meet Daisy, Daisy Adair

Valentine's Day was another adventure this year ended up going to supper at the SunDial which was a lot of fun. Basically its on top of the Westin Hotel in Downtown Atlanta and it's on the 72nd floor. The entire restauraunt rotates 360 degrees to allow you to see a spectacular view of downtown Atlanta. It was a bit expensive, but the food was amazing and it was worth it as a rare treat. If you ever go, try to get there before sundown and watch the sunset. After sunset is when the city is really beautiful, with all of the lights.

But, to get back to the main topic of this post. As her main Valentine's Day gift, I told Tami that we could get another dog. So, we went yesterday to Atlanta Pet Rescue and got Sissy, which we have renamed Daisy Adair (yes it's a weird name....like our other dogs, Daisy Adair was named for a character on a show that we used to watch.) She is a beagle/chihuahua mix (so we like to call her a cheagle.)

Here are a few pics of her:





Here are her and Willow sleeping next to each other:




and our attempt to get all three of them into one picture.....



With a new puppy, you can imagine things are hectic. To throw more logs on the fire, we're watching Jake and the as yet unnamed "Little Dog" for Tami's Dad and Gail. Here they are, Jake is the big dalmation:



Wish us luck!

Greg

Hang Tenn

In a break from posting pictures of our big trip, we took a small trip this past weekend to visit Jenny in Nashville, Tennessee for her birthday (Happy B-Day Jenny!) While there, we tried a couple of restaurants which I think deserve some honorable mention.

The first was breakfast at Noshville ( http://noshville.com/ ). They have a wonderful breakfast (try the Potato Knishes which are great, but somehow didn't make it to the online breakfast menu.... they are kind of hidden.)

Next up was the Loveless Cafe ( http://www.lovelesscafe.com/ ). We had the special, which was BBQ beef brisket on cheddar cheese grits cakes.... very good. Plus, the biscuits are unbelievable.

Other than the places that we ate, we just spent a lot of time hanging out with Jenny, Brian, Mom and Dad and had a great time. We introduced everyone to the game of Billionaire which they all appeared to enjoy as much as we did.

Greg

Phillips Island pictures

Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures of the penguins on Phillips Island. However, we did take some pics of the different views in the area.

Picture update for Cairns

Ok, here are some pictures from Cairns where we snorkled on the Great Barrier Reef.

First off, here is the view from the Skyrail in Kuranda:





and here are some pictures of the fish off of the reef











We haven't been able to scan the underwater pictures yet (my scanner went on the blitz and won't work anymore). When I get them digitized, I'll post 'em though.

Greg

Back from Vegas

Well, I'm back from Vegas. Like an idiot, I didn't take a camera and I regret it. There was just so much to see. The businesses in Vegas just have no taste or restraint which makes for some pretty cool and interesting sights that you just can't see anywhere else. Just walking around and looking was a lot of fun. My hotel was at one end of the strip (the MGM Grand) and the classes were at the other end (the Mirage and the Venitian), so I got plenty of exercise. I think I walked up and down the strip like 6 times in those four days. Tami and I are just going to have to go back sometime soon so that I can get some pictures to post :)

Greg

Pictures for Brisbane

Ok, This is probably going to be the only post until this weekend. I will be leaving tomorrow morning to head for Las Vegas (don't expect a lot of exciting posts from there.... I'm going for business). If anything cool happens, I'll update everyone, but I'm not really expecting it. Also, this is my first post from my new computer which I got for my birthday. The post should look exactly the same, but I'm excited about the computer, so I have to share.

Anyway, on to the pictures. These are all from the Lone Pines Koala Sanctuary.

First up is a Tawny Frogmouth


I just think that it looks cool.

Then we have us feeding the kangaroos. It was a hot day, and the kangaroos were smarter than us, so they were laying down and resting and had us bring food to them.




Pictures of a sheep dog that liked to walk on the sheep.



and pictures of the koala (of course)


and finally, the picture of Tami holding Denzel the koala.


At least we've made it to Australia! I'll keep the pictures coming until we get done.

Greg

Picture update for "Drama on the High Seas - Christchurch"

Just when I think that I'm going to get my act together and get all of these pictures up, I fall back into my bad habits and let waaaaay to much time go by without posting new pictures.

First up are the Hector's Dolphins.... the smallest dolphins in the world which are only found in New Zealand. Check out their dorsal fin... it's the only dolphin which a circular fin.




Next up is a penguin that was swimming around by itself.



Then we have a lighthouse that was on land


and finally, the pig and one of her piglets from Willowbank.

Picture update for "The long day"

Here are some of the pictures from Milford Sound.

The first is a picture of Lake Gunn in Fiordlands National Park on the way to Milford Sound.


Here is a view from Fiordland National Park


Here are the Fiordland crested penguins that were swimming around Milford Sound.


Here is the large waterfall in Milford Sound.


and finally, one of the mountains in Milford Sound.

Picture update

Whew, getting back into a routine is harder than I thought it would be. Unfortunately that means that all of you good people who wanted more pictures had to wait longer than I expected, and I apologize for that.

Lets see, where did we leave off. I think that the last pictures were in Kaikoura (Seals and Dolphins and Whales, Oh My!) So, our next trip was to Queenstown. Here are a few pictures from there:

Here is Minus 5 degrees, the ice bar that we went to in downtown Queenstown (yes, I was stupid enough to wear shorts to a bar made entirely of ice....)



Here is the view from our hotel overlooking downtown Queenstown:




and finally, here is the sunset that we watched the first night that we were in town




I promise more pictures soon.... maybe even later today.

Greg

Home Again

Saturday, December 24th, 2005

Well, after a lot of time in airports and airplanes, we finally made it home and were reunited with our puppies. We had a lot of fun, but it was really nice walking into our house after all of that time. We're going to get ready for Christmas and probably crash soon, so we'll be doing some updates and stuff throughout the week as we fight jet lag. Keep checking because I do plan to post some photos and stuff now that I have a real internet connection again.

Greg

Homeward bound

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Last night was great, we went to Melody and Anthony's in which Melody cooked a wonderful spagetti and meatballs dinner. It was so great to have a home cooked meal, and it was nice to be at someone's house rather than at a restaurant. We played a card game called billionaire after dinner, that was extremely fun, we are going to have to get it.

Again, thanks to Melody and Anthony for having us over and for showing us around, we enjoyed it so much.

Today we were up early, waiting for the shuttle at 6:30 this morning. We got to the airport without any problems and are currently waiting for our first flight, which is to Auckland.

Merry Christmas Eve.

Tami & Greg

Adventures in Public Transportation

Friday, December 23, 2005

Today started off pretty lazy as we slept in later than we have the entire trip. We didn't have anything urgent that we just had to see, so we figured we'd take it easy before we started back and just pop around Sydney and do the stuff that we wanted to do. We grabbed breakfast at a little cafe near our hotel and caught the bus into Sydney, back to Circular Quay which is the main harbour for all of the Ferries. We caught the "Rivercat" over to Sydney Olympic Park. That ended up being a relaxing 50 minute trip, but when we got to the location of the Olympics, it was like a ghost town. There didn't appear to be too much there, so we got a few pics and then hit the train back into town. We made it back around lunchtime. We had wanted to find Harry's Cafe de Wheels to have their famous meat pies, but we were ready to eat and didn't feel like we had time to go searching in Woolloomooloo for it, so we just hit a cafe close to the harbour and found some pretty good meat pies. I personally think that the Australian Bakery in Marietta is better.

After lunch, we headed over to Luna Park to ride a few rides. It's kind of like Coney Island in New York. We rode bumper cars, the roller coaster, and a few carnival rides. After we rode the Ferry back to Circular Quay, we caught the train to head over to the Australia museum. We're not huge on museums, but they had a pretty cool exhibit on animitronics and movie monsters. It was interesting, but not big enough. They also had an exhibit on wildlife photography which was really nice. We finished up in enough time to catch the bus back to our hotel and grab a quick shower before Anthony and Melody picked us up for supper at their place. Our plan is to go back to the hotel afterwards and get everything packed up to prepare for our trip back to the states. We'll be seeing everyone soon.

Greg

I can't hear you

Thursday, December 22

Today we started early since Tami was up already coughing up a storm. She still didn't have a voice, so I got some peace and quiet (just kidding). We walked into town and grabbed brekkie at a little cafe close to town. Then we walked the rest of the way into town passing by a lot of nice statues and parks such as Hyde park. We then hit Pitt Street again and did some shopping in the arcades off of the street. We finally ended up at a photo shop where Tami had left all of the pictures to be developed the day before. The total of digital shots that she ended up having developed was 1201 (which doesn't include anything from Sydney), so you might want to think carefully before you ask to see pictures! It could take days. She also got a bunch of photo albums to put the pictures in, which meant that we had a lot of heavy stuff to lug around all day. (When I say we, I mean me). We ended up buying a cheap duffle bag to carry it around with since it'd be easier. It was still pretty heavy.

With our new burden, we headed over to get a close up of the Sydney Opera house. We had thought about walking up the Sydney bridge, but it ended up being rather expensive and neither of us felt it would be worth it. The Opera House was very nice though, and we ended up eating lunch at the Opera Bar underneath it which had a great view of the harbour, and great food also. We had a very relaxing lunch.

After lunch, we caught the ferry over to the Sydney Aquarium and saw tons of sharks, penguins, seals, coral fish and even a couple more platypus. We then grabbed some ice cream and caught the ferry back to Circular Quay and then the ferry out to Manly which was a nice 30 minute ride. We walked around Manly Beach a bit, but after seeing Bondi Beach, Manly was rather disappointing, so we caught the Ferry back to Circular Quay. By this time, Tami still didn't have a voice and she was starting to get tired, so we caught the bus back to the hotel (that's one good thing about our hotel, the bus stop is right in front.) After that, we walked around outside of our hotel to try and find something for supper. That's when we found out what exactly was next to our hotel. Just around the corner on Darlinghurst street, it was filled with bum, prostitutes, strip clubs, adult stores, the works. It was definitely the red light district. We ended up walking back to our hotel really fast and going to a pretty nice place right next door called Hugo's Bar Pizza. It was a trendy little bar that served a great Margurita Pizza and an even better Chocolate/Banana Pizza for dessert. However, it was a bit too trendy for our tastes and we were waaaaay underdressed, so we took off right after eating and headed back to our hotel for some rest. We were doing good until about 3:00 am when a coughing fit woke us up and we heard that the party was still going on and getting louder. Finally we were able to get back to sleep.

Greg

Ummmmmm Chocolate - Sydney

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

We got up early at 6 am to wait for our shuttle this morning. I did not think we were ever going to make it to the airport. The shuttle picked us up, went to pick up another couple who had not even checked out of their hotel yet so we had to wait on them for about 15 minutes and then picked up a third couple. We finally made it and got to our gate. Once we got on our plane and were ready for take off a woman got sick and had to get off of the plane. They also had to search through all of the luggage to find hers. We ended up leaving almost 30 minutes late. We finally left and made it to Sydney, where Melody (a friend of ours from school) and her husband Anthony were waiting for us.

First, thank you to both of them for showing us around town and picking us up. We had a great day and it was nice to see a familiar face.

Our fist stop was to their house, which is a beautiful old house, where they both live and Melody also works. We then headed off to the Italian Forum for some lunch. Greg had an awesome Hawaiian pizza and I had some penne pasta. Next we went to Darling harbour where we picked up the monorail and rode it half way around the city. We then got off and walked through a shopping area which is very large. We got onto a ferry and rode that through the harbour back to Darling Harbour. It was amazing, the views of the Sydney Opera House and Bridges were spectacular, probably the best way to get pictures.

Walking back to the car we were able to see old ships, submarines, and even a replica of Captain cooks ship that had been moored in the harbour. Then we were off to Harbourside Mall so Anthony could buy a jersey of his favorite team.

Next we went down to Bondi Beach and Bondi Junction, this was the most beautiful beach, it is world renowned and I can definitely see why, white sands, blue water, lots of surfers and sun bathers. We also walked around some of the shops, mostly surfer shops and cafes but they also had a little market set up that we walked around as well. That was very fun and relaxing, we even got some french fries, oops I mean chips, to munch on.

We left there and went to a very large mall, 5 stories, that was cool. You know me and shopping. Then it was time for dinner. We went to Max Brenners, a restaurant where everything is chocolate, yummy yummy. Greg and I split a dome, a chocolate mousse cake with creme brulee in the center, very rich. Greg also had a suckao (milk over a burner that you put your own chocolate morsels in to get to your own consistency) and I had a hot chocolate with magic waffle balls (they aren't really magical according to the waitress). Wow was that a nutritious and delicious dinner.

After we left there Melody and Anthony brought us to our hotel. Thanks so much Trudy, we know what you like to do now(we will explain later). The hotel is in a very dodgy area. We got to our room to find that the air conditioning was making a horrific noise that made it sound like a cat was dying inside of it. We went and asked for another room. The other two rooms that they showed us were very small and I did not feel safe in them at all, they were in the back portion of the hotel that had a fire exit to the alley in it, I also was not feeling real good at this point. So, we stayed in the dying cat room. About 15 minutes later they called us and said they had another room we could look at. We went down to it, it was bigger than the one we were in but was in the front of the hotel, so you could hear everything going on on the street. We took it, we figured music and cars were much better to listen to than a dying cat. It is not the best room but it should work for now.

I lost my voice somewhere around dinner time, hopefully I will get it back. Didn't sleep too much, since I was up all night coughing.

Tami

Penguins on Parade - Melbourne

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Today was a great day. It started out with us riding the tram into downtown Melbourne and grabbing breakfast at a local bagel place. We then walked over to the aquarium where we saw lots of fish, including the only giant squid to have ever been caught. It was from Antartica and was encased in a large block of ice, the thing was massive. We got to see lots of fish and sting rays as well being fed.

After the aquarium we walked into town to grab some lunch at Pepperoni's, much different than our Pepperoni's. We then caught the tram back to our hotel to get ready for our shuttle to pick us up. Once the shuttle picked us up we were on our way, our first stop was Warrook Farm where we had scones and tea. We then walked around and fed kangaroos, wallabies, a very rude and pushy goat and tried to feed a sheep that only wanted to eat fingers or watches, it will never eat that way.

We then left Warrook Farm and continued on down the road, our next stop was the Koala Sanctary on Phillips Island, here they housed several Victoria koalas, they are more brown and larger than the gray ones that you are used to. They were very cute. Here we also ran into lots of flies, oh well.

Next we stopped in Cowes for a bite to eat at a local italian restaurant, went shopping, walked to the pier to watch fishermen, and then got back on the bus. We made our way to our final destination, the Penguin Parade. We got to see thousands of burrows before going to our seats, we paid for the upgrade seats and it was well worth it. Around 9 pm the fun began. Thousands of penguins stormed onto shore and then walked up through the hills into their homes to meet their babies. It was spectacular to watch. This was defintely the best thing in Australia that we have done and second best to the dolphin swim on the entire trip.

After the penguins we got back on the bus for a long 2 hour ride home where we pretty much slept, we made it back around midnight or so.

Tami

Lord of the Flies

Monday, December 19, 2005

Happy Anniversary!

Today we were up early for a shuttle at 7:40 am. We travelled up through the Dandenongs blue forest where we stopped for some billy tea. While there, we fed the birds, some atoos, rosellas and a few other birds. That was quite interesting and a lot of fun. We were then back on the bus. We stopped in a small town to ride their steam train, the Puffing Billy, it was fun but kind of boring compared to the other train that we had ridden in Kuranda. Once the 30 minute train ride was over we were back on the bus again.

We stopped at Fergusson's winery for lunch, wonderful food. They had an actual spit roast with the best roast beef that I have had, next to mom's. We then went down to sample a few wines and then back on the bus again. This time we headed Healesville Animal Sanctuary where we saw a lot of native Australian animals, including the platypus, they are so cute but so much smaller than I had ever expected. This is where we were attacked by thousands of flies. They say there is on average 110,000 flies to every 1 person but they are in a swarm right now and it is closer to 150,000 for every person. Drives me crazy!

Once back on the bus we headed back to the hotel. We got back to the hotel and headed back into downtown. It is about a 10 minute walk, at least, just to get to the edge of town. We walked through town to the Yarra River where we enjoyed a very nice dinner at the Waterfront where I had a grouper that was larger than my plate, too much for me to eat but it was delicious. We then had some hot chocolate and headed back to the hotel.

When we arrived back at the room they had put a bottle of wine in our room for our anniversary. It was very thoughtful. At that point it was back to bed.

Tami

Easy day

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Today was a fairly laid back kind of day. We traveled from Cairns to Melbourne without any problems. It was however a long, late flight and we also lost 1 hour. We did not arrive at the hotel until 6:30 pm, not much time to do anything. We did walk downtown and had a bite to eat at a little pizza place, near their China town. Afterwards it was back to the hotel for bed.

Not much else to report for Sunday.

Tami

Day filled with snorkeling

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Today started out early again as we got up to take a shuttle into downtown Cairns for our trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. The company that the hotel recommended was called Reef Magic Marineworld and he suggested it because they have you stay out in the water about 5 hours, which is 2 hours more than Quicksilver, one of the major companies down here. Once we got to the marina, we paid for our trip and got ready for a 90 minute boat ride out to Marineworld, the huge floating pontoon right next to the reef that we were going to snorkel around. We had intended to do the introductory dive since Tami isn't certified yet, but we found out that you only stay in the water for 20 minutes and you have to lock arms with the dive master. That really seemed like a waste of time and money, so we figured we'd just snorkel instead. Once we got out to Moore Reef, we got our snorkel gear and headed out to the water. It was amazing. All of the different coral and fish that surrounded you. wow. We stayed out for over an hour and came back in to dry off and take a tour on the glass bottom boat where we saw a sea turtle, tons of fish, and some HUGE giant clams.

After the boat ride, we came back in for a nice lunch (where Tami wouldn't eat the prawns again since they were staring at her). After we ate, it was time for the fish. They brought out food for the fish and the fish got really close. We jumped in with our snorkel gear and got really close to them. Their featured fish was Wally, a huge colorful fish that doesn't mind people petting him. Unfortunately, there were too many people around and we didn't get a chance to touch him. oh well.

After the feeding, we headed out for a guided tour of the reef. We saw a lot of things including another sea turtle. Tami even saw a shark, but I missed it. The tour was only supposed to last 50 minutes, but it ended up going 1 hour and 20 minutes instead. Which meant that everyone had already loaded onto the boat to go home and they were waiting for us.... ooops. We quickly got everything packed up and got back on the boat for the 90 minute ride back to Cairns.

After we got back to Cairns, we were pretty tired, so we had the bus drop us off at a shopping center close to our hotel and stopped at one of the cafe's to get supper. We then walked it back to the room and ate there. Then, since we had a handy washer and dryer in the room, we went ahead and did our (hopefully) last load of laundry for the trip. While that was going, we watched a movie and then headed for bed. Tomorrow promises to be relaxing with a late flight to Melbourne.

Greg

Feelin' Hot Hot Hot

Friday, December 16, 2005

Appears that the airport is the best internet spot, oh well.

Today started out with a 9 am flight to Cairns, which was very uneventful. We got to the airport and took a shuttle to the hotel. This was a very nice hotel, we had our own suite, with a washer and dryer and full kitchen. We also had our own private walkway to the pool. The receptionist at the hotel was the first nice Aussie that we had met our entire trip, turns out he is a Kiwi, along with his wife. Go figure!

He made all of our reservations for us, his wife even took us to our first stop, Skyrail to Kuranda. We took this 5+ km sky rail to a small hippie town. The first stop on the skyrail was to walk through the rainforest, then the second stop was at a waterfall, stunning. We then made it up to the top with enough time to do a little shopping, not much but it was still fun. It is so hot in Cairns that I feel like we are melting. We decided to get a banana smoothie for the trip back but their smoothies are absolutely disgusting, we threw them away. Instead, we got ice cream. We headed back to town on a train, through some tunnels and over bridges, very nice views, and very relaxing.

Once we made it back to the ground we took a shuttle back to the hotel and then we were off to the beach. It was about a two block walk where we picked up some supper and brought it back to the hotel to eat. It was way too hot to eat outside so we wanted to eat in the air conditioning. It is about 33 degrees here, figure out the farenheit. After we ate we sat by the pool for a little while and talked and then headed back in for a little tv and then bed early.

Tami

Frustrating Day in Brisbane

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Today started out very early. We were up at 5:30 am for our 6:55 flight. We flew from Christchurch to Auckland, then we were to head out to Brisbane. At first they gave us a hard time and we weren't sure if we were going to get on the plane. We did after a little bit of frustration. The good thing was we finally got on a plane that had the individual movies on the seat. The time difference between NZ and Australia is 3 hours, which we gained, so our flight landed at 11 am. We got down stairs to find out that Brisbane is rather large and the only way to get to the hotel from the airport is by taxi or limosine. We were so annoyed at this point to learn that not only was it nearly impossible for us to get to the city from our hotel, due to the distance, but we also found out that everything we wanted to do closes at 4:30. At this time it was 11:30 so we only had 5 hours in Brisbane to do anything. So annoyed, we ended up renting another car. The women at Hertz made it worse, she was the biggest @#$%^ in world and gave us a hard time about not getting the additional insurance, claiming that they had big hail storms the previous night and we would be liable if there were any more tonight. Oh well, it ended up that there were hail storms in Australia but not in Brisbane. To make things worse we just wanted to get out of the airport and the elevator we were on would not go down. We finally got off the elevator and found an escalator. What a day so far.

We got our car and headed out to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. This made up for most of the frustration earlier in the morning. We saw kangaroos, wallabys, lorikeets, bats, tasmanian devil, koalas, and many more Australian animals. We got to feed the kangaroos and the lorikeets. The best part was that we got to hold a koala named Denzil. He was so cute and I wanted to keep him. We got our picture made with him as well. At the end of the day we also watched a sheep dog demonstration. The dogs in Tignall were much better trained than these dogs, they were too hyper and actually bit one the sheep.

We left the Koala Sanctuary and headed downtown. We were able to get a little bit of shopping in before we headed to the hotel. We checked in and ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut, woo hoo. It was the best pizza I think we have ever had, we were so hungry and tired at this point. We ended up going to sleep before 9 to get ready for the next day.

It has to be better than today.

Tami