Winners are grinners

Jemma grins with the delight of her Stirling Team winning the soccer grand final against Seaford, played at Hindmarsh.
Well done!

Tea anyone?

Teapots in the Tea Museum

Gratitude

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
~Jean Baptiste

Clouds

Dawn is imminent as we fly over the Gulf to land in Adelaide once again after a 36 hour journey from Bremen.
Home sweet home.
We are SO grateful for this (much anticipated) opportunity to travel again.
Thank you to all our support crew on the ground.

Ciao for now

Sunset on our last night sailing, Hvar, Croatia. Farewell to the Adriatic, to Europe and to all of our friends that we've had the chance to visit over the last few weeks.

FABULOUS ! ! !

Giant Crrots

With a diameter of 10 cms these must have been amongst the world's largest carrots, found growing in northern Germany.
You should see the rabbits!!!!!

Wild ride

Katharina decided to test her skill on the mechanical bull and lasted a good.....10 seconds before being thrown off.
Still, she had a much softer landing than if she'd been in the wild west.

Weird food continues

And here we have a pickled herring sandwich...yum!

Blacksmith town

Friesoythe is an old blacksmithing town and we were here in perfect time for the blacksmithing and beer drinking festival...a warm up for Oktoberfest.

Synchronised swimming

Andrew and the marine belles (Kate and Laura) doing some synchronised anchor rope swimming.

Korcula

Th bay of Korcula at dawn from the imposing Fort on the hill behind.

Bird or insect?

Captured drinking this huge insect sucks the delicious nectar from the lantana in Dubrovnic.

Private Bay

Aphrodita moored for the night in this tiny bay giving  us time to explore the rocky hillsides with struggling vines and olives planted among the rocks. We even found a coconut cabana that served us Croatian cocktails while its transistor radio sound system entertained us with crackling Croatian pop music.

Italian roads again

Just where was this guy driving? He really should have thought about road rage before misbehaving.

Sunny Adriatic

It's a tough job but someone has to do it.

Ferry iasco

Catching the ferry from Bari Italy to Dubrovnic Croatia was a complete riot. No border checks, queues extending throughout the dock, hours of waiting and then we had to change terminals with the port authority trying to cram 100s of people into 2 tiny 8 seater buses.
LOL.Great to get on board at last for a magnificently smooth crossing.

Banksy in Bari

Cave dining

Polignano a Mare has been settled since prehistoric times, the city perched high on seaside cliffs with caves, lashed by the seas for a millenium, burrowing deep under the town. One of these is now a fancy restaurant where you can dine in a grotto above splashing waves, which may drench you at your table if the seas are wild.

Sampling the delights of the Ionian Sea

Ok so we paid $60 to go on the beach but....we needed to see sand and have some shade....what can you do?

Roadside butchery feasts...or not.

Searching out the "famous" road side BBQs where the butchers pull out a table and chairs onto the street and cook up a roadside feast, we dove to Ceglie Messapico with a huge hunger for meat. Sadly after doing a few laps of the city centre and hovering hopefully outside the closing butchers, we gave up and headed indoors to a trattoria with amazing antipasta and other fab local delicacies.

Unlock your mind to Lecces' art

Street art Lecce, not only roadside art, but testimonials of betrothal and love from Lecce's in-love couples. Cute!

Venice in drought

Lecce, a collection of spectacular Baroque buildings quite different to the rest of the Puglia that we've seen, and with a very Ventian feel, plus a Roman amphitheatre right in the centre of town. Obviously there was a LOT of money here 1000 years ago as the merchants traversed from east to west across Europe, but sadly most of the old town here is in a state of some decay.

Gelati time

The gelati in Locorotondo was awesome. Paul's was like eating liquid chocolate gold.

The Adriatic

Al fresco lunch Adriatic style.

Sea urchins

The weird food continues...here sea urchins grace the plate. Luckily it was someone elses, although at this meal we did eat raw squid.

Al fresco dining in the Alleys

Dining in the tiny alleys is very much the norm here in Locorotondo...try to avoid driving down them tho.
It's definitely rear vision mirrors in.

Trulli town

Our little cottage for the week is a renovated trullo just like the ones above that we saw yesterday in Alberobello.
Gorgeous towns, gorgeous weather.
Loving life!

District 9

If you've ever seen the movie District 9 you will know how disturbing this image is of Andrew using Percebes as a hand.

Percebes Festival

Isabel's favourite food is Percebes and it's one of the most expensive and weird seafoods that we had the privilege to try. People tied to ropes dangle off the rocks chopping slabs of these off with a shovel. Quite dangerous. As a special treat Isabel managed to score 3kgs of the huge ones that reminded me of elephant's toenails, however there's only so many of the suckers you can eat, so we called in the neighbours to help out.

Weird food continued

Pigs ears...a little chewy and gristly for me.

Walking on Air

Having so much fun Andrew's walking on air.

Andrew Zimmerman eat your heart out.

You know you're in Galicia when you're served a plate of weitd food. Here we enjoy Navajas, razor shells, and berberechas, cockles.

Hmmmmmm....

After 8 years away Andrew and I thought we'd to go back to Oviedo and see how much things had changed and of course reminisce about "the Good Ole Days" First port of call for us was the "Titanic" cafe where many an hour was spent drinking coffees and enjoying the odd pincho de Pollo or Tortilla after dropping the kids to the school bus.

Amazingly Beningno recognised us through the windows on our approach and after such a long time we enjoyed an emotional reunion and realsied that some things, like friendships, never change.

Hidden Beach

There is a secret hidden inland beach just out of Llanes. Unfortunately we were there when the tide was out so we didn't get the full effect, but the Atlantic which was still 100 metres away had to enter the tiny inland bay through a cave. Cool!!!

cruisin Asturias

It was great to meet Mayte (Kike's new wife) in Asturias, and to cruise around HER territory in the flip top mini.

feria de Porrua

We were very lucky to be in town for the annual feria in Porrua where the locals dressed in their traditional garb and brought along all their home produce to sell. Music, dancing, sidra pouring...and drinking, home make breads, cheeses, wines and mind blowing spirits made from fruits and honey and racks of ribs and chorizo to share, while downing a drink or two. Kids and adults alike joined in the traditional Celtic games of the region. It wasn't until early evening that we were able to drag ourselves away from this delightful celebration.