We were gifted a 3-night ‘staycation’ in Port Douglas by family (thank you G&R), so we nipped up the Great Barrier Reef Drive (around 45 mins from Clifton Beach) – one of Australia’s most spectacular roads, hugging the Coral Sea with the rugged rainforest covered Macalister Ranges tumbling down to touch the reef itself. Cyclone…
Tag: travel
Cassowary Capers
One of our ‘bucket list’ things to see and do when we moved up to Far North Queensland was to encounter a Cassowary in the wild. Well, we’ve been to the Daintree many times and sadly had no luck. We even live beneath the Macalister Mountain Ranges – a wild Cassowary protectorate… but since it’s…
José Paronella’s Dream
Paronella Park is a mystical rainforest wonderland around 130ks south of Cairns set in the foothills of the towering Mt Bartle Frere (1622m), the Wooroonooran National Park and the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. José Paronella, an entrepreneurial and visionary Spanish immigrant arrived in the area in 1914, working hard yakka in the surrounding sugarcane…
In The Bleak Mid-Winter (With Glorious Sunny Bits)
We were down in Melbourne for a short winter break, a bit of culture and a catch up with friends. It’s a three-and-half hour flight from Cairns to Melbourne (direct), some 2,817 kilometres away – that’s the equivalent of London to Moscow and, let me tell you, it felt like Moscow, with an arrival temperature…
The Yin and Yang of Shinjuku
There’s no denying that Shinjuku is one of Tokyo’s most colourful districts, in so many ways. It’s famous for its extravagant shopping, the busiest train station in the world (with over 3.2 million people passing through on any given day). Its immense crowds thronging day and night. It’s crazy technicolour neon-bling and 3D billboards. It’s…
Ice Ice Baby – The Sapporo Ice Festival in Susukino
There’s another aspect to the Sapporo Snow Festival, the Ice Festival in Susukino (which bizarrely translates as “Zebra Grass Fields” – go figure) the red-light district of Sapporo, one of the largest of its kind in all of Japan (again, go figure!) far away from kid-friendly Odori Park with its cutesy-pie Anime snow sculptures. Susukino…
Slip Sliding Away in Otaru, Hokkaido
We’ve paused the Sapporo Snow Festival for a day and headed out to Otaru, a charming old port town on the Sea of Japan and, believe it or not, on the same latitude as Vladivostok, which is just 766 kilometres away. Otaru is around 45 mins on a local train from Sapporo, and, on this…
Sapporo Snow Festival – Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!
2025 marks the 75th incarnation of the Sapporo Snow Festival, now bigger than ever with over 200 snow and ice sculptures on display in the city’s Odori Park. We’re staying in a beautifully appointed Onsen Ryokan, a few minutes’ walk from this 1.5k narrow stretch of parkland in the heart of downtown Sapporo, so it’s a…
Snow-ward Bound To Hokkaido, The Frozen North
We’re here in Sapporo for the Snow Festival, a bucket list trip to Japan’s north island of Hokkaido, travelling from Tokyo on the Shinkansen to the top of Honshu then down through the Seikan Tunnel, one of the world’s longest undersea tunnels at 53.85ks and around 240m below the surface. It’s a frozen landscape up…
Out & About in Ameya Yokochō & Harajuku
Ameya Yokochō is another of Tokyo’s lively eat streets which runs alongside the railway tracks between Ueno and Okachimachi Station. Originally this district was packed with wooden tradesmen’s homes but during WW2 the entire area was carpet-bombed and burnt to the ground. However, almost immediately after the war had ended, rebuilding began with shops and…
Travels With My Ant 