Friday, January 18, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Our trip to Australia: Daintree
By the time Max and I reached Cairns, I'd say we were pretty much over our jet lag. Sunshine and fun activities will do it every time! :) After we landed, our transfer took about an hour and a half, dropping off several passengers in Port Douglas on the way.
Silky Oaks Lodge is AMAZING. Absolutely the highlight of the trip for me! I wish we could have stayed there for a week. Wonderful staff, very friendly and warm. Our room was beautiful, as was the view of the Daintree Rainforest and Mossman River from the balcony. Private and well appointed. No TV in the room and limited wifi helps encourage you to let go and relax. Feels very exclusive. The owner, Paul, is very likable and definitely knows what he's doing. In fact, he's the one who drove us back into Port Douglas after we arrived so we could go to the Wildlife Habitat. Max really enjoyed talking to him along the way and we learned more about the area, like that the fields were mostly sugar cane; coffee and tear were only hobby crops.
The Wildlife Habitat was awesome. We were there for hours and a large part of it was spent feeding the kangaroos and wallabys in the Grasslands Habitat. They were so cute! Had to be careful of the birds though, some quite large, like the black swan, were very aggressive about getting the food I was trying to handfeed to the kangaroos. My hand got pecked twice actually but I was okay since they got the food and not my hand, thankfully! There were also crocodiles, emus, tree-kangaroos, birds that looked like owls (but blend into the tree perfectly) called the Papuan Frogmouth, several Southern Cassowarys (whose feathers look more like long hair), lots of parrots and a few koalas. Here I am with one of the smaller koalas, a six year old male who weighed 22 lbs.
Note the slight sunburn? I found out while I was in Australia that the hole in the ozone layer is over Australia. No wonder it's called a sunburnt country!
That night we had dinner at Silky Oaks Lodge. Their food is delicious and there's a separate vegetarian menu available. The exotic mushroom risotto was wonderful. So was the Silky Oaks cocktail!
The next day, we both woke up with the rainforest at 5:30am as light filtered through the trees, birds and bugs started to wake up. Max went off in the morning on an excursion by himself, Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours in Cape Tribulation. I lingered over breakfast, throughly enjoying the fresh tropical fruit, their most excellent birchers muesli, fresh baked croissants and wifi access. Uploaded some pictures, wrote a letter to some friends who live in Latvia, and checked my email until I was pretty sure that the room have been made up. Then laid in the hammock listening to the rain for a while until I went to get a massage at their Healing Waters Spa. Fantastic! Afterwards, Max and I had a later afternoon tea... quite large actually so it was really just an early dinner.
On January 5, we had an early breakfast and then a van came to pick us up for our snorkeling tour of the Great Barrier Reef. We spent three hours in the water, at three different locations. Much deeper water than when I first snorkeled in St. Thomas but after the hot air balloon ride in Melbourne, it didn't feel like it. The corals were huge and I saw several giant clams, a few clown fish, a parrot fish and lots that I didn't know what they were.
On the 6th, we started off the day with a yoga class at Silky Oaks Lodge. Very different than my usual class but afterwards I felt rejuvenated. After breakfast we went for a hike and ended up along the Mossman River. We saw a bunch of aboriginal kids played upstream, jumping off the bigger rocks into the water and laughing. Like kids anywhere else would do. Which is one of the things I notice when I travel, that people are in many ways the same and some things are just innate. It's a shame that we don't focus on that more.
Silky Oaks Lodge is AMAZING. Absolutely the highlight of the trip for me! I wish we could have stayed there for a week. Wonderful staff, very friendly and warm. Our room was beautiful, as was the view of the Daintree Rainforest and Mossman River from the balcony. Private and well appointed. No TV in the room and limited wifi helps encourage you to let go and relax. Feels very exclusive. The owner, Paul, is very likable and definitely knows what he's doing. In fact, he's the one who drove us back into Port Douglas after we arrived so we could go to the Wildlife Habitat. Max really enjoyed talking to him along the way and we learned more about the area, like that the fields were mostly sugar cane; coffee and tear were only hobby crops.
The Wildlife Habitat was awesome. We were there for hours and a large part of it was spent feeding the kangaroos and wallabys in the Grasslands Habitat. They were so cute! Had to be careful of the birds though, some quite large, like the black swan, were very aggressive about getting the food I was trying to handfeed to the kangaroos. My hand got pecked twice actually but I was okay since they got the food and not my hand, thankfully! There were also crocodiles, emus, tree-kangaroos, birds that looked like owls (but blend into the tree perfectly) called the Papuan Frogmouth, several Southern Cassowarys (whose feathers look more like long hair), lots of parrots and a few koalas. Here I am with one of the smaller koalas, a six year old male who weighed 22 lbs.
Note the slight sunburn? I found out while I was in Australia that the hole in the ozone layer is over Australia. No wonder it's called a sunburnt country!
That night we had dinner at Silky Oaks Lodge. Their food is delicious and there's a separate vegetarian menu available. The exotic mushroom risotto was wonderful. So was the Silky Oaks cocktail!
The next day, we both woke up with the rainforest at 5:30am as light filtered through the trees, birds and bugs started to wake up. Max went off in the morning on an excursion by himself, Jungle Surfing Canopy Tours in Cape Tribulation. I lingered over breakfast, throughly enjoying the fresh tropical fruit, their most excellent birchers muesli, fresh baked croissants and wifi access. Uploaded some pictures, wrote a letter to some friends who live in Latvia, and checked my email until I was pretty sure that the room have been made up. Then laid in the hammock listening to the rain for a while until I went to get a massage at their Healing Waters Spa. Fantastic! Afterwards, Max and I had a later afternoon tea... quite large actually so it was really just an early dinner.
On January 5, we had an early breakfast and then a van came to pick us up for our snorkeling tour of the Great Barrier Reef. We spent three hours in the water, at three different locations. Much deeper water than when I first snorkeled in St. Thomas but after the hot air balloon ride in Melbourne, it didn't feel like it. The corals were huge and I saw several giant clams, a few clown fish, a parrot fish and lots that I didn't know what they were.
On the 6th, we started off the day with a yoga class at Silky Oaks Lodge. Very different than my usual class but afterwards I felt rejuvenated. After breakfast we went for a hike and ended up along the Mossman River. We saw a bunch of aboriginal kids played upstream, jumping off the bigger rocks into the water and laughing. Like kids anywhere else would do. Which is one of the things I notice when I travel, that people are in many ways the same and some things are just innate. It's a shame that we don't focus on that more.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Photos from the Great Ocean Road
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| Colac Otway Shire Lighthouse |
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| Wild koala |
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| The 12 Apostles |
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| Loch Ard Gorge |
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| What happens when you ask a stranger to take your picture ;) |
Photos from Phillip Island
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| Wild wallabys |
Photos from Melbourne
These were taken all over the city.
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| From the hot air balloon |
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| From the hot air balloon |
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| Outside of a restaurant |
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| Pulling Weeds |
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| Graffiti Alley |
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| T-shirt art exhibition about how the city expresses itself |
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| Street art by the Yarra River |
Our trip to Australia: Melbourne
We flew from here to LAX on 12/29, then onto Sydney, and finally, Melbourne. We landed around noon on New Year's Eve. Our travel agent had arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport and take us to the hotel. I'm glad she did! There's no way I could have driven on the left side of the road or would have been comfortable with Max doing it either.
Our second tour was later that day, starting with a 2 hour bus ride out to Phillip Island. We saw wild wallabys and little penguins. The little penguins (Eudyptula minor) are the smallest species of penguin, dark teal and white - the colour of the ocean with a patch of sunlight. They spend all day in the water and only come out after dark when they are safe from preditors. Watched them leave the water in groups of 20-50, waddle across the beach to their burrows and (because it was mating season), their babies. So cute!!
On January 2, we went on a tour of the Great Ocean Road, south of Melbourne. We saw surfers out on the water in the early morning wearing their wetsuits, a beautiful little beach I could have stayed at all day, a lighthouse near the southern most point on the continent, wild koalas in eucalyptus trees along the road, and beautiful rock formations along the coast including the Loch Ard Gorge. It was during this tour we heard the song, Land Down Under. Which was actually the only time we heard it while we were in Australia.
Our driver, Joe, was an old white gentleman dressed in a suit. Very kind and sweet man. As he took us into the city, we talked and answered some of our initial questions about Australia. We were off to a great start!
We stayed at the Rendezvous Grand Hotel Melbourne, practically on the Yarra River and just across the bridge from tons of restaurants and shops. The weather was a little cooler than I had expected, just based on the temperature, but 79°F
feels different without any humidity. Like jeans and long sleeves without being hot if you're from the DC area.
We walked around the city for a few hours but then went back to the hotel to "take a nap" which then turned into "fell asleep" because of jetlag. We were woken up hours later by the fireworks going off at midnight, watched them from our hotel window and then went back to sleep.
At 4am, Nick from Global Ballooning picked us up and we were on our first hot air balloon ride with Kiff and his daughter a little while later. What an amazing experience!
An hour in the air above the city, watching the sun rise over the clouds, the cool wind steering us horizontally, the hot air lifting us vertically and the only sound aside from the burner was a few dogs barking while everyone else was still sleeping. I didn't see any people until we landed. There were two people walking their dogs, that was it. For Max, this was the highlight of the trip! It was for me too until we got to Silky Oaks Lodge but more on that later...We walked around the city for a few hours but then went back to the hotel to "take a nap" which then turned into "fell asleep" because of jetlag. We were woken up hours later by the fireworks going off at midnight, watched them from our hotel window and then went back to sleep.
At 4am, Nick from Global Ballooning picked us up and we were on our first hot air balloon ride with Kiff and his daughter a little while later. What an amazing experience!
Our second tour was later that day, starting with a 2 hour bus ride out to Phillip Island. We saw wild wallabys and little penguins. The little penguins (Eudyptula minor) are the smallest species of penguin, dark teal and white - the colour of the ocean with a patch of sunlight. They spend all day in the water and only come out after dark when they are safe from preditors. Watched them leave the water in groups of 20-50, waddle across the beach to their burrows and (because it was mating season), their babies. So cute!!
On January 2, we went on a tour of the Great Ocean Road, south of Melbourne. We saw surfers out on the water in the early morning wearing their wetsuits, a beautiful little beach I could have stayed at all day, a lighthouse near the southern most point on the continent, wild koalas in eucalyptus trees along the road, and beautiful rock formations along the coast including the Loch Ard Gorge. It was during this tour we heard the song, Land Down Under. Which was actually the only time we heard it while we were in Australia.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Australia
My husband and I just returned from a two week vacation in Australia. We had an amazing time!
We flew into Melbourne on New Year's Eve and were there for three days going on a hot air balloon ride, seeing the little penguins on Phillip Island and driving along the Great Ocean Road. We went to Cairns next, the Wildlife Habitat in Port Douglas and stayed in the Daintree Rainforest at Silky Oaks Lodge for days with a snorkeling excursion to the Great Barrier Reef. Then onto Ayer's Rock for two days, during the heat wave, where we chose not to climb Uluru but did the 12 km base trek instead. Our last stop was Sydney for three days and then we flew home, arriving Saturday night.
I'll elaborate more once I've conquered my jetlag... 14 hours ahead is a huge difference!
We flew into Melbourne on New Year's Eve and were there for three days going on a hot air balloon ride, seeing the little penguins on Phillip Island and driving along the Great Ocean Road. We went to Cairns next, the Wildlife Habitat in Port Douglas and stayed in the Daintree Rainforest at Silky Oaks Lodge for days with a snorkeling excursion to the Great Barrier Reef. Then onto Ayer's Rock for two days, during the heat wave, where we chose not to climb Uluru but did the 12 km base trek instead. Our last stop was Sydney for three days and then we flew home, arriving Saturday night.
I'll elaborate more once I've conquered my jetlag... 14 hours ahead is a huge difference!
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| Melbourne |
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Positive Energy Yoga
My yoga instructor is Olivia Sheldon who teaches Positive Energy Yoga. I have been practicing yoga with her for about 7 years and she is fantastic! She mirrors the movements of the class, comes around to do adjustments, and has a wonderful sense of humor. Don't believe me? Check out the reviews on Yelp. :)
Positive Energy Yoga
3223 Duke Street, 2nd Floor
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 582-3699
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 582-3699
This is what the
Mayo Clinic has to say about some of the benefits of yoga:
The
potential health benefits of yoga are numerous and may include:
- Stress reduction. With its quiet, precise movements, yoga draws your focus away from your busy, chaotic day and toward calm as you move your body through poses that require balance and concentration.
- Increased fitness. As you learn and refine new poses, you may enjoy improved balance, flexibility, range of motion and strength. And this means you're less likely to injure yourself in other physical endeavors or in your daily activities.
- Management of chronic health conditions. Yoga might help with a variety of health conditions, such as cancer, depression, pain, anxiety and insomnia, by helping with sleep problems, fatigue and mood. Yoga also can help reduce heart rate and blood pressure.
- Weight loss. If you're overweight or have binge-eating disorder, yoga may help you make the healthy lifestyle changes necessary to gain control of your eating and drop those extra pounds.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Monday, December 03, 2012
A good day
Yesterday was a really good day for so many reasons:
1) We picked out, purchased and put up our Christmas tree! The living room smells like pine and I love it.
2) We crossed a major milestone in one of our home improvement projects - a brand new closet has been built!
3) French toast from Cafe Pizzaiolo!
4) Booked the plane tickets for our next vacation!
5) Got to Skype with my family in Canada
6) And the New England Patriots made it into the playoffs!
1) We picked out, purchased and put up our Christmas tree! The living room smells like pine and I love it.
2) We crossed a major milestone in one of our home improvement projects - a brand new closet has been built!
3) French toast from Cafe Pizzaiolo!
4) Booked the plane tickets for our next vacation!
5) Got to Skype with my family in Canada
6) And the New England Patriots made it into the playoffs!
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