Tokyo has two Disney theme parks – Tokyo Disney, and Tokyo Disney Sea. We decided that one dose of Disney would be enough. It’s doubtful we’ll ever go to a US Disney Park (pretty low on my travel bucket list), so this was a good chance for a theme park fix while the girls are…
Author: dani
Totoro, Totoro!
If the films “My Neighbour Totoro”, “Kiki’s Delivery Service” or “Howl’s Moving Castle” mean nothing to you, you probably won’t be interested in our day at the Ghibli Museum, Tokyo. Studio Ghibli, and its brainchild Hayao Miyazki, has produced some of the highest grossing films in Japan, all animated, and their 2001 film “Spirited Away”…
What’s New Pussycat?
Yesterday was the day Milana was born for. A day dripping with cutesy, “kawaii” fluffiness, dipped in sugar and syrup and injected with baby pink fairy floss and pixie dust. We visited Sanrio Puroland, aka Hello Kitty Town, about an hour’s train trip from our home base. Milana was all nervous and skitty all morning,…
“Don’t Talk to Strangers”
That’s what we say to our kids. We drum it in from an early age. Sometimes when you’re travelling however, it’s in talking to strangers that you can open up a world of discovery. I’ve been sucked in before with stranger talking…shuttled to a Bangkok tailor and being “encouraged” to purchase clothing by a tuk-tuk…
Tokyo day 1
When the flight co-ordination team at Qantas were deciding on an appropriate time to fly Sydney to Tokyo, I’m sure they must have consulted a sleep deprivation expert; “Be sure they are their most uncomfortable right when their bodies are usually hitting deep sleep mode. Hold off their main meal until they are near starving,…
I did it my way.
For my 18th birthday, my parents gave me a plane ticket to Europe. It was part birthday gift, part reward for winning the “Principal’s Award” (which included a year’s free tuition) at our college. Apart from two family trips to Fiji as a pre-teen, this would be my first big overseas adventure; and after a…
Shanghai Suprise
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to become an instant celebrity; throw your cute light haired, blue-eyed kids onto the National-Holiday-packed streets of Shanghai! No sooner had we jumped on the 430km/hr Maglev into the city centre from Pudong Airport than cameras were out, and the girls were being snapped by random…
Rome Part II
If you’re a fan of country music, your mecca is Nashville. You like film stars, new and old? I bet your dream is to stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But for Catholics, many a pilgrimage has concluded at Vatican City, and St.Peter’s Basilica, where marble effigies of Popes and Saints burst, rock-star-like from the…
Rome, if you want to.
It was with a happy sigh of relief that we dropped our freshly cleaned Berlingo at the Rome airport depot. Goodbye heart stopping motor-way moments and stunt driver tom foolery! The lease company ordered a car to take us into town. Far too small a car. The guy could see there were four of us,…
Horrible Histories
When your kids’ favourite show includes segments on “Groovy Greeks” and “Rotten Romans” (if you have kids in upper Primary, you’d know “Horrible Histories”), it’s a given that visiting ancient ruins is going to be a hit. And yes, even though we’re in Italy, there are ruins of the Roman AND Greek variety. The temples…
“The Shame of Italy”
For Year 12 Italian, we studied Carlo Levi’s 1945 novel “Cristo si e Fermato a Eboli”. Levi was an Italian writer and anti-fascist activist who was exiled to a remote area, now known as Basilicata, in Italy’s South in 1935. There, he encountered people living in poverty unknown and unheard of in Italy’s north. Whole…
Baroque and Roll baby!
There are loads of cities and countries in the world with stray cat issues. They thrive around the fishing ports on the Greek Islands; on the streets of Bangkok; and the parks of Buenos Aires; kept fat on restaurant left-overs and doting nonnas/abuelas. They sleep on doorsteps, on car roofs or under trees, and relieve…
The Salento – Beach Hopping Part 2
With the Ionian Sea side of the Salento ticked off, our skin screamed “more sun per favore!”, so we did the drive East to the Adriatic. There are just so many amazing beaches to choose from here, and thankfully all of the ones we chose were more or less sand free! We passed through the…
Beach hopping.
Back in Australia, I’m not much of a beach goer. Not that we don’t have stunning beaches back home. Let’s face it, they’re some of the best in the world. But it’s the sun! It’s bloody hot! And even though I have 50% Italian skin, after about an hour of it, I feel uncomfortable and…
Trulli, Madly, Deeply.
There’s not much to say about the trulli of Alberobello, in Puglia (Apulia in English) in Southern Italy. Only that they are SO CUTE! So compact. So Smurfy! As you drive into the area, they are dotted around the countryside…in the middle of olive groves, or atop generous farmhouses. Some are in rubble, others are…
The best meal of my life.
As a super-organised planner extraordinaire, having two nights un-accounted for in our trip was supposed to be a “hells yeah, I’m all free and breezy, and can be a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda girl” moment. But as we approached those two nights, where we needed to stay somewhere to break up the ten hour drive between Florence…
The Token Traveller 