loungin' around

After a busy morning we all decided to lounge around for the afternoon in St. James Park, just outside Buckingham Palace.

pakenhamites unite!

Claire's arrival on Sunday brought a record number of friends either living in Pakenham or connected in some way in the past!

grandma for a day

Poor Daile must have been mentally exhausted after her day out with us. I spent most of the time drilling her with questions about how to look after Nate!

exploring regents canal

On Saturday, Don and Daile who are visiting for a week, Andrew and Vicki, Matt and Woz, Nate and I took the boat out. It was so great to all be in London at the same time.

the centre of the universe!

A gloriously sunny day seemed like a good excuse to take a ferry trip down the Thames to Greenwich. There we visited the Prime Meridian line - the centre of time and space, and Matt and Nate discussed their plans to take over the world!

nate and uncle matty

Today we had lunch at Covent Garden. Matt checked out all the outdoor camping stores in the area and I discovered the Australia shop which is a shop stocking all of the food we're not able to buy here like saladas, sai biscuits, savoys, BBQ and pizza shapes, lifesavers, allens lollies, licorice allsorts, arnotts chocolate biscuits, white knights, redskins and toffee apple lollies, jupiter caramel bars, vegemite, milo ... the list goes on. I wanted to buy everything but with some items tagged at around four times the price I had to be content with merely drooling at the prospect of such delights!

reunion

Today I had lunch with Tania who was one of the girls who studied Auslan with me. It was great to see her and great to be able to catch up on what is going on in the Auslan world.

the london tour

Today Matt and I headed out to see all of the iconic London sites. No tour of London would be complete with out a trip to Buckingham Palace to visit the Queen!

zoom zoom zoom

On Sunday morning the headed home and took the long route back, off the motorway and on the quieter country roads. Well at least they were quiet until they got there! Matt rode most of the way home.

lost!

no better way to see the sights

lapping it up in paris

under the english channel

My brother Matt arrived on Friday night after spending the last three months in Canada. He and Woz wasted no time in getting straight on the bike early the next morning and heading down to Dover to catch the train across to Calais, where they then headed for Paris.

the view from our tent

the last day

Our last day in Austria and yet another gorgeous campsite. Different again from the last it was nestled deep in the mountains by a smaller river and a short walk from a very sleepy little town. Our tent is the small red dot you can see by the river.

Overall I think you could say we enjoyed our trip and you could safely say you'll see many more European camping holidays to come! And now that we've learnt a little German, next stop Germany! Watch this space!

even the football was beautiful!

Back on the road again we continued to see breathtaking scenery.

Time after time we drove past football fields with the most incredible view. I wouldn't mind going along to watch Nate playing football if I got to sit on the sidelines and look at this view.

andy with the youngest hotel guest

kindred spirits

Breakfast was incredible and one of the highlights of the trip. When we were invited to breakfast we expected to meet in a cafe somewhere in town but Andy, the designer of the park hotel, opened up his home to us and put on a huge breakfast from whatever he had in the fridge, cheeses, fresh homegrown tomatoes, bread, homemade jams and real coffee... it was all so delicious! And just look at the view, overlooking the Danube!

By mid morning more and more of his friends had joined us and each one of them were such friendly and generous people. We now have genuine offers to stay with them in their homes if we return to Austria and we've made them promise to look us up if they're in London. They were all so interested in the fact that we live on a boat and our way of life and particuarly with Woz's design aspirations.

We were so inspired by them all. We're convinced that Andy is going to be huge as a designer in Europe. He is now at the point as an artist where people give him grants and ask him to do a project. The funny thing was though that when we left (after several hours and turning down an offer to join them and some more friends for lunch) Andy kept saying how inspired he was after meeting us and how much he was jealous of our life in London. After five minutes at his house we said we'd happily swap!

The icing on the cake though for him and the team that worked on putting the project together was finding out that the whole reason for our 5 day trip to Austria was to stay in his hotel. He was absolutely beaming and kept saying "I feel 10 cm taller now!"

I am absolutely struggling to convey how much of an incredibly inspiring experience this was for Woz and I to continue to pursue our dreams and passions. An experience we'll never forget.

the skylight

our room

a room with a view

park hotel

... and this was it. Three concrete tubes in the middle of a park which had been converted into three separate hotel rooms. Woz had stumbled across them in an architecture magazine and the "hotel" joined our list of must sees.

On arriving in Linz we weren't able to find them and so called the 24 hour helpline which we had been given. A very friendly man who turned out to be the artist himself gave us directions and invited us to join him for breakfast the next morning, at first we declined but instead decided to throw caution to the wind and take up his offer.

waiting for the train back down

Not your average railway platform!

We had such an incredible time in St. Wolfgang and there was so much to see that we decided that although we had been heading towards Salzburg for the last two days we wouldn't have time to see both and so we made the hard decision to drive in the opposite direction towards Linz to the very reason we chose to visit Austria.

360 degrees of beauty

From the train station (you can see the building in the photo) you were free to roam anywhere you dared on the mountain with no viewing platforms or fences. It was very liberating and a definite hills are alive moment! From the peak there was a 360 degree view.

arriving at the station

dad would have been in his element

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the peak of the mountains. We boarded a train which pushed two carriages up the mountain winding in and out until we reached the peak and what a view ...

a beautiful spot

The water here was crystal clear and full of life,ducks, swans and huge fish which seemed to surge towards you when you dipped your foot in the water.

another gorgeous spot on the lake

now that's a boat!

a view to die for

The view from the courtyard behind the church. Check out the hotel swimming pool in the background.

timber!

With so much timber available the town was decorated with carved statues. There were so many to choose from but this one, which stood outside the church, was one of my favourites.

the main square

the streets were lined with ornate buildings

woz and nate cruise st. wolfgang