Category: Travel

Saturday morning, we decided to head off to the Castillo de Montjuic. Montjuïc Castle is an old military fortress, with roots dating back to the mid 1600’s, built on top of Montjuïc Hill. From here, we could see our next stop, La Sagrada Familia, 4km away. A couple of trains later, we arrived at La…

Friday morning, we went into town, wandered through the St Josep Mercat (food market), and visited the Erotic Museum, amongst other things. With the heatwave currently hitting the Iberian Peninsula, we headed back to our Air B’n’B for a mid-afternoon nanna nap and a shower to freshen up. That evening, we headed back into town…

Our two nights in Carcassonne done, and it was time to leave France. Rather than take the expensive and boring motorway down the coast, we decided to head to Barcelona via the high country and ski fields that straddle the French-Spanish border in the Pyrenees mountains. But a first stop had to be the little…

Today, as we were getting ready to start our day, I shot a few images from the bedroom window. Maybe 15 minutes later, Cath was sitting on the window sill, looking out at the same vista I had just shot. The morning sun was hitting her softly, and from inside the bedroom, it was a…

4 hours later and we were awake at 03:00, with our body clocks not yet synced to the other side of the planet. It was obvious that neither of us was going to get back to sleep, so we decided to get up and hit the road. Given that we had a big drive ahead…

And so we’re off! This trip has been over 15 months in the planning…. which is kind of a loose description, as a lot of this holiday is going to be booked on the fly. With the exception of our first night in Geneva, our couple of nights in Paris, and our couple of nights…

Friday 17th July Really? Already? Meh. In all honesty, I will be glad to be home, and crazy as it might sound, I think I’ll be glad to go back to work. What I’m NOT looking forward to is the crazy cold winter that Sydney has put on in the 3 weeks we’ve been gone.…

Thursday 16th July Today is my paternal grandmother’s 91st birthday, so I gave her a call to wish her a happy birthday and apologise for the fact that I have not, in two and a half weeks of searching, been able to find her a birthday card. I reminded her that we are currently in…

Wednesday 15th July We’ve got a big day planned for tomorrow, so today was a day to just hang around in Kinabalu. We wandered the streets, visiting some places we’d seen two years ago as well as popping into a couple of shopping centres that were still under construction when we were here last. The…

Tuesday 14th July This morning, we decided that even though it didn’t make for particularly spectacular viewing, we nonetheless would do some more snorkelling off the beach to kill some time. Noon came, we checked out, and waited for a taxi to arrive. He picked us up around 12:30 and we began the 250km journey…

Monday 13th July Monday dawned, and the SMS messages to and fro with the rental car company began. We explained that we were booked into a hotel in Kinabalu tomorrow (Tuesday) night, so come hell or high water, we had to have transport of one description or another. They advised that they would be sending…

Sunday 12th July The lodge is absolutely beautiful. The chalets all face east, and we have an ocean-side view. There is a row of trees between our chalet and the beach, so that softens the sunrise a little bit as it hits your front door, but you can still see the ocean. The bathroom is…

Saturday 11th July After arriving back at the marina in Sandakan, we jumped back in the car and headed off to the Sandakan-Renau Death March Memorial. If you were following this blog two years ago, you may recall that we visited the memorial at Kundasang, a small village not far from Renau. Renau was where…

Friday 10th July This morning, we were up bright and early, breakfasted, bags packed, and out of the hotel by 08:30 ready to catch our island transfer at 09:00. Just off the east coast from Sandakan lays a group of three small islands (Pulau Selingaan, Pulau Gulisaan and Pulau Bakkungan Kechil), now referred to as…

Thursday 9th July This morning, it was up, have breakfast, pack our bags, and we were ferried back across the river to where we’d left our car. We got on the road, and were ecstatic at what we had experienced over the previous 36 hours, but there was more awesomeness to come. Our next planned…

Wednesday 8th July The next morning, we headed out in the boat again, nice and early at 06:30. I asked yesterday afternoon if it was safe to swim in the river. I was given a very definite no, there are crocodiles in the river. Right then! No swimming, it is. So, I was pretty keen…

Tuesday 7th July It’s now Thursday afternoon, and we have just arrived back in Sandakan after our 48 hour adventure to the little river village of Bilit. More on that in a sec. We left Sandakan around 08:00 Tuesday morning, heading for Sepilok, an outer suburb which is home to one of the largest orang-utan…

Monday 6th July We awoke at 07:00, headed up to the restaurant for breakfast and a re-shoot of the family portrait we shot last time we were here, then it was back on the road east. Unfortunately, the area we had to pass through from the middle of the island to the east coast is…

Sunday 5th July Today, we left Gunung Mulu National Park, flying to Kota Kinabalu (Kota is the Malay word for ‘town’) where we picked up a hire car. After a brief stop at a shopping centre for some lunch, we hit the road for Sandakan. The trip is about 400km, which in Australia would be…

Saturday 4th July Today, we took a longboat up the river to see the Cave of the Winds and Clearwater Cave. Because this is the ‘dry’ season, the river has dropped in level somewhat, and there were sections where we were scraping the bottom of the boat against the smooth river stones on the bottom.…