Tomorrow morning I am off to New Zealand for 10 days to visit my family and all my favourite coastal places. There will be small port towns (Lyttelton), delicious food (Oamaru and Moeraki), estuary walks (Waikouaiti), and cliff walks up and down the coast. I will be hanging out with sheep, and I may even get to milk them. If the weather is good I’ll help my parents make hay. If the weather is bad I’ll sit in the sunroom with Ben the cat and watch the rain on the glass.
It can be nice having something gorgeous to wear when you are traveling. Clothes are our shelter, but in the absence of a home or place to rest, they can also help remind us of who we are. Travel clothes need to be practical, however. They have to be lightweight, versatile, easy to wear with almost anything, and okay to get a little crumpled.
I had this in mind recently when I sewed my new favourite top – a Wiksten tank in a lovely Liberty print. It’s the perfect summer top. It goes well with shorts, jeans and loose pants, but can also be worn tucked into a high waisted skirt or pants. It looks lovely under a cardigan or a blazer and could also been worn pinny-style over a merino base layer in winter. It will need an iron occasionally, but if it gets a little crumpled I can hang it in the shower with me to smooth out the wrinkles.
But most importantly, it makes me feel really pretty.
I have a song that I like, by Lyttelton band The Unfaithful Ways, called Little Mountain Town (sometimes I wish I lived in a little mountain town, where everybody knows your name and nobody gets you down). This summer, I discovered an adjacent fantasy – longing to live in a little seaside town.
The day is slow to get going in Singapore… Singaporeans start work at about 9.30am and shops usually don’t open until 11am. The good news is that this means the shops are also open really late – it’s not unheard of for people to go shopping at midnight!
But if you’ve just arrived from Australia or New Zealand, you’ll probably be awake at the crack of dawn. When you’re in a city for a short period of time, every day is valuable. You don’t want to waste a minute.
Here are some things in Singapore that you can do during the morning before the shops abnd museums open
You might think that Singapore is all skyscrapers and shopping malls, but there is a quiet little oasis in the middle of the island called MacRitchie Reservoir that is perfect for an escape from the city one afternoon. By catching a train and then a short bus ride, you can find the start of a bush walk that takes you on swing bridges across bush canopy, past cheeky monkeys and other wildlife, to a large network of boardwalk around the edge of Singapore’s main water supply and then through a public park. You will meet lots of joggers and other walkers, but for the most part this 10+ kilometer walk is very peaceful, and teeming with wildlife (we saw monkeys, birds, terrapins and giant water lizards).
If anyone tells you that Singapore is sterile and boring, ignore them.
This cosmopolitan island may have a lot of shopping centres, flash hotels and fancy restaurants, but it also has an incredible local food scene, a rich and multi-layered cultural history, and lush wilderness. And with a brilliant (and cheap) public transport system, it’s easy to get around and explore. I spent 10 days in Singapore in November, and didn’t come close to running out of things to do. I felt really at home and all the locals I met were very enthusiastic about their city. I think that rubbed off on me a little bit. I’ll definitely go back.
It can be expensive eating in the Sydney CBD. If you’re travelling through Sydney and are spending time in the city, but don’t want to have to eat greasy food court fare, here are some of my favourite cheap and stylish places to eat within walking distance of Pitt Street Mall.
I didn’t intend for them to all be asian, but that’s how it worked out (the bonus for me is that this makes it easy to avoid gluten!)
New Zealand is a beautiful shape. It’s not called the land of the long white cloud for nothing. As NZ Poet Cilla McQueen described it, it’s just a long green spine, sticking out of the ocean. The country is no longer than 15 hours drive from tip to tail of each island, and only 6 hours across. As well as offering you beaches and mountains in the same day, it’s this geographical fact that can help you stretch your travel budget while in Aotearoa.
The key piece of knowledge to have about New Zealand is that most visitors travel from North to South.
All you need to do to relocate rental cars the length of the country for free is travel in the reverse direction.
If you are in that part of Sydney known as the Inner West, these are some of my favourite places to eat. Go on… make a day of it.
Cornersmith
Illawarra Road, Marrickville
A simple menu of poached eggs on toast and ploughman platters that changes depending on what seasonal produce is available. Every time I eat something from Cornersmith, I find myself going home and trying to recreate it – beetroot pickle, pear and ricotta muffins, and quince and clove ice cream. I think that’s the best compliment I can give this place – the food inspires you to create and to keep eating well. Try to ignore the hipsters.
Bourke Street Bakery
Mitchell Street (off Victoria Road), Marrickville
More laid back and less crowded than the Surry Hills original. They have different breads on different days, which encourages our household to mix up our bread buying routine. My favourite take home treat is the sour cherry and fennel bread.
Addison Road Organic Food Market, Sundays - 8am-3pm
Addison Road, Marrickville
Great chai. I have a friend who makes a breakfast gozleme here a weekend ritual. My favourite thing to do is to get a delicious fruit ice block or the really fresh corn fritters and sit on the grass and watch the miniature horse rides.
PHD Vietnamese Restaurant
Illawarra Road, Marrickville
Considered by most to be the best Vietnamese restaurant on this strip. Especially the Pho. I’m rating Queyen Restaurant next door lately, too - great vermicelli rice noodle salads.
Zhenghao Restaurant
Enmore Road, Enmore
The only place so far in the Inner West where I’ve found xiao long bao. The fried lamb dumplings are really just incredibly good.
Black Star Pastry
Australia Street, Newtown
This is where you go in Sydney when you want to buy someone a birthday cake, okay? This one had sugar balls, roses, figs, quince and pistachios on top. That many toppings on a cake is just pure decadence.
Everleigh Farmers’ Market, Saturdays - 8am-1pm
Carriageworks, Wilson Street, Everleigh
You can eat for free here with all the different tastings on offer. Don’t be shy. The smoked trout with pickled red onion is my favourite. You will meet all the dogs and see all the flowers. It’s that kind of market.
Big Brekky
Stanmore Road, Petersham
Their french toast is so big I have nicknamed it cake toast. Great corn fritters and a fantastic big breakfast that has merquez sausages, potato gratin and a pear relish that I just want to order as a side on everything.
One of my favourite places in the entire world is a place called Papatowai in the Catlins, south of Dunedin. We spent Easters there when I was a child, and I still love to visit whenever I go back to New Zealand.
This part of the South Island coast has rock pools and tide pools, an estuary that drains out at low tide, South Island Rata that hang low over the sand and old growth Totara. It’s one of those places that you go to stay and not leave. Just get out your map, drawn a circle around where you are staying and go out explore a very small part of the world – climb your way around rock pools, walk up and down the coast, wander across the estuary in zig zags like the spoon bills that live there, sit inside by the fire. Eat good food, go to sleep and then get up and do it all again.
