My Brother David's Wedding

Long time no post, My brother got married on March 24 at Hunter Valley Gardens here in the Hunter Valley, (Australia for those reading from overseas) and it was a great day and night.
Here are some pics.

Kranny's Vineyards trip '06

My friend Geoff organises a mini bus vineyards trip every year for his birthday and they are always a lot of fun with shenanigans to be had. This year was no exception.

The birthday boy Geoff (centre) at 9am


Some random port /cream thingy bday drink


Mmm Grapes


Frisky Five pose for their latest album cover



The bus load at lunch


That's a paddlin'


That's right 6 shots of beer down the hatch!

LIVE

LIVE were back in Newcastle to promote their latest album Songs from Black Mountain, and as per usual I went to see them. I think its the 5th or 6th time that I have seen them now, everytime they have toured I have gone to see them. I seem to enjoy their albums a lot.

Hong Kong

Last stop on the adventure was Hong Kong where we stayed with a mate Nathan that was working there. Very very humid place in August, but cool to see the mixture of brand new skycrapers with super old apartment accomodation. All walks of life living together.

Local apartments

There was a street which was dedicated to goldfish stores!

Ok then, that's it as far as my overseas adventures go... for this trip anyway. I've decided that I am going to keep the blog site going anyway and will occasionaly post some random photos and posts of what I have been up to around the traps.

Tokyo

As mentioned in the last post, Nick and I stopped into Tokyo on the way home. I really loved this city. The people are so friendly, probably one of the friendliest races I have come across. It's just excellent to be in a country/city where the culture and traditions are so distinct. I loved the fact that hardly anyone speaks English, because it seems to me that in every place I have visited around the world, there has always been English to fall back on even if it's broken English.

One of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the world




I love Sushi - even when I don't know what I am eating


Outside the Emperor's palace - There was large versions of Bonsai trees!



Shibuya

I'll post some Hong Kong pics soon.

Back In Australia

So after one of the greatest years of my life I am back in familiar territory - Newcastle, Australia. I got back last Tuesday and it was great to see my family again and get together with some of the boys. On the way home from Europe, Nick and I stopped into Tokyo for a few days, (one of my favourite cities in the world!) and then Hong Kong before getting to the mother land.

Some of the boys

I will be putting up a few more posts with photos of Tokyo & Hong Kong when I get a chance.

I would also just like to say thank you to all the friends that I met along the way for making it all the better and to my friends back home that stayed in contact :)

You go 11 months without putting on a kilo......

and then you hit Spain and put on 5 Kilos in 4 weeks! Galicia comes at a price.... Time to start doing a lot of running once I get back.

I went on a tour of Real Madrid's Stadium yesterday, below is a pic of my extra weight :)

Impressive

Copenhagen & Århus - Denmark

Whilst on my "Round Spain Trip" over a month ago, I met 2 Danish girls who studied in Århus in Denmark. I was invited to come up and visit them in August so after saying goodbye to Galicia I flew up to Denmark for 4 days. By pure luck, Ben was travelling around on his own and was going to be in Copenhagen the afternoon I arrived as I wasn't going to Århus until the next morning.

Copenhagen was nice from what I saw of it...

After a night of eating and drinking with Ben (pretty standard when we get together) Saturday morning it was time to catch a 3.5 hour train to Århus to meet the girls. For Denmark's 2nd largest city, it's actually not as big as I expected and quite cosy.

Nice park

Windmill

L to R - Julie and Camilla enjoying a small pizza

I'm back in Spain now in Madrid. Time is flying unfortunately. I will be here until Monday when I fly to London. Then Wednesday it's goodbye Europe.... direction Tokyo for 2 days, Hong Kong for 2 days and then back to Australia. I'm not sure if I want to head back permanently but I guess only time will tell.