Sunday 7 July, 2019 – Weather Cool but not Raining
We decided that we would BBQ some Quail which we dutifully picked up from Mick at the Vic market. Quail is known to be quite fiddly to handle.
It was quite delicious but as indicated quite fiddly to prepare.
5 July, 2019 – Weather chilly but not raining
Friday, 21 June, 2019 – Weather – in Melbourne – Yukky
Yes, the weather is definitely ordinary – cold, wet, miserable with very strong wind gusts.
As for the title of this post, it is not about the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, but rather me getting back into WordPress posts again after what seems a very long break. So here goes, with me focusing on Food and Wine as usual. At the same time, my friend and accountant, Neil Bishop, is in North America and I will be including photos etc. from Neil’s trip which has looked interesting so far.
We spent another post Easter in the Barossa Valley for the bi-annual Food and Wine festival and that would have been an ideal event to have posted lots of pages. However, I failed to do so, though given time, I imagine I can create some of it from the photos I took. For the moment I am focusing on special cooking, and drinking, primarily happening at Chateau Lara.
After dithering at this point for several days, I have decided to close this Post and move on to the many others that I can do, for myself, and Neil’s as well. Probably my loyal followers have got tired of waiting but here we are.
Doc
Home – Peter Allen
Wednesday, 31 October, 2018 – Smooth flight, weather OK in Melbourne
Loyal followers of this Blog. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot see the photos and / or the captions or alignments are messed up, please go to http://www.beauperi.com directly and all those problems should go away.
The meal service begins after midnight, hence the allocation of this part of the journey until the 31st.
Although I am not interested in any of the movies in the selection and really needed some sleep, there is a stupid Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson movie on at a nearby seat called the Skyscraper. or something like that. It sucked me in although I never totally understood what was going on.
Eventually I crashed big time. I had had some sleep on the first leg but was obviously quite tired as I slept through the lights on and breakfast service and was only awakened around when we were going to land.
When we land in Melbourne, I go on to the baggage area. The Immigration camera once again rejects me so I go into a regular line but the wait was not too bad and the Lady immigration officer was really nice.
I grab my suit case and go into the rest room, disabled of course, and get some fresh clothes as the 32+ hour of flying had left me in quite a mess. Julie has to pick up the pre-ordered duty free.
When I get out of the rest room I am surprised to have Julie waiting there with her bags on a trolley. The kids had grabbed her bags off of the carousel and put them directly on the trolley. They then left to catch an Uber home. We go through customs fairly quickly and are not searched. We go to take an elevator to the first floor where the Uber rides are from but there is a big queue so we take a taxi instead, Finally home, it was nice to be back.
Observations
* I was surprised at how many same sex couples that we saw along the way in Europe. They were in a variety of age groups from young adults to very senior people.
* Many of the same sex couples were mixed race as well.
* We were quite lucky with the weather much of the journey with “heat waves” caused by the “non-existent” global warming.
* Two of the absolute highlights of the trip were late additions and ones I had been quite skeptical about. The castle outside Versailles where we stayed with the tremendous Emma and family and Luxembourg for different reasons.
* The Kids were very useful in handling our luggage. They did have there share of fights along the way.
* The Peter Allen reference. Although we saw and did lots of nice things, in general Australia has just as good and most of the time better. For example, I could not get a decent Bratwurst in Berlin but at the Vic Market the next day after we returned I had one from the Bratwurst Shop that is really good.
Bonus
Our friends David and Kate had gone one two trips with Captains Choice while we were away. They left before Julie had departed and got back about the same time as us. So to “prove our toughness” we meet them at Dainty Sichuan in South Yarra for dinner that night. They had been to the similar areas as us in Scandinavian and around, in more depth and well before we got there. There second trip was all over South America in a private jet. We really enjoyed the food at DS, the Ants climbing trees fantastic, fish slices, etc. There were no leftovers which was unusual.
Anyway, here are some of their photos from the Panama part of their trip.
Plus a couple of extra shots from Julie in London
Tuesday, 30 October, 2018 – We are inside the airports but go through severe wind and rain squalls before we land in Singapore.
Loyal followers of this Blog. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot see the photos and / or the captions or alignments are messed up, please go to http://www.beauperi.com directly and all those problems should go away.
The meal service begins after midnight, hence the allocation of this part of the journey until the 30th. We are flying in a crappy old A003 or something like that with one advantage of a little more storage space but other than that not a nice plane.
The food service begins with a chicken Ballantine which I definitely did not need. There was a decent Western Australian Shiraz from Xanadu which was OK.
As we come near Singapore, we are flying around and around in circles. This is due to severe storms and thunderheads. The plane gets one severe thumping.
Once we are inside the terminal, and there was some was some wait for a gate, we bypass the wheelchairs that have been sent to Julie and I and go directly to the lounge we are flying out from the same terminal at which we landed. The kids get off not long after us due to the efforts of the server in London.
Julie manages to convince the people at the lounge with her Doctors letters that Ryan and Tania were our official carers and after some hassles they are eventually allowed into the lounge with us.
I make myself a couple of Bloody Marys and then find some Australian Shiraz. I check out the food which was again quite ordinary. I had a bit of wonton noodle soup which was quite good but nothing else appealed.
We go off to the plane again board near 10:00, it is the famous SQ227 that I had flown so many times over the years. There is a decent wait until takeoff with all the other planes leaving at the same time but the bad weather has passed and the eventual takeoff was smooth.