Michelle just got back from 12 days touring beautiful New Zealand with her Mum and the blog, “travelswiththemothership” is a brilliant diary of their time together. Brought back a lot of memories of roadtripping with my own Mum last year.
travelswiththemothership has some mouth-watering food refs, highly amusing anecdotes (nice one on the hire car..) and some beautiful photos. Have a read

Six perfect days at Lake Annecy with my little giselle.
Doing all our favourite things but attempting them at a gentle, relaxed pace.
Breathing the amazing air, drinking (pore-ously and pot-ably) the delicious water, baking in the gorgeous sunshine and then, unfortunately getting soaked in full on mountain rainfalls.
Et après…
Two days in Paris with lovely Kate, doing, er, not a lot but loving every second.

Dad joined me for ten wicked days in Thailand. We stuck to the South, exploring the islands & bays, in fact Dad didn’t spend one night on the mainland!

We travelled light and along the way took creeky mopeds around town (all three of us on that, really…?), ultra-slick speedboats to the Full Moon party and hitch-hiked to the airport.

Although it was out-of-season we met a lot of brilliant people: locals who wanted to share their regional dishes; little’uns who wanted to share our wallets; backpackers who wanted to drink; honeymooners who wanted to chat; walkers who, er didn’t want to walk; hosts and guides who wanted to help, laugh & hang.

Thirty-ish hours in the easy, breezy bay of Nai Yang on Phuket.

All the ingredients for revival: friendly smiles, cold beer, criminally good massage, sun sun sun and time to enjoy it all.

An early morning paddle out from Mossy Point near Batemans Bay. Swell & sunshine, dolphins & jellyfish, coffee & cake. Perfection.

Long weekend down in Batemans Bay south of Sydney, a gorgeous bit of the country with some beautiful and secluded beaches.

Scruffing it up with Laz, hostel, bbqs.

Piling in to a whole heap of running, surfing, paddling.

Getting centred with a splash of reading, yoga and red wine.

Happy :)

There was so little surf today I was almost embarrassed for poor Manly beach. I mean, it was gorgeous. But nada.
Some persuasive and logistical texts later and I had Jess & Fernando in tow to go paddling on the harbour. Naturally given that there was no surf or swell on the east side, the harbour, west side was blustery and choppy. Not ideal paddling conditions. Especially if you were hoping for a fun, easy, chatty time out. So much for that.
We battled out of …

Paddling around some (18 k) of the Sydney harbour shoreline on a glorious autumn day

Travelling from north to south of Vietnam and then west into the Mekong Delta and Cambodia.

A fully packed two and a half weeks, using all available transport to get around, every available minute to see everything and all mealtimes to sample as many great flavours as possible.

Paddling in Halong Bay. New Year’s in the old capital, Hue. Coffee by the river in Hoi An. Thai massages at the seaside town Mui Ne. Sunrise at Angkor Wat. Beer and bbq buffet everywhere.