The Roving Roberts'

Notions are an interesting thing. Throughout our travels, Sydney was simply added to the agenda because it was a major hub to fly out of. We even went so far as to shave a few days off of our planned 7-day stay when a flight deal popped up. Oye, we were mistaken. From touchdown to lift-off, Sydney dispelled all notions we had of it just being “another big city”. We found ourselves, yet again, winners in the Home Exchange lottery when we landed on the 27th floor of an award-winning residential highrise boasting, “the greatest possible outlook over the sweep of the Sydney Harbour.” Although the views from our balcony left us feeling a bit trippy, our vantage point put everything into perfect bird's-eye perspective. Architecturally stimulating, attractively designed and infilled with great green expanses which folded snugly around the harbour, our curiosity was immediately piqued. Suddenly 5 days seemed like an impossibly short time to absorb Sydney’s attractive impressions. In the en...

“I rubbed my eyes and saw a red sun glaring off the water top and there were waves coming in and crashing” Oscar whispered in our ear on our first early morning wake-up in Australia. His description is perfectly fitting of how I imagined our ocean-side existence over the past 3 years. We have “figuratively” rubbed our eyes and awoken to a new country, filled with a host of exotic sights, sounds and smells. You can find us hunkered down in Cairns (Northern AUS) as we enjoy the first of our 25 nights of Home Exchanges that we’ve managed to stitch together on our travels along the coast of North Eastern AUS. A year ago when we signed up for Home Exchange *, and were in the throes of preparing to receive International guests, I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of the program. But today, in this moment, it has been worth every effort, hesitancy and frustration. Our tropical beachfront artist residence surpasses any expectation we could have ever made in our wildest dreams.  Fast forward...