Two drifters off to see the world. . .

Well as some of you already know and for those who don’t, we are now back on Canadian soil! We arrived back in Toronto last Friday evening. We had a busy weekend with the wedding of Sarah’s good friends Amelia and Clarke on Saturday, and then a busy week trying to sort through our mail, get our taxes started and get the car re-registered. I think we are over the jet lag now. Eero didn’t waste any time leaving the country again. He headed out to New Hampshire on Wednesday night with our friend Mike to do some hiking and skiing on Mount Washington until Sunday. Next week the job hunt officially begins. We are staying in Hamilton for the time being until we get our life sorted. If anyone wants to hang out shoot us an email eero.teene@gmail.com or sarah.teene@gmail.com or give a call on our new cell number 289-339-0120.

While in Melbourne we were lucky enough to stay with Kim and Jim and their 2 Border Collies, Mellon and Brock, who live in Rosanna, a suburb of Melbourne. Kim is Eero’s godfather Dave’s cousin. We had a nice dinner with them on the first night we arrived.
On our first day in Melbourne we went downtown and to the Queen Victoria Market, then took the tourist shuttle for a ride. The tourist shuttle took us past the Shrine of Rembrance, the Botanic Gardens, Federation square, the Sports precinct which has about 9 sports venues (including Olympic Park), the 88-floor residential Eureka tower amongst other sights of the city.
Kim and Jim took us to see an AFL game (Aussie Rules Football) between the St Kilda Saints and Essendon Bombers. We picked up on the rules of the game pretty quick and we both really enjoyed watching the game. The final score was 123-87 for St Kilda. They should bring the sport to Canada!
The next day we took the train back downtown and went back to the market to get some crocodile sausages for supper. They were pretty good. We also went out to St Kilda Beach and walked out the pier where there is a protected little penguin colony as well as a water rat colony.
On our last day in the Melbourne area, Kim and Jim took us for a scenic drive through the Yarra Valley. We stopped at two (Warramate Wines and Domaine Chandon) of the many wineries in the Yarra Valley and sampled some good wines. On the drive back we stopped in Healesville for some delicious meat pies at the Beechworth bakery.

After the rain and the west coast, we drove up through Richmond and up towards the Golden Bay area. During the drive inland towards Richmond it dried up a bit. The drive up to Golden Bay was really scenic and the sun was finally out until ... [Continue reading this entry]

Okay so we've been quite busy recently. We finished our time in Queenstown by visiting an old family friend of Sarah's and having quite a pleasant BBQ at Mark Shearer's place with his girlfriend Julia, and a couple of their friends. It ... [Continue reading this entry]

... is a van down by the river! We picked up a 1988 Toyota Hiace van, with only 601,000km on it in Cambridge, NZ which is right next to Hamilton. It was a deal, and looks like its only seen 300k ... [Continue reading this entry]

After Italy, we took a ferry from Bari, Italy to Patras, Greece. The ferry ride was fun, as we met up with a couple of Vancouverites the day before. We hung out with Devon and Tom playing card games on ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well we just spent the past 4 days exploring Estonia's capital city, Tallinn. We spent most of our time in vanalinn (Old Town) which is a two-tiered medieval town with part of it's defensive wall still intact and is a UNESCO world ... [Continue reading this entry]