So we went for an amazing dinner in West Hampstead with Stefan and then we hugged and told each other we loved each other and said “see you next year”. I cried all the way on the tube back home.

Then we were off to Paris where we had the world’s most perfect croissant. Then a couple of relaxing days in Istanbul before heading off to Montreal.

In 2018 we were on a boat in Vietnam to see Halong Bay. We had brought some beers onto the boat which had no fridge. It did however have an air conditioning unit over the door spouting out cold air. We lined all of our beers in front of the air con unit and went to go to dinner.

In the hallway we met a couple (Lise and Daniel) from Montreal who had put their beers in the same place! We started chatting, in a mix of English and French and clicked straight away. We found them hilarious and we had a shared love of craft beer and travel.

The staff on the boat wanted to give the travellers something to do in the evening while they went drinking at the back of the boat and so they would give us fishing rods to catch squid. 

Lise was the only one to catch a squid and we had a hilarious night capturing the ink squirting creature. 

Lise and Daniel said “if you are ever in Montreal, let us know” and we said “Don’t say it lightly because we will turn up!”.

So six years later we say ”Guess what! We are coming to Montreal”. They said “You are most welcome, I will put down a NZ IPA brew ”.

So we arrived at Montreal airport and Lise and Daniel were there to take us to their beautiful home. We were so welcomed and spent some lovely time including connecting with their amazing kids. But most importantly we connected with Lise and Daniel. 

Two incredible humans who took two NZers into their home without really knowing them. Daniel is an amazing contemporary artist and Nigel and he stayed up until 4am talking art and life and the universe and everything.

We went squirrel hunting (in their backyard). Found raccoons on the top of the mountain, we went and ate smoked meat at Schwartz (owned by Celine Dion), Old town, Markets and a weeks worth of sightseeing in two days . We used their washer and drier and made and ate dinner together in their kitchen. 

Life has a way to pay life forward. We have a huge amount of credit so we look forward to hosting them and their family or any other random’s they care to send to New Zealand. We promise we will look after you all, the way you looked after us. 

The premise and theme of this whole trip was to get to the precise latitude and longitude of our house in Orewa but on the other side of the world. We would make a sandwich of sorts with the world in between. We realised with no air conditioning in the caravan that we weren’t going to drive there so Ryanair was the next best solution. We flew to Malaga and had a lovely Air BnB 5 minutes walk from the beach in Marbella.

When my family went back to Sweden when I was little we had a package holiday down to Marbella. Marbella was a very common and desirable destination for Swedes in the 1970’s and 80’s. They all flew down and loved it and bought holiday homes there. That’s why you can get Swedish meatballs, pickled herring and Lingonberry jam (among other Swedish foods) in the supermarket. 

It’s also why there is a Swedish restaurant on the waterfront and every bar you can hear Swedes speaking Swedish.

We spent a couple of days eating tapas and drinking sangria and then went and collected Stefan from the airport. 

Our first night we went and had a lovely barbecue dinner on the beach with the waves lapping at our feet.

Then we were off in search of a dropped pin on google maps which was literally in the middle of nowhere. 

The roads got narrower and narrower until we were on a one lane road. We pulled up outside a farmhouse and there we were. A completely random and pointless trip that no one apart from us would find interesting. As we drove Stefan was tracking an antipodean app that shows your exact location. “We’re just coming into Warkworth, right we’re just on the edge of Waiwera, ok we’re in the sea now” and then “Right we’re at the neighbours house”.

We pulled up took a whole lot of photos of an empty paddock and left.  I did have a translation into Spanish on hand if we needed to explain ourselves but it must have been Siesta as we saw no-one. 

We loved it. 

We were then very close to a gorgeous village called Ronda so went there for tapas and sangria and listened to all the swedes talk about how beautiful it is in Ronda. Nigel sang ‘Help me Rhonda’ a couple of times and we had a lovely day. 

The next day was our adventure to Gibraltar. As you all know we collect countries (it’s a hobby). We have an official ISO postal code list which includes countries and territories. It covers for the fact that you can’t say you’ve been to France if you’ve only been to Tahiti. Same with French Guiana. Anyway Gibraltar is a British territory at the very bottom of Spain. A little piece of England with some incredibly proud Gibralten’s. We happened to arrive on National Gibraltar day and so the whole village was covered in Gibraltar flags and the locals all wear red and white. We queued for ages to go up the cable car to see the incredible views.
As soon as we arrived the maquque monkeys were literally leaping down in front of us.  They were everywhere playing and sleeping and were a lot friendlier than the ones in Bali (who provided us with the infamous monkey incident). I think a £4000 fine for feeding them means they don’t see the tourists as being the food providers. We did see a guy get attacked for his backpack though. 

Back to Marbella and we joined a group of South African women and a couple from Florida on a guided walking Tapas tour of Marbella. Stefan quickly chatted up the South Africans who weren’t really drinkers and so we ended up with all their wines to match the Tapas (well done Stefan). 

We learned about the beautiful old town and how it was heavily occupied by Islamic and Jewish people for many years. The Roman Catholics came and took over and appointed a leader who was very dictatorial. He forced everyone in the village to convert to Catholicism. Everyone decided to just say yeah ok and then practice whatever religion they wanted behind closed doors. So the leader decided to go door to door with pork sausages. If you didn’t eat them you got turfed out! 

We wandered around the small streets and ate amazing food and drank beautiful wines and had a really lovely evening. 

Then as soon as it had started we left the 27 degree days and landed back at Luton to 12 degrees and squally showers. Ugh!

So we left Denmark and headed south. In between Denmark and Germany there was a car ferry which only took about 45 minutes but broke up the days journey quite nicely. We try to spend only 2-3 hours driving during the day and stay at least two nights so you can go and do something during the full day.

Our first stop was Lübeck which I remember clearly from when we visited in 1990. It’s a beautiful Hanseatic city with a lovely old town. We went for a big walk and enjoyed beers in the sun in the square. Next stop was Bremen (which I also clearly remember from our 1990 trip). I wanted to go and see the old town and the statue of the Musicians of Bremen.

The Brothers Grimm tale tells of a Donkey, a Dog, a Cat and a Rooster that decide to leave their farms and form a band of wandering musicians (as you do when you are a disgruntled farm employee). Along the way they convince a group of robbers that they are a horrible witch by standing on top of each other to form a strange shadow and then the Donkey kicks them, the Dog bites them, the Cat scratches them and the Rooster makes a horrible noise. They never actually made it to Bremen as they stayed in the robbers house but there’s a statue of them there anyway.

From Bremen we legged it into the Netherlands (who did not understand the assignment) and provided only one windmill, no tulips, no clogs and not one dike! Then down to just outside Dunkirk (which ended up being Belgium) for two nights. There we watched two movies about Dunkirk (including Dunkirk). Then on to the famous Dunkirk beach.

Almost 400 000 Brits and French were evacuated from there. Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech was informing parliament of what had happened there. What I didn’t know until we went there and did the research was that King Theobold of Belgium (who married Princess Astrid of Sweden, who later died in a car crash), had tried to remain neutral but couldn’t and so asked for British help to stop the Germans invading. Promptly after Churchill got everyone there and enlisted France’s support, King Theobold surrendered to Germany which left everyone stranded at Dunkirk (what a dick move).

So Churchill had to organise a way to get everyone out and it was easier to evacuate to UK than try to fight their way out against the Germans (don’t mention the war). Churchill was very angry about it though as he felt that retreat is not how you win the war. But praised his Air Force who were battling it out in the air with the Germans to try and protect the troops. The whole speech is actually a really good read if you ever get the chance.

From Dunkirk we took the ferry to Dover where Ed Sheeran had to learn how to drive on the left again. Drive on the left, drive on the left. We then had three very administratively and logistically challenging days preparing for the conscious uncoupling of Trailer Swift and Ed Sheeran. We had to pack and clean and drop all our stuff at Stefan’s in London, then get back to Southampton. It looked like such a big pile of stuff when we dropped it off and we did feel a bit bad about it. I’m not sure our cheerful “There’s heaps of things you can use Stefan” and our gift of three bottles of French rosé really made up for the mound of stuff on Stefan’s floor. But the next day Tetris Stefan had fitted it all into one cupboard neatly with “room to spare” he said. We do appreciate it Stefan .

Then a big driving day to drop Trailer Swift with the shipping company before heading back up north to sell Ed Sheeran back to the guy we bought him from. I have to admit I was truly sad to see them split up and genuinely sad leaving our happy little home for the past seven weeks all by herself in a UK shipping yard.

“Be good Trailer Swift, see you in New Zealand”.