Up in the morning then we got to the lounge for breakfast. Then a 14 hour flight to Frankfurt – my goodness, that is a long time!! Quite a few films and a bit of a sleep.

We change in Frankfurt and have 3 hours in the lounge. We are all completely zonked by this point. We have to move to avoid drunk Germans who keep playing music and dropping things 🤣.

Then a couple of hours and back to Edinburgh – landing at 11pm and home about 5 to midnight! Nice to see our house again but it’s very cold indeed! Bed and then sleep… that’s it. All over!

Ah, so sad for this holiday to end. It’s honestly been the holiday of a lifetime and we’ve had so many amazing experiences and had so much fun. None of us want it to end….

We’ve still got a couple of hours so we end it where it began – with a walk around the Botanic Gardens. We grab breakfast in the cafe and have a lovely stroll and talk about our favourite parts of the trip. Hard to choose!

We get back to the hotel and pack up then we head to the airport.

The flight is delayed so we get food vouchers so go and eat a lot of food we don’t really want 🤣. I had a laksa in memory of Katy and my happy times in Chatswood food court.

Then we’re off to Tokyo!

We land around 10pm Tokyo time and get the airport bus to the Excel airport hotel. The biggest excitement was the complementary nightshirts, so we all had a picture in those before a good nights’ sleep.

We got up early and headed to Brisbane to take the car back and catch the flight to Sydney. All went very smoothly, which was surprising given the wait when we picked it up.

Returning a rental car has a similar level of anxiety attached as taking a Ryanair flight – you always worry you’ve done something wrong!

Got to Sydney and then jumped into a cab to the Interconty! Yay – back to our fave spot by Circular Quay. Quick change and then on the ferry to Manly. The weather was lovely and the waves were high! I finally got some shots in the water of the kids. We grabbed a quick snack of a pizza slice and a cold drink and went back in for more. Paul had got a bit bored so went off for a walk.

We met him after we’d got tired from the waves and couldn’t decide when to eat – but the heavens opened so we decided to get back to the hotel and change so we could eat around the Quay.

After a bit of wandering we chose an outside spot with great views of the quay and the bridge for our last dinner in Oz.

Our last day in Noosa! So sad to leave this chilled, beautiful place. Although we felt we’d experienced most of what it had to offer.

Last thing was hiring our own boat. Paul felt that it would be too stressful with us all in the boat so he opted out, but the 3 of us hired the boat for a couple of hours.

It was a 6 seater and pretty slow! But we did a few 360s and tried to catch as many wakes as we could.

We’d taken snacks and drinks and played some tunes as we toured Noosa’s waterways and tried to avoid the sandbanks. There were loads of kids jumping off the bridge into the river and fishermen on the other side so we had a few obstacles to avoid!

We all had turns to drive (times of course – for fairness! 🙄). Good fun!!

Paul had decided to go to the national park and saw some amazing beaches and the fairy pools and granite bay. He did a bit of coasteering and rock scrambling, so he had a lovely time too!

We’d booked the best restaurant in Noosa for dinner (according to trip advisor). It was called Gusto on Gympie Terrace and the food was lovely. We had cocktails and Ronan had a steak, Paul had chowder. We had a really nice waiter who was telling us about his life around Noosa.

A lovely end to a great stay!

It was a bit of a rainy day today so we generally mooched about the new flat. Ronan had been sick the night before so we took it fairly easy.

We decided to book a sunset boat ride as the weather forecast looked ok for later.

I was a bit bored at the house so I got the bus into town to have a wander round the shops. Noosa is pretty fancy so the shops were full of lovely muted linen clothes for swanning around your yacht!

I bought a pretty white top and then went for an iced coffee despite the rain! They tried to charge me $91 for it…!

We set off for the boat around 4.30 as it set off from Gympie Terrace. The guy who ran the boat was a real character and had us in hysterics with his non pc commentary. Two kids spotted on a boat were ‘William and Harry’ 🤣.

It wasn’t quite as fancy as ‘sunset dinner cruise’ implied – we all got a box with our names on which had burger and chips, calamari and chips and I had a salmon poke bowl. Think mine was the best.

The boat ride was actually really good fun and we saw all the amazing $10-20m waterfront houses and had a great sunset.

On the way home we stopped at a Whisky bar for a drink – Paul had a Lagavulin.

We could only have the first apartment for a few days, so we’d booked somewhere a bit fancier for the last 3 days. It was right on the water on millionaires row and we were opposite some amazing places.

We had to get our keys later so we decided to go to the beach in the morning. The weather was a lot better than last time we were there and got drenched! We hired a couple of boards to try surfing again but it was quite big waves and so it was a bit harder. Very traumatically, I lost my sunglasses when I was wave jumping so was quite unhappy about that 😭.

It was absolutely boiling and the boys got quite sunburnt.

We walked along into town and had some lunch there and cold drinks to cool us down.

After that it was about time to get the keys so we walked up to the property place to get the keys and then back to the car near the beach. We had a bit of food in there and we were hot and burnt, so we were keen to get into the air con!

The house was lovely – fab views, nice beds and it was well appointed. It was 89 Noosa Parade.

We went for a swim in the pool and then went out for dinner.

We walked into town and started to smell delicious curry smells! We followed our noses to Kaali on Hastings Street and luckily got a table for 4. I had a weird aubergine, peanut and cheese curry thing, Paul had lamb Rogan Josh, Ronan had fish and chips and Sadie had chicken schnitzel and chips.

In the morning the other 3 went to mass then came back for a delicious brunch I’d cooked – scrambled eggs, smoked salmon, avocado and mango. We’d booked Jet skiing for 1.30pm so headed off after that to Gympie terrace.

It all felt slightly disorganised as we had to wait until more like 2pm but then we were off. Ronan was driving and I was passenger (we lied that he was 16!) and Paul drive with Sadie on the back.

It was nice and calm as we were going up the river, but then we had to break into the sea and the waves were wild!! They told us to just go fast to get over the breaks but we were really flying up into the air and crashing down. Ronan and I weren’t sure we’d make it!! Then we had about 20 mins to just go wherever we wanted and speed up. It was great fun and there were enough waves to make it quite thrilling. I kept thinking I was going to be bounced off though! It was raining a bit but it didn’t matter.

We all loved it and it was a great experience. We were glad we did the ocean tour instead of the river one as I don’t think it would have been as exciting.

We went home after that and chilled at the apartment and went in the pool. A frog had fallen in that morning but it seemed to have escaped, thank goodness!

We had booked dinner at Grammi – a really nice, buzzy Italian restaurant on Gympie.

One of the things the kids wanted to was learn to surf so we booked them into surf lessons on Noosa main beach with Merrick’s surf school.

They both did do well and really caught some waves! Both of them were standing up and rolling in.

Paul and I went for a walk along the beach while they did the first 2 hours. I had a Brooki cookie after following her on instagram – amazing!

After that we grabbed the kids and got some lunch in the food court.

In the afternoon Sadie had decided to go back and do some more surfing with Roman so we set out to sunbathe and read. However the weather turned and the heavens opened!! Paul had gone off for a walk and so I tried to shelter under a tree for a bit before carrying all the sodden stuff back to the car.

The rain didn’t stop our intrepid surfers though!

After that we got home and warmed up and went out for dinner later to the local fish and chip shop. I had a nice salmon salad and they had fish and chips. We had a nice stroll along the waterfront after and spotted a nice place to eat for the next day.

We hired a car and after some wrangling of the suitcases we headed off up the Sunshine Coast to Noosa, via McDonalds breakfast!

We parked up in Noosa and wandered along past all the amazing houses into town and walked along the beach.

Noosa is gorgeous! It’s a bit Hamptons like and very affluent.

The town is clean, beaches are clean, water is clean. It’s got lots of lovely shops and restaurants and the houses are WOW!! Some were going for $20m plus…

Our apartment was nice – it had a little pool and it was an easy walk to Gympie Terrace which was one of the nice areas.

I went off to buy some food and then we went along to the barefoot bar and grill for dinner. We were serenaded by 100s of budgies in a nearby tree!

Very happy with the choice for our final destination!

We’d made a bit of an error in booking a very late flight from Proserpine so just passed the day at the lagoon and wandering about a bit.

We got into Brisbane around 10.30om and stayed in a pretty horrible motel. Actually slept ok though!