Monthly Archives: December 2023

Scandinavia, Santorini and Ireland 2023

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November 2021 was our 30th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we’d booked our first cruise with Viking, exploring Scandinavia.

Then we got the blasted pandemic.

September 2023 I turned 60, more reason to celebrate. So, as the planets aligned, we took that cruise. We boarded at Bergen, Norway cruised to Eidfjord, Stavanger, and Oslo. Aalborg and Copenhagen, Denmark. Berlin, Germany. Bornholm, Denmark. Gdansk, Poland and finally Sweden, where we disembarked in Stockholm.

We loved all these places. Bergen was fantastic. Copenhagen stunning. We learned a lot about Norway and the oil industry at Stavanger. Oslo is also a beautiful city.

And icing on the cake was catching up with friends in Aalborg, who collected us from port and took us to their home for friendship and lunch, and to visit a local farmer (heaven for my husband). Lissi and Henning are so lovely. We met them in 1997 at an international farming conference, Eric met them again in the 2000s in the Netherlands, Henning came to Perth for another IFMA conference, and contact continued via Facebook 😁

I began this post from Gdansk, Poland. I’m a writer who spent six weeks overseas in 2023 (Ireland, Scandinavia and Santorini) and didn’t write. Months passed in 2023 without that rhythm. I anticipated that holidaying would reignite the joy; downtime, freed from the real world, with happy things to write about. But it didn’t make a difference, which is why I’m writing about mid-2023 travel in December.

I’ve enjoyed doing #nycmidnight and #WritingBattle challenges in 2023 and had a 48 hour challenge that began (Friday 9th June) while in Gdansk. I’d hoped that doing some blog travel posts would get the writing juices flowing in preparation, but still I didn’t post. 

We began our six weeks away in Cork, Ireland. When we visit the northern hemisphere we always try to fit Ireland into the itinerary. This time for me, it wasn’t about catching up with people. It was being, breathing, and feeling Ireland that I needed. We settled on a beautiful location in Cork, far enough away that only the very willing would visit with us. And luckily and thankfully my Byrne cousin Kevin with his wife Fiona and my Shelley cousin Pamela and her mum (Aunty) Teresa came down. We spent 9 days at Roches Point, flew to Copenhagen for a couple of days before flying to Bergen to join the cruise.

Eric and I expected that we wouldn’t enjoy cruising and we didn’t really. As a cruise line, Viking was excellent. The staff were fantastic, food was great, scheduling was great. There were no kids, or gambling. 

We were uncomfortable with the degree of attention. I know, you moan when you don’t get service, but we’re complaining about too much. We don’t need someone to come to our room twice a day. We also don’t like scheduling. We’re too used to doing things at our own pace and in our own sweet time. We don’t plan to cruise again.

BUT I would like to cruise the Mekong. Might have to get over myself, hey! 😊

After cruising we spent 10 days in Santorini. We love that island. We first visited in 2013 on a Trafalgar Greek Island tour. We booked a studio apartment overlooking the Caldera, took buses all over, hired a car for one day for a bit more freedom to explore wider, had a beautiful sunset dinner at a winery and spent peaceful hours on our balcony, marvelling at the traffic winding up and down from the ferry (narrow winding roads and coach buses, make for entertaining viewing) while we chatted and read. 

I understand how lucky we are to be able to travel. Could we have paid more attention to saving for our retirement, sure. But we could be dead tomorrow. 

The world is not in a good place, and my joints are terrible. We don’t have an overseas trip planned for 2024. 

But since November 2022 we’ve visited Singapore, Scandinavia, Santorini, Ireland. I’ve been to Melbourne several times, Perth a couple, Tasmania also, so we don’t sit still. 

Once we’ve done the hard work to afford it. 

Norfolk Island 2023

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Norfolk Island is an idyllic place to visit. 

Norfolk has been on my radar as a possible writer’s retreat for years. Because Colleen McCullough lived there and if it was good enough for Coll … 😁

Colleen passed away in 2015 after forty odd years of living in and contributing to the Norfolk community. It seemed to me that she was an intellectual, perhaps at time impatient, who could also be very generous. She had a deeply creative streak, was prepared to put in the work and was loved by millions.

Colleen’s home is open to the public once a week (her husband still resides there, so measured out doses makes sense). I visited as I had some curiosity about how the great one lived. My three favourite things would be the two portraits of Colleen and her courtyard garden.

Did I write while on Norfolk? Yes, I did. About 12,500 words (over nine days). It helped that I had a couple of deadlines. A manuscript I’m working on via a Write Your Novel in six months course, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer’s Month) and a 2,000 word short story due for a Writing Battle.

We stayed at Sunset Villas which is gorgeous and well appointed. On the more luxurious cost end of accommodation. It was a beautiful, restful spot with glorious sunset views and our own pool. We booked through Stayz (VRBO).

I think I’ll come back to Norfolk, maybe next November, but will look around at other accommodation too. I don’t need to be spoiled to write but now that I have been 🤣 can I do without the luxury next time? To be discovered.

What we did

Apart from relaxing – reading, writing and for my husband, swimming – we saw some sights.

The cost of our accommodation included a small hire car so we were able to zip around at our leisure. It also included a complimentary orientation tour with Baunti Tours.

The orientation tour was a great setup for a sense of the island and took about three hours.

With Baunti we also did a fish fry, visited Colleen’s home and did the Lantern Lit Ghost Tour (with Rachel. Yikes!). Baunti had so much more on offer but we didn’t need to fill our time with doing things.

We also did a high tea luncheon at Forrester Court (clifftop) and a Tea Shire Drive through the one hundred acre reserve.

Our favourite coffee shop was The Orb for food and service and atmosphere.

On our own, we visited Kingston, the old penal settlement and right next to Emily Beach. We miss being near the sea in Albury, so we walked or brought our books down to spend time there.

We also drove up to Mt Pitt and Captain Cook’s lookout (separate days) for stunning views. Mt Pitt at sunset is recommended.

Also, Fitzy’s baked potatoes, waffles and gelato are delicious on the Lavender Farm premises, right in town.

Make sure you bring a good jumper (even a beanie) for the evening – although temperature wise that stays pretty even day and night. And although the UV index can run high, temperatures rarely exceed about 23 to 25 degrees Celsius.

Put Norfolk Island on your bucket list ❤️

A little Norfolk Island History

An ‘I was there for five minutes, so now I know stuff’ guide to the history.

  • Captain Cook found Norfolk Island on his second expedition around the world and named it after his benefactor’s wife. She never knew because she’d already died, but Captain Cook didn’t learn that until he got home.
  • Norfolk Island’s penal colonies were established twice.
    • The first was abandoned after about 26 years (burned to the ground on purpose) for a move to Tasmania.
    • Then 11 years later they decided Norfolk was a good idea after all and they returned to establish the meanest penal colony they could. Bastards!
  • Whaling was a thing for a while.
  • Norfolk Pine trees made a lot of export money for the island for a long time. Not any more.
  • Approximately one third of the population of Norfolk are descended from Fletcher Christian’s mutineers. That’s Fletch of the Mutiny on the Bounty fame.
    • He landed in Tahiti with his fellow mutineers but after a while they decided to move on (they were on the run). They took his men and their families, and some Tahitian natives to Pitcairn Island where they were predominantly nasty to each other, killing each other, due to their not being easy availability to food and supplies.
    • One of the mutineers taught his children to read with the only book around (you guessed it) the Bible and remarkably this taught those children how to be human and they helped retrain their fellow Pitcairn Islanders how to behave.
    • Things were pretty grim, so they appealed to the fatherland (England) to save them, which they did. They relocated them to Norfolk Island in 1856.
    • Those Pitcairn families (the children of the mutineers) were established in the homes left behind at the now defunct penal settlement – until about 1918 wen the government moved them out to elsewhere on the island because they wanted to preserve the history of the site.
    • Norfolk Island is an external territory of Australia (but when you travel there from Australia, it counts as international travel!).
  • Other interesting facts:
    • The main town area (Grid town) has a 40km/hr limit and all entries have cattle grids because cattle run free and they need to stop them entering the town CBD.
    • Outside of the town (other side of the cattle grids) the speed limit is 50km/hr due to narrow, winding, potholed roads with cattle roaming around.
    • Cows can graze all over the island at a cost to their owners of $145 per head per annum.
    • There is a Norfolk Island language.
    • They don’t lock cars (they claim, no crime).
    • And you can’t use international roaming. You need to purchase a local SIM card, except when you’re at your accommodation, if they have decent WIFI.