Parisian summer break

Visiting Paris on the August bank holiday weekend means two things - no Parisians in Paris, and long queues at the tourist sites, so it's different to other times of year. A definite highlight was the bike ride around the vast grounds of Versailles. The queues for the palace were way too much for us to bear, but a stroll through the gardens, past the fountains and down to the bike hire and we were away...

We rode along beautiful country lanes, past lovely ponds and Marie Antoinette's digs...

I'm the little speck you can see

The palace in the background

Bulli surveys the beautifully laid out Orangerie

The fountains dance to classical music

Meanwhile, back in the city - Place Madeleine

Sacre Coeur watches over the quiet city

I love to ride my bicycle

Bulli cruising past the thatched cottages

Well it was an adventure but once I remembered where we had to pick the bikes up, learnt how to use gears and stopped freaking out about cycling to our B&B before dark (with quite some additional distance given I messed up the bike pick-up), I loved loved loved our 100kms of cycling on the Isle of Wight. There are so many disused train lines on the island which are now cycling tracks, for a beginner like me it was the perfect cycling destination.

The view from our lovely B&B

Here we go, here we go, here we go

After a disastrous, shambolic let down of a World Cup, some of us are (blindly) keeping the faith. Enjoyed a great night at Wembley seeing England take on Bulgaria as Capello's lads 'rebuild' (again) for Euro 2012

Stevie G takes the corner

My garden

These geraniums were the pride of my window sill this summer : ). One day I look forward to having a garden that is bigger than two window boxes!

Lunch on a summer's day

It's still a novelty celebrating my birthday in summer, and this year I made the most of it with a lunch from 1pm - 11pm at the lovely Atlas.

Out and about in Auckland

Usually I spend a fair proportion of my year in London counting down until the trip to the southern hemisphere and this time was no different....anyway after an excellent looong flight on the lovely Emirates A380 we arrived in sunny Auckland. I was very happy to see our old London friends who have now set up in Auckland, and spend time sipping wine on Bulli's parents peaceful balcony. We did get out and about in the great outdoors a lot - two fun nights on the road with Lynn and Rog down at Rotorua and Mt Maunganui and some great day trips. I also loved our stops at the rugged, hostile-looking beach at Piha, and the run over the black, hot sanddunes where you're rewarded with a dive into massive, almost deserted fresh water lake down the other side.

I was also lucky to go to Villa Maria winery with good friends and enjoy a chilled afternoon/evening watching Dave Dobbyn, Tim Finn and Bic Runga perform crowd pleasing classics under pink, fluffy-clouded skies....

We did a four hour walk around Waimangu Volcanic Valley - see the thermal steam. It was cool, we got there early and there were no other people in sight for most of our walk.

Tour leader Bulli led another big walk, this time around an Auckland Regional Park called Waitakere. It was really dense vegetarian, lots of old old Kauri trees

After yet another walk! This time at the top of Mt Maunganui. We swam in some amazing beaches; the joys of mid week day trips = no crowds!!

Olivetti's, Red Hill

There's no place like home, and I really enjoyed the fun dinner with the Bryden ladies, Mum and Zoe at Olivetti's in prep for Zoe's wedding.