All Good Things ... (Finale)

This is our last blog post as yesterday we arrived back in Melbourne after our flight from Heathrow.

The kids did a great job over the 23 hours of flying, especially as we stopped for about half an hour in both Dubai and Singapore. It's quite strange to board a plane late on Thursday and end up at our destination on Saturday morning with the long fly time and nine hours time difference between countries.

On Thursday 8 July, back in London, we walked beside the River Thames from Waterloo up to Tower Bridge, past the Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern Art Gallery. We then caught the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) to our old place at Gallion's Reach (near London City Airport) and were a little disheartened how the area still lacked life and, aside from a few new buildings and an extension to the DLR, was pretty much as we left it eight years earlier.

Lachlan loved the driverless light rail and sat at the front in the 'driver's seat' (pictured), stopping to pick up passengers. He had also wanted to catch a London double-decker bus, so we retraced our old route to work when back in London by catching a bus from North Woolwich to Canning

Town, then a connecting train on the Tube back to Waterloo.

It was great at the end of the day to then catch up with our friend Janelle who we also saw back at the start our trip in Dubai (she lives in London). After a coffee, we then thought we'd used pretty much every other form of transport for the day so we took a cab to the airport (costing a lovely 70 pounds = $120 Aussie dollars = ouch!). Unfortunately we didn't have much choice as we'd accumulated 95kgs of luggage which was a little too much for Sandra and I to lug onto the Tube during peak hour.

So, we're now back in Melbourne. As I've said before, we had an awesome time and it's a shame that all good things must come to an end.

It's great to catch up again with family and friends and again have the creature-comforts of home, but in no particular order, here's some of the things we'll miss about Europe:

• The wonderful sites including beautiful, historic buildings.
• Warm weather and long days (it's 15 degrees in Melb and dark at just after 5pm ... yuk!).
• 130km per hour speed limits.
• Guilt-free 10 min showers without water restrictions.
• Meeting great people and learning more about their cultures.
• Wandering around a new town, not knowing what to expect, getting lost and finding something cool and unexpected.

So, thanks for reading over the past several weeks. Back to normality!