And She Said ...

We are in the Club Lounge at our hotel in Singapore. Great. Free drinks, food, beautiful view. We can milk this - Chris Lambert I'm looking at you. Anyway this cute, young girl in her fancy hotel Club lounge suit who's taking care of us asks how our day is going. We tell her we just flew in from Sydney and she says "oh, your ass must hurt". Exsqueeze me! Elizabeth tries not to spit out her drink, I act as if I didn't hear her. She forges ahead two more times with such nuggets as "Yes after such a long flight your ass can get really sore". Elizabeth is crying now with laughter. One of the unexpected joys of travel.

Nothing Makes This Man Happier

Than the first class treatment.

Workout in Sydney

MovementRevolution right around the corner from our apartment was a very different concept for working out. It was like a playground with boxes to jump on and balance beams and monkey bars, ladders, big plastic balls and cylinders filled with water and other unconventional exercise equipment. The classes there nearly crippled me - they were very hard, but the were fun. The gym was only a few weeks old so really nice and everything was bright and new.

Uh, Not Much Chance of That Pal

Singapore Airlines Lounge, Sydney

Looks Bad, Tastes Phenomenal!

Spice Temple in Sydney. You will never look at Chinese food the same way again. Out of this world. We ate there 5 years ago and we're dying to eat there again. Glad we did😀

More Bondi Beach Wall Murals

Fun!

Gorgeous Day in Bondi Beach

The 100 degree heat spell broke today and beautiful 80 degree weather followed. We spent the day doing the coastal walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee. Spectacular vistas. These shots are of the pool at the Bondi Icebergs Club. The water was so rough all the main ocean beaches were closed and the surf was pounding over the wall and into the oceanfront pool. Very dramatic to watch.

Bondi Beach

Beach Crows

So cute.

Sydney Fish Market

Oysters and abalone

What's Better After a Swim

You know me.

100F degrees at Manly Beach

Fast ferry from Sydney Harbor to Manly Beach. Beautiful water and weather. Swim and beach shower.

Hello Sydney!

Traveling around after dinner by harbor. Best way to enjoy!

Post Super Bowl Party

GBR: One of the 7 Natural Wonders of the World

It's so large at (about 350 square km) it's visible from space, and is the largest living organism on earth.  

 '
It's about as unbelievable as we thought it would be.  Saw huge turtles, millions of beautiful fish, giant clams, and thousands of varieties of coral.

It really looks just like this!  

We snorkeled in 2 different locations.  One started at Michelmas Cay, about 33 km east of Cairns, where they take you by tender into this small sand island to start the snorkeling and you swim back to the boat. The second was Hastings reef, where you jump from the boat to explore fantastic underwater canyons.  Once you swam over the ledge you felt like you were flying as you looked down at the fish and corals on the sides and bottom of the canyons.

We were VERY lucky as it's rainy season here.  When we left the house it was pouring buckets.  Once on board the boat, it cleared and we only saw about 5 minutes of rain all day.  Until we landed, where we were slammed with another round of torrential rain.  

GBR is a national park and very heavily regulated.  That keeps it nice, but also keeps it very uncrowded.  The different boats basically buy permits for certain areas, and only 2 boats are allowed at any time.  Plus the boats have limits on how many people so it's not like a swarm of tourists descending on a small area.  

Super Bowl Party

9:30 a.m. Monday morning kickoff - live from Cairns.

Why Would Anyone Swim Here?

These signs are about every 50 feet along the Palm Cove beachfront. Let's start with the "marine stingers". About 8 different kinds (see chart below), 2 of which are fatal. This is why we wore the stinger suits - protection against the stings - which are less prevalent a couple hours out on the Reef but still exist. Nobody, including the crew, ever gets in the water without a stinger suit. In fact, one person was admonished not to hang his feet in the water while removing his stinger suit. The worst type you "may not feel" the sting. Another you just stop breathing. This is a summer phenomenon so nobody goes in the water in summer except in a small area protected by a net and even that's pretty dicey.

Stingers not enough? Well there are also the crocodiles which can be in the ocean and have also been known to swim over the nets and into the protected swimming area.

What they say is true. Everything in Australia wants to kill you!

Beachfront Palm Cove

North of Cairns. 9:00 am Monday morning. On the way home to watch the Super Bowl.

Stinger Suits

Required fashion apparel for snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef. Truly amazing experience.

Sweet Digs

John and Sarah strike again, selecting a great house on the beach. It's part of a resort with nice pools and spa, etc. but we also have our own plunge pool. They did a great job selecting our accommodations over months of research and planning. Huge thanks to them!

Palm Cove Beach

Palm Cove, Queensland

Our house is about 15 miles north of Cairns in a beautiful beach and spa town called Palm Cove. You can admire the beaches and walk on the nice white sand but no swimming outside of marked areas which are netted as it's the season for a small but deadly jellyfish. So we won't get into the ocean until later today when we are out on the Great Barrier Reef!

Nice 27 km Barossa Valley Dedicated Bike Trail

And we passed a total of 2 people. School in Australia started up on Monday this week, so the vineyards and trails were pretty empty. More for us! Barossa is a quick 1 hr drive from Adelaide, and there are many other great wine areas within an hour of Adelaide.

Arrived in Cairns

Hot, sunny, great house. Sarah and Mike get right into the moment.

Beautiful Barossa Valley

Home to the best Shiraz in the world, including Penfold Grange and Henschke's Hill of Grace. South Australia, about an hour north of Adelaide. You could easily spend a week exploring here. Tastings are great. Imagine tasting a $100 bottle of wine - or several - for free. That's Barossa.

Why didn't anyone look happy?

Because the sitters were live for three days, they had to strike a pose and expression that they could keep over an extended period. So people ended up looking more or less natural.

iPad Art

Hockney embraced the iPhone and iPad completely to create art. This exhibit showed not only final works on screen and printed from the digital image, it also showed the creation process live so you could see how he built each image. Inspires me to get wild on my Surface pro or my iPad. Stay tuned! And no messy turpentine and you can work almost anywhere and any time.

82 Portraits and a Still Life

This part of the Hockney exhibit was a long narrow room full of portraits done around 2013-2015, featuring friends and acquaintances. Each person sat for 3 days and all portraits are in the same style against blue backgrounds which made the scale of how they were exhibited even more interesting.

Great Adelaide Apartment

Perfect launch point for a tour of Barossa Valley.