Home again

Home today after a direct flight from Vancouver to Melbourne.

It's lovely to see eucalypts again and my garden seems to have survived without me.

Not so lovely to see rubbish all along the highways here in Australia - we never saw any in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany or Canada so why is it here?

We've had a fantastic holiday, seen some amazing things. learned a lot about other cultures and met some great people.

On the down side, for the first time ever, we'll be putting in some insurance claims this time.
1. I flew to Toronto from Europe but my luggage didn't. It was two weeks before we were reunited. I had to shop for a few clothes and toiletries but luckily I had some in my carry-on luggage and in Phil's luggage was our bag of dirty clothes so it wasn't as catastrophic as it could have been.
2. In my case was our Tom Tom, already loaded with Canadian maps. So we had to hire a GPS navigator for two weeks. Ouch.
3. Just after we arrived in Canada I dropped my camera and broke my zoom lens beyond repair. Fortunately I was able to use my macro lens (which has infinity focus) but it's a fixed zoom at 120 mm which meant I was couldn't get wide angle views except on the phone. Just a bit tricky when you're in the mountains!! So annoying but entirely my fault.
4. About three weeks ago Phil developed a cold and then ruptured an ear drum. We spent a whole day in Emergency at a hospital north of Montreal (after paying $1200 up front) - GPs won't look at a tourist. He was put on antibiotics but is still pretty deaf in that ear. And he had a relapse or another species of cold a week or so later. And then I got the cold too and have ended up with a blocked Eustachian Tube so I'm deaf as well. We were both coughing and lethargic for the last few days in Canada so we holed up in a quiet motel at Hope to recover before flying home. In Hope we found a great secondhand book shop and a proper cafe so it was a good spot to be. We were concerned about ears and air pressure of course but I think we're OK. Despite his woes Phil managed to keep driving in Canada, often over high passes in the Rockies, and after rugging up in multiple layers, hats and gloves we even went for some short walks in the cold. On the plus side the last few days in Canada were quite wet so I don't think we missed out on too much.

Despite all of the above we've thoroughly enjoyed our adventures and we've seen some amazing country.  Thanks for following along. It's nice to be home.