What I did on my holidays (Part 2)
Well hey, I know it's not possible to go back to work after a really great holiday and then say "Oh I am so happy to be here, I do not miss sitting on the beach at all". What I don't understand is why I needed to have one of the worst weeks at work in living memory. Was someone concerned that after a week off I may accidentally forget that I don't enjoy working there?
I will spare you the whiny details and get straight to a few more holiday highlights.
The place we stayed at had a truly exceptional mini golf course. It wasn't so much the course itself, since some sadist had decided to put a few of the holes on slopes so that, if you miss a necessarily long putt, your ball will roll back past you, off the edge of the course, and into a paddock across the road where it will be eaten by a goat. The good part was what happens if you actually hit the ball into the ninth hole. Underneath the hole, there is a vacuum cleaner, which, when triggered by the arrival of the ball, sucks the ball down the hole and then shoots it up a pipe to a track which runs overhead for 10 metres and then drops the ball back at the start of the first hole.
Who would even think that up? The only unfortunate side effect is that, once the boys discovered it, then lost interest in actually playing minigolf and just wanted to drop a ball down that hole around 18 times per day.
While we're on the whole golf thing, I should mention again that computers play a role in my children's lives. It's partly my fault, since I had told Bundle and Cherub that the place we were going to had a mini golf course like the one in Bundle's favouring "Dora" game.
Why am I concerned? Because after completing the first hole for the first time, Bundle said "Oh, I'm going to go and try the next level".
Oops.
Another one of the more exciting things for small children to do in that region is the ferry from Queenscliff to Sorrento which, if you don't take the car, will do a return trip for the reasonably modest price of $44.00 for two adults and two children under 5.
If you take the ferry at 11.00am on a Wednesday, there is also little difficulty in finding a seat.
In between rides, we stopped for lunch at the Via Sorrento. The first thing we noticed was the music they were playing. After 20 minutes of "Khe Sahn", "That's what I like about you", "Land Down Under" and the Hooters' "And we danced" (a song which I thought had not been heard anywhere other than my ipod in the past ten years), I started to wonder if a cover band somewhere had decided to make an album, before realising it would be way easier to just download the originals from itunes at $1.70 a pop.
I was close. We made enquiries and discovered that were listening to disc one of "World's Best Beer Songs".
If lunch happens to be seafood pizza, chips and beer, followed by toffee apple icecream from the place over the road, then that soundtrack is entirely appropriate.
The place where we stayed also had a fair collection of donkeys, geese, chickens, rabbits and birds for the children to feed. In amongst this reasonable sensible collection of animals, there is one emu, which wandered onto the property a few years ago and is yet to leave.
It only freaked me out slightly when, the day after the song writing relate revelations in the previous post, I discovered that the emu's name was Edwina.
Every night after the children went to sleep, we ate cheese and drank wine and watched movies. For the record, these included all three "Matrix" films, "Ten Things I Hate About You", "A Good Year" (which is possibly the most underrated film ever) and "The American President". If I ever get time, reviews of each will appear over here, but that may take a while.
We also spent plenty of time playing at the beach. I know the waves at Anglesea are not huge, but it is still great to watch two little boys running at them without a trace of fear.
It is also great to see the whole "sunsmart" thing has really taken off, even if the local interpretation seems to be that it is fine for a child (who looked about three) to run around the beach completely naked so long as he was wearing a big floppy hat.
Finally, we rounded out the trip by stopping at the Werribee Zoo on the way home, which I mention mostly because I am thrilled that it is still there.
Now all I have to do is to remember to go on holidays far more often.
I will spare you the whiny details and get straight to a few more holiday highlights.
The place we stayed at had a truly exceptional mini golf course. It wasn't so much the course itself, since some sadist had decided to put a few of the holes on slopes so that, if you miss a necessarily long putt, your ball will roll back past you, off the edge of the course, and into a paddock across the road where it will be eaten by a goat. The good part was what happens if you actually hit the ball into the ninth hole. Underneath the hole, there is a vacuum cleaner, which, when triggered by the arrival of the ball, sucks the ball down the hole and then shoots it up a pipe to a track which runs overhead for 10 metres and then drops the ball back at the start of the first hole.
Who would even think that up? The only unfortunate side effect is that, once the boys discovered it, then lost interest in actually playing minigolf and just wanted to drop a ball down that hole around 18 times per day.
While we're on the whole golf thing, I should mention again that computers play a role in my children's lives. It's partly my fault, since I had told Bundle and Cherub that the place we were going to had a mini golf course like the one in Bundle's favouring "Dora" game.
Why am I concerned? Because after completing the first hole for the first time, Bundle said "Oh, I'm going to go and try the next level".
Oops.
Another one of the more exciting things for small children to do in that region is the ferry from Queenscliff to Sorrento which, if you don't take the car, will do a return trip for the reasonably modest price of $44.00 for two adults and two children under 5.
If you take the ferry at 11.00am on a Wednesday, there is also little difficulty in finding a seat.
In between rides, we stopped for lunch at the Via Sorrento. The first thing we noticed was the music they were playing. After 20 minutes of "Khe Sahn", "That's what I like about you", "Land Down Under" and the Hooters' "And we danced" (a song which I thought had not been heard anywhere other than my ipod in the past ten years), I started to wonder if a cover band somewhere had decided to make an album, before realising it would be way easier to just download the originals from itunes at $1.70 a pop.
I was close. We made enquiries and discovered that were listening to disc one of "World's Best Beer Songs".
If lunch happens to be seafood pizza, chips and beer, followed by toffee apple icecream from the place over the road, then that soundtrack is entirely appropriate.
The place where we stayed also had a fair collection of donkeys, geese, chickens, rabbits and birds for the children to feed. In amongst this reasonable sensible collection of animals, there is one emu, which wandered onto the property a few years ago and is yet to leave.
It only freaked me out slightly when, the day after the song writing relate revelations in the previous post, I discovered that the emu's name was Edwina.
Every night after the children went to sleep, we ate cheese and drank wine and watched movies. For the record, these included all three "Matrix" films, "Ten Things I Hate About You", "A Good Year" (which is possibly the most underrated film ever) and "The American President". If I ever get time, reviews of each will appear over here, but that may take a while.
We also spent plenty of time playing at the beach. I know the waves at Anglesea are not huge, but it is still great to watch two little boys running at them without a trace of fear.
It is also great to see the whole "sunsmart" thing has really taken off, even if the local interpretation seems to be that it is fine for a child (who looked about three) to run around the beach completely naked so long as he was wearing a big floppy hat.
Finally, we rounded out the trip by stopping at the Werribee Zoo on the way home, which I mention mostly because I am thrilled that it is still there.
Now all I have to do is to remember to go on holidays far more often.
posted by I'm not Craig at 6:21 AM
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