The Chambers

We’ve started planning our holiday at the end of the year.  We’ll be heading back stateside for some New Years fun in Las Vegas and then skiing Telluride with Kim and Ian for a few weeks.  I’m not going to say this will be our last trip to the states, I’m pretty sure we’ve said that the last couple of times now .  Instead, I’ll say it’ll be our last trip there for 2009 / 2010….

Our plans are to be in Vegas for just over a week and then, early in the new year we’ll head to Telluride, CO, for a few weeks.  Already, we’re very much looking forward to getting back to a couple of our favourite places.

Jackson is turned off by the long flights of the plane with the kangaroo on it and Kylie and I were turned off by the large price difference between QANTAS and V Australia on the dates we’re travelling.  Of course, Kylie and I realise that the flight is the same length, but as least it will help get Jackson on the plane if he knows we’re not flying QANTAS.

This morning I was looking at the V Australia YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/flyVAustralia) and saw their safety video, which is embedded below

Jackson enjoyed the video, especially the bit with the dad having the oxygen mask on. Congrats to the V Australia team on an entertaining approach to the production of a safety video.

We’ve settled in to Telluride quite nicely. On Saturday we were up nice and early for the coach transfer to the Orlando Airport for our flight to Denver, then another little flight on to Montrose, for a 1.5 hour transfer to Telluride. The driver of the car we had transferring us was Don. Don is coming to Australia for his second honeymoon next year and I made sure to let him know Queensland is THE place to be seen in Australia (wonder if that makes part of this trip a tax deduction now?). After being up and at ‘em at 5am we arrived at the condo in Telluride at a little after 630pm local time (2 hours time difference).

The condo is beautiful and has a great view of one of the ski slopes, lots of snow, big beautiful snow capped mountains and is pretty well located.

We had our first full day here yesterday and we took it very easy, no skiing yet. We went for a ride on the free gondola which goes up to the mountain village and had a look around, Jackson had a play in the snow and made snowballs and jumped in the snow, we had an afternoon rest, then went back up to the village and got fitted out for our skis and boots, Jackson had a go on a trampoline / trapeze thing (which he loved & I have a video of) and then out for dinner at a Thai restaurant (Jackson fell asleep).

We’ve run into a few Australians working here already. Apparently Tom Cruise is in town (I think his wife is stalking me).

Here’s a slideshow of some of the photos we took yesterday:

Here’s a video of Jackson trying out for a life in the circus. Aplogies it is sideways, just crane your neck for 60 seconds….

At Disney World there are four different theme parks. Each have a different theme and unique attractions and shows. Today we visited EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, or something like that). The park has two parts, the first has quite a few rides and is like a traditional theme park, whilst the second part is like a World Expo. Today we only did the first part, tomorrow we’re going back to do the World Expo part.

My take from EPCOT is that it is supposed to include some representation of what communities in the future will be like. If that’s the case, get ready for bunches of merchandise places, weird costumed characters and “scooter hogs” (more on that in a future post) to be everywhere.

At EPCOT there is a show called “Turtle Talk with Crush”. In this show the kids sit down the front of a small theatre on the floor and the parents / adults sit up the back. The show is pretty clever in that the kids are able to interact in real time with Crush the Turtle from the Nemo movie, who appears on a movie screen. As questions are asked the turtle responds to the specific questions and also makes comments about people in the crowd, like what shirt someone is wearing.

Jackson was sitting down the front with all the other kids and I thought I’d start video’ing Crush, because it’s just pretty nifty that they can do this. And then, Jackson asked a question….

Pretty funny stuff, hard to script this type of stuff I’d reckon!

Hi ya! Please excuse some of the mixed-tense you will find in this post, it was written over a week and a bit, so is a little mixed up!

I’ve got some of Jacko’s video updates to come too and will post them to the blog soon. We’ve got some great can-can action to show you all

This post started on the “verandah” (or whatever they call them on ships) of cabin 7122 of the Disney Magic. We’re now finished our cruise and are at Disney World….. This update was written with three days remaining on our cruise of the East Caribbean, which has been tremendously relaxing and a nice change of pace from the rather frenetic first fortnight of our holiday. Kylie commented at dinner the night before this post started that this would be our first morning to sleep in and wake naturally, without any alarms being set. She’s probably right too. It was about 545 am (a sleep-in for me) when I woke up and started writing this update, Jackson and Kylie woke at about 630am (not a sleep-in).

I need to catch you all up on a fair bit of our holiday, including finishing off with an update on New York, our time at Port and Cape Canaveral and our cruise. I’ll give you an update on the rest of New York in this post and follow up on the cruise and Canaveral later.

New York is really an amazing city. Everyone should visit New York at least once. Kylie has been here five times, I’ve visited four times and this is Jackson’s second visit. Even with a few visits we were still doing things we hadn’t done before and wondered afterwards why it wasn’t something we’d done on our first visit AND we haven’t got to any of the other four boroughs of New York City yet. We had so much fun here.

I don’t think a day–by-day or blow-by-blow description is the way to wrap up the New York part of our holiday, so I’ll give you some highlights.

The 30th of November (Sunday) was the first bad weather day of the trip. It was cold, very, very cold and raining, raining cold, very cold rain. Kylie, Mum and Jackson headed off to do the Statten Island Ferry for views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, the views of the Statue were not good (damn rain). After riding the ferry, they did a few things but the most noteworthy (if you ask Jackson) was getting back to Toy r Us and riding the four floor high ferris wheel inside the store. I went off to check out a large electronics store called J&R, which was very cool and then off to catch up with a friend at an American Football (NFL) game. Great thing to do on a day when it is cold, freezing cold rain. Thank god our seats were under cover! The rain was coming down four different ways and the people on the top tiers (not under cover) must have nearly froze. The game was ok. It was nice to get out to a game and hang out with Robert and his mate for a while, but next time the game better be great if the weather is that bad!

We shopped. We shopped a fair bit and had fun doing it. There is a lot more variety here in the USA over Australia in the types of products available and things are still pretty cheap, despite whatever the AUD / USD is at the moment. We went into some great stores including clothes and electronics stores. I loved visiting the electronics stores and checking out all the different products they had for sale.

The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) was a very interesting way to spend a few hours. They had large Picasso and Joan Miro exhibitions on. The Picasso exhibition was very interesting and enjoyable. Contributing to the understanding and enjoyment of the exhibition, MOMA have a wireless network within the exhibition and you can use your own wireless devices (phones) to basically tune into and listen to information on each piece of art as you stood in front of it. It was very interesting to be able to absorb what state of mind the artist was in (drunk? crazy?) when the piece was being done and learn a whole lot more about the actual piece hanging on the wall in front of you. Some of the works on display take weeks and months to complete, despite them looking like they could be whipped up in a couple of minutes (more on Jackson Pollock later). I went through the Joan Miro exhibition and wasn’t really taken by any of the work. We strolled through the rest of the exhibits and took in works by many famous artists and pieces, including the famously large Water Lillies, which stretched out at least 5 metres wide and was the highlight for Kylie. There were many Jackson Pollock’s on display and Mum mentioned the national “interest” in Australia when Gough Whitlam bought Blue Poles for the National Gallery in Australia. It got me interested in that and when I get back home I am going to keep an eye out for books written on that topic. Surely there’s one. The MOMA do a great job of an exhibition, but I still reckon our very own GOMA is something we should be incredibly proud of.

On one day we caught a cab down to the financial district, to right near the site of the World Trade Centre to start a day of walking. From here we had a look through Century 21, which is a department store worth a look and then walked up to SoHo. In SoHo there are lots of great stores, including Ben Sherman, Ted Baker and Ed Hardy as well as a bunch of stores like the GAP and Old Navy etc which are fun to spend money in. I got my snow boots finally, they were marked down a fair bit on their original price and then when I got to the check-out they were marked down even further! Bargain. SoHo is also where we had lunch at Balthazar.

Rockerfeller Centre is a collection of buildings in mid-town. They were at one stage all owned by a very rich dude and were once home to the Tourism Queensland’s New York office (who do I talk to about re-opening that puppy?!). Rockerfeller is also home to “Top of the Rock”, which is a skyline viewing area similar to the Empire State Building which is about 70 stories up and also includes an outdoors area. The ride up to the viewing platform is an a lift (duh) but the roof of the lift is transparent so you can see through the roof and see the workings of the lift taking you up to the viewing area, this is pretty cool. Once up on the 70th’ish floor you can get a great 360 degree view of Manhattan. I prefer this view than the Empire State Building, there are shorter lines to get up to the viewing platforms and you are closer to Central Park. The outside areas have glass “walls”, but it was so windy that when out there I was clinging tightly to the camera and walking as “low” as I could. We got some great photos from up here.

We went along to the Radio City Christmas Show, with the Rockettes. Apart from being dazzled by the heights of the dancers kicks we also thought the show pretty cool as they combined dancing and singing with a story about believing in Santa and a 3D film which tied in nicely (and not so subtly) advertising messages from the shows sponsors. This was a good night out which also featured a 5 block dash to the gents room at the restaurant we were having dinner at for Jackson who pronounced that he was busting to do a pee just after leaving the theatre and we were sure we wouldn’t make it, but he did! Phew…

Dining wise we had some great meals in New York, probably the highlights over the last few days in New York would have been.

Balthazar is a beautiful French Bistro in SoHo. A friend had dined there in the past and recommended it to me, we were looking forward to eating there and we were not let down. We’d made a reservation for 12 and when we were going back to the restaurant I noticed a big black SUV pulling up in front of the restaurant. Given my earlier induction to the Posh-Pap-Scrum and that my paparazzi sixth sense is now nicely developed and I commented to Kylie that someone famous was in that car. Turns out it was Kate Moss who was having lunch at Balthazar, “with us”. Kylie wanted me to let everyone know that she did eat something and definitely drunk her share of red wine (Kate Moss, not Kylie). We had a great lunch and the highlight for Jackson was when he was presented with a box of crayons and told to draw all over the paper tablecloths. He didn’t believe me and I had to get the waiter to come over and be the first to draw on the tablecloth for Jackson to believe it, but after that first drawing he couldn’t be stopped and he made his way around each of the four settings at the table doing his own special drawing for each setting.

We also ate at Daisy May’s. This was one of Kylie’s finds, which came from Oprah Winfrey (!). It is over on 11th Street and it served BBQ’d ribs. We ordered our dinner and went into the dining room, which was a few rows of tables and benches and sat down to one of the most delicious meals we have enjoyed so far. We both had Kansas City style sticky sweet ribs, Jackson had a chocolate ice cream. Kylie and my ribs were served with our selection of two side dishes. We got the Brown Sugared Sweet Potato Mash (which I’d had a version of once before when we had a Thanksgiving Lunch in the Digital Team with Caroline Lalla, a Yankee member of the team) and the Red Eye Sauce Mash Potato and the Corn Bread. My mouth is watering just remembering that dinner… If you are in New York, get yourself here for a meal. Fantastic food, go Oprah!

Mum headed back to Brisbane on the Tuesday, from New York, to Los Angeles, to Sydney, to Brisbane. Blech! She did have a row of three seats all to herself from Los Angeles to Sydney, which is very fortunate! With her she took a medium and a small sized suitcase loaded up with goodies we’d bought in San Francisco and New York. Kylie has bought eight pairs of shoes (compared to 11 the last trip) and I’ve bought a few new business shirts.

Sadly, I’ve now realised that we go back to work next month

New York.

We’ve managed to cram a lot in during our stay in New York. Since the last update we have done so much more and the days tend to slip into one another. I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone four days ago, so I’m going to drop down here a few notes on the main things we’ve been up to.

First and foremost, Kylie has done a lot of shopping while we’ve been here. My mum heads back from to Brisbane today, taking with her quite a bit of our shopping (thanks mum!) which includes an unknown (to me) number of pairs of Kylies shoes and quite a few new business shirts that I have bought and a whole bunch of other stuff. We’ve certainly done our bit to try and kick start the US economy. I might try and get Kylie to do a summary of her purchases when we’re back in Brisbane. No point in doing it on the road, the “kill” count rises too quickly….

Saturday 29 November

Saturday we all went our seperate ways for the day. Mum did the hop-on-hop-off bus tour of the Uptown areas, Kylie went and did some shopping and Jackson and I went to the Intrepid Air & Space Museum.

The Air & Space Museum only recently re-opened after being shut for renovations for a while. The Museum sits on board a retired US Air Craft Carrier which is moored in the River just at the end of the street we’re staying in! (One heck of a yard ornament to have in your street!) What a great facility and museum this is. Jackson and I were both enthralled for the three and a bit hours we walked the decks of this massive ship. We got some photos, but I’ve been having trouble uploading them through this internet connection, hopefully the next place is kinder to me, because we’ve got some great shots to share.

A visit to the museum starts off with a movie about the career of the ship. It’s mainly focused, of course, on the tragic aspect of the lose of life which happens during war. Halfway through I thought I’d made a “dad” mistake taking Jackson in, but he hasnt had any nightmares since and though he asked once after the movie about why’d those people get killed, he was fine with the movie. We were sitting next to a (I presumed from the way he was talking to Jackson before the movie) retired British Naval guy and during the movie he started crying through the movie – the emotions which come back visiting a place like that must be a terrible thing to manage.

The main “exhibits” of the museum are the planes which sit on the deck of the carrier. There must have been 20 different planes and choppers from different Navy’s / Army’s around the world. Jackson loved it and would run from plane to plane and then ask me to read the words on the sign for each plane (some of those Russian designers have VERY difficult names).

You also get to walk through the hanger of the carrier and in the hanger is a kids museum area where they can get their hands on all sorts of cool stuff, including sitting in the cockpit of a M*A*S*H style chopper, a plane simulator where you try to land a plane on the deck of a carrier, there’s a scoreboard which counts the number of “Jap” planes and ships the carrier took down and some models which show the carrier in its different incarnations.

Another exhibit is the Concord, which sits on the pier next to the Intreipd. The Concord is dwarfed by the Intrepid. I was looking forward to looking inside the Concorde, which you could do, but they had all the seats enclosed in a plastic bubble and the cockpit was blocked off, so all you got to do was walk down the aisle. Which was pretty boooring, even to me.

By the time we got back from there we met up with Kylie and went down to the Union Square area for a look around. We had lunch at a burger joint and walked around and looked through the stores. Paragon Sports was the main shop we visited and we got some stuff for the ski part of our trip – cool new goggles!

That night Jackson and I went to a cirque de soleil show and Kylie and Mum went to see the Musical Wicked. They liked Wicked better than Mumma Mia. Jackson thoroughly enjoyed the Cirque show, particularly the acrobatics of the show including a great trampoline act and during the finale huge fans sent a deluge of paper snowflakes out over the audience. This was pretty cool.

Jackson’s video:

This started out as a short note, ended up being longer than I thought, so I’ll wrap it up there. more to come.

over and out

New York….

Lots to report on today’s happenings, what a great day!

The day after Thanksgiving Day, the stores go on sale here. They call it “Black Friday”. I’m sure there’s a really good reason for it, but I haven’t a clue and can’t be bothered looking it up right now. Some stores open up at 5am for eager beavers to get in and snap up the early bargains. There is another group of people who go, that’s Australians who don’t like crowds! So, me being an Australian who doesn’t like crowds and Kylie being an eager beaver shopper, we were all at Macy’s shortly after 5am…. I have the best wife, she accompanied me and kept Jackson entertained while I had my turn at Macy’s! I found some great stuff and once done shopping, I volunteered to bring it back to the apartment and drop it all off and let Kylie have some peace and quiet from us boys. Kylie spent two hours in the shoe department! Unfortunately it was so busy she only got to try on two pairs of shoes! Lucky she bought both pairs!

Nanny was doing a hop-on-hop-off tour today. I saw her for a couple of minutes after I got back from my outing with Jacko and before Kylie and her headed out. She had a long day touring and I’m thinking tomorrow might be a sleep in day.

While Kylie was in Macy’s and on my return walk from the apartment, Jackson and I went into a big electronics store and a golf shop! The electronics store was very cool, I recommend a visit there if you’re into this type of stuff. BH Electronics Superstore (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/) has two floors, but no working lifts or escalators, so I had to carry the stroller up to the second floor. It was worth it. When you order something, the attendant helping you enters something into their computer system, which advises someone somewhere of an order, that someone then puts the item you order into a container which then gets moved from the storage area to the shopfront along conveyor belts. Nifty! Unfortunately for them, I then decided I didn’t want what I’d got them to send out and I left without buying it, but I’m thinking of going back tomorrow to do the whole thing again, just to see the conveyor belts in action. (Big Al – I picked up their catalogue, which is bigger than the SONY catalogue and full of great stuff.)

After the excitement of that I went to a golf store looking for some new golf shoes. My last pair finally gave up and croaked about a month or so ago after 10 years of solid service. Those shoes saw some great golf courses and they’ll be missed… The sole just came unstuck on one of the shoes and there was no saving them. Anyways, back to the story. I found a great pair of Adidas shoes, but for the amount of golf I get to play I couldn’t justify the cost, so ended up with a sparkling new pair of Calloway shoes. Why do most pairs of golf shoes look like clown shoes? The economy can’t be so bad here, the guy serving me flat-out refused to give me a discount on some golf balls I also wanted to buy to lose later on the trip. Merry Christmas?! Ba humbug….

After this I had to go into Macy’s to find Kylie. We’d agreed to meet at a certain point at a certain time. It was now coming up on 1030am or so and the store was chockers! I had Jackson in the stroller but aborted that plan shortly after getting into the store as I was running into far too many ankles and getting too many hairy-eyeball looks from cranky shoppers trying to get to their discounted items… shouldn’t have slept in, should they!? Kicked Jacko out of the stroller and fought my way to the meeting point. I haven’t ever seen a shop so crowded! It took me 4 minutes (I timed it after I thought I was going to be late and left behind on the battle field by Commandant Kylie) to walk about 40 metres! Once I met Kylie she told me how she’d spent two hours waiting to try on shoes. (booring!) So we decided to come back to Macy’s another day.

Left the Macy’s area and walked up Madison Avenue. Along the way we saw a bunch of tweens camped out to see some guys called the Jonas Brothers. Good for them, I can’t come to trust / like bands with Brothers in their name, Bros ruined it for me…. (remember them?) I went into Best Buy and Circuit City for a look and see and walked out pretty quickly, far too many people….

We ended up at Rockerfeller Centre for lunch at a restaurant which is right by the ice skating rink. Nice spot and a beautiful lunch. Poor Jacko dropped his glass and it smashed his glass and pink lemonade everywhere. That makes the video as the bit he didn’t like about today – the waiter was very nice about it and helped to calm Jackson down by telling him a story about how he once dropped a tray full of glasses.

We then headed up to my favourite shirt shop in Thomas Pink and despite the terrible AUD to USD rate, still bought a couple of shirts. That can be what my first weeks wage back to work goes towards when I get back. We also stopped in at the Sony store where Jackson got out of the stroller and showed the good people in-store how to play Guitar Hero (or not) on the big screen. We also bought Jackson & I the Crash Bandicoot game for the PSP.

Here’s where the real fun begins!

We’re all knackered, we’ve been up for ages and walking around the city in all kinds of crowds and we decide to take a less travelled path back to the apartment. We cut along 52nd (or something like that) from Madison Ave heading to 9th Ave. On the way I see a sign saying that there is some movie being shot on the road we’re walking along and I think that’s pretty nifty and take a photo of the sign and then we keep walking. We get another couple of blocks along and these cars and scooters (mopeds) come screaming along the road. Horns honking, people yelling for us and other people to get out of the way, so we stop and move towards the building. This SUV pulls up in front of the theatre we’re passing and the guys from the cars and scooters all run to the front of the theatre. I’ve thought this is something to do with the movie which is being shot, so we now stop to actually watch events unfold. The guys running past us all have cameras around their necks. We were still stopped where we were and then I am not sure where the idea came from but I moved towards where the SUV is stopped and get my camera out too. Before you know it I’m in the middle (ok, on the fringe) of this crowd and these guys around me are all snapping shots, so I did too. A woman got out of the SUV with a boy, everyone else was still taking photos, so I did too. Guy beside me says something like “you look gorgeous today Victoria”, I’m still trying to get a photo… Woman walks past me and into the theatre, so I turn around to walk back to Kylie and Jackson. Kylie recognised her as Posh Spice! Victoria Beckham. Then, Kylie says there’s David Beckham, and I turn around and sure enough, there he is. I didn’t even get close to getting a photo of him. So…. Without further adieu, I present to you, my portfolio of shots for my application to be a paparazzi photographer:

You can JUST make out Posh’s head in the last shot, to the right of the nearly blinding flash of someone taking a photo of me from the opposite side of the scrum. Really, you can. It’s partly obscured by the head there. Ok, almost fully obscured… Trust me, she’s there!

I can’t tell you how freaky and bizarre the whole situation was. At first scared we were going to be mown down on the footpath by a moped (and seeing the headline on the Brisbane Times flash into my mind), then seeing a swarm of cars and mopeds come to a screaming holt, everyone running past us and then being in my first real life paparazzi scrum. I feel for Britney Spears… it must be hard living in the middle of that ALL the time.

We stuck around for a few minutes and someone mentioned that the Cruise’s had gone in a little bit before the Beckham’s arrived.

(this is a long update… sorry)

From here we went back to the apartment for a little rest before Jackson and I went to the circus. Kylie went for some retail therapy. Kylie is with Mum at Momma Mia right now, so I don’t know what she bought – but I don’t see too many bags laying around, so I don’t think she bought too much. Although, she is skilled at smuggling in new purchases under the cover of darkness, so there could be lots of new purchases I just can’t see yet. Apparently Dayle Grant is quite good at that too.

Jackson and I went to the circus tonight. It’s the Big Apple Circus, which is an old fashioned circus put together to raise money to fund activities to lift the spirits of sick kids. It was a one-ring circus and a great afternoon out. If you are in New York when this is on – go see it! Jackson giggled uncontrollably at the clowns in some parts, it was great to see and will be one of my most memorable parts of this trip. He also liked the horses and dog acts. The horse act had one Clydesdale in the ring with a Miniature Pony, with the Pony chasing the Clydesdale around the ring and eventually running in and out of the Clydesdales legs. Quite funny (funnier than I have explained it anyway) Jackson did get freaked out at the trapeze acts, but after I told him that they had safety harnesses on and practised a LOT, he was a bit less edgy.

We arrived home just as Nanny and Kylie were walking out, so I don’t have anything else to report from them yet. Their adventures might need to be in tomorrow’s update.

Here’s Jackson’s view of the day:

That’s about it for the excitement of the day, over and out (snap, snap)

Day three was a great day. It was a long day, but a great day. We’d booked onto a tour to the Yosemite National Park with a company called Extranomical, who were recommended on tripadvisor. The day was to start about 620 am and we’d be on the tour for about 14 hours, which included 3 and a half hours travel in each direction plus a half hour stop in each direction at a large grocery store for lunch and dinner breaks. So, with the PSP and the iPod’s all charged up we were down waiting outside the lobby at 620… it was cold!

I can recommend the tour highly, it was a long day and we didn’t get to spend a lot of time at each stop but it was a great day out. The scenery was spectacular and hopefully the photos do them justice.

The drive out was for the most part uneventful, but once near the park the road turned very windy and interesting. The turns and twists reminded me of the drive up to Lamington National Park and at one point you could see where more than one panel of a guard rail had had to be replaced because a car had gone through it. It was interesting for the road to then curve back on itself and be able to see the hillside below that part of the guardrail and be able to see the path the car which had gone over had cleared through the trees and shrubs for about 200 metres down the hill. Yuck….

We stopped at a few spots in the National Park and each of them was beautiful in their own way.

The first stop was at a lookout (or vista as they are called here) which looked right down the barrel of the valley. From here you could take in the valley floor, which was covered in what seemed like small, but I’m sure they weren’t, pine trees and you could also see nice and high up to the tops of the granite cliff faces and one long waterfall.

The second stop was a short ride away at the base of one of the waterfalls named Bridal Falls. It was a short hike (I’ll use that word to impress the guys in my team) from the car park to the waterfall base. You could actually walk in from the end of the well trodden path to be nearly underneath the waterfall, but with a little one in tow and the feeling of a disaster movie in the making, we elected to view from a safer distance. I love a good water fountain, but this took it to another level. I’m going to guess the waterfall was at least 400 metres, but will check this later and bet it’s further. We got some great photos here on the “hike” and at the waterfall.

From here we went to the Yosemite Lodge, which is a hotel in the middle of the park. The hotel reminded me a little of O’Reilly’s in its look and feel and it was quite busy coming into the Thanksgiving holidays. We had a lovely picnic lunch by a babbling brook, the only detraction was the low whining sound of a little boy who didn’t want to eat his sandwich (for the record Kylie didn’t make it – we bought it from a local store). From our lunch spot we could see a couple of huge waterfalls, the granite face cliffs the park is famous for, a babbling brook and some other lovely sights. A very, very nice lunch spot indeed and well worth the three and a half hours of bus travel to get there.

After lunch it was back onto the bus and onto the final stop. Kylie really wanted to see the large tall trees which are famous here. We got to see a couple of them and these things are massive! I’m sure they are taller than 30 Makerston Street. The hike (and the word is deservedly used this time) was 1.5 km’s in each direction, downhill to get there and unfortunately uphill to get back at 6000 feet. The area is dense forest; the smell of pine was nice and refreshing for the walk. At the bottom of the walk is a few live Sequoias, which were amazing, as well as an old (now dead unfortunately) tree that some bright spark had cut a tunnel large enough to drive cars through into the trunk and an old dead trunk of a tree which you were able to climb on and INTO! I tried convincing Jackson Winnie the Pooh hid his honey inside, but that didn’t convince him to go in looking. A lovely Park Ranger came along and coerced Jackson into walking into the hollowed out trunk a little, I got a photo and he told the ranger “this is cool, no kid from my kindy has done this before!”. Then we had to tackle the walk back UP to the bus, it was a heck of a walk and I thought we were the last ones of the group so we were walking very hard. Jackson did VERY well, though he did say a few times along the way he wanted to have a long rest and that his legs and even his arms were tired from walking and even suggested at one stage that one of us go and get the bus and bring it to meet him. It was a heck of a way to finish of a visit to a beautiful part of the world.

From here it was back on the bus and a three and a half hour drive back to the hotel to pack up our stuff to be ready to leave.

Day three in the eyes of Jackson:

Over and out, Chris, Kylie and Jacko.

from nearly 12 months ago…

So, this week I finally got into getting some of the videos from our US holiday LAST year transferred into a format which allows me to share them.

This video is from the balcony of our apartment in Hawaii…. ah the serenity and what a sunset!

Cannot wait to get back there later in the year. This year we’ll be joined by Meema and Big Al (babysitters!!) just kidding.

spead-outed-ness? someone told us that the population of LA county is 28 million – 18 million legals and 10 million illegals…. vs 21 million for all of oztraylia…

So far we’re having a blast.

The flight over was…. long. It wasnt too bad, except for the people in the row in front of us who insisted on putting their seats all the way back so that they were nearly sitting in our row. The food on the flight was ok, jackson had a couple of decent sized sleeps, was disappointed to wake the first time and find out we werent in disney land yet, the on demand tv that QANTAS has worked most of the flight. Chris got to watch Blades of Glory and a rugby league movie with Andrew Johns as the main actor (I didnt mind it!) & Kylie watched Knocked up (didnt get a good review) and Blades of Glory and Jackson watched the cartoons and the flight path channel (ok, cc watched it too! (“are we there yet? are we there yet? are we there ye?”).

We arrived at 730am Saturday and had pre-booked our room so we could check in to the room straight away, which was great. The hotel we’re staying at is very nice. It’s in a great spot and it’s a very big apartment (photo’s to come).

Santa Monica is very pretty – I highly recommend staying here when in LA. The pier, the third street promenade, the palisades park (which overlooks the pacific ocean) and some of the other treelined (both palm and others) streets here are all very nice. LA wasnt a city I was looking forward to staying in, but i’ve had a great time.

The weather… the weather is great – it’s pretty similar to what it is in Brisbane during the day, and it gets cooler at night.

We went to Universal Studios on Sunday, which was an enoyable day out!

Public transport here in LA sucks (even more than my usual perception of the usefulness of public transport) and the city is so spread out – so, we got a taxi car service to take us out to the park. The traffic is shocking too – i blame the bad public transport facilities Our driver (Allan) was a real interesting guy who covered many topics, surely the most interesting was how he just wanted to meet a nice girl to marry and settle down with, you know – someone to do his washing, cook his dinner and clean his house…. and NOT be like his current girlfriend who promised she could do all those things, but was just like all other LA girls who have no interest in those things and just want to spend his money… oookay. don’t worry oz girls, I told him there were plenty of aussie girls who were looking for men like him!

At Universal Studios Jackson got to meet Dora the Explorer, Diego and Spongebob Squarepants! There’s some great photo’s of this coming to the slideshow. We enjoyed the backlot tour, which was a tram car ride around the stages of the Studios and includes some of things you most often see about Universal Studios, including Jaws the Shark jumping up at the tram, famous film locations, the airplane crash scene from War of the Worlds, the tanker truck on fire in the subway which floods and the crashing helicopter. Jackson managed this ride pretty well until the “mummy” section where Whoopi Goldberg gets covered in cockroaches – he hated this and it freaked him right out… We saw the “WaterWorld” show which was very entertaining – it was incredibly noisy – Jackson didnt like the loud noise and would cover his ears up and turn away, but he was very interested in what was going on and would keep turning around to watch, but the noise would then scare him and he’d turn away… and so on and so on

We’ve all enjoyed the shopping here. Kylie has warmed up for her NYC efforts, by practicing her attack plan on some of LA’s finest, including the third street promenade, montana avenue and the beverley center. The beverley center was a bit disappointing – but the drive there took us through Beverley Hills & Bel Air (yo yo fresh prince), past UCLA (HUGE campus) and a few other spots of note.

Kylie’s favourite shop here has been either Zara, where she bought lots of great stuff for her and Jackson OR the Banana Republic where she bought more great stuff. Chris’ favourite was Victoria’s Secret… or The Gap

We’ve enjoyed walking around and checking things out. Yes – we’ve been walking…

The palisades park is very pretty. It’s right along the front of Santa Monica on the ocean and has a few walking paths and has a lot of palms trees and it leads you to the pier. The pier is a good spot to spend an hour or so, Jackson loved the carousel here!

Chris’ work meetings were great – it was nice to see the TQ offices and sit down with JD and have a chat, the meeting with Disney went well.

tomorrow we check out of LA and fly to New York…. LA has been fun, my opinion of the city has definately changed.

photos to come soon – just click the big picture link on the right hand side soon (by soon I mean – after we put Jackson to bed and if I am not asleep by then)

bye for now, cc, kc and jacko…

us on youtube…. we’ll update this as we get more video