A LONG WEEKEND IN AMSTERDAM | PHOTO DIARY

Hey everyone!

I recently made a trip to Amsterdam, officially now one of my favourite places I've visited.

We flew on a Friday from our local airport of Norwich. The flight lasted 30 minutes, with an additional 20 minutes to taxi the plane from the runway to Schipol Airport. Officially the easiest and quickest flight I have ever been on, which makes weekends away in Amsterdam a great place to escape to.

We stayed in a recently opened hotel called Mr. Jordaan. This is based in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam, and literally around the corner from Anne Frank Huis. With a short 10 minute walk to Central Station.

On the first day we landed early evening, so settled down for an hour and headed straight out for food. We visited a little place called Mr Jacketz, which sold only baked potatoes and salads, amazing! We took a different way home and had our first taste of the canals! They're beautiful in both daylight and when they are lit up by the street lamps and houses at night. 

I won't go into too much detail on what we did, and let the photos do the talking, but here's a very quick summary of the places we visited, including: Van Gogh Museum and Modern Art Museum, Diamond Museum, Flower Market, Boat Tour, Shopping and a Food Market.

We weren't able to visit the Anne Frak Huis as people start queuing from early on in the morning, and as we were a group of nine it was harder to get tickets.  

I have added some of my favourite photos from the trip, which mostly consist of the canals!

As you can see, it's a beautiful place! I'm already planning my next trip!

Thanks for reading, xo

*As with all pictures featured on my blog, they are all taken by me unless otherwise noted. I use a Canon S120 and iPhone 6S.


THE OUTBACK

Hello!

I know, i know. It's been over a month since i last posted on here. Firstly, i spent almost two weeks travelling through the outback. Starting in Darwin and finishing thousands of kilometres later in Adelaide, which is when i realised that i have a busted laptop screen and still haven't gotten round to getting it fixed because i don't want to spend money on it until it becomes necassary.

So, let's have a catchup shall we?

We decided in Cairns to do the middle, whilst we still had money and weren't desperatley seeking a job. There we found ourselves planning the next part to our adventure.

After a week in Cairns, we took a flight across the country to Darwin. Here was had a good couple of days before our tour started.

The first tour, which took us 6 days and down to Alice Springs was with a company abtly named WayOutback. It was decided into two sections.

For the first 3 days we travelled down to Litchfield National Park, and then across to Kakadu National Park. We spent out time swimming in waterfalls, crusing in crocodile infested rivers (where we saw two saltwater crocs! Crikey mate!), viewing ancient Aboriginal Art, seeking out some amazing views and meeting some awesome people.

The next 3 days we had a different tour guide, taking us down to Alice Springs. Again, we started in Darwin and then drove and drove and drove! Again, we met some lovely people and did some amazing things. Such as swimming in thermal pools, watching glorious sunsets, climbing The Devils Marbles, visiting the infamous Daly Waters, hiking to view Katherine Gorge and also cutting my knee open. Yes, this is something that happened and the following day i passed out at a service station whilst trying to get the bandage off. All fun and games here.

Finally we made it to Alice Springs. One place i have always wanted to visit, one place that isn't high on my list to visit again. It was an experience, and was pretty. But there isn't exactly alot to do without a car and the crime rate is very high. Someone described it to me as 'the bad side of Cape Town, for Australia'. We did end up in a weird little "club" though, which was an experience. On our second, and final, night in Alice we were downstairs and overheard the women at reception telling another women who had just arrived, that she wasn't allowed to go out after 10pm on her own because the risks were too high. Saying all this though, it was a good few days spent with friends.

I preferred the second tour to the first one, mainly because i fianlly got to see Uluru (Ayers Rock), which is something that i have been waiting to do pretty much my whole life. We did this tour with a company called Groovy Grape. The first day we got picked up around 6am and drove straight to Kings Canyon, which is a big canyon with amazing views. It also includes The Garden Of Eden, which is a big waterhole with trees everywhere, in the middle of all this dry sandstone. It was truly beautiful, and a lovely (apart from the uphill climbing) hike. On our drive here we stopped at the only service station, and ended up bumping into a friend we met on Fraser Island and continued to follow up the East Coast... how weird!

We then spent one night at Kings Canyon before continuing on to Uluru. We arrived around lunch time and ate food. Then we drove into the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park and hiked Kata Tjuta, also named The Olgas. They are made up of 36 individual rocks, which altogether is bigger then Uluru but equally as beautiful in my opinion. It is also lesser known, due to the fact you cannot take photos for commercial use or for photography that will then be sold.

Sometime between 5 and 6pm we walked up to the Uluru Sunset lookout, and viewed a pretty amazing sunset. Although the one on the second night was better. When the sun is setting, it glows off the rock creating an intense red colour. The next day we woke up early and viewed the sunrise, which made Uluru go a beautiful purple colour. We then hiked around the base of Uluru, and i took some great photos which are unfortunately stuck on my camera because i can't transfer the images onto my broken laptop.

Finally it was time to leave this incredible, spiritual place and head to a town called Coober Pedy, the opal capital of the world! We had to leave at 4am and the drive was near enough 8 hours long, which meant that i slept for the majority of the morning until we arrived at lunch time. After a bit to eat we headed to an Opal Museum, where i spent alot of money of buying jewellry, we also got to take a look at an underground house. This is what makes this place so special in my opinion, about 80% of the people who live here, do so in underground houses. Which just seems so awesome to me! Next on the list was to go to a Kangaroo Sanctuary, one of the only ones in South Australia. Here we fed the kangaroos and saw a joey who was so tiny and adorable. We then went for pizza and then our tour guide and asked a DJ to play for us, so we partied until the early hours of the morning.

The next day was got a lay in... 7am! And after a night spent in our underground hostel, we were as fresh as a daisy, if not then a little hungover. But we had one more long drive, which meant more sleeping! Sometime in the evening we made it to our last camping spot for our outback adventure. We pulled up at our campsite, situated somewhere in the Flinders Ranges. Here we drunk some more and gave one of our new friends a terrible hair cut, much to his dismay.

Our final day was spent hiking through a section of the Flinders Ranges, before driving to Adelaide. Bringing this incredible experience to an end...

If you are travelling in Australia, then this should all be on your list of cool stuff to do because it was phenomenal and probably my favourite part of my year out here so far.

I then went on to spend a week in Adelaide, which has come to be one of my favourtie cities, and am currently back in Brisbane looking for work. Hopefully i will get my laptop fixed soon, and then i have alot of catching up to do with putting photos on this blog. But i will get there eventually! Anyway, thank you for reading! xxx

BROKEN DOWN IN TABOOMA | PHOTO DIARY

Pretty much as soon as we crossed the border into Victoria we came across a fire, and then got stuck in traffic. We were heading to Croajingalong National Park and were meant to go to the Thurra River to see the big sand dunes but we got half way and our campervan wasn't sounding to good so we found a place called Tabooma were we broke down for the night. The only bonus was the spectacular sunset over the lake that we got to witness.

Because we were so close to the lake there were bugs everywhere! The place also had no running water and the toilet was a hole in the ground. On our way down to the lake we came across a wombat who was having a good scratch on a fallen down tree. 

 It was a very clear night and due to Tabooma having no street lights, we could see the stars very clearly. At this point i was very happy that my camera had a setting for taking photos of the stars because i managed to snap this photo, which i'm quite proud of! 

The next morning we had to jump start the campervan with the help from a couple of very kind strangers, and then drove to a town called Orbost were we took the van to a garage. Turns out the exhaust had completely come apart, which is why it sounded like we were in a jumbo jet and had to drive with ear plugs in! 

TILBA TILBA & BERMAGUI | PHOTO DIARY

We came off the Princes Highway onto a 'tourist drive', this took us through two villages of similar name, Central Tilba and Tilba Tilba. They were tiny in size but beautiful, surrounded by mountains and farmland.

On our way to Bermagui we passed a place called Wallaga Lake, and the road goes straight through the middle of the water which gives you an amazing view. Our view included pelicans sitting on a sand bank. 

We then made it to Bermagui and pulled over to take some photos and adjust the GoPro on the side of the campervan. There was a little port in the town as well. We then went to get a cold drink from a petrol station and the mad inside informed us about a natural pool which had been created through erosion. So we decided to check it out. 

We were expecting just a small little rock pool but the natural pool seemed to be a full size swimming pool situated at the bottom of the cliff surrounded by rocks. Quite spectacular and amazing how this place came to be. The sun was beaming down and i kind of wish we had enough time to stop for a swim. 

We spent a good amount of time here, mostly trying to rescue a hat that the wind had blown into the rock pool which you can see in the picture below. But finally we managed to get it without having to get wet.