30 May Tasmania

Today we took an early flight to Hobart, Tasmania. We arrived there around 9 o'clock in the morning.

We picked up our 4 wheel drive rental car, a Nissan X-Trail and drove to Strahan, to visit our cousin Margo and her family, her husband Mark and her daughter Marisa. Marisa who is six years old is actually helping me write this blog at the moment.


We had a good drive to Strahan, we got there in something like 5 and a half hours and we saw some beautiful scenery on the way. On the way we stopped in Hamilton for a coffee and a cake for Nathalie and me and a bacon and egg pastry for Marja.


We also stopped at a sort of museum called The Wall in the Wilderness that had a lot of nice wooden sculptures of an artist called Greg Duncan. We stay at Margo's house in a really nice cottage of our own with a comfortable woodfire. We went to bed early because we were tired after having to get up at 4.15 in the morning to catch our plane.

27 - 29 May in Sydney

Here is a quick update for the last couple of days. We stayed at Annemarie's house for one night were we also got to meet Leonie.

The 28th of May we went towards tante Janny's house to celebrate Annalise's, Marjo's daughters 3rd birthday.
Today we went to Featherdale Wildlife Park, were we got to meet kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, wombats and a lot of different birds. Later on we went towards Sydney by train and again met Leonie. Tante Janny, Sonja and Marja went sightseeing, while Leonie and I went shopping. In the evening we again had dinner at Janny's house with Marjo and Ben and some of the kids. We tried out kangaroo meat .

Sydney 27th may

Already at a quarter to six in the morning we left Roelies house to cath the 8.15 plane to Sydney.
Annemarie was waiting for us at Sydney airport and drove us via "the Sydney operahouse" and "Harbour Bridge" to her place.

After a walk around the golftracks at the beach we relaxed the rest of the day.

Brisbane 26th of may

Today we went to Surfers Paradise.
We went swimming, the water was 22 C. Quite nice, although the wind was a little bit cold.
The waves were quite strong, so Sonja and I went under water. Then we had to sunbathe on the beach til we were dry again.

Afterwards we walked over the beach to Broad beach and took the monorail to the casino. Luckily we were more interested in shopping than in gambling, that is why we went straight through the casino to the shopping mall "Pacific fair".

Caroline drove us back to Roelie and Tony.
Roelie had made her speciality, ravioli with ricotta. Delicious.

25 May Brisbane/Gold Coast

After a good nights sleep Henk came to pick us up from Roelie to take us to his house on the Gold Coast in Robina. They have a beautiful house right on a lake with a lot of terrasses and a swimming pool. They also have a lot of animals: 2 guinea pigs, 2 cats and a dog. Marja and I went for a little walk in the neighboorhood but Australian roads are not really made for walking. After their daughter Rhonda came home from work we had a delicious bbq and some nice glasses of wine

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24 May Brisbane, Australia

After a nightflight from Tokyo we arrived a bit tired in Sydney. We took a domestic flight there to fly to Brisbane. Our family was waiting at the airport.
We drove to Roelies place and had lunch together with Henk, Kay, Jed, Paris, Roelie and Tony.

In the evening we had dinner together with Roelie and Tony and their children Caroline and Daniel. Caroline's family and Daniels girlfriend were also there.

Last day in Tokyo

Then it already was the last day in Tokyo. We ate a japanese breakfast at our japanese inn again. We got served the breakfast again, but now the old lady put a little fire under a special pan for each of us. We each got an omelett.

Afterwards we packed our luggage and checked out of the hotel. We can just say that it was a marvellous experience, very good and very friendly personell.

Later on we left our suitcases in a locker at Tokyo central station. Nathalie planned to meet a Japanese friend from her exchanging in the USA (Daiji) and we wanted to take a look at the imperial palace and gardens.We were lucky, everything was closed so we went around the whole imperial palace and saw almost nothing. (but walked about 6-7 km).At 20.30 hour we took the Quantas flight from Narita airport to Sydney airport for a new long journey.

Yokohama

The day started very early for us at Homeikan hotel. At around 7 the ground beneath us started shaking. This was because of an earthquake that had it's epi senter outside the coast of Honshu (the biggest island of Japan) at 5.50 am with a 4.8 on the Richter scale. Of course we did not feel the earth quake as an 4.8, maybe more like a 4 or less. And we were a bit surprised, but soon again fell back to sleep. We did not sleep for long however...an old lady who worked at the hotel brought us a Japanese breakfast. It was pretty good with both rice,tofu and also small sausages.
Later we took the train to Yokohama to once again meet with Kikuko and her mother. They live in Yokohama so they showed us around in what is the second largest city in Japan. Here we got to see Chinatown and taste Chinese food and sweets.
We also got a boat tour around a part of Yokohama's harbour with it's skyscrapers. Then we had to say goodbye and take the train back to Tokyo.

It was really nice of Kikuko and her mother to show us around and we appreciated the Japanese sweets and snacks we got which will be eaten very quickly.
Back at the hotel we ate some of the sweets, tried the warm tub, ate some sushi (not Sonja) and tried out Kirin, the Japanese beer

Some sweets we got

Just had to do this...greatings from Japan!

Saturday 21 May
Today we travelled back to Tokyo with the Sinkansen to meet with Kiku, the Japanese girl who stayed at Marja and Huub in Norway for almost 1 year as an exchange student. We met her at Tokyo Station and she took us to the Senso-ji temple in the centre of Tokyo. It was really crowded with people everywhere. The temple was impressive but in a cosy way. Afterwards we went to Roppongi Hills where you could look out over the whole of Tokyo from a height of 270 . We then went for dinner in a typical Japanese restaurant and had shabu shabu which is Japanese fondue with thin slices of beef and a lot of vegetables. It was delicious. We said goodbye to Kiku (and her mother who joined us later) and took a taxi to our hotel named Homeikan, a ryokan, a sort of Japanese inn, with a lot of traditions.

Kyoto

Today we saw a lot of Kyoto.
We visited the Kiyomizu temple, the Sanjusangen-do temple, the Kinkakuji temple and Gion Corner teater.


We used the whole day and took the buss through a big part of Kyoto.
A lot of schoolgirls and boys were also visiting the temples. It looked like it was almost all the pupils from whole Kyoto and around. They are as noisy as dutch and norwegian schoolkids.



In the evening we saw japanese teater and dance.

19 May Kyoto

Today we travelled to Kyoto with the Hikari Shinkansen, one of the bullet trains. Fortunatedly we had a good sleep last night, because we missed a night the nigth before because of the time difference between Holland and Japan. On the way we saw Mount Fuji, but only because the conductor told us to look out of the window. We also learned about making a line in Japan, we were the first to line up for our carriage of the bullet train and all the Japanese people lined up behind us. Only when the train was about to arrive we discovered that our line was the only line that wasn't close to the track. All the Japanese people followed us out of courtesy and didn't say anything to correct us.
In Kyoto we stay at a very cosy guesthouse. We tried to visit some temples today but unfortunately we were to late. We'll try again tomorrow. We did try out a lot of buses today, we saw about the whole of Kyoto already.

travelling from Amsterdam to Tokyo

We started at Amsterdam airport schiphol and had to take a picture of the dutch cups delfts blauw


15 hours later did we arrive in Tokyo, quite exhausted but it was just 9.30 in the morning.

Amsterdam

The journey has started! At least for my mom (Marja) and me. We flew from Trondheim to Amsterdam today to stay one night at my aunt's (Sonja) house before taking off to London and then off to the far east= Tokyo. The flight time tomorrow should be 11 hours and 40 minutes which is the longest flight we are going to have on this trip. We may not look too much forward to the flight itself, but arriving to a totally different country with a different culture is worth the flight.

Meeting with the family at La Place outside Amsterdam

Questions?

Why is this blog in english?
-We live in the Netherlands, Norway and will be visiting family in Australia. We tried to write in three languages but that will be to complicated.

Why are there flags in the last blog and which country do the flags represent?
-I thought it would be nice with some colors that show our homecountry and the countries we will visit.
-The flags are from Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, Australia, NewZealand and Hawaii