Home and Away

Finally a decent night's sleep and over the jet lag at last. We are now up in Bilgola in the Northern Beaches area about an hours drive north of Sydney, staying with Richard's sister and husband, Ros and James, who have been living over here for just over a year.

Today they took us for a short drive up the road to Palm Beach. The sun was shining and unseasonaly warm, and we sat on the beach while Callum had lots of sword fights with Uncle James.

Palm Beach is where lots of the outside shots are filmed for the Aussies Soap "Home and Away" - which I confess I was addicited to for many years as a teenager. So it was great to see the beach, iconic lighthouse, cafe and the Surf Lifesaving Club, which actually has a sign on the beach side saying "Summer Bay Surf Lifesaving Club". I was going to post a picture of that, but thought it far too sad.

Well we wandered down the beach and had some lunch over looking the water, where we were lucky enough to watch a sea plane taking off (which Callum really enjoyed, rather unsurprisingly). But after lunch we did a hearty walk up the to the lighthouse at the top of the headland. You can see it in the photo below. It was a steep climb with some paved parts but mainly a rock strewn path. Callum was in his element and was racing to the top, confidently negotiating the rocks. All those gym lessons are finally paying off, as he did seem to have far better balance than most of us! At the top he ran up to the lighthouse and asked where the door was, and was very disappointed that you could not go inside. The maintenance access was a flat sheet metal door firmly padlocked shut, which Callum did not recognise as a door, so he said "but mummy how will the man get inside to turn it on". There followed a lengthy conversation about how lighthouses were important, how they get turned on and how if everyone could go inside it might break and the ships might crash. Finally he accepted the fact that not all lighthouses have men living inside to turn on the light if they see a ship! The climb back down was a bit slower but still displaying amazing mountain goat abilities and resolutely refusing any help, Callum made it back down a bit tired but feeling very elated with his achievements.

I don't think he has ever walked that far, and suffice to say he went to sleep very quickly. We, on the other hand, were treated to a delicious marinated beef and roasted vegetable supper followed by tart tartin, courtesy of Ros. We are certainly being spoilled. Tomorrow we are off to another beach to meet some Australians, which should be interesting with the Ashes, at time of posting, still to play for.

Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club

Oh yes we have truly embraced the expat lifestyle by visiting the RHKYC. As a member of Royal Southampton Yacht Club we had recipricol rights, but we actually went with an old family friend Katie and her 3 yr old Samual. A really relaxing time was had by all lounging at the poolside while the boys splashed in the shady children's pool and we even got Richard in the water to cool off. The food was delicious. I had a beautiful salad which seemed to have everything on it you could think of!

Afterwards we headed up the peak on the tram which Callum totally enjoyed, although he was a bit fractious being tired, but did very well and we ended the day by going to the airport and flying to Sydney.

Thanks Katie it was great seeing you and for organising a night out on our own! All in all we totally loved Hong Kong. It is a great place for a short trip.

Ocean Park

A fun but very very hot day was had at Ocean Park. We rode the cable car, saw a dolphin show and panda bears. It is a great place, but rides are very spaced out due to it being built on a cliff and that meant a lots of walking in the very hot sun. Even I was hot! Callum was very good at drinking lots of water, especially the lime snow cones, which cooled us all down.
Had to post a picture of the pandas, especially for my friend Emma, as when they came here last month the naughty pandas were fast asleep!

Eating Out in Hong Kong

We ventured out last night to the busy streets near our hotel where lots of restaurants are. We chose to eat at Fairwood. It is kind of a fast food chinese style. You order at the till and then collect your food at a window and sit and eat it. I chose their beef stew. You get a burner and metal dish full of soup and then you get dumplings and meat and veg to put into it and cook yourself. Callum loved the dumplings and the plum juice we drank. It was great fun, even though we felt completely out of our comfort zone as we had no odea how the system worked! You read more about Fairwood on wikipedia



Well firstly having had such a brilliant flight, there had to be pay back and it came last night at 1.30am when Callum woke up and decided he could not go back to sleep. He tried but not very hard and everytime I was just about to fall asleep myself he seemed to know that that was the "perfect" time to say "mum I can't sleep I am not tired"!! He finally went back to sleep at 6.30am. Suffice to say we are all a bit tired this morning and missed breakfast.



We did however go to a tea rooms for lunch. The room was full of round tables and nearly every one was full. We were waved over to a small space on one round table that we were sharing with 5 other people. A pot of tea, bowls and rice spoons were thrust onto the table and a slip of paper with numbers on it. We looked around and saw ladies pushing trollies piled high with bamboo baskets and you basically picked the dishes you wanted to eat and she marked a number on your paper. We ate loads of dumplings and pork things and other things we have no idea what they were! Callum has decided that dumplings are the best food ever. It was all very delicious and right off the tourist track which is always fun and cost less than £10 to feed us all.



After that we went on the Star Ferry to Kowloon and back. Callum was saying "Star Ferry" in the picture below!

Terminal 5 - what a surprise

Greetings all from a very humid Hong Kong.

So the story so far... we arrived at Heathrow Terminal 5 with plenty of time to spare. Check in was calm and easy, as was security. Callum studiously took his shoes off to go through the scanner and put them on again, while I gathered together all our various hand luggage, laptops, bag of liquids, shoes and jumpers - Richard was being frisked at the time! The security scanners are very high tech, but a little too much really. If they don't like something in your tray, it is automatically moved into a different "lane" while other boxes are dutifully whisked to an automatic stop. The trouble is that you have to unload the tray before it is automatically whisked down the shute and back to the beginning, awaiting its next load of travellers goodies. I am sure there is a weight sensor or something, but I couldn't help feeling that if I was not quick enough, my ipod and probably 1 shoe would get sucked away before I was ready! Hence the slight panic as I tried to grab everything off the conveyor and thrust it in the direction of Callum, who was obliviously looking up at me saying "does it go on this foot, mama?" and wondering why I was ignoring him and running back to the conveyor!! I was just thankful that he was sitting in 1 spot and not running off.

Still I have to say Terminal 5 is light and airy, like the great big metal hanger it is. It's huge glass wall allowing a superb view of the runway and departure gates, making it utter heaven for plane crazy little boys. We had a lovely dinner at Wagamama's - who do great kids stuff (not suitable for a child that does not like to try new food I hasten to add) including easy kids chopsticks, that Callum loved and we took them with us. To make life even more interesting we had to go on a little underground shuttle to get to our departure gate all very exciting.

Well we sat watching the planes take off as the sun went down and lights came on. We also got to watch our pilots doing their pre-flight checks. Finally the time came for boarding and we found our seats and got settled for the night. Callum was looking sleepy and quite ready to go to sleep just after take off, but then - even thought nearly everyone was trying to sleep, they turn on the cabin lights to give you food!!! Well then he wanted to watch a film and have some dinner - while I was getting a bit of rest Richard entertained him as I was shattered. So eventually they turned the cabin lights off at midnight and we all settled down for some sleep. Callum chose to sleep on the floor and he slept like a preverbial log, while I woke everytime some child near us called out or cried thinking it might be my little boy - but no, he has traveller genes and in fact proved incredibly difficult to wake up. Eventually I hauled a sleepy mass off the floor with a promise that he could watch "Monsters v Aliens".

So we arrived at our hotel suitably rested and Callum got straight into playing with his toys!!!

All Ready to go

Yes it is less than 24hrs to go.
Online check-in has been done and now we just have to squish everything left into the hand luggage.
I am very proud of our packing efforts and thought a photo was worthy, but we had already packed the camera!!. Our main luggage is just the 2 bags at the bottom and our hand luggage is a couple of rucksacks.

Under advisement I have actually weighed the luggage and it is all OK.

So off we go to the airport!!