Happy New Year

We are not planning any celebrations - just a quiet night at home

But click here to see a card from us - turn up your sound and enjoy it.

Christmas greetings

Click to Open the card and then you may have to click on Next to see each picture

Beagle Bells and Darwin (place & the man)

On a rainy Saturday in December, David and I ventured out into a park in Darwin (Australia) to take some photos of a memorial to Charles Darwin who sailed on the ship HMS Beagle to the Southern hemisphere

The Port of Darwin was sighted by John Lort Stokes in 1839 and was named in Darwin’s honour by his friend and former shipmate John Clements Wickham.

Featuring a series of 10 cast bronze bells and a replica HMS Beagle ship’s bell, cast in brass, the HMS Beagle Ship Bell Chime brings together the separate Eastern and Western bell traditions.

Whilst in Australia, Darwin was amazed at the varietal range of the parrot species, and a selection of these, cast in bronze, from the small Budgerigar to the large Black Cockatoo, are perched on top of each bell.

• G# Red Crested Black Cockatoo
• A# Galah
• C# Sulphur Crested Cockatoo
• D# Crimson Rosella
• F# Eastern Rosella
• G# Red-collared Lorikeet
• A# HMS Beagle
• C# Night Parrot
• D# Cockatiel
• F# Budgerigar
• G# Wild Budgerigar

David in the rain, with some of the bells.

Random pictures and thoughts on our trip

At our Hotel in Darwin one of the pillow choices was a Boomerang pillow - only in Australia!
As I mentioned earlier we had lots of rain in Darwin this was because we were actually in a cyclone and whilst I did not get any really good pictures, I did find this link

If you click on the video link in the middle column, it gives you an idea of the weather conditions
The photo above was taken from our hotel window - I took it to show the downspouts (yellow bar in center of picture) is not connected to anything and just sort of floods the street!
On the flight from Singapore to Tokyo I had the continental breakfast of cereal and fruit and was surprised to see my Kellogs Corn Flakes (packaged in Thailand) came complete with tiny instructions on how to eat them!

The Long Trip Home

The saga of our trip home was as follows...
We left our hotel in Darwin on Sunday afternoon at 3pm local time (which would be 9:30pm Saturday in Portland, just to give you a true concept of the times)It was a short ride to the airport, but this was the only time the shuttle ran, and so we got to the airport at 3.20 to discover that out 6.20pm flight was delayed for several hours. Now Darwin is a small international airport with not many facilities and there was no WiFi and just a bar and a coffee shop, which were all closed by 6:30 and yet our flight was delayed until 9:30 and several others were scheduled to leave after our and some into the early morning hours. Being on a budget carrier Jetstar there was no free meal, just buy on board, even the water is $3. So we made do with the food we had had earlier on in the day. Jetstar also has the most cramped seating I have experienced - so this is the last time I will fly them. We finally arrived in Singapore at midnight Singapore time (4 hour flight) and our next flight out was leaving at 7:30am (be at the airport by 5:30m) So we had this wonderful hotel room at the Crown Plaza at the airport and got to use it for about 4 1/2 hours! The Singapore airport did have some magnificent decorations
Then we flew on United Business from Singapore to Narita and then to Seattle - was able to stretch out and doze some on this leg of the trip, then a couple of hours in Seattle and finally arrived in Portland at noon Monday - that's 38.5 hours - minus the short stop in Singapore. No wonder we are tired.
As we passed through Narita, we spent some time in the United Lounge where they have this wonderful beer machine (now I am not a beer person, but David is and he has not stopped talking about this machine since last year), so this time I took photos. The way it works, is you put your chilled glass on the machine, it tips it back
then fills it, and then returns it to the upright position with just the right amount of froth (edited: David tells me the correct word is head! What do I know about Beer?)

Heading home

Well we will be leaving Australia if we can ever persuade the plane to go. Our 6.20 pm flight is now supposed to leave around 9.30pm which will make the overnight in Singapore very short as our United flight leaves at 7.20 am.
The stay in Darwin was washout - literally with about 6" rain falling during our stay and many streets flooded etc. We spent a lot of time in our hotel suite
really looking forward to getting home....

Day trip to Byron Bay

As this was our last full day in Queensland, we decided to take a day trip to Byron Bay, just about an hours drive south of here (quick now the freeway is built (the scenic road we used to drive some 15 years ago, was tedious) It's an area of beautiful beaches and a lot of gorgeous views

We drove up to the lighthouse, which may be the most easterly lighthouse in Australia

There were lots of birds, both feathered and 2 legged
David did a lot of people watching and commented that many of the swim suits were not much bigger than a Band aid

More Drinks

Today we drove up to Tambourine Mountain - a hillside comunity about an hours drive West of Surfers Paradise. We had lunch at a Fromagerie (cheese factory) and Brew Pub - David sampled the beers below - and enjoyed them - the cheeses were pretty good also.

For a link to a video of the area go here

Drinking in Australia

Just wanted to share a couple of the most popular drinks we have had here in Australia - remember its summer and its hot - so cool drinks are the order of the day.

VOLTAGE - extreme Coffee is a blend of ice, milk, vanilla, expresso beans and expresso coffee.Then hot expresso shots are poured into the cold, blended mixture to really get you going!

Then there is the Affogato - instead of desert have this - its icecream, with a shot of liquor (usually Franjelico or Amaretto) poured over the icecream, then followed by a shot of hot expresso poured on top - the perfect end to a meal.

Trip to Adelaide

Yes, the correct answer to the last post, was Adelaide. We went there for a few days. We toured the city the first day and explored both the botanical gardens and the nearby wine center. The wine center was an informational and educational display of wine growing and was very interesting. One of the displays allowed you to select grapes, and process them into wine and evaluate the results - mine was described as worthy of "floor cleaner!!" David's was something to accompany a truly awful meal. So I guess wine making is not in our future, unless we are much better educated! This was not using real grapes, just a computer program... A wander around the Botanic gardens was relaxing and enjoyable. We then stayed right down town at the Hilton and enjoyed a meal at a small Italian restaurant that night before heading out to the Barossa the next day to go wine tasting.
The first winery was Wolf Blass and they had just released a very innovative new package - a plastic wine bottle and the wine in it was quite good, its light to carry and does not break! It come with both red & white wine. We sampled many more wines and drove around the area and took some pictures of the architecture and other sites - see pictures at the end of the blog.


The next day we planned to fly to Kangaroo island and island just off the south of South Australia. It was just a 20 minute flight (but it saved the ferry crossing which can be very rough and I am not the best sailor in the world!) We arrived at the tiny airport collected our Hertz car (after being told that you only get 100 free KM and after that you pay .27 per km and as the island is about 100 KM long and to see anything you need to drive from one end to the other, they know you will exceed the mileage allowed - great revenue raiser. The airport was also planned with great expansion in mind, as it 14km from the nearest town (and that's also where the nearest petrol and accommodation is) - so going in and out of town uses up 28 of your "free" miles! We stayed in Kingscote for the night and the hotel was under renovation, the restaurant was mediocre. I did play the 1c poker machine and won $19...
The next day we drove around the island, visiting a Eucalyptus Farm, a honey farm and the National Park where we saw magnificent rock formations. After a full day of driving (and 300km later) we returned to the airport and headed back to Adelaide. We went a dog show on Saturday morning and then flew back to Queensland.
Enjoy the photos below

Up, Up and Away

We are flying on a new airline today - Tiger Airways (they are the low cost version of Singapore airlines) they are taking us to ???? (Guess where and no, its not Singapore, its somewhere in Australia)

This is Coolangatta airport, above

And this is our destination - below - who knows, or wants to guess where it is.

The unusual things you see

Driving around today we saw this establishment and had to take a photo. I have never seen these 2 businesses combined before...

This is the dog wash part. While I was taking the photos, an employee came over and asked what I was doing - I said taking pictures, and they wanted to know why. I said I thought it was an unusual combined business. He was not pleased?!

Beautiful One Day, Perfect the Next

This is the slogan for Queensland and it is so true - the weather has been wonderful about 88 F (28 C) each day, with hardly a cloud in the sky and a soft ocean breeze. We have been having a lazy time - a little bit of shopping (but with the Ozzie dollar at .92c US) - there are NO bargains! But basically we are just relaxing.

Surfer's Paradise - ariel view
Board riders

The Beach

The other night there was LOTS of activity as one of the Schoolies had got lost in the surf, and they had all the helicopters up searching for him - and it was just outside my parents apartment - he has not been found, as yet.

One of the parking meter attendants in Surfers Paradise.

Today we decided to go to a country dog show about a 2 hour drive NW of here - held inland, it was very hot there - the show was due to start at 4pm, we arrived at 3pm and took a look around the grounds, which were set up - see picture below
The grounds were very dry with prickly grass and ants abounded. There were only a handful of beagles entered, saw a couple and decided that as the coolest place was our car, that there was not much point hanging around, so we drove back home!
Still we saw some lovely rural views along the way

Schoolies??

After a hot weekend in Sydney (110 degrees F) and a brief visit to the dog show and visits with friends, we flew to Queensland, to stay with my parents for a week or so. During our visit we have some exciting things planned - Swine Flu shots! - its not flu season here, being summer, so the vaccine is available.

The big news here is that it's Schoolies week - what is this you ask.... it is the Australian tradition of high school graduates (Schoolies) having week long holidays following their final examinations. Queensland's Gold Coast, particularly Surfers Paradise is the largest single venue for this revelry attracting tens of thousands of Schoolies. This brings with it, binge drinking, drugs, sex and arrests in what has become a rite of passage experience. And it actually lasts more than a week as the different states have "their" week, at different times.

We have avoided all this nonsense and are just enjoying the sun, and great weather - 80 degrees, with a cool sea breeze and the wonderful fresh fruit.

Where our travels are taking us.

For all those guessing, we were in Singapore.


What does the above photo have to do with our trip, well its a Fish Pedicure - Singapore style! Followers of the blog will remember we did this last year also. We enjoyed it so much we returned for another session. Only this time we progressed from the small Turkish Spa Fish to the larger African Spa fish - there are more aggressive and you can definitely feel them nibbling on you (or as David found - really make you feet tickle!) Still they do a great job and our feet are really smooth, now.

Then we flew to Sydney, there was such a strong tailwind that our 7 hour flight took 6 hours. But as a result it was very bumpy.

Saturday saw us at the dog show, but due to the heat there were many absentees and only 6 beagles showed, after watching the breed we left the show and went up to Leura in the Blue Mountains, hoping it would be cooler there, but it wasn't - it was still 100+

Then back to Sydney to catch up with friends (Leanne, Christophe & baby Harry), for a Bar-b-q dinner then back to the hotel to update my blog!

Random sight today - a fast food chicken burger and chicken sausage shop called "Plucked"

Guess where I am #2

We are heading here in the morning - weather permitting - yes its a Botanic garden - but where? However the rain fell and so we had to go shopping!!

This second picture almost gives it away..... as to guess where I am?

Audiobooks and other things

I had a long drive up and back to Seattle today and so had a lots of time to listen to the latest audio book I had downloaded and it was really good! The miles and the time (all 6 hours of driving) just flew by - the book was the Chopin Manuscript - it's a thriller, but the unusual part is that it is a unique collaboration among 15 distinguished international thriller writers who came together to create a single audio book with each author contributing a chapter to the ongoing story. If you like this sort of thing - try it - I got it for my iPod. And there is a sequel... Now tomorrow we have a long flight and so I am actually looking forward to listen to the "rest of the story"
The 2 shows this weekend were a success, with Thomas, our Danish boy winning Group 3 one day and Group 4 the other day. So that's it for us, as far as shows go for this year. Now in Australia we were planning to go to a big show in Sydney this weekend, but with very high temperatures expected, it may be called off or just have a very low entry. Will report back soon.

Packing, packing....

We are off tomorrow to shows in Monroe, WA which has this beautiful Cascade Mountain range as a backdrop. Hopefully it wont be too chilly and will be dry - well we can but hope! Just one dog to show so an easy weekend. Then just one day at home, before we head to Australia.

Back Home

I arrived home after a weekend in Houston, Texas with a stop in the Denver airport in each direction - and these were the answers to the "where am I" questions...many people guessed correctly.
Saw some very nice dogs and enjoyed the company of friends - so I had a lovely time in Texas.

Which airport am I in?

Which airport features two cast bronze gargoyles, one each, located in the east and west sides of the baggage-claim areas. The gargoyles, roughly the size of a fifth-grade boy, are seated inside suitcases. Historically, gargoyles were placed on buildings to protect the site. These are placed slightly above the travelers’ heads to oversee and ensure that baggage will arrive safely at xxx airport..

Where Am I going

I am packing my bags to go judging this weekend. I will leave tomorrow and will be leaving wet and windy weather and heading for sunny and temperatures in the high 70's....

This is a statue that I could see...but I actually am more likely to see the inside of a shopping mall...The first of my "guess where I am"? quiz

Weather

Yesterday we left Orlando in 90 degree heat (and 90% humidity) and flew to Denver where there was about 6 of snow on the ground!

The flight that had the plane we were to fly to Portland on, had been delayed somewhere so instead of leaving Denver at 8.55pm we left the gate at 10.25. Then because of the weather we had to get in line to be de-iced...you know how it is when you are at the supermarket and all the lines are going faster than yours...well this was the case at the de-icing station - all lines except ours kept moving along - the pilot kept apologizing for the delay...anyway we finally took off a couple of hours late and arrived (with time changes) back at Portland at 1.30 in the morning and were sound asleep in our own beds at 2am!

Awoke this morning to rain....

It has been suggested to me, that following my blog is sort of like guessing "Where in the world is Lesley?", so with that thought in mind and with upcoming trips, I may post a couple of Where am I?" questions, and see who is good at geography?

Are we crazy? ........Maybe

David and I are on a mileage run. For those of you are not dedicated
mileage addicts like me... This is where you take a quick inexpensive
trip to a destination far away, solely for the purpose of earning miles.
So yesterday we flew to Orlando and are flying back today. We earned
about 12,000 miles for the trip- and these are the miles that count
for status. We want to maintain our 1K (100,000 "bum in seat" miles)
for this year, because of the wonderful upgrade perks.
We had a free night at the hotel, and went shopping at Dillards and
gave the credit card a workout- now waiting for plane and heading home.

High's and Lows

On Saturday David showed our Danish boy - Thomas - Ch Gold Line's Global Dark Horse to a group 3, which was a nice start to their show career, following up on some group placements earlier this summer, when I handled him.

Then today we said goodbye to Java, who was 14 1/2 years old. He is shown here a couple of years ago, with one of his favorite toys. Java was not a show dog (due to an injury as a puppy), nor was he a great sire but he was a beautiful beagle with a glorious head. He lost his battle with cancer but for the 10+ years we had him, he had a very good life. He was registered as Bayou Oaks Zydeco (Ch Starbuck's Hang 'em High x Ch Bayou Oaks Chianti)

Some more pictures from our trip to Europe

I have just received the pictures in this posting from our friend Pia, with whom we had dined in Bratislava. This is the restaurant that we dined at - by day and by night (below)
And then this was the most unusual toilet in the men's room - it was a bucket, which doubled as the urinal. No - Pia did not take the photo, she sent her husband, Knud into the toilet to record this unusual arrangement!