Visiting Europe and Tying up Loose Ends
15 October 2018
We had been planning since last year to go to Europe in mid-2018 and by the time it came it was a very welcome vacation. For Jay’s birthday I had planned to have dinner at Brae. His birthday fell on a Sunday which meant we had to settle for lunch as they don’t do a dinner service on Sunday. The meal was fascinating and the service excellent.
Jay had been wanting for some years to go to SIGGRAPH, a big conference for 3D graphics professionals. This year he had the opportunity through work and so was away for a week in Vancouver. He had a chance to catch up with Derek, a friend he met at GDC in March. It was immediately before our planned vacation in Europe, so he went directly to Rome from Vancouver and I met him there.
While Jay was away, I made the final arrangements for my cousins to move into the house in Prahran we had been preparing since my father died. They moved in on the day I left for vacation. It was a relief to have that house largely finished with, and I was looking forward to selling the North Melbourne house.
We had a day and a half in Rome to fill in a few of the places we hadn’t been before and also meet up with Beau and Sammy who were coming with us on the Atlantis cruise to the Eastern Mediterranean. We boarded the ship in Rome and sailed to Naples, Heraklion, Mykonos, Santorini, Malta, Palermo, Cagliari and back to Rome.
As always we enjoyed the cruise, spending time with people we knew and also making some new friends. There were almost 400 Australians on the ship, including more than a dozen we knew from Melbourne and Sydney. There were also a few guys we knew from California and we met many friends of friends.
Ten days on a cruise is a little long for us, but we limited the number of really late nights to three and so were not completely exhausted by the end of the cruise. We had a good time with shore excursions in all the stops except for Cagliari; the charter boats in Mykonos and Santorini were the best of the excursions. Being able to arrive at Super Paradise and Elia beaches in Mykonos without having to deal with the road transport was definitely a highlight.
After returning to Rome we flew to Prague. We stayed there in an Airbnb run by an old friend I hadn’t seen since secondary school: David. Prague was charming and the old castle quite spectacular. It was a pleasure to have dinner with David and his partner.
From Prague we flew to Vienna. If I had done my research more carefully we probably would have travelled by train as the flight was short and the airport delays (with Austrian Airlines) were extraordinary. By the time we had our luggage at the airport, the driver from the hotel in Vienna had given up and gone home. The hotel itself was charming.
In Vienna we saw the palaces and parks from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and agreed that their cuisine made us appreciate Italian food even more. From there, we boarded a train for a day-long ride through the Alps to Zurich.
The scenery from the train was like a picture-book and the service and standards similar to the Shinkansen we rode a year earlier in Japan. We briefly entered Germany and Lichtenstein on the journey. The hotel we were staying at in Zurich was close to the main station, so the trip was also very convenient. On the train we did some reading about things to do in Switzerland and decided to book a tour to Jungfraujoch for the following day.
It was a full day travelling to Jungfraujoch via Lausanne, Interlaken and Grindelwald. The Sphinx Observatory was as crazy as it looked in the photographs and the tour was excellent except for the bus driver’s lapse of concentration choosing a freeway exit on the way home which resulted in a 20km detour around Lausanne. I made an online album from the whole Europe trip.
From Zurich we returned to Melbourne. After three weeks away (four for Jay) we were very ready to get home. The campaign for the auction of the North Melbourne house had been conducted while we were away and the auction was on the Saturday after we arrived home. The timing was about as early as we could have, because of the need to process a survivorship application for my mother to be listed alone on the title, but was still a little late to get ahead of the cooling of the Melbourne property market.
It sold after the auction at a price we were content with but not excited about, apparently to a junior doctor who will be training at the Royal Children’s Hospital which is very nearby. This echoed my own experience buying the house in Moor St twenty years earlier: a purchase from the mother of a doctor of a house close to my training hospital at a price which was somewhat less than the vendor bid at the auction.
Over the following weeks, the remaining administration of my father’s estate was completed. This was a great relief, and I was able to move on to dealing with his superannuation and simplifying my mother’s financial affairs. After eight months it has started to feel like I can see the end of the work related to my father’s death.
To recognize the fact that we were getting our weekends back, Jay and I went to Sorrento in September. I had built up a few repair and housekeeping tasks to get done and with help from my sister we are moving on to getting the beach house painted and cleaned. Developers have built two houses on the next block which are for sale, the $3M asking-prices of which were astonishing.
Because it seemed likely that Richmond would be in the Grand Final this year, I had entered the ballot for seats. Even though they were defeated by Collingwood in the Preliminary Final, I still went to the game. It was an exciting finish. Unfortunately Jay wasn’t able to come as this is the first year we don’t have access to a guest ticket.
Two weeks later we went back to the MCG together for the WWE show my sister had bought us tickets for. There were 70,000 there for the wrestling even though it was hard to see much unless you were very close, so the scoreboards and big screen displays were put to good use.
It’s now getting close enough to Christmas that we have to make detailed plans for visiting Jay’s family. The year has seemed to pass very quickly, which for me has not been a bad thing this year.
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Jay had been wanting for some years to go to SIGGRAPH, a big conference for 3D graphics professionals. This year he had the opportunity through work and so was away for a week in Vancouver. He had a chance to catch up with Derek, a friend he met at GDC in March. It was immediately before our planned vacation in Europe, so he went directly to Rome from Vancouver and I met him there.
While Jay was away, I made the final arrangements for my cousins to move into the house in Prahran we had been preparing since my father died. They moved in on the day I left for vacation. It was a relief to have that house largely finished with, and I was looking forward to selling the North Melbourne house.
We had a day and a half in Rome to fill in a few of the places we hadn’t been before and also meet up with Beau and Sammy who were coming with us on the Atlantis cruise to the Eastern Mediterranean. We boarded the ship in Rome and sailed to Naples, Heraklion, Mykonos, Santorini, Malta, Palermo, Cagliari and back to Rome.
As always we enjoyed the cruise, spending time with people we knew and also making some new friends. There were almost 400 Australians on the ship, including more than a dozen we knew from Melbourne and Sydney. There were also a few guys we knew from California and we met many friends of friends.
Ten days on a cruise is a little long for us, but we limited the number of really late nights to three and so were not completely exhausted by the end of the cruise. We had a good time with shore excursions in all the stops except for Cagliari; the charter boats in Mykonos and Santorini were the best of the excursions. Being able to arrive at Super Paradise and Elia beaches in Mykonos without having to deal with the road transport was definitely a highlight.
After returning to Rome we flew to Prague. We stayed there in an Airbnb run by an old friend I hadn’t seen since secondary school: David. Prague was charming and the old castle quite spectacular. It was a pleasure to have dinner with David and his partner.
From Prague we flew to Vienna. If I had done my research more carefully we probably would have travelled by train as the flight was short and the airport delays (with Austrian Airlines) were extraordinary. By the time we had our luggage at the airport, the driver from the hotel in Vienna had given up and gone home. The hotel itself was charming.
In Vienna we saw the palaces and parks from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and agreed that their cuisine made us appreciate Italian food even more. From there, we boarded a train for a day-long ride through the Alps to Zurich.
The scenery from the train was like a picture-book and the service and standards similar to the Shinkansen we rode a year earlier in Japan. We briefly entered Germany and Lichtenstein on the journey. The hotel we were staying at in Zurich was close to the main station, so the trip was also very convenient. On the train we did some reading about things to do in Switzerland and decided to book a tour to Jungfraujoch for the following day.
It was a full day travelling to Jungfraujoch via Lausanne, Interlaken and Grindelwald. The Sphinx Observatory was as crazy as it looked in the photographs and the tour was excellent except for the bus driver’s lapse of concentration choosing a freeway exit on the way home which resulted in a 20km detour around Lausanne. I made an online album from the whole Europe trip.
From Zurich we returned to Melbourne. After three weeks away (four for Jay) we were very ready to get home. The campaign for the auction of the North Melbourne house had been conducted while we were away and the auction was on the Saturday after we arrived home. The timing was about as early as we could have, because of the need to process a survivorship application for my mother to be listed alone on the title, but was still a little late to get ahead of the cooling of the Melbourne property market.
It sold after the auction at a price we were content with but not excited about, apparently to a junior doctor who will be training at the Royal Children’s Hospital which is very nearby. This echoed my own experience buying the house in Moor St twenty years earlier: a purchase from the mother of a doctor of a house close to my training hospital at a price which was somewhat less than the vendor bid at the auction.
Over the following weeks, the remaining administration of my father’s estate was completed. This was a great relief, and I was able to move on to dealing with his superannuation and simplifying my mother’s financial affairs. After eight months it has started to feel like I can see the end of the work related to my father’s death.
To recognize the fact that we were getting our weekends back, Jay and I went to Sorrento in September. I had built up a few repair and housekeeping tasks to get done and with help from my sister we are moving on to getting the beach house painted and cleaned. Developers have built two houses on the next block which are for sale, the $3M asking-prices of which were astonishing.
Because it seemed likely that Richmond would be in the Grand Final this year, I had entered the ballot for seats. Even though they were defeated by Collingwood in the Preliminary Final, I still went to the game. It was an exciting finish. Unfortunately Jay wasn’t able to come as this is the first year we don’t have access to a guest ticket.
Two weeks later we went back to the MCG together for the WWE show my sister had bought us tickets for. There were 70,000 there for the wrestling even though it was hard to see much unless you were very close, so the scoreboards and big screen displays were put to good use.
It’s now getting close enough to Christmas that we have to make detailed plans for visiting Jay’s family. The year has seemed to pass very quickly, which for me has not been a bad thing this year.
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