Travel resolutions for 2012

I've said it before, and I'm going to say it again: we're not big planners, at least not when it comes to our travel plans. We don't tend to spend too much time before the event imagining what the end product is going to look like. we are more fly by the seat of your plants kinda people, who have a rough idea of what they want to do, then we don't think about it that much until it's actually happening. This has it's advantages (no fretting, and who doesn't love a bit of spontaneity?) and disadvantages (nobody told me San Seb was the food capital of Spain.. surely somebody, somewhere should have told me this before... why didn't I know this til we got there??)

But all this doesn't meant that we don't have any goals in what we're doing over the next year. It's not every day that you pack up your comfortable life and set off on a journey to fulfil a few dreams, so, feeling more than a little bit inspired by Boots n All's 2012 Indie Travel Challenge, I spent some time mulling over what I want out of the next year.

We left Sydney with a couple of big goals, namely being with my mum while she went through radio therapy and working out what was going on with the littlest hobo's health. With both of these under our belts we're ready to move forward and embrace the year to come, and there are some important things to achieve on the way.

For me, some of it is about seeing places that were on our doorstep at times and we never seemed to make the time to explore properly. All the countries we are visiting this year are places we've lived in or visited before - we've had a taster, but feel we didn't get enough, so now we're going back for more. And I really hope that I will remember this in the future, and always live like a traveller at home in the future, embracing everything that my surroundings have to offer.

I want to develop myself. I spent a year and a half being the littlest hobo's mum, and nothing else. It was an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling job, and I would recommend it to anyone, and do the same again tomorrow, but often the achievements are disguised in every day life, and you don't get that same sense of having done something new and massive that I did from work in the past.This blog is one of those efforts - while it's proving a great means to keep friends and family up to date with what we're up to, it's also a fantastic creative outlet that's challenging parts of my brain which have been left dormant for perhaps a little too long. Last year I rekindled my previous interest in photography by participating in the 365 project. While I didn't keep up with the project for the whole year, it did ignite a passion in me for creating photographs, and late last year I signed up to study for a photography diploma. It's an online course with the Photography Institute and while I was hesitant about doing a diploma while we were travelling i figured there'd be plenty of time for the reading, and besides there's no time like the present. So this year I will endeavour to complete my course and improve my photography. 

I'm keen to experience travel in new ways. For the last few years we've been lucky enough to always stay in 4 and 5 star hotels or opulent apartments, travelled by taxi and flown business class for all but the shortest journeys. While we're not planning to rough it all the way, I'm really looking forward to experiencing a few different ways of travelling. Like the littlest hobo, I'm most excited about travelling in a campervan. So far we haven't met many other travellers on our trips, and I feel thats really important, for the experience, and for our sanity! Í'm hoping that staying on some camp sites might open up a few possibilities.

This one's for Mr T. But I'm in, I think. Sometimes you have to make the pendulum swing too far in the opposite direction before you can find your new momentum. We both feel that we've all been spending too much time staring at screens, and we want to spend a bit more time living in the moment, getting out and trying new things and really living in our experiences. So for a month at some point we plan to go technology free. We're still setting out the parameters, and I am bucking against it at every mention, but I'm softening every day and I can see a strong argument for doing it too. We'll be putting the computer, iPad and iPhones aside and doing things the old way - it remains to be seen whether there are actually enough phone boxes left on the planet for us to phone our folks now and again, but I love the idea of finding things out by talking to people and researching within our environment. I even bought a paper version of the Lonely Planet New Zealand book the other day in preparation (half price on Amazon - bargain), and I'm sure that some of my buddies might actually relish a bit of peace and quiet on facebook! Rest assured when the time comes you will get plenty of forewarning though!

But the most important thing of all is about spending some time immersed in being our family. Children grow so quickly, and while they're young their little brains are like sponges. I love the fact that in the last few months the littlest hobo has had both her parents as a massive influence on her life. She's exposing parts of her personality from spending all this time with her daddy which may have stayed hidden if we'd carried on with our previous way of life, simply because they're not personality traits I posses. They're both courageous and cheeky with a wicked sense of humour that I just don't have, and it's magical to see it all coming out. And me and Mr T, we have time for each other too, rather than a snatched hour when we are tired at the end of every day, where we recap all the things we achieved separately, we are building memories together, like we used to when we first met. We're all on a fantastic journey together, both physical and spiritual. I wonder how i will reflect at the end of the year. 

Where are you taking yourself in 2012? What do you hope to achieve?

This post was inspired by and forms part of the Boots n All 2012 Indie Travel Challenge - a prompt, question or challenge, every week for the year of 2012. I'm hoping that it will be a little more realistic for me to achieve than a photo a day proved to be in 2011!

Adult time

I recall an evening last year, not long before we left Balmain when I tore out of our front door, raced down Darling Street and jumped onto the ferry to Circular Quay. I drank in the lights of Luna Park glittering in the dark, and became a part of the city at night as I spent two blissful hours photographing the Opera House lit up with the lights of the Vivid Sydney exhibition. I rarely went out at night, with a young child to look after, especially one who slept fitfully and woke frequently, and almost always wanted her mummy. Going out at night, being part of the outside world for the evening, all the while doing something I loved, was magical and exhilarating.

Last week was our wedding anniversary, and we treated ourselves to a night in a London hotel and tickets to see We Will Rock You. It was the first time in the Littlest Hobo's two and a half years of life that we had left her overnight without one or the other of us being there. And I know that several of my friends who may be reading this will be tutting and rolling their eyes now, but I always have been a bit of a hippy when it comes to parenting, and I make no apology for it. It was great - she's old enough now to understand what is going on and she feel reassured that when we leave her we will come back - she waved us off happily and I wasn't nervous about leaving her.

We've been out for dinner occasionally, and we've each been out separately with friends several times, as well as numerous 'sleepovers' with friends who also have kids where the adults get to party once the kids are asleep, but really we haven't had much opportunity for mutually participated in adult outings for the longest time. We had a great time - I can't remember the last time we went to the theatre, a past-time which I have always enjoyed. Although we've probably checked into more hotels than your average Tom, Dick or Harry in the last couple of years, it was refreshing to just check in, no fuss, without having to make sure that they had put a child bed in the room, that they could cater for children, and one with food intollerences and allergies at that. When we walked into the hotel room we were able to marvel at our upgrade and throw ourselves onto the massive bed without having to first check the room for safety hazards. We ate when we wanted to and what we wanted to and drank enough cocktails, without having to worry about looking after anyone mini, to make the journey to the theatre very giggly. When we left the theatre we walked along Oxford Street, watching people go about their evenings before taking in the Christmas lights of Regent Street from the warmth of our cab, without having to race back to anyone.

It's Mr T's birthday tomorrow, and we're off out for the evening again with my mum in charge of getting her ladyship into bed, and I'm sure that it won't be the only time in the next two and a half weeks as we scrabble to see friends before we leave England's fair shores and our live-in babysitting opportunity is over.

We're quite enjoying our new found occasional freedom, but I'm not too sure how sustainable it is with our plans for the next year. I'm not willing to trust some random babysitter to look after my daughter so that I can go off galavanting around. I'm not that bothered about it - it's not forever, and ultimately we will be fulfilling dreams travelling, and we do have a couple of hours of child free time once she's asleep at night - we're just restricted to wherever our current home may be, and the night life will once again become a distant memory. I was reading in the Lonely Planet Travelling with Children book that between the age of 1 and 3 is the worst time to travel with kids - while I don't agree in many respects, I suppose this is one of the downsides. They need to be at 'home' and in bed by a reasonable time - too old to sleep for hours in a pushchair and too young to stay up late for too many consecutive days.

So I'd love to hear from the rest of the travelling families community - how do you get adult time when you're on the road? Are you able to experience the places you are visiting at night, or do you stick to daytime exploration?

Baby, it's cold outside

I'm in the depths of trying to submit a module for my photography course at the moment, so not a lot of time for blogging between that and our sightseeing excursions, but I am saving up lots of exciting things for the coming days. In the meantime, I just wanted to share this with you:

Yesterday afternoon.....

And....

This morning

Brrrrrrr - The thick fog hung throughout Duras right up until about 3pm, when we had bright clear skies but still pretty cold temperatures for about an hour. Thank goodness the heating system was fixed the other day!

Donostia San Sebastian: a full tummy, a great view and a happy toddler too!

San Sebastian, what can I say. I think I've fallen in love with this pretty little city. We weren't even planning to go there (planning, what planning?), but a couple of weeks ago, when I mentioned that we were getting the ferry into Bilbao, my friend Sarah said that her husband had proposed to her in San Se (as the locals call it), and it was really pretty, and then I mentioned it to my uncle, Roger, who's pretty well travelled when it comes to Spain and he agreed. So that was it, we went to San Se.

View of La Concha beach at sunset, taken from the harbour

And what a treat we've had. Situated on the northern coast, with an uninterrupted view out to the Bay of Biscay, only 20km from the border with France, in the Basque region, San Sebastian enjoys a mild climate, and is a favourite holiday spot of the Spanish. It's mid November, and we've experienced temperatures of between 16 and 24 degrees. You can't often say much better than that for the Northern Hem at this time of year.

The city is sprawling; with three beaches and numerous suburbs. We stayed in the Gros neighbourhood, in a cool but spooky apartment overlooking the Zurriola beach, the one favoured by surfers, as it's out of San Se bay. I reckon it could give Bondi a run for it's money, and we enjoyed building, and destroying sandcastles there, as well as a quick and unplanned, fully clothed, dip into the surf by a certain miss Hobo, who stepped off an ankle deep sand shelf and landed in water up to her chest. It probably wasn't my best parenting moment when I laughed once Mr Traveller had whipped her up into his arms, but thankfully, true to character, she took it all with a smile.

The centre of the city is made up with a shopping district, with some pretty good shops (well, it was my birthday while we were there!), the working harbour/beachfront, and the Parte Vieja (old town) which was full of spectacular medieval architecture, and had me walking around with a crick in my neck, it was so amazing to look up at.

Looking through the Parte Vieja to the cathedral

But the Old Town has another reason to bask in it's utter brilliance, and that is one of the big reasons that SanSe is often referred to as the gastronomic capital of Spain: Pintxos.And loving food in the way that we do, us Travellers couldn't get enough of these magnificent morsels that we found on bar after bar after bar.

Jamon pintxos with huge legs of Jamon hanging behind the bar in the background

Most people will be familiar with tapas, and pintxos (pronounced pinchos) are the basques version of tapas - rumoured to be the best on offer. The bars in the parte vieja offer a veritable feast of pintxos; some just a simple piece of bread or a croissant filled with the delectable jamon, others much more elaborate, such as the Mackobe - a mini kobe burger in a ketchup bun served with plantain chips.

Classic pintxos include a piece of bread and a 'spear'to hold the topping in place. This one had goats cheese, walnuts, and, according to the barmaid 'sugared fruit', I suspect it was quince, but any pintxos expert who can verify would be most welcome!

The done thing in San Sebastian is a pintxos crawl - visiting a succession of bars, having a drink and one or two pintxos in each place. We took sandwiches for the Littlest hobo (no room for allergies at the bar, but children were very welcome) and managed three bars in any one session - I think we would probably be classified as pintxos lightweights.

The whole bar area was covered with pintxos - at a guess 20 varieties to choose from

San Sebastian was a really child friendly city. Not only did we enjoy the beaches, but there were play areas around every corner too, and the Littlest Hobo's particular favourite, a merry-go-round, built in 1900, complete with groovy Spanish pop music, right on the sea front. Handily enough, it was right next to the Parte Vieja, so everyone was happy! There are also a couple of great attractions for kids - the funicular railway, which we walked to, but sadly it was closed for refurbishment, and a hands on science museum that we read a lot of positive reports about, but didn't actually make it out to. The Spanish take their children everywhere, which means that they are always made welcome. The biggest problem we experienced was with timings - the littlest Hobo is used to eating dinner by 6 and being in bed sometime between 7 and 8, and the playgrounds are still heaving at that time; culturally, they just shape their day to the beat of a different drum. This wasn't a big issue per se, but it made eating out in the evenings near impossible; by the time the restaurants were open (it seemed to be 8pm onwards) the littlest Hobo was ready to flop into bed. This made me thankful again that we stay in self catering accommodation and we can make our days work for us. 

San Se merry-go-round

Romantic San Se takes you in and envelopes you in warm fuzzies. For somewhere that wasn't even on the radar until 2 weeks ago, I really enjoyed our time there. We originally only booked for three nights, but decided to extend after we arrived. I would definitely go again, although might book a different apartment next time, lest our night time visitor felt the need to return!

I thought it was Saturday when I woke up

...then I got that sinking feeling you get when you realise it's actually Friday, and you've still got another whole day until the weekend.

Then, as I began to shake off that obligatory bleariness that comes with being woken too early by a 2 year old a few days after the clocks have changed, I remembered that it didn't really matter that it was Friday after all. I got up with the Littlest Hobo and set ourselves up in the lounge with a bit of kids telly and my laptop while we waited for true morning to arrive, and Mr Traveller pulled the pillow over his head and drifted back into the land of nod which was fair enough, seeing as it's his turn for a lie in today. And so our day began, in the way that many of our days begin these days.

I spent the day doing washing, taking the car to the tyre place (again...) and going to the supermarket, and Mr Traveller and the Littlest Hobo talked to his mum in Brisbane on the webcam before making profiteroles ready for our friends to come over and go to the local fireworks display tomorrow. We had a nice day, doing nothing extraordinary.

After the upheaval and sadness of the last couple of weeks, it's nice to return to our strange kind of normal. But I do feel like I'm in a slightly weird place at the moment. Before all this happened, I was desperate to get going, wishing the weeks away until we could go somewhere new and getting slightly frustrated with down time, because it meant that time when we could be travelling and making the most of this opportunity was being wasted. Right now, I could give or take our trip down to Spain, and our flights back down to the Southern hemisphere in January seem like something someone else told me they are doing, rather than our plans. We've decided to go to a different area in Spain, so that we can spend less time driving, and more time experiencing the country, and I know nothing about that area - normally I'd be researching like crazy now, trying to work out what I wanted to see, where we should stay etc, but I just gave it a ten minute glance last night, and now I really can't be bothered.

I'm sure that my mind is quite occupied with the upcoming funeral, in fact, as I am typing this I realise that I am probably trying to numb myself down so that I can get up in front of everyone and deliver a eulogy - I want to do it, but it's certainly throwing me a new challenge - although that's probably no bad thing.

But this mornings start to the day, getting up at our own pace, spending time with the Littlest Hobo, having the time to thrill her by involving her in our mundane tasks, and yesterday's visit with friends, Wednesdays trip to Bath, it's all reminding me why I love what we're doing. Right now I'm glad that it was so easy to be here, with my family, when I needed to be, and next week, when the hard bit is over, I will be able to appreciate once again that Mr Traveller has the opportunity to cook to his hearts content (and us to eat!) and I have the chance to write again, and to develop my photography, all while spending more time being a family and enjoying each others company, to run on beaches and splash in puddles, and to see so many things that we've never seen before, or never had the time to stop and really appreciate before, all while the Littlest Hobo is still little.

Enjoying the vast expanses of Newquay beach

This was one of those posts where you start writing something, and somehow you start wandering on the way and it turns into something completely different. I just pointed it in a direction, and let it change route undirected on the way. That is, after all, one of the things we tend to enjoy when we're on an adventure, so I guess I'll just let it be.

Filling in some of the blanks...

Thought it was about time I added a bit of background info to this blog, so I've just pulled together an about me section:

Charles Fort, Cornwall

After a series of unfortunate events meant that we had to put our 'regular'life on hold, we took the opportunity to fulfil a dream and travel for a year or two.

Myself, my husband, and our 2 year old toddler are spending some time with family in the UK, and seeing a few snippets of Europe on the way, before heading back down to the southern hemisphere in early 2012 when we'll travel Australia and New Zealand in a motor home. We'll also be travelling across the US and Canada in 2012... and who knows where else!

We're Brits who were living in Sydney, Australia immediately prior to our departure in June 2011. We are also Aussie citizens, and our daughter, having been born in Sydney, also holds dual nationality.

We're using our travels as an opportunity to search our souls about where we want to settle after this - England or Australia. With family in both countries and a different set of benefits with each choice, the jury is still out.    

Stuff... oh, stuff

Before we left Sydney we carefully considered what to do with our stuff - keep it and store it or sell it and start afresh when the time comes to settle down somewhere. What we eventually agreed was that we would sell most of it - mostly ikea furniture anyway, so we could probably buy new for not much more than the cost of storing it and transporting it to wherever,whenever that may be. we kept hold of a few things, mainly personal stuff like photographs and memories, and our dining table and chairs which we both felt bizarrely attached to, although now I do question whether it was really necessary. We had our things transported up to Brisbane where they are nestled safe and dry in my brother in law's garage until such a time that we might need them, or he might need the space, or move to a house with a smaller garage.

The beginning bit was easy, sofa, beds, desks, washing machines, whatever. Then some more challenging decisions - the Littlest Hobo's baby clothes for example - hanging on to them because we remembered her being tiny in them or just in case we just happened to have another child and then that other child just happened to be a girl all seemed too remote a reality to keep hold of them so we selected a few particularly heart-string-pulling pieces and either sold or gave away the rest. Deciding what to put in those final few suitcases which came with us though, that was painful. We ended up packing  and re-packing right up until the very last minute, leaving a mess of confusion at my mother in law's house after taking things out that seemed so important at the time, but in reflection, three or so months later, I can't even remember what they were! Apart from the sat nav... we ended up buying a new one not long into our travels. We boarded the plane 18kg overweight, and with bated breath, but I'm glad to say we didn't get charged on any one of the three flights. 

Last week we went for our first trip to a motor home sales place, to do a bit of research about exactly what we want to be in once we arrive back in antipodean lands, and I found myself thrilled at the idea of cutting down again and living in that small space with maybe half of what we have with us now. And yesterday, suddenly realising that in 2 weeks time we'll be leaving the comfortable base of my parents house that we've been relying upon for the last few months, and only what we can stuff in our car can come with us down to Spain, I opened my wardrobe and wondered why on earth I had brought with me half the things I did. The local charity shop will be very pleased with me in the not too distant future.

And then there's the small matter of toys. It was The Littlest Hobo's second birthday 2 weeks ago, and an excellent excuse for a huge party to catch up with loads of friends. We considered stipulating no presents, but that just made me feel like Scrooge McMum, and asking for money instead of gifts at a small child's birthday would've just been downright crass, and besides all that she loves all the little plastic fiddly things and crafty stuff etc that make excellent presents for kids birthdays, so we decided to just go with it. And, being surrounded by so many gorgeous friends and family, she received loads of lovely gifts which she is in heaven playing with. I don't want to sound ungrateful, we really are, we have some gorgeous friends who were so kind to our little hobo. But it's drawing near to the time when we'll have to  make the Europe trip cull, and as the new year draws we will be making an even stricter selection ready for our flights down to Singapore. 

On the plus side, given that there's so many things that we want, but don't want to haul around the world with us, I have no qualms with sticking anything that we treasure but doesn't make the A-list into a box or two to store in some currently unsuspecting relative's loft until such a time that we are ready to pick it up and drive it to our English country cottage, or pay some extortionate amount of money to ship it down to Oz, or wherever else we stumble across on our travels and deem suitable to set up our next home.

Writing this post has been enlightening; going through the editing process I started to question whether we're thinking like travellers yet. Right now it's more of an eager anticipation than a burning reality, although there has been a definite shift in the way that we approach each purchase as a family, we still buy some thing that we won't be using/consuming immediately and can't won't take on our travels. It's a change of attitude that's taking a bit of getting used to!

Travellers officially :)

It's a pretty big day for us here. 9 months ago, driving through the New Zealand countryside, we decided that we wanted to travel. At that point it was just a dream, a glimmer in our eyes of a life we would like to have, in the same way as so many must dream, but never dare or manage to turn that dream into reality. We schlepped back to everyday life in Sydney, me at home with the littlest hobo, Mr Traveller working too much at something he was great at but didn't have true love for burning in his heart, and thought nothing more of what could be if things were different.

In February the littlest hobo was hospitalised with a spurious illness and breathing problems in what would become a months long unsolved mystery and myriad tests. She was discharged after a few days, but we spent an awful lot of time in doctors offices, hospitals and trying out this that and the other theory. It was trying and heartbreaking watching this little being that you'd brought into the world struggling to keep up with everything that everyone was expecting her to be, without being able to offer any definite solutions. 

In April, while we were driving back down the coast from visiting Mr Travellers family in Brissie, we had a completely unexpected and at the time devastating phone call from my mum, back in the UK, to say that she had cancer. While we spent a few days umming and ahing about the how and when of it we knew that one way or another I would be going back to the UK for a period of time to support her through her treatment. 

Sometime in the middle of all this the whispers of redundancy went whispering past our ears, and somewhere in the middle of all this a little seed was planted that maybe, just maybe, if our luck started to look up sometime soon, and everything that was currently bad went good, this could be an opportunity to fulfil our dream.

So with a great deal of trepidation and a flurry of manic activity Mr Traveller took a sabbatical, we sold the material possessions of our lives and packed up our treasures to store in the Brissie family's garage and jumped on a plane to England, not really knowing for how long we would be going and where. We took 3 days in Korea to decompress an luxuriate in the sort of hotel that encourages calm.

We arrived in the UK and my mum started and finished her daily treatments, and came through it relatively unscathed and with the best results you could expect with cancer really. The littlest hobo, thanks to the wonderful set of paediatricians that we have worked with in both Australia and the UK, is being treated for asthma and a wide range of allergies, having been cleared from the suspicion of cystic fibrosis, which was our greatest fear from the possibilities that the medical teams initially explored. And today Mr Traveller has confirmed with his employers that he will take redundancy, which will enable us to fulfil our dream and travel the world. This is such an exciting day - a situation that could have been so bad has turned into something so good, and this is just the beginning of a beautiful adventure! I'm sure that there's plenty more bumps in the road still to come, but fingers crossed they're not as big, and they are as overcomable (according to spell check that's not a word, but it should be...) as the last few months have been. Who's coming?