travelling allrite

There must come a time when people learning to ski suddenly discover the exhilaration of weaving their way at speed down the slope and find a new addiction in their lives. At least that's what I suppose happens. After two hours of slipping and skidding, of trying to stay upright and not go too fast in the wrong direction I couldn't wait to get the frigging ski boots off. Same with the other two. Oh well, at least we've tried skiing once in our lives. Honestly, I don't want to go fast. You can keep your extreme sports, I'll stick to extremely boring. Don't believe me? Why do you think we were skiing anyway? We'd already decided to drive to Jindabyne. What to do but catch Australia's highest altitude train line, the Skitube? When looking up how to catch it I just so happened to find that ski lesson packages were still available on the weekend. After feeling a bit left out during our winter trip to Japan we thought we might as well give it ...

From the hot sun  and beaches of Botany Bay to the chill waters of Lake Jindabyne overlooked by snow capped mountains. Along the way we had lunch at Ikea in Canberra, sat behind slow cars and saw many police. Finding dinner in Jindabyne was difficult with almost everywhere booked out. Ended up with Thai takeaway hastily eaten in the cold outside. Tomorrow we head into the mountains.

It's nearing the time for the airport to sleep. Once I would dream of being inside that terminal, excited for the journey to begin. Now I would worry what the darkness hides. But earlier at the traveller's time I still felt the desire. Either way it is for nothing. I'm not flying anywhere. Just spending a night in our favourite hotel in a room overlooking the airport, the city and the smooth waters of Botany Bay. It is still the beginning of a journey. Tomorrow we head down to the snow. Driving.

It's my goal to visit the compass points of Japan's railway system, from the North, East, West and South. I'm trying a more dynamic way of sharing updates about this trip, so if you want to follow me please go to allrite.at/blog Update 27 September 2017 I've finished writing almost 30,000 words of text of the trip and am compiling it along with images and video into Stories which I will release on a separate site. It's a huge process! I may also publish each day separately on this blog in future.

Have you always dreamed of flying in the utmost luxury, served the finest wines and dining on the best foods while resting comfortably while you soar between the continents? I know I have. So read on for my review of flying full fare first class on the world's best airlines. It's too expensive.

It sometimes seems a bit incongruous to have visited museums in distant countries while neglecting their local counterparts. We've taken Alex to science centres in places as distant as Paris and Tokyo, but never looked around the ANSTO Discovery Centre fifteen minutes down the road. To be fair he's done vacation activities there before and B and I went on a tour of the old nuclear reactor before he was born. But this was the first time that Alex's activities were actually held in the Discovery Centre, allowing us to have a look around. It's pretty small and there isn't that much to see without going on a tour of the facilities. However, I was captivated by my all time favourite science demonstration, a cloud chamber showing the trails of particles as they pass through a liquid. Meanwhile, Alex built Lego WeDo robots. You can't get much more local than your own suburb. Last term Alex studied some of the local history of Illawong, a suburb that...