Ashfield

20-29/5 Heading home
Our visit to Venice over, we took a vaporetto to the station and had a five hour train ride to Rome, a bit longer than expected due to flooding in northern Italy having affected train services around Bologna and Florence. It was blue skies, snow on the mountains we could see from the Venice lagoon, and the last of the pretty Tuscan countryside before the big city again. We had a five minute walk to Casa di Amy http://www.lacasadiamy.com/ , a family-run place that owns several apartments that they’ve turned each one into three-room ensuite accommodation with a common hallway, quite clever really, all within one block dating back to (I think) 1883, a pretty courtyard and an office area. We stayed there five years ago and other friends have been there too, very handy to transport and eating places. Covid has changed things though, they used to have a really nice breakfast but don’t offer it any more, and our room wasn’t as nice, but it was economical regardless.

Pete’s knee was a bit sore and since it was after 3pm we decided to get the hop on/hop off bus from round the corner to fill in time, ended up doing almost two rounds because part way through we got the front top seat with a great view. Colosseum, Forum, St Peter’s dome in the distance, and other sights, lots of tourists everywhere – and dozens of tiny electric cars, quite a few of them parked at right angles to the rest of the parked cars.

We had KFC for tea, and spent the evening in our room with gelato for dessert and a complimentary bottle of Prosecco from the management, watched a saved TV series and that was it – Europe ended on Friday morning after the morning’s short train trip to Fiumicino airport.

The flights to Sydney via Dubai were long (7 hours, 3 hours stopover, 14 hours) though the check-in process in Rome was incredible: we were off the train, walk to the terminal, had a quick snack, checked in, through immigration and x-rays, all within 65 minutes. Puts Auckland to shame.

We got to Sydney at 10pm Saturday night, met by Jen, and a quiet Sunday with a picnic at the park and just family time.

Monday 22/5 – off we went in two cars to Bowral, lovely town of around 12,000 people in the southern highlands between Sydney and Canberra, lots of autumn colours, nice houses (some with big gardens full of trees), a really good looking hospital with mainly two-storey brick buildings, seems to be quite new – Nelson hospital should be so lucky! Our Air BnB in Bowral was very comfortable, plenty of room for us all, outlook onto a creek with autumn trees, ducks, we saw a couple of coloured parrots, magpies.

The creek – a warning in the house book that there’s a ‘one in a hundred year flood risk’ and instructions for safe evacuation! And driving round the area we’ve seen water depth warnings with depth gauges showing two meters high, makes you wonder.

Holiday time so on Tuesday it was the playground and a big walk for two boys with their dad and granddad. Had a nice lunch at a place called Dirty Jane’s https://www.dirtyjanes.com/, definitely not how it sounds. It’s an enormous vintage store full of everything from vintage clothes to new jewellery, an old merry-go-round horse, old and new homeware, furniture…….you name it and I’m sure it will be in that shop.

Took a drive after that to a winery Vince had been to for a work function, Bendooley Estate, which has a very nice café as well as a bookshop selling new and second-hand books – apparently they just roll the bookshelves away when it’s needed for a function https://bendooleyestate.com.au/book-barn/. I could have spent a lot longer looking around the shelves, they had everything. Definitely not Founders book sale. There's a simple lawn area, garden with daffodils up, it will be a mass of yellow in a few weeks.

Wednesday we had a walk in the morning and in the afternoon Pete went to the Don Bradman Museum https://internationalcrickethall.com/, cricket fans eat your heart out, he said it was excellent; Don Bradman comes from Bowral.

Pete and I are going to stay Thursday night with friends ex-Singapore and on Friday the Brisbane rellies will be in town for the weekend so we’ve got lots more family time coming up before heading back home on Monday, back to real life.Read more