Back From Holidays: Part One

Last night we touched down in Hong Kong bringing to an end a very relaxing, if emotional, holiday down under. We spent hardly any time in Sydney itself, opting instead for a stay at Pearl Beach, on the NSW Central Coast. It’s the area where L spent her summers as a child. This was our fourth holiday there since C was born.

Since the three of us have amassed a wealth of frequent flyer points, we opted to buy Economy fares with Qantas and chance our arm at upgrades to Business Class. That proved to be a folly. Despite following the procedure, the upgrades did not come through and we were stuck with a history lesson in what economy long-haul travel was like. Rock-hard seats, no personal entertainment, lousy sound for the almost un-watchable movies and Qantas’ renowned service with a snarl. I’ve flown long-haul with all three classes on Qantas and never, ever, enjoyed the service. The words, “never again,” were muttered by all of us several times on the return flight.

The beach itself was everything we had hoped for, with the weather staying warm and pleasant for most of our time there. Pearl Beach is a small town, with a limited number of houses due to its topology and smaller crowds since the beach is is neither patrolled, nor offers much surf. This makes it a peaceful, family-centric place, with little to distract you from a routine of eating, walking, swimming and just simply relaxing. There’s one convenience store, one cafe and one real estate agent from which you can pick up the keys for your holiday rental.

As with past trips, we made an order with Simon Johnson (purveyor of fine foods) to cover most of our gastronomic needs and supplemented that with trips to the excellent Fish and Chip store in Patonga, a small fishing and camping town just down the road from “Pearly.”

to be continued…