A couple of weekends ago we went to Noosa. It’s our annual work trip where we enjoy some warmer weather, eat lots of good food and run in Runaway Noosa races. This year I planned to do the HM but forgot and when I remembered it was already sold out. I had to settle for the 10K which I don’t like doing because it starts so late it is always hot. As it turns out it was lucky because I had COVID a few weeks before and would not have been able to do the HM. G and his business partner had also had COVID (caught on a flight home from China we think and then passed on to me). So we all had pretty ordinary runs. Luckily the weekend is about more than just running. G and I did our favourite walk in the National Park, we had some excellent food. I also had a couple of naps.

We also did what we often do while on holidays—plan our next holiday. If it’s a holiday with lots of down time and time to chat we often make future plans. While in Kangaroo Island we made plans to book a hike in New Zealand to celebrate our 30th anniversary. This time we booked the accommodation we need for our road trip to the Gold Coast Marathon weekend that is fast approaching. We’ll have three nights in Sydney and one night in Port Maquarie on the way up and three nights in Yamba on our way back to Sydney for the City to Surf.

Speaking of holidays we finally pulled the pin on our flights to the Berlin Marathon. From Australia we usually have to fly through either the Middle East or Asia to Europe. Unfortunately this time we had booked with Emirates (our first time) and since Dubai is currently on our government’s do not travel list and who knows when the war in Iran will end, we decided to book flights with another carrier. We wanted to start booking accommodation so we needed firm dates. First of all we confirmed that we were able to get most of our fare back from Emirates. Then G contacted Qantas to see what options they had and they offered us Melbourne-Perth-Rome for an extra $10,000 on top of what we had already paid. Ah … let me think … that would be a no. We ended up getting a good price flying Finnair, so we have to go through Helsinki then back to Frankfurt, but we fly Milan-Helsinki on the way out which is more convenient if G visits his clients in Italy. To get the cheap flight we also have a night in Singapore on the way and an extra few nights on the end of our trip. That means we are away for five weeks instead of four. It also means that we will spend the last weekend in Venice. Elisabeth’s recent trip to Venice reminded me how much I loved Venice so I’m not disappointed that we “had” to add this on to our trip.

Does travel and the down time involved find you making more travel plans?