where I have been

I have been AWOL for some weeks, but I have a good excuse! We went on a family holiday to Paris, Portugal, Spain and Hong Kong Disneyland.

We started with three days in Paris – which is not nearly enough, but we did pack a lot in. We stayed in the Latin Quarter, which is a lovely part of Paris. It was wonderful to be able to enjoy summer fruit such as peaches, plums and nectarines. We also enjoyed croissants for breakfast and baguettes for lunch. Yum! Among many other things, we saw a fabulous exhibition of Valentino clothing at the decorative arts museum. What that man can do with fabric is just incredible!

We then flew to Lisbon and spent a few days there. I particularly loved Monasteiro dos Jeronimos, a monastery spectacular Manueline architecture. We hired a car and drove up into the north of Portugal. We stopped off at towns along the way, having a night here and a night there. Then we came back down through the middle of Portugal, with our final night in Evora.

While in Portugal I did some research for a future book on embroidery. There is so much lovely embroidery in Portugal. We had a great time in Portugal, and found the people there to be wonderful, generous people.

We then drove across to Andalusia in the south of Spain. We were based in Seville, and from there explored Cordoba and Granada. It was HOT HOT HOT! The Moorish architecture was fabulous and we took hundreds and hundreds of photos. In some of these palaces etc, you just didn’t know where to look. You’d think “this is amazing” and then the next room would be even better.

From there we drove back to Lisbon and flew via London, to Hong Kong. We stayed at Disneyland and our kids loved it. It was perfect for their ages, and was nice and small, so easy to get around. Our kids were treated as minor celebrities, due to their complexions. They were stared at, photographed, picked up, kissed, passed around, pointed at, whispered about etc all day. It was funny at the beginning of the day, but by the end it was wearing a bit thin. We could sort of understand why celebrities punch photographers. It was unrelenting…

We had a great time, and are finding the return to the cold Sydney winter a bit of a shock!