Australian Adventure

FOND MEMORIES

So this time last year I had just gotten back from Melbourne, Australia. For the past two weeks Facebook has been telling me things I was doing last year and showing me photos I'd posted whilst on my adventures. (Thanks to the rad little "on this day" feature they have!) I have such fond memories of my Melbourne adventure and the photos I took there always bring a smile to my face when I see them.

And so I thought, why not create a blog post about my time there? So here we go! 

PHOTOS AND STORIES 

This is Degraves, or as we renamed it 'The Dark Alley'. It was the raddest alley lined with cafés, restaurants and a couple of shops. We went down there for breakfast nearly every day because all the cafés were so good. My personal favourite was either 'The Journal' or 'The Quarter'. 

I'm a huge fan of the Australian soap 'Neighbours' and we got to go on the set and even meet a star! This was James Mason who plays the character of Chris on the show. 

This is probably my favourite photo from the entire trip! Taken on The Great Ocean Road, where we had stopped at this little area that was basically just some trees and a tiny shop, but in the trees were hundreds of rosellas (that's the bird for anyone who doesn't know)! Our tour guide gave us bird seed and the rosellas would eat the food straight out of your hands. I even had birds on my shoulder and head! 

This is my and my sister at the aquarium. This was the best tank, filled with sharks and huge stingrays. It was amazing. 

I love this photo! My mum having a stare down with a shark! This guy was a proper mean looking shark, he looked like he'd definitely eaten some people before...

Penguins at the aquarium. 

This is the entrance to the Great Ocean Road! 

Our first stop on the Great Ocean Road was Lorne. Here we had coffee in stained cups (a bit gross but we laughed it off, it's cool), ate delicious biscuits and watched these people surfing! The cool thing about stopping in Lorne was that my mum realised that we'd stayed in the campsite just across the road when we'd been there about 20 years beforehand. I was one the first time round so I obviously didn't remember it, but it was still rad to know! 

Still in Lorne. There was a koala sitting in one of these trees and cockatoos flying overhead! Our first proper sighting of Australian wildlife. 

Incase you needed a reminder of why I love Melbourne so much. 

Me and rosellas. Seriously in love with this birds.

Look at this cutie.

I waded across a little bit of sea to a small sandy patch to take a photo of this beautiful starfish. 

These are the Twelve Apostles, the highlight of the Great Ocean Road tour. It was so beautiful here, like this photo doesn't even begin to cover it.

Another apostle!

#nofilter

We also went on a day trip to Philip Island for the Penguin Parade (penguins coming out from the sea at sunset, I have no photos of that because you're not allowed to take them there). We first stopped at the Moonlit Sanctuary where we got to feed kangaroos. This one held me hand. It was the best moment of my life.

I kinda wanted to take this little guy home. SO cute.

#nofilteragain. This was at The Nobbies, where we stopped just before going to the penguin parade. It was hella windy there but so gorgeous.

This was the first photo taken of me in Melbourne! We were waiting to meet one of my sisters friends for coffee. 

This was along the Great Ocean Road also, at a place called Cape Otway. We had lunch here and then had a little while to explore the area. I loved it there and I want to go back!

FIN

And that's it. I took over a thousand photos while I was there so obviously this is just a very small selection of them. I had the time of my life in Melbourne and I'm hella excited to be going back in December! 

If you ever get the chance to go to Australia, please do! I promise you'll love it. 

Thanks for reading, remember to follow me for posts at least once a week (and very often more). 

Love Chloe x

P.S. Sorry the photos are in a slightly odd order. I'm blogging on the go and I don't know how to move them around on the app...

A Weekend in France // TRAVEL

A Weekend In France - 14/15th June 2014

So over the past weekend my parents and I tumbled into our car at 5am and drove down to Kent where we would take the Eurotunnel, and it was here our adventure started!  

After an uncomfortable sleep in the back of the car and a short drive once we had arrived in Calais, we reached our home for the weekend - Le Touquet! Now you can go to markets all over the world, but France really knows how to do a market, although it's quite common to see spare parts for dolls and barbies in boxes, which is just a little bit terrifying. Saturday is market day in Le Touquet, so after having scones and lattes for breakfast (yes I did have scones have breakfast and yes it's as good as it sounds) we wandered over to the market. You could buy pretty much anything there - shoes, fruit, books, antiques, home ware, fish and that's just a little selection of the stuff on offer! My favourite purchase at the market was the radishes we bought; not because I really love radishes or anything, but because we bought them off a French farmer who had real life green fingers! And he looked really pleased that we'd chosen him to get our radishes from - bless! 

After lunch and a little browse around the few shops Le Touquet has to offer, we headed back to our hotel. Now the hotel we always stay at when we're there is right on the beach. Like when you step out of the door you're on the beach, pretty great right? However that does mean that rooms with a sea view are a little pricey! So we'd settled for a room with a view of the sand dunes (which is just a nicer way of them saying that your view will be of the car park and if you really stretch your head out the window you can catch a glimpse of the sand dunes). But to our surprise we had been upgraded to a room with a sea view, woooo! Also they'd left a bottle of Le Touquet brewed beer and biscuits in the room, extra woooo! 

We had our dinner in the best fish restaurant I've ever been to, the food there is amazing! And then we finished off the day in the hotel bar, where we were joined by the most beautiful sunset. It was all oranges and reds and pinks and the reflections of it on the sea were breathtaking. I could have taken thousands of photos, but due to the fear that it looked like I was taking photos of the couple sitting outside, I didn't... hahaha.

Now hotel breakfasts are one of my favourite things ever. There's just so much amazing food to choose from, and also an endless supply of coffee and orange juice which is great. And as I said, this hotel is right on the beach, so I enjoyed my platefuls of pastries and scrambled egg and bowls of cereal with a lovely morning view of the beach... Perfect!

Sunday’s in France are very relaxed, most shops close or are only open until midday, but when you’re right by the beach, shopping isn’t really on the top of my list of things to do. Therefore, we walked along the beach instead. The beach at Le Touquet stretches for miles, so even though I’ve been here loads of times, there were still parts of the beach unexplored. So we walked along those parts, discovering a lovely little café that was placed right on the sand and loads of little beach huts that were all brightly coloured and adorable. After some cold drinks we emptied the sand out of our shoes and headed into the main part of town. We took a quick look around some of the shops before they closed their doors for the day and then settled into the local Irish pub for a coffee. 

So cute.

People watching in the Irish pub.

Before leaving the beautiful beach and starting our journey home we got lunch in the hotel bar. A club sandwich and chips for me, accompanied with a pineapple flavoured mocktail, yummmm! And then it was just about time to go home.

The mocktails, delicious!

It was a short but sweet trip, and I can’t wait to have more Le Touquet adventures!