Holiday, part 2
To continue the story of our holiday…Wednesday was a fairly wet and chilly day but we made the best of it. Our journey took us into Denmark, about fifteen minutes away from our cottage. Our first stop there was the visitor centre, which seems quite big for such a small town. It also houses a collection of barometers, including the largest in the world. One of the volunteers provided a map with some local attractions. We chose to visit just a few attractions due to the rain and the limited walking we could do with Game Fanatic’s sore foot.
We spent most of our time in the town centre and visited a few shops. I went into a craft shop that also sold ice cream, a rather bizaar combination. They had a lot of really nice yarns there but I opted not to buy anything since I’ve still got projects to complete. Lego Lover was hungry, of course, so the Scientist and Game Fanatic took him down to the the award-winning bakery for a sausage roll. It was much bigger than what he usually gets and he really liked it. With his lunch taken care of, the rest of us ate lunch at the Fig Tree Cafe. I had a veggie patty on a roll with chips (thick french fries). The rolls was huge, with a thin patty, lots of salad and sauce. It was very messy, but it was good. After we had lunch, Lego Lover was taken to the craft shop to buy an ice cream and they even had his favorite, cookies and cream. It should also be noted that all of us got something to eat at the bakery during our brief time there. The Scientist bought a vanilla slice when he got the sausage roll. I bought a hedgehog slice for dessert (best I’ve tasted and I’m not that keen on them). Then just as we were leaving, we got Game Fanatic a curry pie, which he said was very nice.
We visited a couple beaches in the area during the day. One was Ocean Beach and the other was an area called The Elephant Rocks. Most of the reason we saw the latter was that I had bought a postcard and sent it to my mom with a photo from there, slightly by mistake and I thought it might be good to visit the place in the photo. It was getting very windy and the rain was getting heavier so that was one of the briefest visits. Just after the Elephant Rocks we visited the Bartholomew Meadery for its honey. We sampled several types of honey while there, ate honey-flavored ice cream and bought a jar of hazelnut honey to take home. They also have some bees in a hive inside the shop…just a small one but it had clear plastic or glass so that visitors could watch the bees at work. Very interesting to watch…
We stopped in the town centre to buy a few groceries from the IGA to make sandwiches for the trip home. We hardly cooked while there and spent way too much money on eating out (or in with prepared meals). This grocery store seems to be quite new and modern in design.
That was the last we saw of Denmark but it left quite an impression. It was absolutely beautiful there and very peaceful. I don’t know what it’s like in the summer but it just seemed to be a lovely place to live. Something the Scientist noticed was the lack of traffic lights anywhere in the region. There were none in Denmark nor Albany, which used roundabouts instead. In retrospect, it was interesting that for five of the six hours of driving, we saw not a single traffic signal. Neat.
We went back to the cottage fairly early in the afternoon and just hung out while it rained outside. Our dinner consisted of three different curries (lamb, vegetable and fish), prepared by the cottage owners. We weren’t quite sure what to expect and thought the curry might be a big on the sweet side. But all three were enjoyed by all. Well, not all, since Lego Lover didn’t partake. He ate sandwiches instead, if I remember correctly. Each curry was meant to feed two people so we had a lot to eat. Some of the yellow rice was leftover as was some of the vegetable curry. We brought that home with us since it wasn’t going to go off during our trip home. After dinner, we cleaned up and made sandwiches for the journey home. Then we played board games, then watched tv and dvds until bedtime.
On Thursday, we were up early again. Lego Lover had been prepared since early the day before for our departure. I think he was ready to come home by that point because he missed his favorite games. It was another wet morning with some hail falling early on. The deck was covered with little pebbles of it and it looked much like we’d had a brief snowfall at first. We ate breakfast, finished packing and cleaning, then checked out.
We paid the rest of our bill and said goodbye to our excellent hosts. They are off to Mauritius on their own holiday this week. August, being late winter, is a very slow month so the wife says they go as far away as possible so that they aren’t tempted to come back early for someone trying to get a cottage at the last minute. Seems a sensible plan to me.
I kind of wish I had written everything down while there because there’s more I wanted to record but I suppose some of it has already been forgotten and I can’t write all the details.
Our trip home was again mostly uneventful. My neck soreness had mostly improved by the day we left but the Scientist drove the whole way home anyway. We stopped again in Albany so that I might buy a souvenir spoon. Unfortunately, they were out of stock at the visitor centre and the only other place that definitely had one wasn’t open yet. While there,. it had rained and we saw another full rainbow. It wasn’t as nice as the one two days earlier but it was still something to see. Our journey back was slightly different to the trip there, passing through Albany and Mt. Barker along the way. We stopped at Mt. Barker and they were out of spoons at their visitor centre too! We stopped in the town of Williams about halfway through for toilet breaks and to eat our sandwiches. I did buy a spoon there for the woolsheds there. There was a spoon for the town with a Blue Wren on it, which was identical, aside from town name, to the one I bought in Denmark. I’ve never seen this bird anywhere but apparently it’s an emblem for the town of Denmark. I guess they must have quite a few in the area of Williams too.
We arrived home before 3pm and the car was quickly unloaded. The Scientist and I went off to the vet to pick up the cat, who apparently had a nice stay with the other cats boarding there. We had been worried about her getting upset but I guess we forgot that she’s a cat, lol. We won’t worry so much in the future.
