Summer Down South

New Year's Eve 2013 was spent at 10,000 feet winging our way home to ole Un-Zud for the first time in two years.  The cherry on the top was that the flight attendants were handing out Singapore Slings.  Fantastic.

Invited to attend the beautiful wedding of one of Kyle's school mates and his stunning bride in Petone also gave us the long awaited opportunity to catch up with friends and family.  Not to mention sample some of the countries finest wares that are no longer at our finger tips.

Tip top - we love you.

After a few days of rain of the kind we'd not experienced since we'd left, Wellington thankfully put on a pearler for Dave's special day - where we took part in our first ceilidh! 

It was a jam packed 10 days.  We visited as many people as we could, saw how children had grown and met the new ones who'd arrived (all over the place - honestly, is there something in the water???).  Mum was brilliant at helping us cross all our culinary requirements off the list and we visited a few of our favourite old haunts too.  Big shout out to the pepper steak pie on the drive round the bays.

On our way back to the UK, we stopped off in Singapore for a few days to break up the trip and to have a look around at the Chinese New Year festivities.

Year of the Horse

Only our second visit to an Asian country, we got amongst the food and drink, including the eye-poppingly good, bright purple dragonfruit juice and resident dish, chilli crab.

And the sights and sounds.  We visited the Singapore Zoo night safari, wandered down Orchard Road and past the waterfront, complete with Merlion.

All in all, it was a good couple of weeks away.  Fantastic to see everyone again, even if it was only for a very short while.