Two Drifters

                                                                    ^Dinner in Darlinghurst, Sydney Wow! What a month February has been! What a whirlwind! What a lot of opportunities I had and, after a Conference in Sydney, I now have. But I’ll get to that… Three trips, eight flights (nine if you count sitting on the plane at Learmonth [Exmouth] as we refuelled), five different accommodations, some time at home and some time at Rye. I think I am getting to the stage of having a travel bag permanently packed!! First up was the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Words do not do justice to the beauty of this place. But it was a trek to get there from Melbourne – fly to Perth and overnight there then fly to West Island (part of the Cocos group) via Learmonth. Also, wind back 4.5 hours (3.5 hours if ...

Isn't she a beauty?! A shorter than usual entry for me this month as I am in “holiday mode.” I have spent most of the month at my happy place in Rye (where I am writing this). My first trip outside of Rye is 30 January when I fly to Perth ahead of flying the following day to the Cocos Keeling Islands for a week! Look for photo spam on @2_drifterss (Instagram) and for a rundown in February. Very excited for this incredible opportunity. Rewind to this month..the weather has been incredible in Melbourne (very stable and sunny). We have happily pottered about at our house, in the garden, read, watched the Australian Open, watched cricket, had a couple of lazy winery lunches, had family time, swam and generally lolled about. Perfect! On my first morning here, I went to Polperro Winery in Red Hill for a morning outdoor yoga class – blissful. Sadly (!!), that was the beginning and end of my yoga for the month. Oh well, one class is better than none!! Our lovely winery lunches were at Port...

^Dressed up for our son's wedding - a perfect day! We finished our coastal voyage, spent a night in Bergen and flew out early to Tromsø. We’d booked five nights (four full days) to maximise our opportunities to see the Northern Lights. We found walking around that first afternoon hard in the icy, slippery conditions. Our hotel, the Scanic Ishavshotel was pricey and the room was small but it was right on the water and super close (max five minutes’ walk) to where all our excursions left from. Best of all, we had an enormous window that looked at the water and across to the mainland (Tromsø is an island). The view was to die for even though most of the view was during pitch-dark hours. Tromsø is in the Arctic Circle. When we visited at the beginning of December it was bright (sort of!) at about 10am and dark again between 1 and 2pm. It was so strange yet also amazing to see. The first morning where we woke up in Tromsø, we woke to falling snow which continued to fall for the next fou...

^Polar me!! I write this from the Havila MS Pollux on the Southbound voyage en route to Tromsø, Norway. A little queasy but more on that later. Andrew and I drove to the Hunter Valley. We could easily have flown (Newcastle airport is the closest airport) but Andrew wanted to go fishing and play golf so it worked better to drive. He bought himself a fishing kayak and we towed that too! I attended a Pre-famil (meaning a Press Trip) before the Convention. This was organised by the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association and was a genius move by me, even though I hadn’t realised it at the time! Rather than attending the Convention where I would know one other person (the PR who convened the Azamara Croatia Press Trip), I was able to meet seven other people. It made attending the Convention much less intimidating. The Pre-famil was a whirlwind (mainly of wine tasting!) and we had the red carpet laid out. It was a great learning experience and I already have one accepted travel story in t...