied. We spent most of the first day on our butts, or front, or sides depending on how we fell. I decided on getting a lesson while Chris had Mark to help him along the way. By the second day we were gunning it through the snow although it was snowing for most of the day so we ended up quite wet. The lesson really helped and by day 3 I was wizzing past Chris and bringing it home! Most nights were spent sitting in silence (from exhaustion) except for the ocassional, or sometimes frequent "ow" as we moved across the room or reached to grab some food. The pain is still severe. We were proud of our progress though and thoroughly enjoyed overcoming our fears of speeding. The toughest part was watching the French 4-year olds skiing past you at great speeds without poles or anything. They were so cute in all their snow gear but so annoying! I confess we did have a laugh when we saw one go over when we were on the lift...

The highlight was of course spending some quality time with Mark. It was great to see him snowboard, although we didn't see enough of this, and it was even better to see him having a ball in the kitchen again. He is an amazingly confident cook who can whip up some good food in a short space of time. He certainly taught me a few tricks.

That's all for now. Chris is still on the path to running that marathon and I am meanwhile looking forward to seeing one of my best friends, Erin who will be over in a couple of weeksfor a girlie trip to Paris. Love ya's all!

We've updated our photo site so either click the link on the right, or click here to see the photos.

the longest way 'round is the sweetest way home

Well we have made some decisions about our trip home. As most of you would know, we've been planning to leave around July and be back in mid-October in time for our friends' wedding (Bec and Darren). After a few chats with STA we have found flights ourselves that were cheaper and have firmed up dates and where we'll be headed. So here's a rough itinerary:

June 28 - Fly to Croatia, head up to Bosnia (Sarajevo) then back to Croatia (Dubrovnik). We'll then catch a ferry across to Italy (Bari, on the east coast) after a week or so.
From Bari we'll head across to Naples, up to Rome, Pisa, maybe Verona and then Milan. From Milan we'll head to the south east of France and do Nice and Monte Carlo (maybe Marseille and Avignon also).
July 22 - Fly Nice to Paris in time for the final stage of the tour de France on the 23rd. I just couldn't talk Jane out of it...
We'll then spend a couple of weeks in France, including hopefully seeing the DDay beaches and battlefields before heading down to Bordeaux and across to Lyon, then making our way through Switzerland and Austria, ending up in Vienna around the 9th of August.
August 11 - Fly Vienna to Cairo. We're doing a 17 day tour of Egypt and Jordan and will be back in Cairo on the 27th.
August 28 - Fly Cairo to Mumbai (Bombay). We're still working out exactly where we'll volunteer for the following 6 weeks but we're hoping through Oasis India, another arm of Jane's employer. Most likely it will be more towards Bangalore.
Round October 7 or 8 - we hope to maybe head to the Maldives for a few days just to have a bit of a relax.
October 12 - fly Bangalore to Singapore and stay in Singapore for a day or two.
October 14 - Fly home (Melbourne) from Singapore.

So that's it in a nutshell. We'll cover most of Europe we've not yet covered, Egypt and Jordan and India. In total, we'll be travelling for around 3.5 months which will be great, but expensive. So we'll be working hard to save the dosh for the 15 or so weeks of travelling.

Let us know what you think and if you have been any of those places and have suggestions of what to see/what not to see, please let us know. I know a few of you will be in Europe at the time so we hope to catch you at some point somewhere.

We will be away a few times between now and leaving London for good. We're off to ski in France and visit Mark in a couple of weeks, we're heading to Berlin in May, and the week after the marathon we're off to Venice for a belated wedding anniversary (our anniversary is the day after the marathon).

Let us know how you're all going. We love to hear from you and look forward to seeing you in October.

A what-enheim?

In an effort to make this vaguely interesting, I'll try and keep this to 5 mins of reading tops. Blogs are meant to be updated a little more often than we do, so when we do blog we tend to have a bit to catch up on.

Last weekend we spent in Bilbao which is here, in the North of Spain. We went on the recommendation of Jason and Tracey who had a good time there as well as the fact that we loved Spain when we were there almost a year ago and this would be our last chance to go.

It was quite a cool city and a great blend of old and new. It has the newest Guggenheim Museum, of which there are only four in the world. The building is incredible as you can see from the photos which I've now put on our photo site and from the picture on the right. Some of the displays were cool but the building was the highlight.

We also timed our trip well as we were there for Carnival, where everyone dresses up in crazy outfits (like on the left here) for no particular reason and just parties on the streets of the old town.

The highlight for me (and Jane I'm sure too!) was going to a Primera Liga game. We saw Athletico Bilbao and Villa Real play a 1-1 draw. Very cool indeed. The crowd provide plenty of entertainment as they all chew nervously on sunflower seeds and then at half time, pull out their bocadillos (baguettes) from the tin foil and munch away.

I could write more, obviously, but won't bore you with details. The photos tend to tell the story just as well anyway. It is a bit sad to know we're not going back to Spain again as it is a cool place with a great culture that seems to be strongly family, friends and food-orientated (our 3 great loves!). We love their routine with eating and how laid back they generally are about time. We will certainly miss authentic tapas and pintxos, not to mention the sangria. But that is Spain now done. Time to think about the trips that are ahead when will take in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria etc etc etc. At the moment we're tossing up between a couple of weeks in Eastern Europe or Egypt. Tough choice to face hey?

Other news:
* we celebrated our one-year anniversary of being away when we were in Spain. Don't worry family, it was half-celebration and half-wake.
* training is going ok in the marathon and I'm nearly half way there for sponsorship. Please jump on and donate if you haven't donated already. Thanks to those who have, you've been very generous.
* booked tickets to see Foo Fighters in Hyde Park with Dave M, who lands that day!
* other trips planned: 22-26 March in Les Arcs (French Alps) to visit Mark and hopefully learn to ski. May sometime we're off to Berlin for a weekend.
* only other trip to plan is the one home. We will be travelling for around 3.5 months so quite a bit of planning to do, particularly the tail-end when we'll be working in Asia.