Holidays Advice: Page 7 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Holidays Advice

Burnwinter

Asterix Perth is great for a stopover and a few days driving south to the wine region of Margaret River. You can go snorkeling with whale sharks at the right time of year at Ningaloo Reef - but it's a long way even from Perth, which is itself a long way from anywhere.

Without prejudice, southwest WA probably has the best beaches in the country. It is a great place to spend time, but I think you can have a lot of the same sorts of things but a bit more action-packed over in Tasmania. That said I will be camping out on West Cape Howe on Saturday eve, and it'll be stunning.

@HomeSteak Honestly, nothing wrong with Sydney and Melbourne but I can't understand why anyone would fly here to tour them.

These would be my 2 week Australian itineraries …

Tasmania circuit … something like Hobart, MONA, wine and cheese, hike and camp Cape Freycinet, Port Arthur, Bruny Island and then maybe jam in a Cradle Mountain hike would be a pretty good combo for a week or two … this one's for the summer months. Head back to Melbourne or drive the Great Ocean Road a bit.

Queensland city to the tropics tour … Brisbane, Glass House Mountains, Atherton tablelands, Hinchinbrook Island (especially if you like hiking, the Thorsborne track is amazing but you've gotta book early), Cairns, dive the Great Barrier Reef, hit up the Daintree. That is a lot of beautiful stuff.

Asterix

Burnwinter Without prejudice, southwest WA probably has the best beaches in the country.

I really have to go there so I can verify this for myself. So far the NSW coast has the best beaches I've visited anywhere, and Sydney is ridiculously well blessed - Palm Beach, Bilgola, North Curl Curl, Freshwater, Manly, Fairy Bower, Balmoral (in Sydney Harbour), Bondi, Bronte, Clovelly, Coogee - these are all in Sydney and are all wonderful. The water is a bit warmer on the east coast too. Mollymook on the NSW South Coast is gorgeous, with dolphins visiting nearly every day. The beaches of Jervis Bay are also fabulous. Then there are countless coves north of Sydney up to Byron and Yamba.

The WA beaches do also look absolutely stunning, I'm hoping to spend a few weeks there next year - I get my long service leave in a couple of months. My youngest child is finishing high school this year so once that's done I'm working on convincing the missus to take a leisurely tour of WA. She won't need much convincing.

Clrnc

On a side note about Abnb, during my Australia road trip years ago when I stayed in Byron bay and Coffs Harbour, I met 2 of the nicest hosts ever. We chatted a lot and they even brought us to nice local restaurants and those 2 days in those towns went by so fast. I told both of them (old couples who were retirees) that if you would want to visit Singapore, drop me an email I will bring you around and they could stay over at my place. I dropped my contact in both their welcome book at their home as well as Abnb message.

Few years later, I chanced upon one of their email! Filtered into spam mail in my google inbox. It was more than half a year later and I immediately replied to the email. Didn't receive a reply for weeks so I remembered I had their daughter's contact number from one of our trip, texted her and found out her parents was killed in the forest fire while trying to protect their house, which they singlehandedly built from recycled material from a nearby school that was torn down. Heartbreaking

Coombs

Clrnc wow clrnc, that story took a turn I wasn't expecting. Tragic.

Don Pacifico

Clrnc wow, how sad. Things like that can really stay with you and remind you of the fragility of life.

Burnwinter

Clrnc Ah, fuck man … that is a sad tale. Hate to hear stuff like that. Those fires have been brutal in recent years, so much was destroyed in NSW and Victoria over summer 2019–20, whole towns wrecked.

Burnwinter

Asterix So far the NSW coast has the best beaches I've visited anywhere, and Sydney is ridiculously well blessed - Palm Beach, Bilgola, North Curl Curl, Freshwater, Manly, Fairy Bower, Balmoral (in Sydney Harbour), Bondi, Bronte, Clovelly, Coogee - these are all in Sydney and are all wonderful.

I lived in Canberra for quite a while and visited south coast of NSW often, never saw anything I'd rate in comparison to Margaret River round to Esperance. Can't comment on central to north coast, never really had a look. I think Lucky Bay was recently voted "world's best beach", though the landscape off the beach is a bit less compelling—Cape Le Grand a bit windy and exposed. Hellfire is nicer anyway 😛

Add to that I've twice had dolphins come and swim with me for over an hour off the beach in waters round Esperance. Not an everyday thing but it's not impossible.

Google Greens Pool and Elephant Rocks for two of the most popular spots round Denmark, anyway. Looking forward to a swim round there over the weekend. Lowlands Beach pictured below is about a five minute drive from my folks' place. Never seen more than 10 people there, and usually there's none.

Lowlands Beach

Daz

Asterix
Northern NSW is where it's at. Sydney beaches don't come close 😉

Asterix

Burnwinter geez that looks wonderful. Dolphins are so cool.

Burnwinter

Asterix Plenty of sharks too sadly … the stretch round Albany to Esperance is probably the most dangerous in terms of great white attacks 🦈

jones

Burnwinter lol Australians always keep saying the dangerous animal thing is a dumb meme only to go "oh yeah the most beautiful beaches here have no humans just irukandji and sharks"

Burnwinter

jones 😆 To be fair I've been heading to the beach all the time my whole life, and I've never actually seen a great white. You get cleared out of the water by shark patrols ever so occasionally in Perth …

On the south coast there's probably 1–2 attacks per year, maybe 1 fatal, at the moment, out of kajillions of swimmers. It tends to be surfers or divers who are further out.

Up in the north there's just certain times of year you should never be in the water due to the jellies. But I reckon there will be irukandji down around the Perth and Sydney latitudes in two or three decades due to the perilous rate of ocean warming.

jones

Will be visiting the Congo later this year, was a childhood dream to tour the entire continent by 4x4 but now with little time I just pick a couple spots here and there. Going with a Congolese friend but he hasn't been in ages so if anyone has more recent experience with that part of the world - mostly Kinshasa Congo but will go to Brazzaville as well - would be glad to hear about it

HomeSteak

So australians are loud but always in a good mood

Qwiss

HomeSteak From reading the last few posts I assume they're just happy not to have been eaten that week.

Burnwinter

HomeSteak always in a good mood

Few nations (if you can even call it one) have ever been more consumed by cope

KingslandBarge

Planning to spend Sat to Sat in Bergen and Flåm. As always would be grateful for any recommendations on trails, restaurants.

QuincyAbeyie

KingslandBarge Never been to Flåm, but I used to live in Bergen. It's a really nice city in my opinion, hopefully you're lucky with the weather.

Bergen is surrounded by 7 small mountains. There's a trail that visits each of these. Not sure what kind of shape you're in, but if you are it's called 7-fjellsturen (7-Mountain Tour). If not, there are shorter versions of the trail where you don't visit each of them, 4-fjellsturen and 3-fjellsturen.

And if you want to not do everything in one day, you could also do them individually. Fløyen is the most casual, probably just an hour to get to the top and with a nice view of the city and a restaurant at the top.

Ulriken is one of the others, and has a cable car to get to the top as well if you don't want to walk. There's a restaurant at the top called Skyskraperen Restaurant with panorama windows overlooking the surrounding landscape. Never been there myself, but it's become pretty popular. Takes less than three hours to walk to the top I think.

As for restaurants, I lived there as a student with limited funds so didn't try that many of them. Not sure if you're into fine dining or not (I've never been one to spend £150 per person for a dinner) but there are two Michelin restaurants in the city called Moon and Lysverket. I've also heard good things about Bare Restaurant and Restaurant 1877, but these are all 'exclusive' choices. On the other side of the scale you could go by Trekroneren hot dog stand for a reindeer hot dog.

Bryggeloftet is also supposed to be good for Norwegian cuisine. Not as expensive as the first ones I mentioned, but not cheap either. However the Norwegian Krone is worth less compared to GBP than ever before, so that should help you.

People who live in Bergen are extremely proud of their city so they'd probably be happy to recommend you something if you asked a random person. If you're there in the summer most of the people you meet will be from there (or tourists, I guess). If you're there other than the summer I wouldn't ask young people since they're probably students and won't be able to help you that much.

Like I said, I've never been to Flåm, but I've only heard good things. It's famous for it's zipline (1,4 km long) and obviously nature in general.

Stegastein Viewpoint
Ægir Bryggeripub (food and beer)
Nærøyfjorden (either by ferry or kayak)
https://www.alltrails.com/norway/vestland/flam

KingslandBarge

QuincyAbeyie dropping a line to say thanks so much QA. What a pretty town. Weather was pristine on Sat so we seized a couple 'steep' fares to go up to Ulriken. I'm sure you got well acquainted with local team Brann during your time here, who were hosting Rosenberg on Saturday. There was a procession of away fans heading towards the stadium as we were making our way to Ulriksbanen, and we could loudly hear and faintly make out the game from the mountain peak. Lots of Arsenal jerseys about town yesterday too.

On your tip, we've booked Bryggeloftet for tomorrow night. Still quite keen to fit in a solo lunch at Lysverket before the end of the trip.

I would also really like to straddle the Vidden trail, though there may not be time to squeeze it in. However, will through the all-trails link for later this week. We're renting a car and heading towards Hardangerfjord on Wednesday. I'm vying to indulge in a late night/early morning session at the James Turrell skyspace if I can coax someone to come along.

Segway

Norway is amazing to visit. Stunningly beautiful country. But it's very expensive to go out. Definitely going to Bergen as well sometime so thanks for the tips, Quincy.

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