Homeward bound...

In just a few hours we'll be driving to San Francisco Airport for our flight home to Sydney. A little over 10 months ago, on 29 March 2010, we boarded our first flight, from Melbourne to Bangkok and set off on our 'Beeg' adventure.

Twenty-three countries later, countless capital cities, small towns and villages, hotels, hostels (and a few guest bedrooms) our pockets are nearly empty, but we are rich with experiences and wonderful memories.
For both of us the highlight of our trip was our month in that cultural extravaganza and melting pot called India with Mexico, Morocco and Turkey close behind. Traversing the countryside of Europe in spring and summer by train was marvellous. I can still taste the flakey roti canai in Kuala Lumpar, the 40 rupee ($1) veg thalis in Mumbai, bread dumplings in Prague and the fresh alpine water I sipped in an icey river in Rueun, Switzerland.

The gods have smiled down on us: we avoided revolution in Egypt and Thailand (just), the big freeze in Manhattan, mad taxi drivers, pushy carpet salesmen and dangling powerlines. The ash cloud may have delayed our visit to Europe, but it gave us the opportunity to detour and savour Malaysia.

We have sipped mint tea in the Moroccan desert, spicey garam chai on the train from Mumbai to Goa and sweet apple tea overlooking the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, Turkey. We have lingered in cafes in Delhi, Cairo, Budapest, Paris and New York and watched the locals pass by on foot, in rickshaws, on bicycles, on camels, horses, donkeys and in long, black limousines. We have seen the most wonderful old and ancient architecture - the pyramids in Cairo, the Taj Mahal in Agra, the leaning tower of Pisa and the Mayan ruins of Palenque, Tulum and Chichen Itza; and modern concrete, glass and steel landscapes of Manhattan and Mexico City. We have passed through dramatic snow covered mountain ranges in the Swiss alps and hiked through the green hills of Mount Abu in Rajastan.

It has been mostly wonderful, sweet and charming to dip our toes in the world; at times, scary and depressing.

In all though it has been the greatest of privileges to set out on this adventure. To all my friends and family who took the time out to read this blog, I hope you enjoyed reading it. It was a delight to write it.

Till the next beeg adventure....

Smors by the fire, wine tasting in Napa valley

We spent the last couple of days in Sebastopol, where my cousin Ruth, daughter Lily and her fiancee Ross have a home. It is a beautiful part of the world, about 60 miles North of San Francisco, in wine country. Sebastopol got its name following a prolonged bar room brawl in the 1850s, which locals at the time (who were of Russian origin) likened to a British siege of the then-Russian seaport of 'Sevastopol' during the Crimean War.
Today you are more likely to slip on an organic apple peel than get into a bar fight. The town is full of organic groceries, bookstores and cosy places to eat. Very tranquil and homely.

My cousins shares their house with two goats, about twenty chickens and three cats. On Saturday night we roasted hotdogs and veggie kebabs over the wood-burning fireplace in the lounge and for dessert made "Smors". For those of you uninitiated, Smors are a great American campfire tradition where you toast marshmallows over the fire and make a sandwich with chocolate, marshmallow and two sweet plain biscuits called "Graham Crackers". A winning combination! We had a really wonderful night sitting around the fireplace, throwing the occasional log into the fire to keep it burning, exchanging stories and eating smors.

On Sunday my cousin Lily celebrated her sixth birthday with her friends. The highlight for them was smashing the rainbow shaped pinata. Those little kids held nothing back as they smashed at the pinata with a wooden pole, yelling with delight...all the adults kept a safe distance. When the pinata finally felt apart there was a mad dash and scramble among the kids to collect as many sweets as possible. I should say that while most kids seem to go a little psychotic when it comes to sweets, Lily and her friends were very happy to swap with each other so that everyone had a fair share.

Today we drove out to Napa valley to sample some of its famous wines and to have lunch at a French bistro. In took only 40 minutes to travel to green hills with rocky outcrops and endless rows of grape vines. While the vines were bare (it's winter here), in between the vines and sprinkled across many fields and hills were bright yellow wild mustard flowers, painting a canvas of Van Gogh yellow - Napa's answer to Provence's fields of purple lavender perhaps.

We stopped for a wine tasting at the Silverado Vineyard. An nteresting piece of trivia - the winery was established by Diane Miller and her husband. Diane Miller's maiden name was Disney and she was in fact the oldest daughter of Walt Disney. From the balcony overlooking the vineyards we could just make out the little house where the wife of the famous animator once lived. The highlight though of our visit (beside the tasting) was being given a personal tour of the winery by the winemaker himself Jon Emmerich and sampling a Merlot straight out of the vat.


We ate lunch at a fantastic french restaurant called Bistro Jeanty in the historic town of Yountville. Without a doubt the best meal I have eaten in the US. Delicious French cuisine cooked perfectly - I had steak entricote with bernaise sauce, Larna had mussels. For dessert, we shared what we both agreed was a very fine bread and rum pudding, perhaps the finest known to humanity, which I washed down with a glass of Amaretto. We all (bar my uncle Colin who was driving) dozed off on the drive back to San Francisco.



Well just two days to go until we head home. Ten months of travelling and it's all nearly all over. The real world approaches rapidly!