Saturday 29 June - The time finally came, after some drawn out and half-hearted packing, to launch into gear, undertake a massive laundry day, make up the bed, bathroom, hoover, wipe down the kitchen, empty and defrost the fridge to finally, have an early night and prepare ourselves for a 'stupid o'clock' get up time. And of course, we were up an hour earlier than we had to be - why oh why do we do it to ourselves? We were seated on the Western Explorer XPT at Ce...

What can we say? Paris and Sydney are our two favourite cities. There are many that we love - just not as much as those two. It was great to be back, our stomping ground hadn't changed a bit (well they appear to have finished the footpaths in Potts Point, finished George Street and the light rail in the city and are getting started on the rejuvenation of Crown Street…) but by and large, just great to be here. We had a great sushi feast from one of our loc...

Qatar Airways - what can we say - it is undoubtedly our favourite way to fly. We had a wonderful experience in the Qatar Premium Lounge in Paris (even before departure) then trundled onboard and settled ourselves in. It is beyond a first world problem (obviously) but because we had been squeezed onto the Friday night Paris departure, it was a full cabin and our two Qsuites were in the second business class cabin - see - definitely a first world problem. It's only...

We were glad we had the chance to visit Ljubljana and happy to leave as the warm weather crept in and Spring arrived along with blossoms in Slovenia. It certainly felt like we'd been there for longer than 3 odd weeks - aside from anything else there was snow on the mountains when we flew in and certainly no sign of it on our way out. The flight to Paris was our first experience of LOT Polish airlines with a quick stop in Warsaw en route. Wow! We definitely enj...

I've been on to the Tourist Bureau with the possibility of a new slogan… Ljubljana - When you have to be somewhere. Which just about covers our situation. We finished up in Dublin on 4 March… wanted to celebrate a massive anniversary, figured out where our various stashes of airline points and miles could take us and where we could use our IHG hotel points to most effect. And the answer to a question that could stump AI ended up being Ljubljana - w...