2018 was an exciting year – mostly because of Mogwai – but also because we’ve really settled in to our life here in Dunedin, NZ. So much so that we’ve bought a house! The settlement happens shortly, so for now we’re looking forward to moving in and making the place our own.
We also had a trip back to Melbourne in December-January to celebrate my grandmother’s 90th birthday.
Continue reading Visiting Melbourne, but settling in to Dunedin
Last weekend was the This is Not a Love Song festival in nearby Nîmes. We were initially drawn to it because Dinosaur Jr was on the lineup, but there were loads of great bands to see!
At the end of October, Tom and I took the train to Bordeaux. Ostensibly to see The Drones play, I was also really interested to explore the city and drink all the wine.
The Drones are one of my favourite bands ever, and when we lived in Melbourne we would see them play pretty regularly. They don’t tour Europe regularly, so when we heard they were playing a few concerts in France we jumped on the tickets pretty quickly.
It’s been a busy few weeks with lots of travelling (in fact, I’m away right now as well!), but they have all been really exciting trips to see places we’ve never been to before. I was excited to visit Stockholm to compare it to other Scandinavian cities we’ve visited (Oslo, Copenhagen).
While I really liked the city and there were lots of fun things to do, I didn’t really find it that beautiful, so the camera stayed in my bag most of the time! Nevertheless, we packed a lot into a short trip.
After an amazing cycling trip through the Pyrénées, we had a couple of weeks to recover then it was straight out west to Porto, Portugal for NOS Primavera Sound festival. We had initially toyed with the idea of attending the Barcelona event, but settled on Porto for two reasons: one, we had never been to Porto; and two, the festival was slightly more intimate with fewer stages and bands.
Porto is beautiful; full of beautiful tiled buildings, great food and a really weird public transport ticketing system…