The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

We’ve had a variety of experiences in just a few short days, such as:

Attending a concert at the Sydney Opera House to hear The Signature Choir & The Sydney Symphony: Man Moana – Spirit of The Ocean. The music was good and audience participation made it fun, although I didn’t understand the songs, which were in Samoan, Tongan, and other Pacific island languages.

Plus seeing the opera house from many viewpoints, including the Salesforce tower and a ferry that we took to & from the Taronga zoo.

At the zoo, we saw a variety of Australian animals that we’ve been looking forward to seeing. We might see more next week while up north.

And of course, walking to, around, and across the bridge offers good views too.

All that walking earned us a good local beer from Tooheys while at Sydney’s oldest pub, the Fortune of War.

We saw quite a bit:

Glow worms in a cave, along with stalagmites and stalactites.

Lots of countryside with cows, sheep and deer (we saw more cows than anything).

A bird sanctuary.

Mitai Māori Cultural Experience & Dinner Buffet.

A redwood tree forest, which I wasn’t expecting.

The Agrodome, where we saw sheep shearing, cow milking, and working dogs round up some ducks.

Hobbiton which was a beautiful location.

We had a sunny day walking around Auckland, which included the Maritime Museum and the Sky Tower.

It was 33 Celsius all day, but no rain, just a lot of sweat. We spent most of the day at the Marina Bay area or within sight of it. we even saw a rooster in the wild and a dinosaur. The architecture in the city, and especially the Marina Bay area, is pretty impressive.

A few sights while out walking on a rainy Sunday.

We met up with friends Steve and Brendan in Paris and, as usual, walked and walked and walked. This time, we discovered La Coulée Verte Paris, also known as the Promenade Plantée, which is an elevated walkway & park that used to be an elevated train track.

We saw a pizza vending machine, but didn’t try it., but we did try a cool little wine bar. And, we walked past the renovated Notre Dame, which is still under construction but looking good.

We also got to experience the city erupting with excitement Saturday night as Paris beat Milan for the Champions League. People were celebrating and streets started getting closed off, along with the Metro stops we needed to get back to our hotel. The Metro itself was shaking from people celebrating and even the driver was honking with excitement at each station.

Dutch kids grow up playing in the forest, or at least in parks with trees. They often lean sticks against trees to build a hut, or a fort (fortje) or a hut (hutje) building (hutten bouwen). It’s part of a way to help kids connect with nature, and it doesn’t cost anything since kids just use the sticks they can find.

For our 25th anniversary, we had about 15 people get together at a pub in London for a couple of hours and then 10 of us went to the ABBA show. Since silver is the color for the 25th and the music is mostly disco, like our wedding, we dressed to match the occasion.

Last night we took a cruise around the canals of Haarlem, which was a new experience for us. There aren’t as many as Amsterdam, but it was nice to see the city from a different point of view and learn a few things from our boat captain/tour guide.

It starts and ends at the windmill in Haarlem.

The first round of flowers are out.