Strawberries

My favourite : )

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Quarteira, Algarve – Portugal

Steve is feeling slightly better although he is starving – he has only eaten a couple of plates of ice cream in the past three days.

We decided to venture to Quarteira which is the next settlement along from Vale do Lobo. It has a really long beach promenade which we strolled along.

The area of Quarteira dates back to Roman times where it’s charter was granted back in 1297. It has evolved from a simple fishing village into one of the major tourist centres in the Algarve.

The beach was lovely & there were lots of little eating places along the promenade. Lots of pizza & pasta restaurants. There are also a lot of seafood dishes on the menus given they form a lot of the traditional Portuguese dishes. Sardines are a traditional Portuguese dish.

We stopped off & ordered a frango (chicken) pizza which Steve managed to eat bar the crust. Hopefully the start of his recovery.

They had espresso coffee on the menu & soy milk so I ordered a soy latte. Not bad.

Nice to be out & about again. Might pop down to the beach for the rest of the afternoon now : )

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Algarve – Portugal

Unfortunately we haven’t been too far in the last couple of days. Steve has a very infected and inflamed throat. He hasn’t been able to eat or drink for the past couple of days and has done a lot of sleeping! We took a trip into Faro yesterday and navigated our way to Santa Maria which is a private clinic for locals and foreigners. The Doctor was great and prescribed some antibiotics – it will take up to 4 days to sort itself out though.

I have been roaming around our local neighbourhood though checking it all out. Have been for a run the last couple of mornings and then embarked on a do it at home gym program! It is a lovely spot and the temperature is very pleasant – it says 20 degrees but feels a lot warmer than that in the middle of the day. It is set to rise to 26 degrees on Sunday.

Hopefully we can get out and about tomorrow if Steve is feeling better. Meanwhile I will continue to enjoy the R & R.

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Vale do Lobo, Algarve – Portugal

Body clocks back to normal.  Went for a walk around our neighbourhood this morning.  There are some very large houses with beautiful grounds and pools around.  The sea is about a 5 minute walk and we checked out one of the two golf courses in our neighbourhood.  So far so good : )

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Lisbon – Portugal

We arrived into Lisbon at 8am on Tuesday morning. We flew Vueling Air which I think is a Spanish airline. There are so many different airlines over here which we’ve never heard of. Anyway the flight was good and all went to plan. Got picked up at the airport by the rental car company to go get our car. All good apart from the fuel tank was empty – a little trick by these rental car companies – you then don’t have to bring it back full but more often than not you don’t risk that so they end up with the gain. Anyway if driving a manual on the left hand side of the road in a city we’ve never been too wasn’t stressful enough we had to find a fuel station. Found a station, got fuel, dialled in the address in Algarve and off we went in circles until we eventually found our way to the highway heading south.

Crossed this amazing bridge – picture below. We had about 250km of straight roads. The Portugese are very good at building bridges and viaducts across streams & valleys – I say streams because they were quite small in comparison to the bridges.

The coast eventually came into view so we knew we were getting close to our destination. The weather is very pleasant – blue skies and about 20 degrees. The forecast for the next 4 weeks is more of the same with the temperatures increasing daily. I think I can live with that.

Found our little abode & settled in before navigating to the supermarket to stock up on supplies. Not too hard. Found ourselves asleep again on the couch about 6pm, woke at 11pm and went to bed. Second night in a row doing this and not having dinner.

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Melbourne – Australian Tennis Open

Given that part of our adventure this year is to take in all the tennis majors I thought I better skip back in time to January 2014 when we went to Melbourne for the Australian Tennis Open.  We had a great 4 days at the tennis and saw Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic and the like play.  We went with Jeffo, Harty, Pete and Kaz – it was a laugh a minute – normally at Steve’s expense : )

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Welcome to Europe

We are now in Paris after a great couple of flights.  MH130 got us to KL safely and then it was onto MH002 to Paris.  MH002 was one of Malaysian Air’s new A380’s – what a plane.  The lie flat beds were fantastc and we both managed quite a bit of sleep.  It was also a first for Stevie – an alcohol free flight!  He went straight to sleep and they didn’t serve champagne with breakfast – obviously still under Malaysian control because I am sure the French would have!

We took the Air France bus to Orly airport where we are staying at the Hilton before flying to Lisbon in Portugal early tomorrow morning.ImageImageImageImageImageImageImage

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Malaysian Air – MH130

I hope this plane doesn’t take any detours into the Indian Ocean. Saw the pilots checking in & was tempted to have a word!

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Auckland International Airport

After a busy morning picking Mum up from the bus, having breakfast with her & then dropping her at the domestic terminal we are finally all checked in & ready to go.

The Taylor family minus Preston dropped us at the airport. Preston wrote us a lovely card though telling us to keep calm & think cool!

Relaxing in the lounge waiting to board our flight – it’s finally happening : )

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The Farewell Parties continue…

On Sunday the gym girls put on a long lunch under the trees at Vicky & Hira’s – what a magical afternoon. The very talented gym girls put together a song & dance using classic Abba songs & some very classic moves!

It was a fabulous afternoon – more wonderful memories created. Will miss you all very much x

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