Nathan's Insights

World Traveller: 7 Continents, 90 Countries, 871 Days Overseas


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  • World Trip 2009: Day 49 – Margaret River, Western Australia

    Thursday 9 July 2009
    Highlights: Bushtucker Winery Tour

    First a confession, I’m writing this with a hangover. Today I went on the ’Bushtucker Winery Tour’. We started at 10.30 am and I got dropped off around 6 pm, in between was a lot of drinking, singing and eating.

    The full day saw use visit (in order) the following places:

    • Bettenay Wine
    • Chocolate Factory
    • Margaret River Dairy Company (Cheese Factory)
    • The Grove (Winery)
    • The Liqueur Factory
    • Knee Deep (Winery)
    • Duckstein (Beer)

    All up I tasted about 38 different wines, and when I say tasted I mean it, they taught us how to drink wine, how to hold the glass, smell it, hold the wine in our mouth and drink it. While not a big fan I did like the whites from The Grove, apparently they have won several awards.

    In fact Margaret River area accounts for about 2% of Australian wines but 25% of the awards.’ Now the liqueurs were terrible, but hey, I don’t like coffee and they tasted like coffee. The beers were based on Munich beers which bought back memories of my misadventures in Munich in 2006. It was actually hard to finish the last beer; it had been a very long day by this point.

    I should mention that the cheese and chocolate factory were first rate, the dark chocolate being especially good. For lunch we had an assortment of meats, breads and fruits and vegetables. One of the meats was kangaroo (not bad actually). Two lucky people got to have a rare WA witchetty grub. I didn’t volunteer for this job as I have tried one before (when I was young and naive).

    At the end of the tour we headed back to town singing all kinds of songs, a few Australian themed songs (“I come from a land down under” rings a bell). In summary a great day if not for the headaches coming on. Hopefully the alcohol levels will drop enough to let me drive tomorrow 🙂  The cricket was good to watch again, Ponting and Katich both getting their centuries in the last 2 overs of the day.

    BTW the overnight storms they are having are incredibly powerful. I’m hoping my red eye special on Friday night isn’t affected.

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 48 – Perth to Margaret River, Australia

    Wednesday 8 July 2009
    Highlights: Bunbury Harbour, Margaret River Nature walk

    Today I drove from Perth to Margaret River which is about 300 kms in distance. Along the way I stopped in Bunbury a seaside city of about 30,000. The harbour was nice, and the yachts tell me there is money in this area. I had planned to watch a movie instead of just driving the whole way but it turns out it is school holidays over here making that impossible.  I arrived at Margaret River at about 3 pm feeling very tired, I’m guessing due to both the driving and the jetlag. The accommodation is fine and they handed me a good map of the local area.

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 47 – Singapore to Perth, Western Australia

    Tuesday 7 July 2009
    Highlights: Easy flight to Perth, View of Swan River

    The flight turned out to nearly be empty. I got my aisle seat again but with no one in the window seat I moved over to watch the landing in Perth at the end of the flight. We didn’t have any problems with the 5 hour flight and landed safely on time at 2.05 pm.

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  • World Trip 2009: Leg 3 London Summary

    Facebook Photos 1, Photos 2
    The London leg is now over, I suppose I should call it the Brussels, London & Brighton leg but it was 95% in London. London has had a heat wave over here, most days over 26, normally I’d make fun of that been called a heatwave especially given the 38+ weather in Egypt I experienced but London is not designed for this, and the Tube is like an oven once it gets over 20. Still this meant it was easier to see the outdoor sites since there was no rain. It was great to be able to really see London in depth without the need to move on quickly as in the past.

    Some of the highlights include:
    – Seeing the ancient Stonehenge site
    – Seeing Billy Elliot – great West End show
    – The Imperial Museum – especially the holocaust display
    – Going to Wimbledon and watching Sam Stouser win her 2nd round match.
    – Seeing a 20/20 cricket match at the Oval (Surrey vs Kent)
    – Visiting Lord’s
    – Cruising down the Thames
    – Jon’s flatmate James’ birthday party (Singstar contest!)
    – Visiting Greenwich (a great village type suburb and the being of time ie. Greenwich Mean Time – GMT)
    – Catching up with Inge (Belgium) and Belinda
    – The Royal Pavilion in Brighton (George IVs incredibly opulent, luxurious and crazy ‘house’)

    I’m very happy I got to do an extensive stay in London with my side trips to Brussels, Brighton and Stonehenge being particular highlights.

  • World Trip 2009: Day 46 – London to Singapore

    Monday 6 July 2009
    Highlights: Saying farewell

    I said goodbye to London today. Jon actually decided to get to his school a little late and ride with me on the Tube almost all the way to Heathrow Airport. Jon is a very good friend and I know how lucky I am to know him, which has now been for 22 years since we first met at school in Year 7 in 1987.

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 45 – Stonehenge and London, England

    Sunday 5 July 2009
    Highlights: Ancient Stonehenge, London Walking Tour – Ghost Walk

    Jon had organised to borrow Jeanne’s car so we could head out to Stonehenge for a day trip. It took about 2-3 hours to get there including our lunch/pit stop. It’s amazing to visit a site that is believed to have been around for over 4,000 years. The thing I got from the audio commentary was how much they don’t know! The one thing we do know is that the stones keep a good monthly calendar if the location of the sun at different times of the year. Whoever designed this was clear even by today’s computer assisted standards.

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 44 – Brighton and London, England

    Saturday 4 July 2009
    Highlights: The West End Show (Billy Elliot), Royal Pavilion

    As Jeanne has a new posting starting soon she needs to find new accommodation so we all headed down to Brighton for the day. Jon insisted that I had to visit the Royal Pavilion. After some problems at Victoria station (no machines to pick up our train tickets) we were off for the resort town visit.

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 43 – London, England

    Friday 3 July 2009
    Highlights: Lords – The Home of Cricket

    After listening to my team Essendon lose badly on the ABC via the internet I headed off to the world famous Lord’s Cricket Ground for a tour. As there was a match on (Middlesex vs Surrey) we didn’t have access to the pavilion or Long Room today, same price of £14 however!

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 42 – London, England

    Thursday 2 July 2009
    Highlights: Buckingham Palace, Duke of York Column

    Today has a crazy busy day in the heat of London (I’m not joking about the heat, air conditioning doesn’t exist here!). I started the day at the British Museum, I mostly skipped the Egyptian section since I had been there recently but the Roman and Greek displays were excellent. They had reconstructed a ‘Nereid Temple’ and the coins sections (which included current currency) was very interesting especially for the rulers who put themselves on the coins. Leaving the museum I decided to walk to Buckingham Palace, this meant I got to walk via Regent Street full of high price shops and Piccadilly Circus.

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  • World Trip 2009: Day 41 – London, England

    Wednesday 1 July 2009
    Highlights: Imperial War Museum

    Today has supposed to be an easy day, starting with me just posting the rest of my Egypt photos online and booking the Perth leg accommodation. However in the afternoon I visited the Imperial War Museum.  The ground level is in its own way very fun, old planes, tanks and submarines on display. The next level has information and photos about the secret side of war like the British SAS, MI5 and MI6 and the code breakers. Fascinating stuff which asked hard questions about terrorist in particular and keeping secrets from the public.

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