I’ve always wanted to go surfing, so when I was in Australia I was determined to give it a shot and have a lesson. So I scooted across to Manly Surf School, for a two hour beginners lesson. Jill decided she didn’t want to participate, and no-one else turned up to begin with so I managed to get a private lesson.

The instructor warned me that because there’s usually about 10 people in a two hour lesson, and I was on my own, I would probably only last about just over an hour as I’d be more tired.

First off, the weather was the worst we’d had so far in Australia – cold and wet, but once I got in the wetsuit, to be honest I couldn’t feel it. The water didn’t even seem that cold. If you’ve been snowboarding, you know the hardest thing is constantly having to get up when you’ve fallen over. Well with surfing, I found the hardest thing to be constantly having to push up off the board. It was absolutely exhausting.

To cut a long story short, I did manage to stand up a couple of times, and lasted about an hour and fifty minutes before making it all the way in to the sand standing up, and deciding I’d go out on a relatively successful go.

I wasn’t prepared for the aching limbs I had for the next week, but I really enjoyed it, am glad I did it, and may look to do it again, as Northern Ireland has some great surf up on the north coast.

Ok I’ve been tardy with the posts again. I just have a couple of Sydney related posts and then it’ll be back to normal, even though I’ve been back like a month!

One restaurant I was really keen to go to when I was in Sydney was Bill’s. Bill Granger’s done a couple of TV shows which have been on in the UK (although I haven’t seen any of them) but I bought one of his cookery books a while ago and have bought every one he’s done since. The food is simple, fresh and great tasting.

Anyway, his cafes / restaurants are famous for their scrambled eggs, so Jill and I visited his cafe in Darlinghurst for breakfast a couple of times. The eggs were truly amazing. In fact the whole breakfast was amazing, but be prepared to queue – we had to wait about 25 minutes on morning.

Bill’s is at 433 Liverpool Street in Darlinghurst, but he also has outlets in Surry Hills and Woollahara. Hopefully I’ll be back soon to enjoy those creamy scrambled eggs again!

Dustin Curtis (who has an amazingly designed blog) and his friend Alaska Miller (no relation) are about to undertake a 30 day trip to visit every destination jetBlue serve (thanks to an All You Can Jet pass jetBlue put on sale recently).

They’re going to strike up conversations with fellow travellers and see if they can get an understanding of the average jetBlue flyer, and presumably uncover some interesting stories along the way. You can find out more at the 30dayflight website.

So Jill and I have spent our first week down under, and it’s just been amazing. Read on for more about what we’ve been up to in our first week!

We arrived two days after we left, but the flight wasn’t that bad at all. We got upgraded to World Traveller Plus, and got in the lounges at London and Bangkok, so it was pretty plain sailing (or flying) really. I also managed to sleep A LOT. I was out for the count.

We arrived in Monday morning, and we’ve already done quite a lot of the things we wanted to do. We’ve climbed the harbour bridge (although not the $300 Bridge Climb) but the Pylon Lookout, had lunch with an amazing view at the Rocks, been to Manly, Bondi Junction, and gone for an amazing walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens to reveal a stunning view of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

We’ve eaten in some great places as well – the world famous scrambled eggs at Bill Granger’s cafe, a place called Rambutan on Oxford Street which served up an unusual but delicious lamb curry with mandarin, a little Italian called Giardinetto in Surrey Hills, oh and the obligatory Maccers which came to the rescue on a night out in Kings’ Cross.

We’ve also been out quite a bit, the first night went completely wrong when we got jetlag drunk on wine, and I ended up locking Jill out of the apartment. In a deep sleep I missed her 34 telephone calls to my phone, and she ended up having to get another room. Not ideal. I think my favourite bar so far has been either Gazebo in Kings Cross or a place we went to very briefly in Manly last night – Charlie Bar. Although that did have someone playing the bongos on it.

I’ve done a bit of shopping too with a new shirt from Mooks, and a couple of cookery books, but that’s been it so far – no massive purchases!

Best thing of the week so far, apart from the meals at Rambutan and Bills, was probably Taronga Zoo – we saw loads of animals, and got our picture taken with a koala, although it was asleep. When you consider they spend 20 hours a day sleeping though because their eucalyptus leaf diet hardly has any energy, I guess you can say it’s fair dinkum though! You can also sleepover at the zoo, which would have been amazing, but it’s a bit pricey.

We’re still feeling a bit jet-lagged which is beginning to get a bit annoying – I’ve only had one kinda crazy night out so far, because I just keep hitting a wall of tiredness at around 10pm. Boring!

Me any my mate Jill are off on one of these soon! A couple of us had been looking to get away from the dreadful Belfast summer to someplace hot for two weeks. Amazingly I managed to discover a little known, short-term offer on BA.com and Jill and I managed to score two return flights to Sydney, Australia for only £215 each – everything included! They’re usually about £700-£800.

So at the end of August, we’re off to Oz for two weeks. I can’t wait! I’ve been once before, but it was a family holiday for the Millenium, so I’m looking forward to exploring Sydney with a mate. We’ve already got our apartment booked and both wanting to take a surfing lesson, so nearly good to go!

The long flight doesn’t really bother me to much, although our layover in Singapore is only around an hour on the way back – I would have liked a bit longer there to go exploring. At least we’ll get in the lounges with my AA Platinum card!

I use AA.com all the time – booking flights, checking my AAdvantage miles, and checking seat availability, requesting upgrades bla de bla.

Their site honestly sucks big time. It looks awful, is clumsy, and is a nightmare to navigate. So hats off to Dustin Curtis for sending an open letter to AA about their site design, posting a possible redesign, and getting a response.

It doesn’t sound like AA.com’s gonna get a redesign anytime soon, but if only!

On a trip to London probably about a month ago now, me and the famille ended up in Lacock. It is a really olde worlde looking village with loads of thatched cottages, and is used loads in filming historical television series and so on. Probably the funniest thing about the trip was when we had a cup of coffee and Mum started getting all jittery around a cat that was prowling about. She hates those cats! So obviously we had to pretend every two minutes it was about to jump on her shoulder. Ha ha!

Anyway, slightly drawing away from the historical look of the village, when we visited, they had this weird treasure hunt going on where you had to try and identify various very disturbing looking pop star models. They were creepy cos they had paper mache faces. Or peeling plastic faces. Anyway, here are two of them, can you guess who they are?

That’s number one, here’s number two….

That one’s a bit of a give-away!

This is an advert produced by the Scottish Government to publicise Homecoming Scotland. It does actually make me want to go back home! Hooray for Scotland!

Well I’m back at home now after a relaxing Christmas break, and back to work today as well. I went to visit my family in London this year for Christmas, and we all went off to a very nice hotel (in the pic above) for four days over Christmas. It was great to chill out a bit, and also get to see a bit more of my new niece, who’s only two and half months old. She does just eat, sleep, and be sick but it was nice to see her anyway.

I got a couple of really neat things for Christmas – a knives set to sharpen up my cooking skills (ha ha ha!), Dexter Season 2 on DVD which I am watching at a rate of like three episodes a night, and some cooking stuff and a book from my sis which I’m hoping will enable me to become a bit more adventurous in the bread making department.

The hotel we were staying at was really amazing. It had a great pool and a ‘men’s relaxation room’ and this weird shower thing which let you select either Rainforest Something-or-other (warm water scented like flowers) or Artic Mist (cool mint-scented water). I could have stayed in that all day but unfortunately I pressed both buttons at the same time and couldn’t work out how to stop one so I could enjoy the other.

We also went clay-pigeon shooting, and at one section of that I managed to hit four out of six clays. Get me! I did have bruises on my arm the next day though.

All in all a very relaxing Christmas with little alcohol involved actually! Which was good as I did feel like I’d been over-doing it in the run up!

So a couple of weekends ago, me and me ol’ mucker Jill headed off to London to see Strictly Come Dancing, which our mate Christine Bleakley is taking part in this year. If you live in the US, Strictly Come Dancing is our version of Dancing With The Stars.

Now I must confess I don’t really watch Strictly – I’m more of an X Factor person myself (Go Diana!), so I was more excited about catching up with Christine than seeing the show. However, after a couple of beers in Television Centre before the show, I think it’s fair to say Jill and I were excited.

The show was absolutely brilliant to watch. Bruce Forsyth is a legend in my opinion now – he was very, very entertaining and did a brilliant song and dance routine (”Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week”) before the show started. It was great!

After the live Saturday night show, it was off to the bar for more drinks, and then back to the studio for the pre-recorded Sunday results show. I think I was partly very excited by this point because we were sitting behind Lauren and Abi from EastEnders, and seeing any EastEnders people always gets me excited.

After the Sunday show had been recorded, we headed off to Christine’s dressing room and met her dancing partner, Matt, and some of the other dancers and celebs taking part in the show. After that it was off to a club in London (which apparently had a revolving dancefloor, but by that time Jill and I were too drunk to notice). That’s where the picture above was taken which Jill and Christine find hilarious for some reason. Apparently because I look like a “little boy”. I have had my hair cut short since.

After the club, it was back to the hotel, and I fell in to bed absolutely knackered while the rest of them carried on drinking – I blame the tonsilitis myself! It was a brilliant weekend though, and Jill and I are hoping to go back to see the show again soon.

We also got interviewed for the Sunday results show (Jill fluffed her lines, I was perfect) but unfortunately they didn’t use it. Next time!