The past two weeks have seen Mr Shallot and I complete a food, family and friends tour of the Eastern Seaboard of Australia. Landing in Sydney, driving to Canberra the following day, back to Sydney the day after, the Gold Coast a few days later (Mr Shallot achieving a personal best in the World Championship Triathlon), Melbourne for a night and then back to the Gold Coast.

I’m ready for a sleep-in now.

Thanks to everyone who made time to see, feed and / or house us over this time. This was a longer trip than what we normally take to visit which meant we were also able to fit in a few of our favourite things. In no particular order:

• Dinner at Café Pacifico – I haven’t seen frozen margaritas here yet
• Breakfast at Bondi
• Breakfast at Hopscotch (which now has some other name)
• Lunch at the Pyrmont Fish Markets
• Eat a hamburger
• Have a cupcake from the bakery at Annandale
• Devour / inhale Smiths Salt ‘n’ Vinegar Chips
• Bike ride around Centennial Park and swimming with the swim club (these are Mr Shallot’s favourites, mine was to see these people rather than exercise)
• Barbeque – we were lucky and managed to have three, each would be worthy of a blog post in its own right with one involving people not being in a state to attend work the next day, another involving a snake bite (51 puncture wounds) and the other with my brother’s family and their new daughter.

Of the whole trip, the best part was having the opportunity to visit more people than usual. We’ve been in HK for nearly three years now and have continued making new friends. The great thing about being back home was that we didn’t need to make any effort on the ‘getting to know you’ front because we knew everyone already and had done so for quite a long period of time. It was picking up were we left off. We all had new stories to tell but it was like we had been on an extended holiday rather than living with mainly electronic contact over the past few years.

Another highlight was having both of Mr Shallot’s Best Men in Melbourne with their wives so we could meet the latest addition to the Melbourne family. This was the first time we had all been together since our wedding four years ago.

It was also great to see so many people turn up to support Mr Shallot at the triathlon. Having a group this size meant that we could easily be heard over some of the other cheer squads! Thanks for coming. The next one is in Hamburg…

I’m looking forward to starting running again to shift some of what now seems to have appeared on my stomach to drop off on the national park or beach.

* Thanks to Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo for writing this tune. Portnoy sung it as the theme from Cheers. These two can also be thanked for the Punky Brewster theme tune.