Anyone who arrives home from holidays can be forgiven for wistfully looking over their photos of their time away and, having done so, head straight to the internet to check on their points status to see when they might be able to go away again. I think they can be forgiven because that’s exactly what…
Dear Karen, On behalf of the Australian Government and the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, we are very pleased to inform you that your application for a double pass to attend the Anzac Day Dawn Service at Gallipoli on 25 April 2015 has been successful. You might recall my post from a year ago announcing my…
This is the Piazza del Popolo (the “People’s Square”) and it was at this moment when Rome and I finally ‘clicked’. I am high up on a balcony at the edge of the Villa Borghese. We’d had a fairly disappointing time until that point, but after a refreshing morning in the Villa’s gardens I was starting to…
I admit to feeling a slight… ambivalence… as to what laid in store for us in Rome. It’s been on my Living List since studying the Judio-Claudian emperors in ancient history and watching old movies a child, all those ‘sandal and toga’ epics, full of fighting and chariot races. And, of course, I wanted to eat the…
Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into view; and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and the churchyard became gradually visible. Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed, for there, on our favourite seat,…
When I was in Year 9 in high school, we undertook what was called a ‘Visions’ project. Each student chose a subject of his or her own and examined movies, songs, poems and more relating to this subject. From memory, it was our first truly independent venture as learners and as you’d expect we were all…
There were parts of Paris that I did a lot of research about ahead of visiting and there were others where I knew just enough to want to go, but left discovering the finer details until arriving. The Catacombes de Paris (or Catacombs of Paris) was one of these places. I wondered how the kids would go…
We emerged from our long, though blessedly uneventful, flight at Charles de Gaulle airport. I found a strong Wi-Fi connection as soon as I turned my phone back on. My data roaming was turned off, so I became a bit of a Wi-Fi hunter while in Europe – easy in some places, harder in others,…
Hello! Here we are a few days out from our trip and I feel like I need to leave a few reminders and notes before I go. My life over the past few weeks has been led by ‘to do’ lists and meetings (why is March so busy?) and so, along the way, when people…
