For a kind of birthday weekend Rache organised a group of us to head to Copenhagen for the last bank holiday of May. The crew ended up being a bunch of girls – I tell you that sharing one bathroom between six women was certainly an interesting challenge. Thankfully I’m an evening showerer so I had the bathroom pretty much to myself (after various toilet/brushing teeth/removing make-up absolutions) and didn’t have to get up two hours earlier in the morning to get my turn at the bathroom. heh heh.

Before arriving in Copenhagen I didn’t know much about Denmark. I knew that (1) Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark (2) Denmark has Australia’s first genuine royalty: Crown Princess Mary who is married to the Crown Prince Frederik and (3) Copenhagen is one of the new big cities reknown for its amazing food. Its also known as being a happy country with friendly citizens right down to their electricity plugs and coins with love hearts on them…

None of the group had really done any research on the place so the weekend was a lot of ad hoc making it up as we go kind of weekend which was kind of cool.

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The Experience

Out of the group of six of us we all kind of arrived and left at different times with a couple arriving early Friday and leaving early Monday, a few , Phelon, Nic and I, arriving late Friday and leaving late Monday and one girl arriving and leaving in between so trying to figure out sights we wanted to see etc. was a king of juggling act but I think it worked out pretty well.

With Rache arriving ahead of Phelon, Nic and I she’d given us some pretty good instructions on how to get to our flat. Unfortunately we kind of didn’t read the instructions very well and blindly following a friend that Nic had met on the plane, a girl who was a local, we ended up on the right number platform but for the wrong type of transport (train instead of metro!) As a result, though with much fun and laughter and an opportunity to “drive” the train in the same way you’d “drive” the DLR, it was very late by the time we got the apartment and we had to resort to having a kebab as our first meal in Copenhagen. So much for fine food! Ha!

Day 1

Day 1 was a mish-mash of castles, fortresses, theme parks and Eurovision! We started the day with a visit to what the girls thought was a castle (misled by the Danish title Kastellet) which was actually supposedly one of the best preserved fortifications in Northern Europe. Coolly shaped like a star it proved to be a popular place for joggers and walkers alike. The fortification, like any good fortification, is surrounded by a lovely little bit of water which even for a grim start weather wise to the morning made for a very pretty setting. No fishing or parking allowed. When we arrived at the Kastellet there was also some sort of service going on (this actually further confused as we weren’t sure whether it was some changing of the guard ceremony!) For those that are interested there is a cute little windmill onsite too.

The palace or Slot we were really trying to get to was Amalienborg because we wanted to watch the changing of the guards which takes place every date at noon. Oh boy I hope not all changing of the guards is this boring. There were a lot of (very young) guards but basically the changing of the guards seemed to just involve a lot of marching and standing in place then marching again. The most entertaining part was the “usher” responsible for making sure the crowd didn’t get in the way as the guards changed for the four buildings which make up the Royal Residence in Copenhagen.

Lunch was long the very pretty canal area of Nyhavn – a gorgeous waterfront lined by some very pretty and colourful townhouses – before we hopped on to a boat for very good value canal tour. Lucky for us the weather improved significantly and we had some delicious blue sky for this part of the day. The canal tour was one of the highlights of our visit to Copenhagen and I loved seeing all the architecturally beautiful buildings of Copenhagen from the water. We saw all sorts of random things and I swear I even saw someone bungee-ing off a crane in the far distance! The canal tour took us past where The Little Mermaid should have been, past The Royal Library (this cool amazing black diamond type building) and even past Noma, the world’s number 1 restaurant and where I hope to dine in the near future! Be warned that the canal boat passes under some very low bridges!

After we got off the canal tour Rache showed us something she’d discovered early on Friday and was one of the creepier sights of the weekend …

I think they were called The Merman with Seven Sons and something to do with the Danish ballad “Agnete and the Merman” about a heartbreaking story of a human girl falling in love with a merman and having seven sons to him only to leave him after she gets homesick. A bit of a creepy setting underwater but an interesting bit of art nevertheless.

After a pit stop for ice cream we moved on to the thrill-seeking bit of the day – a visit to Tivoli Gardens! I love the fact the theme park is right in the centre of town! Tivoli is actually a really pretty theme park with heaps of restaurants, spaces to sit and relax and, for us adrenalin-junkies, just a few rides or twenty-seven (though only eight of them I would classify as being “wild”, as described by Tivoli.) By this stage Amy and Nick had also joined us on the trip and it was good numbers for the rides. Unfortunately we riders got a bit carried away and the non-riders got the boring end of the stick I’m afraid as we got a bit involved for a few hours. The funniest ride was The Roller Coaster – the ride attendant sits in the middle of the roller coast and spins around, dons a random face mask/funny glasses and just was generally entertaining through the ride – unusual!

Tivoli Gardens is a really pretty venue. We even got to see the sister of The Little Mermaid (a small consolation for missing the real thing) and The Tivoli Boy Guards who were so cute!

We finished the night with … a night in front of the TV watching … the Eurovision final! It was actually a lot of fun and we had high hopes that the Danish entry was going to get through. It would have been party central if they had! Unfortunately the indie punk rock type German girl won instead. Its such a set up!

Day 2

Day 2 was started with an early-ish visit to Frederiksborg Castle which is a little way out from Copenhagen. I’ve only since discovered after googling Frederiksborg that its actually The Museum of National History! But at the time I was surprised by the collection of art etc. housed in the castle including the modern stuff on the top floor! My favourite part, however, had to be the gorgeous gardens. Just a shame we didn’t have more time to explore it cause we were rushing off to our next destination

… The Royal Palaces (Amalienborg)! No changing of the guard this time – just a visit into the newly renovated palace where Princess Mary will soon be moving in. It was absolutely chucking it down by the time we got there and with only two umbrellas between the six of us I’m surprised none of us were any wetter. Thankfully the line was fairly reasonable (compared with the line we’d seen the day before) and, though I wouldn’t say it moved quickly, it moved quick enough.

Inside we were just happy to get out of the weather. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any pictures inside – the renovations were a mixture of traditionally and really non-traditional staff. Some of the wall paintings were interesting and quite unique.

One of the advantages of having the Copenhagen Card this weekend was that we didn’t care how long we actually spent inside a museum/attraction as we were essentially getting in for free so when the Wonderful World of Hans Christian Andersen Museum turned out to be less wonderful than promised we weren’t overly disappointed. This translation of the Emperor’s Clothes did give us a bit of a giggle. Additionally, it did provide some cover from the constant drizzle and also a view point out to the main square where some kids were doing something odd with crates and crane.

Look! My name!

Day 2 ended with dinner at Nyhavn followed by a visit to the Copenhagen Casino where we had to pay entry! Unfortunately luck wasn’t with me at blackjack but I had a sympathetic dealer and it was certainly interesting to play in non-English. Guess the sign for hit me, no thanks and I’m out of money is universal …

Day 3

We lost a few of the girls early to planes back to London in the morning so it was left to Nic, Phelon and I to fill in our day and boy did we do a good job. We fit in Copenhagen Zoo, the Circus Museum and Christianhavn – all within about five hours before we got the train to the airport.

We literally flew around Copenhagen Zoo. Maybe because the temperatures were so cool or for whatever reason the animals were all really lively and active. The brown bears and polar bears in particular were quite feisty with the brown bears running all over their cage and fighting each other and one of the polar bears actually posing for photos. It was well cool!

Oh and I got to see a Tasmanian Devil – probably the first I’ve seen and we’re not even in Australia! I was also excited to see the Norman Foster designed Elephant House though I think the elephants looked a little sad and skinny.

The Circus Museum was an absolute laugh to get to. We had no idea where we were going as it seemed to be located in a small community with no indication at all that there was a Circus Museum in the area. We wouldn’t have gone at all if Nic hadn’t hated clowns so much (ha ha!) and we didn’t have the Copenhagen Card. But whilst we were there we made the most of the interactive parts:

Christianshavn was an absolute revelation. For a start don’t expect it to be a tourist-friendly place – this is an actual community and they don’t appreciate gawkers or cameras. Christianshavn has a definite hippy feel to it and for a long time was known as a place where dr*gs were readily available and no taxes were paid! Things have moved on now and though dr*gs seemed readily available as we walked about maybe the stalls were more innocent than the seemed. At the very least the community now does pay tax. And community is absolutely the word I’d use – it’s a very close-knit community and I felt a great sense of sister/brother-hood. It was quite refreshing even if I do feel a bit like I’d walked on to the set of Mad Max or Waterworld!

Other Thoughts

Copenhagen must be a relatively low-crime city because bikes were left all over the place unlocked and seemingly without care that they’d be stolen. It’s a great thing to see. Oh and make sure to leave room and time for their hot dogs or polser – delish.

Every year on the 25 April in Australia we honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. Gallipoli was where the allied troops landed in a vain attempt to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula in order that the Black Sea could be accessed by the allied navies. Unfortunately for both sides it ended up being a stalemate after eight months of fierce fighting and significant loses on both sides. Today the losses are honoured by Aussies, Kiwis and Turks in a joint commemoration at what is now known as the ANZAC Commemorative Site (formerly it was held at the Ari Burnu War Cemetery at ANZAC Cove but so many people attend now they moved it.) Though technically my family has its origins in China I can still appreciate the sacrifices that the members of ANZAC made and I was eager to join Rache and Nic on the pilgrimage this year.

I’ve never been to Turkey and I was torn about whether to combine our ANZAC pilgrimage with a bigger and more encompassing tour of Turkey. In the end I decided to focus on the ANZAC part and come back and visit the rest of Turkey another time. Let’s hope I get that opportunity because it is a gorgeous country. During my short time in Turkey I completely fell in love with its people and its beautiful landscape and culture.

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The Experience

We decided to do our ANZAC pilgrimage on a tour, with Travel Talk. Relatively cheap it also took the hassle of getting around out of our hands. I’ve never traveled with them before but was pleased with how it turned out, even if some of the hotels we stayed in were a little bit skanky. The funniest hotel was Temizay Hotel in Canakkale where our “triple” room consisted of one double room and then a smaller side room with a single bed. It was funny because the single room had a door and key of its own. Well, it loses a bit in translation – guess you had to be there!

Day 1 – Istanbul, Bosphorus Cruise

We landed in Istanbul late in the afternoon so that didn’t leave much time for exploring. As it was we had to wait at the airport for over an hour anyway as they were waiting for our bus to “fill up” before we were brought to the hotel. As a result we missed the tour briefing at the hotel (though as it turned out it wasn’t that informative anyway!) We did however arrive with enough time to relax before heading out on the pre-organised evening cruise of the Bosphorus, which is the strait that separates Europe and Asia. Though being on a cruise at night was pleasant enough, because it was night there wasn’t a whole lot to sea (get it, see/sea)! The drinks on the boat were also very limited and, rather cheekily, also scarce so after the first round of drinks they were only selling large ones!

Day 2 -Travel from Istanbul to Gallipoli and Overnight Stay

Day 2 started off fairly early though not ridiculously so (8am start) as we had nearly 300kms to travel from Istanbul to get to Gallipoli and we didn’t want to arrive too late and miss out on the limited spots to lay out our sleeping bags. The area they’d allocated for sleepers at Anzac Cove is not huge by any stretch of the imagination.

But before we even left Istanbul we had a stop at a Carpet Seller! It wasn’t actually too bad because the seller went into great depths to explain what the carpets were made of, what made some more valuable than others, what to look out for when buying carpet etc. and they even gave us some apple tea (though I understand in Turkey it is tradition to negotiate over cups of tea.) I actually expected a much bigger push for us to buy the carpets but they weren’t at all aggressive.

When we finally got to Gallipolli it was nearing 5pm! I don’t know where time went. There was a massive queue to get through security but ridiculously we were split up into males and females. Typically the male line went through quickly and it took us girls over 45 minutes to get through. I couldn’t understand why it was taking much longer for us since everyone had the same amount of gear (overnight bags and sleeping bags in the main.) Luckily the guys on our tour had staked out some space for us where we all just managed to squeeze it. It was well cosy. The Fanatics got the best area though right near the stage which made us wonder just how much earlier they’d gotten to Gallipoli (apparently the gates didn’t even open until just before we got there).

I was actually very surprised at the amenities at the site for us overnight campers. There were giant TV screens, there were food vendors (the chicken kebaby men were hilariously singing out their wares all night) and most importantly there were a lot of porta loos which were quite well maintained and cleaned throughout the night. There was also always plenty of toilet paper and soap for washing of hands. The toilets barely even got clogged up. I was quite impressed.

For those not lucky enough to get any laying down space there was stadium seating surrounding the sleeping sites. What was amazing to me was that all night people were arriving. At no stage did the influx of people stop. I couldn’t even estimate how many were there but surely it was thousands and thousands.

We were really lucky with the weather because although it got fairly chilly I didn’t even need to get into my sleeping bag until nearly 2am. It was apparently fairly mild compared with previous years and additionally the rain, thankfully, stayed away.

Sleep-wise I did manage to snatch probably about an hour’s sleep all up throughout the night. It wasn’t actually the people and laying out in the open that stopped me sleeping – it was the fact that there was “entertainment” going on all night. It would either be live bands or singing on the stage or documentaries on the video screens. They certainly had the volume cranked up so everyone could hear everything. Many of the documentaries were extremely moving but the most moving was the still photos they showed of all the young men who lost their lives in the fight. I couldn’t help shedding a tear, especially when I saw that some had died only a month after joining the service.

The thing that hit me most was how respectful people were. Sure we were searched to make sure we didn’t bring alcohol on to the site but I’m sure if people really wanted to they would have found ways to. For the most part our overnight stay was solemn and of a quiet contemplation. There wasn’t any rowdiness, not sound systems and thankfully no one playing ball. It was mostly card games and quiet talking amongst each other.

Day 3 – Dawn Service, Ceremonies, and Anzac BBQ

I didn’t take any photos during the dawn service so this bit is all about the text. It didn’t seem right to do anything more than listening and absorbing the ceremony. I must admit getting twitchy when they started to lay down all the wreaths along the ANZAC commemorative site wall but otherwise it was an amazing experience to be a part of. Mostly the joint contemplation by the entire site whether they were Aussies, Kiwis, Turks or random nations it was very touching. And when they played the Last Post. Goosebumps much?! Unfortunately our PM at the time, Mr Rudd, didn’t make it to Gallipoli instead sending along Australia’s first female Governor General: Quentin Bryce and actually she was a pretty cool lady and I was proud to have her representing us.

After the dawn service everyone started their trek to visit the respective ceremonies held on separate sites, the Aussie one at Lone Pine, the Kiwi one at Chunuk Bair and I can’t remember where the Turkish one was held. The trek is not an easy one and we were keen to get to both the Aussie service and the Kiwi service (which were also about 3 kms apart uphill!) But we made it.

At both services the reps, Quentin Bryce for Australia and the PM John Key for New Zealand, were really generous with their time – going around to the crowds, shaking hands and even in the case of Quentin Bryce accepting gifts! One girl passed her an Anzac biscuit and she said a polite thank you and put it straight into her pocket. So down to earth it was great to see.

Both services were interesting but it was so difficult to keep our eyes open (not having slept really the night before and it being so hot!)

Because the area was so beautiful it was actually difficult to picture that 95 years ago the whole peninsula was a big giant war field. But what brought it home was something that the MC said at the Australian ceremony. He said something to the effect of “as you walk around today just remember that you are walking on ground where people have died and shed their blood.”

After a long day of ceremonies and memorials we headed finally to Ayvalik where we would stay for the night before heading to Troy the next day. Our hotel was such a stark contrast to the night at Gallipoli. It was a lovely hotel, we all had giant balconies and the pool was gorgeous (though it was too late and cold to have a dip.) Admittedly there wasn’t much of a nightlife (we were the only ones in our hotel club!) but it was nice nevertheless.

Day 4 – Troy and partying in Canakkale

Troy was, shall we say, underwhelming! The history, of course, is fascinating but what remains at this ruin is not a whole lot. The most fun thing is the replica Trojan Horse which you can climb and poke your head out of the windows. Tolga, our tour guide, did his best, however, to impart the history and tell the story of the ruins that did remain.

Later, in Canakkale, there was another replica Trojan Horse – apparently the one that was used in the movie in which Brad Pitt starred. It looks a lot bigger in the movie and this one couldn’t be climbed.

We only spent a couple of hours in Troy and jokingly, but also seriously, our tour guide said that we could now at least say we’d been there for what it was worth! After all the driving to and fro we had about some of the afternoon to spend in Canakkale. We didn’t see too much except for the waterfront, the replica Trojan Horse and an internet café!

After some dinner, drinking games in our hotel lobby (for which we kept getting shushed – heh heh) it was off for a night out at a local bar or two.

Day 5 – Gallipoli again

We spent our next day back at Gallipoli visiting all the sites again sans the crowds this time. Our first pitstop was the Kabatepe War Museum which is worth a look if you’re interested in seeing some photos from the war and bits and pieces such as original uniforms (blood included), bullets, weapons, diaries and letters. There were actually so many bullets in the air that they even hit each other mid-air!

After this we visited all the memorial sites at Gallipoli including Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair, Jonston’s Jolly, North Beach, Ari Burnu, and many more. Visiting the cemeteries in particular were very moving. Seeing all those headstones laid out brought goosebumps to my arms again. At some key sites we were posing and taking photos with our Aussie flags etc. but it felt really awkward. I mean – do you smile for your photo, do you grimace, do you even take a photo?

Mid-afternoon we’d done all the sites and started our long trek back to Istanbul for our final night in Turkey. We were all totally exhausted and there was not really a peep from anyone on the trip back.

In Istanbul our night’s entertainment consisted of some belly-dancing but we ended up there too late and didn’t really see much. Actually, Nic got pulled up to do some dancing so we saw that and then there was this random guy doing the belly-dancing. A cross-dresser! It was strange!

And finally we finished the night with some shisha. Good stuff but went straight to my head with my lack of sleep.

Day 6 – Istanbul

Our final few hours in Turkey was spent hitting a couple of tourist spots such as the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. Both were beautiful but it was absolutely heaving and with so many people about made it a little difficult to enjoy the serenity of the beauty.

At Topkapi Palace which is huge with many rooms and courtyards to explore some of the highlights include the Harem (extra entry fee), the Imperial Treasury (look out for the Topkapı Dagger and is three large kick @rse emeralds and the fifth largest diamond in the world) and the gardens themselves. We had about 45 minutes to get around to everything – impossible when there are hundreds of rooms!

After the Palace Rache and I made a quick drop in to the Grand Bazaar. Now all over Turkey I was expecting the same attitude and pushiness that I experienced in places such as Marrakech and even Dubai to some extent but to my surprise, in the majority, we didn’t really get that. Sure I got a lot of attention from the men, including our tour guide, heh heh, and even many men on the street declaring they were in love with me but their flirtations were harmless and friendly even. I didn’t sense any pushiness to make a sale or any sleaziness or anything and I quite liked it. In fact as a whole the Turkish people, men and women, were very friendly and helpful. The Grand Bazaar, on the other hand, was completely different. They were extremely aggressive in there and once you encouraged them even a little bit they were on you like white on rice!

Last Words

I felt a little sad to be leaving Turkey. Sad because I didn’t feel I got to see much of it (probably a day all up doing touristy things) but only a little sad because I know I’ll definitely be back. The country is beautiful, from what I could tell from the hours spent driving on our tour bus!, and the people equally beautiful. I look forward to coming back and experiencing more. Maybe try some more of that Turkish ice cream:

So Vegas.

An AMAZING city.

There really is no way to fully describe Vegas. It has to be experienced.

Vegas is unlike any other place and I reckon, if you had time and money enough, you could easily spend a few weeks here without getting bored. Very easily. But then again I can be fully entertained by people-watching and with exploring what feels like hundreds of hotels (okay, maybe not that many.)

I think what I like about Vegas is that anything goes and if you wanna do it – you can find a way to do it! You can go and do your outdoor adventure stuff like sky diving, go kart racing, ATV driving etc., do you your by the pool side relaxation, go eat at some of the most fabulous restaurants, go watch a show every night for a month (both PG and of the adult only variety) and I’m sure you’d still have to skip some, explore every detail of every hotel, go shopping, go clubbing and partying, go do a day spa, shoot guns!, and of course … gamble your spending money away! I’m sure there are so many more things too and even simply walking up and down the Strip at night and during the day was absolutely fascinating!

We only had limited time in Vegas – 5 nights and 5 days in fact and though that sounds like quite a chunk of time it was only enough to put a dent into the inner workings of Vegas!

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When?	Beginning April
Why Go?	See Introduction!
Weather	Hot and sunny during the day, Cool at night and Cool inside the Casinos!
Tips	With a place like Vegas you definitely want to work out a rough idea of what you want to do especially if you want to see any particular show which may require booking way in advance of your arrival. For months I was trying to get a booking to O but luckily we managed to get some pretty decent seats when we arrived in Vegas. This too will help you plan your nights if you plan to hit loads of the clubs. There is a lot on offer and it can be overwhelming in choice with both food and shows so you may also want to have an idea of where you’d want to eat. There are plenty of buffets but you want to save your money for the good stuff.
	A few of us have decided to go around to each of the hotel and collect the Player’s Card as a kind of momento of our visit. A lot of the hotels are, unfortunately or fortunately, linked to the one player card so we didn’t end up collecting as many as we thought. One of the benefits of signing up to the cards is that quite often you get some sort of benefit (other than collecting points) including such bonuses as $10 free play etc. Beginner’s luck meant Mei was able to convert one of these free plays to $50 to take home! Lucky girl. So, any time we went into a hotel often our first port of call was the Player’s Desk.

The Experience

We stayed at Caesar’s Palace which had a great position in the middle of the Strip. Last time I came to Vegas I stayed at the Luxor and though it was a lovely hotel and not too badly located it was situated way at the bottom/start of the Strip so if we wanted to visit anything like Treasure Island or the Venetian which is nearer the top then it was a major hike!

Our room was nice and spacious with our bathroom containing separate bath tub and showers, two sinks and even a little monitor by one of the sinks in the bathroom so you could watch TV!

Our first night in Vegas was the night we drove back from the Grand Canyon and by the time we got settled in etc. it was fairly late (though very early probably from Vegas standards!) We decided to take it easy and take a stroll down the Strip, just in time to catch the Bellagio Fountain show, to find some dinner. Disappointingly, considering all the amazing food you could get in Vegas, we ended up at a food court where I had an average pizza.

Still, I could sense this might be the pattern of the holiday as I don’t think I was really with foodies who would appreciate some of the nicer food. I don’t want to sound like a snob but it would have been nice to try some of the offerings from the likes of Wolfgang Puck, Joel Robuchon, Emeril Lagasse, Thomas Keller (owner of French Laundry), Bradley Ogden, Charlie Palmer and Michael Mina whilst we were in Vegas. On the plus side eating was definitely cheaper than it otherwise would have been which meant more money to be lost on gambling! Ha!

After dinner and a stroll down the strip Jonny, Laney and I decided to hit the tables at Caesar’s. In all honesty I was looking for $5 table because although I’d come to Vegas ready to gamble knowing that we’d most likely hit at least 10 casinos the lower the stakes the longer I was going to be able to stay in the game. Optimists might instead have said that gamble more win more but I’m not stupid – the house ALWAYS wins! Heh heh. Anyway, we didn’t find any so I passed on gambling happy instead to watch Laney demonstrate her newly learned skills in craps. We clearly had a few more things to learn but the atmosphere was great!

The funniest thing about the tables was whether we were simply watching or playing without exception we were all constantly asked for ID. At first I was fairly flattered to think that I might even look under 21 but I found out later that they ask if you if they think you’re under 30! Additionally, being of Asian descent, I guess we always look younger than our age so they probably make it a practice to ask us anyway! LOL.

Day 1

Officially what I’m calling Day 1 in Vegas was started with a bang, literally, with a visit to the Gun Store. I’m afraid it’s a bit of a tourist trap which will suck your money very quickly from you but its fun for kicks. Laney and I opted for The Gun Store package which was $99.95 for 50 rounds on a H/K MP5 SMG, 10 rounds of a semi-automatic rifle and 5 rounds with a 12 guage Shotgun. It sounds like a lot of shots but especially with the SMG they go very quickly! The boys decided to choose their guns individually and Mei opted for the Ladies’ package (which was cheaper than ours with less guns and with a handgun.)

We were also convinced that we should opt for a private bay, at a premium of course. Between the five of us we also had a couple of instructors but I’m presuming that they would have them anyway with each gun to ensure that guns are not used incorrectly. Surprisingly the rounds went by really quickly – even five of us and about 12 guns to go through! The good thing about the range is that they are pretty casual with allowing cameras etc. inside the bays though we did feel a bit rushed.

After the Gun Store it was off to find the Las Vegas sign. No trip to Las Vegas is complete without a visit and photo with the sign. Clearly other tourists had the same idea with a giant queue forming in front of it. Most people were pretty good about only taking a few shots … except Laney and Mei! Ha ha! They must have got about 10 shots each. Cracks me up.

The we started what we thought would be a journey through all the hotel casinos all the way up the strip. The only problem is we kind of got settled at the Luxor for a few hours and didn’t end up leaving there until early evening! We had a really good blackjack table and though we ended up down (remember – the house always wins) we were very entertained by our dealers and got very cheap drinks (basically $1 a pop as all casinos give them free to players and the only money you hand over is a tip!) We had two dealers who swapped every 20 minutes or so – the first guy, Ralph, was this 70 year old Filipino lounge singer who was incredibly slow at dealing but serenaded us girls with love songs in between hands, the second guy, Bob, was this super quick dealer and, because he could see that we kind of knew what we were doing, just automatically played our hands for us! It was really good when we were on a winning streak but not so good when we were on a losing streak. Poor Mei was the only one of us not playing so hope she wasn’t too bored at the table with us.

After Luxor at about 7pm we were all still pretty full from our late breakfast/early lunch so we decided to head back up the strip towards Treasure Island to catch the Sirens of TI. Las Vegas is great like that with loads of free entertainment around the place. This show is a new one that replaced the previous Pirate Show. As can probably been deducted from the title it’s a lot saucier and sexy that’s for sure with loads of scantily clad women and men!

And back our hotel we discovered the Pussy Cat Dolls Lounge … shame they’ve stopped the show for the moment!

Day 2

One of the key techniques to saving time and/or money in Las Vegas to have one massive meal that’ll do you for the day. Day 2’s massive meal was at Hash House A Go Go – we only knew about it because Mei, Jonny and Kwok saw an advert for it on TV and were impressed by the portion sizes. Heh heh. Hash House A Go Go’s tag line is: Twisted Farm Food and twisted it is with offerings such as Sage Fried Chicken stacked with bacon waffle, hot maple caramel reduction and crowned with fried leeks (my brunch), Roasted Chicken Pot Pie upside down crust stuffed with house roasted chicken, red potatoes, veggies, and pan gravy served with mashed potatoes (Mei’s brunch) – this may sound ordinary but the upside down pie crust was like a giant sombrero and even this bacon drink thing – gross concept but I’m sure someone must order it if its on the menu!

We literally staggered out of there with none of us finishing our meals. Most people, upon observing the dining room, were lucky to get through even 30% of their meal! By the way don’t mistake giant portions and this casual atmosphere for non-quality food because it is surprisingly very well presented and good quality nosh.

Having such full bellies we decided it would be a good idea to walk off the calories we’d just consumed so we decided to explore the top half of the strip which included visits to the Venetian, Wynn, Encore, Riviera (I was hoping that rubbing the bottoms of the bronzed ladies up there would give us some luck)

and Circus Circus. It never ceases to amaze me the characters that you encounter on the strip. There was this one girl, from Israel, who was manning the temporary tattoo stand. Unfortunately no one could be convinced to get one (and I didn’t bother since I’ve got a realy one) but that didn’t stop the girl trying to convince me to get a tattoo on my boobie! She was really really funny and actually quite sweet. It was hilarious how she was fixated on my boobies though!

Wynn and Encore are two of the new hotels on the strip. Very beautiful and grand these are amazingly opulent. There was a quiet sense of peace when we visited these hotels seeing as there was a lot less people around as they are fairly away from the main hubbub of the Strip. Lots of photo-taking opportunities however with the Mountain Waterfall and the man made lake at Wynn, the butterflies adorning the roof near the theatre and the green oasis inside.

Circus Circus was in direct contrast to the richness offered by Wynn and Encore. Decidedly “cheaper” than the other hotels its one of the more family friendly hotels and includes regular live performances of circus performers.

By the time we were done with Circus Circus it was reaching about just before dinner time so we decided it would be a good time to head up to the Fremont Street Experience. However we made a brief pitstop (a couple of hours!) at the Premium Outlets which were also in that direction and the Golden Nugget (hotel). The Golden Nugget is known for being the home to the world’s largest gold nugget on display, the Hand of Faith, hence the name I guess. It was pretty gigantic and weighs the same as two-three one year old babies! (27.21 kilograms). The other reason I wanted to visit the Golden Nugget was for the shark aquarium which is surrounded by a swimming pool also has a slide through the shark tank! It would have been cool to hang out there but at $20 for non-hotel guests it wasn’t really economical for us.

Finally we made it to Fremont Street and the light show, the Fremont Street Experience where it turned out we spent the entire night! The light shows started at 8pm and were broadcast every hour – each light show was unique from the last and in between enjoying the free live concerts and waiting for each broadcast we ended up at Fremont Street until past midnight.

But the real show was waiting for us when we got back to our hotel. We were heading for bed when I noticed at the craps table that one side had been reserved. This peaked my curiosity – and it turned out it had been reserved for this high roller. Now watching how high rollers play is entertaining enough but this guy, a Spanish dude, also had with him an escort. And she was absolutely stunning and gorgeous and he was, shall we say, not attractive at all. Unless you go for the older, fatter, out of control drunk this guy clearly was becoming. Laney, Jonny and I couldn’t help but hang around for a few more hours just to watch this man and the girl and it was only once my back started to ache with pain that I could even think about leaving. It was very interesting to watch. Everytime he won a roll he would try to kiss her but she’d subtly duck so that his kisses landed on her check or forehead. I think she was a little embarrassed about the whole thing but as it was her job she couldn’t act offended. Laney also met this guy at the craps table – who also happened to be a high roller – and he wouldn’t let her leave with us because he claimed she was his good luck charm. Laney told me that later on the Spanish dude, who’d already been dropping about $2-3k a roll, started to lose big time (when we were there he must have called on two $10k markers at least), and apparently he went totally crazy and asked for all the staff at the table to be changed and even the pit boss. It was all rather fascinating.

Day 3

Day 3 was both a quiet day and a long hard day. We started with a visit to MGM Grand for brunch and to watch one of the free pre-screenings of a TV show at CBS Television City. It was cool as we got to watch and rate the show but unfortunately we were so exhausted we all practically nearly fell asleep! Still, it was something different for everyone. At MGM Grand they were also showcasing the new Sony 3D television. I can’t really see it being a big until they find a way to remove the need for 3D glasses … and actually watching the TV I was getting a bit dizzy from it. But not sure if that was because we were so close!

It didn’t seem like much time had passed before we three girls, Laney, Mei and I, were heading back to the hotel to get ready for out night out – first stop, Chippendales, second stop Voodoo Lounge!

Chippendales are hosted at the Rio which also has a free show which rocks every hour until midnight on most days. This show, Masquerade Show in the Sky, is very cool and involves dancers gyrating in various carriages in the sky. They also through out mardi gras type beads which apparently was hot commodity with the way people were desperately snatching them out of the sky and out of people’s hands! The best thing about the show was that there was this one guy that apparently liked me as he made an effort to spot me and wave at me! Even when his carriage rotated he ran around or when the show was finished he jumped off and was waving at me.

Shame I couldn’t go find him and instead had to head into Chippendales …

To be honest the Chippendales were more for Mei’s benefit, Laney and I thought it would be a nice birthday present for her – heh heh, but it was fun to see them. They were surprisingly modest – I was expecting a lot more skin! They did however come out into the crowd and hug people which was pretty cool. The best part was that after the show you all go into the Flirt Lounge and they all come out one by one so you can take photos with them. Shame they were dressed though …

Conveniently with the Chippendale tickets we also had free access to the club at the top of the Rio – the Voodoo Lounge. Now on the night we went I must say there wasn’t must talent out on the dance floor but we didn’t really care because the location of the club was just unrivaled. On the rooftop we had amazing views back to the strip and we were luck enough to get a position right near the railings so we could lap it up. At one stage these ‘ho’s (they weren’t really but I choose to call them that as they were nasty) actually physically muscled in on our territory. Laney said one girl even farted on her. Classy! Anyway, we outlasted them eventually. Biatches!

In our position we were also right next to the DJ who actually told us we were inspiring her and gave us free drinks! I think we were the only ones dancing. I must say she mixed a mean set of decks but not a lot of people were actually grooving! Ah well. We appreciated the free drinks! The Voodoo Lounge is supposed to also have flaming bar tenders – so I thought we would see the bar tenders mix drink with flair and fire. Sadly we didn’t really see this – guess they were too busy!

It was a great night out finished with a ride in a limo back to our hotel! Nice! This was thanks to Kenny, the high roller that chatted Laney up at the tables the night before. Though most of us made sounds of protest about getting into the limo, except Kwok who for some strange reason was into the limo like a shot!, we were I think internally grateful for the ride home!

Day 4

Friday was kind of a chilled day as it was everyone’s last day, except Laney and I as though we were flying out the next day it wasn’t until nearly midnight that we were flying out wheras Mei and Kwok were flying out at the crack of dawn and Jonny just before lunch.

Strangely this was the first time we’d really explored our own hotel! We hadn’t even gone to see Caeasar’s Forum, basically a load of shops and their legendary sky roof and cool aquarium, nor our own pools. The pools were gorgeous and I wish we’d had more time to just laze around the pool. Ah well, next time!

Taking advantage of the Victoria’s Secret we girls also went and got fitted for some bras. Man – they were full on in there. First we had some lady measure us in the store, who then passed us to a lady in the dressing room who also then measured us, gave us a box of bras in our size and then when we’d selected a few to buy, passed us on to another lady who directed us to where the stock was before passing us on to another lady who actually got the bra we wanted in our size. It was hilarious. The funniest thing was that the ladies kept trying to give me push-up bras and I was thinking – I’m already pretty big and I don’t need to be p*rn star big! *giggle*

To get in our day’s gambling we then headed up to the Mirage. They must use the older near retiring people for the $5 tables because once again we got this guy who was practically 70 dealing for us! I didn’t mind though as he was very lovely and clearly knew everyone around him. Apparently he’d been working there since the hotel opened in 1989. Cool huh? I was happy anyway as he was a good luck charm for me – first time I walked away from a table in Las Vegas this trip being a little bit up! The surprise of the day was when this guy who had a mega crush on Mei (we met him at Voodoo Lounge) managed to track us down and find us at our table! Though he brought his crew with him he ended up hanging with us the rest of the day. Bless.

This was one of the days we actually did dinner – and it just had to be at the Cheesecake Factory. Everyone was mega full from the dinner part of dinner but Mei and I just had to go for dessert and get a cheesecake – why else would we have come to the Factory! I should have just had the cheesecake for dinner because it was MASSIVE. I got a red velvet one and though it was delicious it was the bigger than my rubik’s cube. Actually even the whipped cream that came with it was as big as my cube. Fair to say I didn’t finish it. 🙁

And finally, on our last night in Vegas, what I’ve been waiting for since I couldn’t see the show when I last visited Vegas, was O. We spent ages trying to get tickets for the show and it was so totally worth it. Even if we could barely keep our eyes open during the show. Damn – we must have been exhausted because the show is simply stunning and fabulous. Its hard to even describe but most definitely the star of the show just had to be the stage. How they turned water into wood into water at the drop of a hat I’ll never guess. A marvelous piece of engineering – this was one technical show. Just imagine one wrong button pressed or a lever pulled at the wrong moment could mean a performer was paralysed or killed. Oh sure the acrobats etc. were also brilliant and they were amazing divers not even barely making a splash, they all as a cast had incredible timing and I think overall were a very strong cast. No one act really stood out though I was impressed with the girl who balanced on her head on a swinging trapeze. How she didn’t fall off I don’t know. The ship act in the air was cool also.

O is simply unxmissable. Sell a kidney to see this show.

Day 5

Saturday was a day of goodbyes. Goodbye first of all before dawn to Kwok and Mei. Goodbye to Jonny after lunch in the food court. Goodbye to Kenny, though that was more accidental then anything. And finally goodbye to Vegas.

I was very sad to be leaving Vegas but Laney and I didn’t waste the remaining time we had left in Vegas. After visiting Victoria’s Secret again to top up our underwear stock we went over to Aria, another new hotel on the Strip, for a lovely massage and use of the facilities. It was divine and though the massage wasn’t particularly hard or taxing I was so totally relaxed after it I’m surprised I could still walk around. Mmmm ….

With a few hours to kill we spent some time at the Pleasure Pit in Planet Hollywood. Actually, I think we were mainly checking out the action at the tables (the dealers are supposed to be sexy scantily clad ladies …) or hanging around pokie machines waiting for the free drinks as the stakes for the tables were higher than we wanted. Lushes!

And the moment or two moments that will stay with me for quite some time now. Because we’d left luggage behind at Caesar’s Palace somehow we were able to skip to the front of the queue with our luggage to get to the airport. This was a great thing as the queue was mega long. A New Zealand couple came up to us and wanted to share a cab and it wasn’t going to harm us so I agreed. Turns out they’d only come for the night to see Cher! Wow. Admittedly they’d planned a US tour around the visit but still. But the moment which will remain with me was the taxi rider saying that he was very hard for me. What the! I didn’t even think he could see me as I was at the back of the cab and away from his mirror. Once he’d broken the ice with that comment he kept turning around to look at me. Then he kept asking if my boobies were real. To say that the entire cab was cracked up by this was an understatement. He made a lot of very inappropriate comments. Probably some girls would be offended but it just made me laugh so much. Laney, who was at the front, tried to pimp me to get the cab ride free but clearly my boobies wasn’t good enough for this as we still had to pay the fare! LOL.

Last Words

Basically, you either hate Vegas or love it. I’m definitely well into the Love It category and I can’t wait to come back and do more!

Leaving on a very early flight this AM from Toronto Laney and I arrived in Vegas just around lunch time. A quick dash for (some expensive) Burger King and we were set for the long drive to the Grand Canyon! Yippee! We picked up the rental car and went to pick up Jonny, Mei and Kwok who had flown in direct from London last night. Thankfully we had our GPS system to get us to where we needed to be!

Photos photos photos.

The drive was relatively smooth until we hit Hoover Dam where the traffic slowed to a standstill! Which is to be expected as one of the major tourists destinations coming out of Las Vegas. Parking wasn’t easy to find but eventually we managed to sneak into a spot. By this time it was 2pm and the weather was absolutely glorious. Obligatory photos were taken and then we resumed our journey after about half an hour which is all you really need!

And yes Rubik’s made the journey with us too!

The rest of the journey was pretty smooth after we left Hoover Dam but unfortunately we just missed the sunset. Amusingly the receptionist at our hotel told us that there wasn’t much nightlife in the Grand Canyon and that not many things shut by 9pm so here we were at the Grand Canyon at about 6.30 with not much to do! Ha ha! We ended up having dinner in the hotel’s bar (where we made a friend), heading across the road to another bar and then coming back to our hotel to play some pool. It was a bit bizarre.

This should have made getting up the next morning before dawn easy but it wasn’t! We still hit the sack pretty late and ended up getting only a few hours of sleep before getting up at before 5 to get ready to go catch sunrise on the Grand Canyon. Which we only just missed! Still got some beautiful photos though!

There are free shuttle buses which operate from sunrise to sunset on the South Rim (as its inaccessible by car.) The round trip is about 75 minutes and has about 9 stopping points. They came pretty regularly so that was quite good and we got around to a good few of them. They recommend Hopi Point as being the best one but some of the others weren’t too bad either.

The Grand Canyon was as magnificent as I remember it. Of course viewing it from the ground like we were was nothing like the experience from the air but still it was just breathtaking and I could have sat out there looking out all day long!

Toronto was our first stopover on our Easter break to the US. Laney’s cousin, Carmen, had offered to put us up for the four nights were in town. This had its good points (staying with a local, cheap – free! accommodation) but also pitfalls (when staying with family you are kind of limited in the kinds of things you can do so we didn’t really get to party.) But having said that I had a lovely time in Toronto and most importantly I finally managed to tick big old Niagara Falls of my To Do List!

Photos photos photos.

The Experience

Day 1

Day 1 was kind of a mish-mash of events. Laney’s aunt came and picked us up from the airport and at the last minute we organised to meet her cousin, Heman, for lunch. He was coming off a late shift at his family restaurant so was still in bed when we arrived! To pass the time we went into one of the posher supermarket stores in the area. I mean, its posh enough to be selling $525.09 balsamic vinegar “Mussini Il Grande Vecchio 100 year old balsamic”! Food definitely looked good in there though!

Finally lunch was at Linda’s, Thai, where I had some very interesting food. First up was Meng Kum which served with peanuts, dry shrimp, shredded coconut, chilli shallot, aromatic leaf and special sauce may not sound all that enticing individually but when combined into one mouthful – wow it was definitely an explosion of flavours in your mouth. Apparently this is what Thai princesses eat so it was very appropriate for us to be indulging ….

My main was a baked young coconut with fried rice which I must admit I chose simply because it was going to be served inside a young coconut and I was not disappointed. Filled with rice stir fried with eggs, shrimp paste, coconut water, shrimp, scallop, and topped with sauce made from coconut milk and tamarind it was extremely filling but delicious.

Then a bit of sight seeing at the CN Tower with Heman. He used to work at the CN Tower ages ago and he was able to get us in for free. Bonus! (Since we probably spent all up of about 30 minutes up there!) The weather had turned a bit and had gotten gray so the views weren’t as fantastic as they could have been. You’re supposed to be able to see Niagara from what is supposed to be the third tallest tower in the world but it wasn’t clear enough for that. Security was tight for the tower and you had to walk through one of those weird puffing machines which determine whether you’ve got any sort of explosives/gun power etc. residue on you.

One of the best bits of the tower, if you can get on to it, is the see through floor on one of the levels. Its cool to look all the way down to the ground as if you were floating in air. Too bad the scuffs in the plastic/glass kind of ruined the effect but I’m sure it would still give someone a bit nervous about heights something to think about!

Next up was something that the locals do apparently and using some local lingo it was “getting juiced” in the Peace Garden outside City Hall – a great location because you can b.y.o. drink, sit out in the fresh open air and most importantly have access to a free and clean bog (inside City Hall.) Now technically it is against the law to be drinking out in public … at one stage Heman wandered off to visit the gentlemen’s leaving Laney and I with our tin of ciders. And just like a bee to honey this security guard came right over to us to check if we were drinking. We tried to fob him off with a – is this really alcohol? but it didn’t work 🙁 However he was quite reasonable and gave us two choices – tip it out or get in big trouble! Ha!

And as you do when you’ve been drinking you start to crave a little something bad for you and that something today was Poutine – a little serve of heart attack! It combines three of my favourite things: hot chips, gravy and cheese (curd).

Okay so this wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t eaten it only 30 minutes before dinner! … which was at a restaurant called Amuse-Bouche! Heman, who is a budding chef, was very amused (pardon the pun) by the restaurant’s name. Ironically Heman then got for his meal a posh version of Poutine! Ha ha!

We decided to treat Heman and Carmen for a meal since Heman was taking us around and Carmen was putting us up at her flat. Actually Carmen was very surprised that we’d found this restaurant! I guess if you’re not into eating a places like this you would search it out.

The restaurant was really lovely and the food was delicious and included amuse bouche of Roasted Garlic Croquette and a pre-main course of Blood Orange Sorbet to cleanse the palatte. oh and of course the bread divine!. Its such a shame that there weren’t many other customers! As I passed the kitchen the chef/owner actually pulled me over to say thanks for coming. How nice!

Day 2

Day 2 in Toronto was all about the shopping. To get us properly energised Laney’s aunt made us crepes and cupcakes for breakfast. How sweet!

Eaton Centre is apparently the top tourist attraction in Toronto in terms of numbers with one million visitors per week! Well, thankfully those one million visitors weren’t all at Eaton Centre when we were there though the food court was pretty crazy. Admittedly we went at probably what was the peak moment but it took us about 25 mins to find a spare table and then the lines for food stretched out to about 30 people at each place!

It was a long day of shopping and how did we finish? By meeting up with Laney’s family for an all you can eat Japanese. It was hilarious and great. It was all you could eat sushi, hot food and dessert. There were about 10 of us so you can imagine that’s a lot of food. But the ordering was a little crazy as we didn’t know what everyone was ordering. I think we did pretty well to finish most things though it was a challenge.

The funniest thing was when they were ordering dessert. Sure they were moderate sized little desserts but to order over 40 of them for 10 people after feasting on all this sushi and hot Japanese food. Madness! It was clear this was not the first time this lot had been here. 😉

The night ended with me getting my butt whooped in Western Chess by Laney’s 8 year old cousin. I’m going to blame the fact that we had to play with random pieces and I kept forgetting what they were for! Hey – I got him back in Connect 4 …

Day 3

Day 3 was Niagara and the Niagara Casino! Wee hee! The drive from Toronto to Niagara is probably just about an hour and a half to two hours (depending on traffic) so Carmen though it would be a great time to teach us how to solve a rubik’s cube whilst Andrew (her boyfriend) drove. I tell you that damn rubik’s cube is addictive. I’m going to master it one way or another!

By the time we got to Niagara the first order of business was finding somewhere for lunch. This proved to be a bit of a problem with people pointing and looking in all different directions. However we ended up at a place right next to the Falls which was quite nice (but clearly touristy …)

Getting my first glimpse of the Falls I was mega excited. This big amazing feat of nature was so beautiful that I must have a taken a million photos which I shall now proceed to bore you with. Ha ha!

Before lunch:

At lunch:

After lunch:

Oh yes. Many photos taken! Then it was off to explore the rest of Niagara like the Hershey factor! Mmmm!

Before finishing the evening learning craps. What a fun game – though you can lose your money very quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing! The dealers were really funny when they were teaching us but really good about it.

My final view of the Falls:

Day 4

Our last day in Toronto was spent doing a bit of what I would expect locals do on a lazy Sunday (even though it was Saturday!). It started with breakfast at the Breakfast Grill. I was craving eggs benedict but I wasn’t expect to get 3 eggs! Hmm… 3 Eggs Benedict poached on Peacemeal Bacon, Topped with Hollandaise Sauce over English Muffins AND served with Home Fries. Delicious and so filling! Andrew and Carmen had waffles and pancakes and their meals were so large they came served on two plates!

The we walked off breakfast with a stroll through the Distillery district in downtown Toronto. Its quite a funky area with loads of cafes, stores and galleries and though it could be a bit touristy I still felt like there were heaps of local about enjoying their coffee/brunch.

But the best thing about it was the dogs. I was in dog heaven with French bulldogs, Labs, Bulldogs, Rottweilers, Sharpeis and Huskies all sighted. All my favourite types of dog. The only ones missing were pitbulls and pugs!

We then made a quick visit to St Lawrence Market to pick up some cheese for a cheese and wine evening. Hmmm cheese!

And check this guy who was trying to eat something like 6 big macs in 15 minutes or something like that. Didn’t sound like much of a challenge to me!

Then I don’t know quite happened to the rest of the day between buying the cheese at the market which was early in the afternoon and the end of the day as time just seemed to disappear. We did do a big walk up a shopping street but that was pretty much it because suddenly it was evening and we were enjoying Ice Wine and cheese. The Ice Wine is gorgeous. More like a dessert wine I could have sat there all night drinking it … but for my allergy.

Last Words

Toronto reminded me a lot of Brisbane. A small city feel in a big city? It kind of strikes me as the kind of place which is great to live in as a resident with a few touristy things to do on the side for visitors. I liked by vibe of the place and I’m sure its got a decent nightlife for those interested in that sort of thing. Something to try out next time … along with maybe visiting a few of the galleries or museums! LOL!

In visits past shopping and family have featured but normally mixed into that is also a fair amount of food and sightseeing however shopping and family dominated my New York visit this time around. My cousin from San Fran, Penny, was home for Christmas – normally I miss her – so it was a good chance to spend time with her. Additionally I made sure to make an effort to make my way to Connecticut to visit one of my other aunt’s and her families.

More photos here.

The Shopping

Thanks to the tightening of security controls for flights in and out of the US my flight arriving in Newark was delayed nearly two hours. The security measures, which involved searching us at the gate, not allowing us access to any of our items in the last hour of our flight, treating us like prisoners but requiring us to have our hands on our laps in clear sight of the flight attendants at all times for that last hour and, unbelievably, having our luggage scanned once the luggage came off the plane prior to releasing it to us!, did not reassure me that I was any safer than normal. Some security consultant is certainly earning a sh!tload to create these suggestions – all they probably do is inconvenience the regular flyers – because, you know, as a terrorist you’d wait until the last hour of the flight to start any monkey business right? Ridiculous.

So, by the time I arrived in Flushing and got ready for bed it was just about 2 am on Sunday morning. Six hours later I was waking up to get ready for Day 1 in New York – shopping at Woodbury Common! Ha!

I absolutely love Woodbury Common and its unusual for a trip here NOT to result in me walking away with a ton of bags. And this visit was no different from any previous shopping visits although I did try to consolidate my shopping into as few bags as possible both for environmental and ease of carrying around the shopping reasons. Often its only when you get home that you realise what seems like so much shopping is just actually a heck of a lot of giant shopping bags!

The day was rather a glorious day and when combined with the fact there were post Christmas sales to say that Woodbury Common was busy was a total understatement. Its just as well we arrived reasonably early as we were able to get a fairly decent car park – many others had to resort to going into the overflow car park across the other side of the highway! Unfortunately queues were the order of the day from the Coach shop, to the Ugg Boot shop and to even leaving the complex. It took us just under two hours to crawl our way out of there at the end of the day.

On Day 2, whilst Kathleen headed off to work, Penny and I hit Barneys. I’ve never really gone into Barneys before and today’s experience proved why: super expensive price tags on everything! The dressing rooms are even personalised to the shop assistant (at least on the top floor) – I guess to give the guests a sense of pesonalised service but also to ensure the shop assistant gets his/her commission. Even the gear on the sales racks were pretty out of my budget! We started on the top floor where prices were scary but, opposite to my expectations, the lower we went the higher the price tags got. The good thing about Barneys is that it was not at all crowded except for the shoe area which, because of the sales, was absolute chaos. Whilst Penny hunted around for the perfect shoe I sat back and watched all the goings on. I can tell you that there are certainly some very spoilt people in the world. One lady, her husband and daughter had taken up a whole section and had what looked like about 60 pairs of shoes scattered around her. The daughter, who was about 10, was running around grabbing shoes and imperiously ordering the shop assistant around. What a pain in the butt she is going to be when she grows up! Needless to say they didn’t bother to help at all in putting the shoes back to where they came from or even pretend to be civilised about their browsing. Guaranteed they didn’t even buy one pair of shoes.

SoHo was Day 3. It was an absolutely freezing cold day so we, Penny, her Mum and I, made sure to stay inside the stores as much as possible. In fact we didn’t spend that much time in Manhattan that day purely because it was so cold. Just a few hours were spent whipping around Old Navy, where Penny and I rocked out on the Band Hero they had on display (probably there to entertain the men/kids who come in accompanying the women!) and UniQlo, where most of the time was spent in a gigantic queue. On the ground floor they had every attendant who could operate a till on the tills (at least fifteen!) and it still wasn’t enough to get the line moving. The store is massive but the sales meant it was super crowded.

The other day of shopping was my second last day in New York when we ended up going to Woodbury Common again (!) because Kathleen wanted to return some clothes. This time the queues seemed more reasonable, probably because it was absolutely fricken cold, only being three lines snakes long rather than five … so we waited in the queue to get into Coach. Not unexpectedly we were in there for a while though I had to escape because the women in there were driving me crazy! Because this was the second time in a week we were at Woodbury Common we didn’t spend much time faffing about. In fact the day was so absolutely freezing that we didn’t stay long at all! Just hit the shops we wanted to hit and got the heck out of there!

The Family

So, other than spending quite a bit of time with my Flushing family I also headed up to Connecticut to spend time with my Hartford family over New Year’s Eve. Hartford should have been an easy just over 2.5 hour bus ride but instead we ended up stuck at the Port Authority Terminal for a couple of hours as they cleared a “suspicious” van in Times Square. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we’d known the reason for the delay. The bus ride itself was great – our bus was quite comfortable, we had the funniest bus driver and, apparently, we even had free wi-fi. Nice huh?

I arrived in Hartford just in time for dinner. My Aunt, Uncle, Jesse and Ruthie took me to one of their Italian favourites. Food was pretty delicious and, naturally, with huge serves. They had the must divine garlic bread sticks which were bottomless, as were our sodas and ice teas! You gotta love America! After dinner, a quick visit home so I could meet Marley, their gorgeous chocolate lab (he’s so gorgeous I could easily forgive him chewing my boots up!), my Aunt and I drove to their cottage on the lake to spend a girlie night catching up.

It was great – a cosy cottage, a nice fire, a great DVD (Under the Tuscan Sun) and great conversation. She’d also made some delicious sticky rice for dessert. Mmmm …. I’m surprise I didn’t wake up halfway through the night to finish it off!

In the morning (New Year’s Eve) we woke to a beautiful snow covered landscape. The lake was nicely frozen over and was clearly solid enough for people to go cross country skiing and walking on. Out in the distance we could also see a hole in the lake where people had started to set up a fishing spot. After breakfasting in the enclosed patio my Uncle came to pick us up to bring us to Old Sturbridge Village which is basically how you’d imagine rural New England to be back in the early 1800s. It was a well cute village – farm animals, shoe makers, potters, candle-makers etc. The snow, which fell by the bucketloads whilst we were there, made it even more magical.

After Old Sturbridge Village, Ruthie wanted to take me shopping and to see a movie. We ended up going to see It’s Complicated with Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. I loved the movie – probably because I’m well into Alec
Baldwin at the moment thanks to his stint on 30 Rock.

By this time we’d worked up quite an appetite and were well ready for our New Year’s Eve meal which was at one of their favourite Mexican restaurants. A bunch of my Aunt and Uncle’s friends came out as well and it was very lively meal. The evening happened to also be a full moon or new moon and therefore the restaurant was all themed around a blue moon including blue tortilla chips! It was a bit weird! The meal was yummy though. My New Year’s eve was actually fairly sedate – we got home just in time to watch the ball drop in Times Square on TV. I was trying to find Audrey on the broadcast, one of my Flushing family, as she’d gone in to Times Square with her boyfriend. She actually got there for 6.30am to try and get a good position. What a trooper!

The Food

Other than some fantastic cooking by my Uncle at home (I love love love his ginger chicken – he makes the greatest sauce ever) I had two notable culinary experiences: Korean at Bann and L’Ecole at The French Culinary Institute.

Bann was notable for the way they present their tea to you – in cute little box with a backlit screen – and their desserts – which included a crème brulee three ways (tonight it was vanilla, ginger and strawberry.)

The food, which included a delicious Korean pancake and gorgeous Kal Bi Jim (beef short rib simmered in a sake ginger soy glaze served off the bone), was pretty damn tasty too. Though our dishes did look particularly brown!

L’Ecole at The French Culinary Institute, where I decided to treat Penny and Kathleen to brunch, was something just a little different.. All food is prepared by the student chefs but what made our brunch visit different was that, unlike all the other meals, the brunch service is not actually part of The French Culinary Institute’s curriculum but is carried out by volunteer students – so you know they wouldn’t be there unless they wanted to be.

The venue is clearly a popular place so it was lucky they could fit us in. The room is nice, bright and airy and, thankfully, sound levels are just right to give you that kind of a buzz without having you feel like you need to shout. The food was absolutely divine from the freshly baked breads to the Butter Poached Shrimp, Andouille Sausage and Grits (yummo – more please!) to the perfectly cooked Steak and Eggs, French Fries, Béarnaise to my Crème Brulee. We had a lovely time but if there was one thing they were let down on it was the slowness in the service – though our waiters were perfectly friendly, as they inevitably are in the US, they were a little slow. It was still a lovely way to finish off my visit to New York.

Our holiday to Lapland has been over a year in the planning so we were definitely looking forward to this one.

Lana and Mike are on this mega-couple-of month’s-trip over to Europe from Oz and as part of it they planned for two big mini-holidays – Egypt and Lapland. Two holidays which probably couldn’t have been more in contrast with each other and nowhere was it more obvious than in the temperatures: 30+ degrees in Egypt and neg 30+ in Lapland!

We had a pretty big itinerary set for this trip and as we were doing it all on our own (that is not as part of an organised tour) and without the use of a car all the bits and pieces (buses, taxis, trains, planes etc.) really had to come together to work out.

Thankfully it all came off without hitch … except that we didn’t see as much of the Northern Lights as we would have wanted despite having practically perfect conditions for it and despite wishing desperately to see them!

Photos photos photos.

The Experience

Day 1 – Helsinki

We started our Lapland journey with a day spent in Helsinki. Interestingly despite the fact it was day 1 of our trip we hadn’t actually really planned anything for our visit!

We only had the day to explore the city as we had to catch our overnight train to Rovaniemi later in the evening so in all honesty we couldn’t really do too much anyway. As we ended up spending a couple of hours in the hotel in the afternoon I’m thinking we didn’t find that much to do (plus the others were a little on the cold side. Heh heh!)

I suspect maybe that Helsinki is better as a spring or summer destination!

We were out walking for quite a while, however, and along the way we stopped in at the Christmas markets, one of the shopping malls, a tourist shop (where entertainingly I found tinned reindeer and bear meat and of course just had to play around with the hats/beanies), a long line for people waiting for the president (it wrapped around several blocks!), taking photos around Helsini’s symbol the Lutheran Cathedral, and finally stopped in for some Japanese at apparently Helsinki’s oldest Japanese restaurant.

Overnight Train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi

We wanted to make sure that as part of our trip to Lapland that we stopped in to Santa’s Village which is a short taxi ride from Rovaniemi. It seemed only fitting since we were going that way anyway and looking at the map Rovaniemi is just over halfway to Saariselka (which was going to be our ultimate destination.) In an effort to save money and log some greener miles on hotel fees/plane journey we decided to take the 12+ hour overnight train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi. Although I was able to get to a website in English to book our tickets there was still that little nervousness that we hadn’t booked the right type of ticket. We decided to spend a little extra to get berths with their own private bathroom which was something like an extra €5-€10 and in the end tickets were about €95 each which I thought was pretty fair.

The overnight train was super cool. It was a very tight squeeze, especially for Lana and Mike with their giant luggage, but I thought the train was well designed considering the space that was available. I was most impressed with how the toilet converted into a shower. Though a bit annoying that the shower was kind of like a hostel shower where the water runs only for about 10 seconds at a time, the pressure and temp was decent and it was surprisingly not that difficult to wash my hair. The beds themselves have their own night light, electrical socket (!), clock and alarm. The berth was also very clean!

The train nearly thought of everything – there is even a berth for travelers with dogs!

Day 2 – Santa Claus’ Village and overnight at Lainio Snow Village

Santa Claus’ Village

We arrived at Rovaniemi train station exactly as scheduled at 7.53am. Santa’s Village technically didn’t open until 9am and the public transport bus (No. 8) wasn’t running until 10am so we had a little time to kill. There was a bunch of taxis that were at the station just after we arrived but we thought that we’d rather stay at the train station for a bit to stay warm and then grab a taxi a little closer to 9. It wasn’t the greatest of moves because after that we saw no taxis! Finally Lana was able to call for a taxi for us.

It was kind of weird to be visiting the Village because the sun hadn’t risen at that time and in fact it didn’t even start to “rise” until about 9.30. The Village sits on the Arctic Circle which is a line which marks the point on Earth at which the sun doesn’t rise at the winter solstice or set at the summer solstice.

Let me say at the start that Santa Claus’ Village is really a commercial venture e.g. we paid €25 for an A4 photo with Santa and €6 to visit the huskie park (my favourite part of the Village.) Most of its business probably comes from those doing a day trip from England where no doubt for a ridiculous amount of money you can pay for a flight to and from the area to visit the Village in a day. The beauty of the Village is that there is no entrance fee so you only pay for the activities that you want to indulge in like riding the reindeer, going for a huskie slide, snowmobiling or visiting the ice sculptures (if there are any.) There is also Santa’s Post Office where you can send a postcard to home or friends, nearby there is a theme park (which is also an extra charge) and there are a ton of souvenir shops.

We were done after a couple of hours and that’s only because we stretched out the visit to the Huskies (they are very loud and bit smelly but the puppies were sooooo cute – they kept licking and chewing on my fingers!) and had some lunch! Oh and mucked around a bit in the Post Office – it was very very busy in there!

Lainio Snow Village

Planning on getting to Lainio Snow Village from Rovaniemi without a car was difficult. I ended up working out that the best option for us was going to be catching a bus to Kittilä, which seemed to be the biggest city near the Snow Village, and then taxiing it from there. This was all determined after numerous emails to various tourist sites and information points. Once again I had to trust that the bus I was booking online for us and from a translated website would be there when we needed and that we’d be at the right station. The fact that there was only one bus was also a bit worrying – I didn’t really fancy us paying for a two hour taxi ride. Thankfully it all worked out. And even better our bus driver, who didn’t even speak English, understood we needed a taxi when we got to Kittilä, called one for us with his own phone and stayed with us until it arrived. How nice and helpful!

Lainio Snow Village was another 30-40 minute taxi ride (or about €60-€80) from Kittilä. The taxi driver could have been taking us anywhere but I liked the driver we had as he even switched off the meter once it got to a round number.

So why were we willing to go to so much trouble to go the Snow Village? Well, its because we, in particular I, wanted to sleep in an ice hotel/ice igloo. The original icehotel was located unfortunately a little off our path so we decided we’d try out Lainio, which is a fairly young development (this is the 9th year.)

It was still early on in the season when we got to Lainio so we were nearly practically the only guests staying there (there were a few others visiting on a day trip and a few others staying over night) so it was kind of cool (pardon the pun) to practically have the place to ourselves. The only drawback was that they were still developing the complex so some rooms were incomplete. Still, we managed to entertain ourselves sufficiently.

At Lainio you can stay in a suite or a simple room. The difference is that the suites have extra designs and the simple rooms are a room with beds only. It’s a hefty fee for either room but you can also visit the village by paying a €7 entrance fee. All rooms are available for public access until 10pm so you don’t miss out if you aren’t staying there or if you only go for the cheap room as you can go into every single room.

The structure of the village changes every year apparently and this year’s theme centred around a kind of four seasons theme with a water, forest, fire and ice (my descriptions) halls and areas. The whole snow village consists basically of series of igloos all interconnected together. They have an ice bar/ice restaurant as well as a wedding chapel. Outside they have giant snow carvings of animals, think they were mostly huskies but there was a bear and santa outside as well, and ice slides.

As you can imagine we spent hours running around taking photos!

After we’d exhausted ourselves taking photos we decided to have dinner in the ice bar/ice restaurant. For the most part as long as you kept your warm clothes on it wasn’t too bad as the ice tables and benches are covered by reindeer skin (though they were a bit smelly!) however food got cold very quickly and after a while, despite trying to warm up with alcohol (I had a delicious mint chocolate cocktail) we all started to feel the cold – even me!

To warm up we headed to the warm room. For those planning to visit the village and have an overnight stay and you don’t think you can handle the cold in your igloo (it gets to about neg 5 in the room) there is a warm room which is heated by a lovely fireplace (and this is also where the toilet is) where you can escape to. However, and there is a big however, you will probably freeze before you get there! The room is about a 3-5 minute walk (how quick depends on just how cold you are! Ha ha!) from your room but before you go to bed down for the night they suggest that you take only your thermals and one layer on top so if you want to dash back you won’t be wearing much. You’re supposed to leave the coat behind – I think its because the room is pure ice so if you bring anything other than what you’ve got on it is likely to get wet and icy. You could probably try and put your coat at the bottom of your sleeping bag if you’re really keen to keep it with you. The bed itself is not ice but a mattress and a mattress protector but the bed frame is made of ice so if you move around too much you’re likely to find yourself dozing on ice! You’re given a thermal inner lining and a sleeping bag as well. Once I had my beanie and gloves on I was perfectly snug all night and in fact at one point slept out of the thermal because I was sweating! Pat, who has less, ahem, insulation and not as good circulation as me, said he felt a little cold by morning.

Daylight at the village brought new fun in the form of slides and tubing runs!

Day 3- – Travel to Saariselka

We were starting to get the hang of travelling by bus and taxi now so we were pretty cool about the next leg of our journey – to Saariselka – our ultimate destination and where we stayed for about a week. The taxi ride back to Kittilä was more expensive (€20 more than the day before!) which was a bit of a shock but gladly our bus was at the train station waiting for us even though we were rather early. In another display of friendliness the bus driver got us to come sit on the bus so we could stay warm. She was very friendly. The trip from Kittilä to Saariselka (changing buses halfway) was three hours which we spent mostly sleeping though I did try to stay awake to keep an eye out for the reindeer scattered around. Shame we were going too fast and the light conditions were a bit low to get a proper snap.

We chose Saariselka over all other leisure destinations in Lapland as we thought it gave us the balance of remoteness but still having enough activities and diversions to occupy us for a week. Remoteness was to increase the chances of seeing the Northern Lights – as we all know the more built up an area is, the more lights that will be on and the less chance you’ll see anything in the sky.

Arriving at Saariselka we were very impressed with the flat that we had hired – in addition to the sauna it had a giant bathroom, comfortable lounge, nice kitchen, two toilets and three bedrooms with room to sleep eight people. We even had a cake mixer! Heh heh! We loved it. The best thing was that bits and pieces like toilet paper, dishwashing detergent, handwash, toilet bags etc. were supplied. It also had a fireplace but none of us could work out how to use it. When Pat and I tried we nearly smoked the house out. Oops! Still, the central heating worked a treat.

Day 4 – Reindeer Ride and Snowmobile Northern Lights Tour

There are heaps of activities that you can do in Saariselka, or in the snow I guess, but because at this time of year there isn’t a lot of daylight and because its so cold you don’t tend to stay outside too long you don’t really end up cramming a lot into the day. Having said that I still felt that our days were quite busy though we did spend an inordinate amount of the night time hours looking and waiting for the northern lights to appear!

After a big sleep in on our first day to recharge for the week we spent the first day walking around a bit and booking some excursions. We’d tried to look up some tour companies before arriving and there a few companies around though Top Safari, with whom we ended up booking most of our excursions, seems to be the big one. I don’t know if they were the cheapest company but certainly we had no complaints about them and they were very good and being flexible and helping us with our tours and even giving advice on the northern lights (though as it turns out the northern lights were a bit shy this week!)

Our first tour was a Reindeer Ride. For €100 you get to in a reindeer sleigh for about an hour and the whole tour lasts about two hours which includes the transfer to the reindeer farm, coffee and cake and a bit of a lesson on reindeers and what happens on the farm. They market it as an opportunity for you to “drive” the reindeer and to get an “international reindeer driving licence” but in actuality all you do is sit on the sleigh – the reindeers just drive themselves!

The tour was nice and all and very peaceful but an hour on the back of a reindeer sleigh was just a little bit too long! 15 minutes could have done us especially as we didn’t need to do a thing on the back of the sleigh and the reindeers were quite slow. I liked the talk by the lady who lives at the farm though and at the end when we were waiting to drive back to town she even got us to practise our herding skills (on a wooden reindeer though …) Its interesting to realise just how great the spatial awareness that reindeers have in taking account of the space around their antlers – she says if the reindeer doesn’t like you they’ll deliberately brush a tree to get snow to dump on you!

The forecast for the evening was cold and clear which are some pretty decent conditions for seeing the northern lights. We booked on to a northern lights tour on snowmobiles to get away from the lights of the town to increase the chances of seeing them. The tour is €115 p.p. for two people sharing a snowmobile or €155 for singles. The trip is 2-2.5 hours though our tour guide was really good and took us out for a bit longer to try and find the lights. Sadly we didn’t see them but Pat and I did have fun trying to get our snowmobile to go as fast as we could – think our top speed was something like 60 kms?) It was pretty thrilling to do this in the dead of the night! Being on the snowmobile was bloody freezing even with our ski gear on plus the snowsuits but the handles were heated which was pretty funny! The hot berry juice at our midway point was very much appreciated.

Day 5 – Cross-Country Skiing

Day 5 was one of our physical days with a few hours of cross-country skiing. For €35 you get a 1.5 hour lesson and then you get to keep the skiis for the rest of the day. It was exhausting but so much fun! I’ve only done it once before and I’ve gone down-hill skiing a couple of times so it wasn’t totally unfamiliar for me. It was the same for Pat though he was noticeably more skilled than me. It was the first time for Lana and Mikie and they did pretty well once they got the hang of it.

Cross-country skiing in Saariselka was clearly a very popular activity for the locals if the number of people flying by us was any indication. Plus they have a dedicated series of trails which stretch on for kilometres for those fit and keen enough. At the end of the lesson we’d travelled about 600 metres and though we could have followed our instructor back to the beginning it was so beautiful out there skiing that Pat and I decided to continue on the trail.

We ended up making it to Laanila which was the next pit stop and 3.4km from the beginning. At one point I got so eager trying to go fast that I took a most exciting tumble as I trapped my ski pole under my skis! Pat said it was really funny because one minute I was up and the next I was down. He reckons he didn’t even see what happened I fell over so quickly. Heh heh.

Everyone who knows me knows I’m freakily warm at times and whilst we were skiing my hands got really hot so I had one glove off for most of the skiing. Hilarious all the Finnish people kept stopping to ask me if I was alright with my one glove and asking where my other glove was! They could hardly believe that I was exposing my hand like that! (It was neg 16 ….)

By the time we turned around to get back home I was seriously getting fatigued but there was nothing to be helped but to concentrate on getting back through the 3.4kms. The downhill moments helped but for the most part it was a hard slogged. I definitely felt like I’d earned my dinner that night.

Day 6 – Tobagganing

On Day 6 Lana and Mike headed off to the glass igloo village which is about 13 km from Saariselka. Pat and I decided to explore a bit of Saariselka a bit more and we ended up at the foot of a 1.2km toboggan run located at the Downhill Ski Centre. Dotted all over Saariselka, mostly resting against hotel or resort walls, you’ll find sleds. Free for anyone to use we found that they came well in handy whether for carting our luggage around, for carting our supermarket shopping around, carting each other around and even more importantly for use down the toboggan run.

For our first trip up to the top of the slope we took the ski lift. We were the only ones on it and in fact there wasn’t even anyone managing it at the bottom. We realised the dilemma of catching a ski lift without skies – when you get off at the top you have to almost try leaping then running straight away otherwise the ski lift will catch you in the back of the legs and there’s the risk you won’t be able to get off. Luckily there was a person at the top of the lift who slowed it down a bit for us! In fact you can get to the top of the slop by catching the ski bus (€4 to use all day) or even walking up the slope.

We’d chosen a particularly cold day it seemed to do the toboggan run so before we set off down the run we warmed up with some snacks and hot chocolate at the Huippu restaurant. Brrr! So cold! I just about froze my fingers off trying to take photos whilst on the ski lift. The only blessing is that we were the only ones on the toboggan run!

You’d think by the photos that we were up there early in the evening but it was only 2pm!

I was extremely nervous before starting the run. All we really had were these plastic sleds – no safety equipment of any kind and the snow looked very fast! Pat got me to go in front of him so that I wouldn’t freak out if I got left behind but he soon went flying past me when I careened off to the side and into a snow bank. It was sooo much fun but scary at the same time as I had no idea how to slow down, let alone stop, or even turn! My advice is to cover every part of your face and wear ski goggles as a lot of snow gets kicked up!

At about the midway point there is a natural slow down point as the slope levels out and from the fencing it was obvious lots of people stopped to leave their signature. So Pat and I did the same and then it was on to the bottom half of the slope which was much scarier as it seemed much faster but also there seemed to be more potholes (like moguls).

Day 7 – Bark of the Huskies and overnight at the Glass Igloo

Before Pat and I headed off to the glass igloos we fit in another tour – this time a 2.5 hour drive with huskies (€130). Even better than our reindeer ride you actually get to drive the huskies yourself and it was much faster! Driving the huskies is a lot more hard work than you imagine – I found stepping in the brakes difficult (at one point the dogs were still dragging me!) and also sometimes you have to get off the sled to help the dogs by running behind it instead of on it! It was great fun though I do admit that I let Pat do most of the driving!

Huskies are, mostly, incredibly loud animals. They are constantly barking and shouting at each other. They are also always constantly jumping around and trying to go go go though some of the more experienced dogs know to relax when they can. Like the huskies we rode behind in Are they are also very skilled at going to the toilet on the run! Halfway through the journey we stopped for a break for some reindeer salami and tea in a room with a giant fire. I went outside during the break to play with the huskies naturally. They’re beautiful creatures. A little girl followed me out and I could see that she really wanted to play with the huskies but she was only as big as the dogs and though she wasn’t afraid she was a bit nervous about approaching the loud jumping playful dogs. Encouraged by the fact I hadn’t been eaten by the dogs, ha ha, she came forward to pat the dogs. It was so cute – she was so gentle about it!

You aren’t really instructed much on what to do on the sled in terms of driving it though you are told that its important to not let the sled get too fast and to stand on the brake when you’re at a stop. Unfortunately there were two accidents during our trip though no one was hurt luckily. The driver of the sled in front of us must have lost concentration and fell off the brake and consequently off the back of the sled so the huskies took off! Our instructor chased with a snowmobile and it was quite impressive how he jumped off the back of it and on to the sled. The second accident happened behind us! We were going very fast across a practically straight bit of the path though it did have some twists. The sled behind us must have hit a bump on a slight curve which caused the sled to tip over! Talk about excitement!

After the huskies Pat and I caught the ski bus to Igloo Village Kakslautanen for an overnight stay. During winter the village has a number of snow igloos for sleeping along with the usual attractions of ice gallery, bar, wedding chapel etc. but most interestingly they have these glass igloos which are great fun to sleep in. Though the benefit of the glass igloo is that you can see the sky above whilst laying in the comfort of your bed they also do a lot to make it as comfortable for you by ensuring the igloo is well heated and that your bed is super comfy – you can adjust both the head rest and your legs to whatever position you’re happy in. Ingeniously they’ve also somehow tucked away a little toilet and sink at the back of the igloo near the entrance.

Just note, however, there is no tv or anything to entertain. Yes the sky is beautiful to behold above you but watching that constantly for a few hours might just get a little tedious! Pat and I entertained ourselves with movies on his laptop. It was nice and relaxing. Oh – also be warned that everyone can see into the igloo!

We didn’t see the Northern Lights but it was still an interesting sleep. It almost felt like we were sleeping out in the open only it wasn’t neg 25 in our room … LOL!

Day 8 – Our last day

On the way home from our stay in the Igloo Village Pat and I decided to have another stab at the toboggan run. This time I was better prepared bringing along my goggles and my ski gloves. There were a lot more people doing the run this time around though most of them were hanging around the bottom half. This proved to be a bit problematic as it meant that the potholes which were just small bumps a couple of days before were now pretty big and when I came through them, as I was also going that much quicker, it was inevitable that I’d get into some trouble. The first sign of trouble was when I hit the first hole and my goggles flew off and I hit my head on the ground behind me. I somehow kept picking up more speed and after bumping through a couple more holes I hit the mother of holes and flew right off my sled! Yeah – I gots me some bruises from that!

We were pleased that our names were still there at the halfway point! Heh heh.

The Eats!

I was so super impressed with the eats during our trip that I think they all deserve a special mention. Lainio
Snow Village this is where I tried moose, or so the dude said, for the first time. Its also where I had the most amazing soup I’ve ever tasted – a Reindeer flavoured mushroom soup – I don’t know if it was because I was feeling chilled at the time and the soup going down was a perfect remedy but it was just stunning. Strong mushroom flavour but not in a bad way. Drooling just thinking about it!

On our first night in Saariselka we ventured to the most famous restaurant in town: Pirkon Pirtti (though I don’t know what the claim to fame is – we did end up coming here twice during our week in Saariselka so I’d say it was pretty popular with us!) The patron was hilarious – she had the biggest laugh I’ve ever heard and she was so cheeky! She brought a giant candle for Mikie as it was his birthday. So funny.

I liked the fact that the restaurant served both Pizza and Lappish specialties. On my first visit I couldn’t go past the mushroom soup and, to try another new meat, sauteed reindeer, mashed potatoes, pickled cucumber and lingonberries -apparently Lapland’s version of shepherd’s pie. Servings were absolutely huge and I couldn’t get through my meal. Poor Pat had to finish it off. The second time we went, which was our last night in Saariselka, Pat and I shared a pizza to start (Aslak: double-smoked reindeer, peach, blue cheese!) and this time around went for a lighter dish in a seafood option: a simple herbed crusted arctic salmon served with a sh!tload of potato. Yummy though I left most of the potato behind – probably because I kept helping myself to Pat’s dinner which was a fish plank (which is what Lana had on our first night.) It wasn’t the fish so much I was in love with on his plank but the morel sauce. I can’t say enough how gorgeous all the mushroom dishes are in Lapland weather they be soup or sauce!

Continuing on with my theme of trying random meats at Restaurant Petronella, one of the even finer dining restaurants in Saariselka, I decided to try the sautéed bear served with mash and carrot. I laughed about the fact our napkins were practically the size of the table but I didn’t laugh about the fact I couldn’t finish my bear – even despite the hard day I’d had cross-country skiing nearly 7kms! The bear was very similar in consistency to the sautéed reindeer and in fact the plating even looked the same! Reindeer on the left and bear on the right:

The food at Petronella was pretty fine – Pat’s dessert was even served with a square of gold foil!

I broke my seeming meat obsession when Pat and I went to the restauraunt at Hotelli Riekonlinna. This was another restaurant priding itself on fine dining – we were given an amuse bouche, which was a surprise, of some sort of malt bread with a yoghurty/tartare source. Pat and I had started to lesson by now in terms of how filling the Lappish food is so we decided to share our starters and go for something light for our dinner (crab and fish respectively.) The starter of deep fried cod tongue with lime aioli was certainly something different (though a little only the oily side for us) but I liked my wild arctic char fried in lemon butter and supported ably by a crayfish sauce. The potato terrine used to bulk up the dish I could have passed on. Strangely the potato is the one ingredient which is not dealt with very well in Lapland. Pat had a gratinated leg of king crab, hollandaise sauce but it was the mushroom risotto that this crab was served on that I really liked. So in love with Lapland mushrooms! Of the Lappish cheese baked in cinnamon cream that composed my dessert – I hated the cheese (reminded me of haloumi of which I’m not a great fan) but loved the cream.

Saariselka wasn’t about fine dining every night. In an effort to save some money we decided to take advantage of the kitchen and do some home cooking. This was mainly for our lunch but for a couple of dinners we also beefed up a couple of instant noodles and pastas to make quite satisfactory dinners. I think we ended up in the supermarket every night whether it was buying groceries or snacks (like ice creams and popcorn!)

Leaving Lapland

We had a few problems actually getting back to London at the end of our holiday. It was like Finland didn’t want us to leave! We had heard about the snow in London and were worried that this would delay our arrival into Heathrow with the possibility of the runway being shut down however we should have worried about taking off. Our flight between Ivalo and Helsinki went off without a hitch – in fact it was possible that we arrived in Helsinki earlier than expected. Plenty of snow was falling in Helsinki however we were confident that the airport could handle it after all it must surely be used to such conditions.

Apparently not.

Our flight was initially delayed for about half and hour. We weren’t provided an explanation for this delay but we know we certainly didn’t board until about half an hour after we were supposed to take off. I suspect it had something to do with trying to get other passengers on to the flight who could not get to their own airport such as Manchester which had apparently been shut down.

Unfortunately this delay caused the snow and ice to accumulate on the plane. We therefore had to wait for a de-icing and undergo this process. This led to us missing our departure slot. This in turn led to us sitting on the tarmac for an additional time which meant that the de-icing had worn off! We underwent a second de-icing but unfortunately this failed after 5 minutes. A third attempt was made. By now it was 2.5 hours after the original scheduled departure time.

At least we did eventually make it home but many many hours after we should have got there.

Last Words

Throughout our stay in Saariselka the snow was constantly falling. I loved seeing all the snow everywhere and the temptation to just dive into it was just too tempting. It was fab!

We all for had such a great time in Lapland with all the fun things we did and the great company. It just goes to show that planning does really pay off and I’m quite happy that we were able to do it pretty much independently. Though I’ll be paying off this holiday for most of the year, ha ha, I’m very glad we did it and that we took advantage of all the activities that we could. Its just a shame that the Northern Lights didn’t make an appearance!

I guess I’ll have to try and find them again … maybe in Northern America next time?

I joined some new friends, Laney, Mei, Jonny, Jo, Kwok, and Ruth, on a weekend trip to Basel this weekend though it does turn out that I actually met Ruth about a year and a half ago at another friend’s (Amy’s) Girlie Day which is also where I met Laney for the first time too – though I’d forgotten about it!

So strange how I’ve ended up meeting up with them both again.

Why Basel? Well, it was promising to be a fairly cheap weekend away with cheap flights on ryan air and a stay in a hostel so since I hadn’t planned anything for the weekend and I hadn’t done a quick and dirty weekend away in a while I thought why not.

Other than booking flights and accommodation we had absolutely not plans or itinerary at all – which is especially unusual for me as I generally cram as much as I can into a trip and this requires quite a lot of planning. It was quite relaxing to have this kind of freedom. Thanks to the good company I had a fantastic time.

Photos photos photos.

The Experience

We arrived into Basel at a reasonable time quite early in the evening on a Friday. As Basel lies quite close the German and French border the airport itself is split into the German and French half. The physical representation of this border (a big giant steel fence) as you walk out of the airport is a very entertaining vision. Shame I forgot to take a photo!

We stayed at the YMCA only five minutes walk from the central railway station in Basel. I was very pleasantly surprised with the place which was very modern, clean and with plenty of storage. Because the YMCA wasn’t full they were also very good at letting us have the room to ourselves even though for our second night we only took up five of the seven beds (with Kwok and Ruth heading off Saturday morning to continue their journey through Switzerland.)

Friday Night

Since the night was young we started off by exploring the town. We discovered that it was first weekend of the Basel Autumn Fair which turned out to be this massive celebration (a right first granted on the 11 July 1471 to the Mayor to hold an Autumn Fair in perpetuity.) The Fair was spread out over several squares – each featuring some pretty cool rides and the usual carni games and food. It was fantastic. And the rides! So much fun! So quickly did my euro disappear! So quickly did I nearly get sick! Ha ha! But best of all – we got to eat sausages for dinner AND breakfast (yes, we came back the next morning for some sausages … hey – its a great hangover cure!)

After visiting several squares we headed back to the YMCA to get ready for our night out. There are quite a few clubs in Basel though finding the particular one we’d chosen, NT-Areal, ended up being quite an experience. We rocked up to where we thought the club was and found it looked kind of half residential half warehouse. Not hearing any pounding bass or seeing any people at all (it was about midnight at this stage) we were really confused! During our exploration we came across this long road which lead to what looked like a very run down, very desserted and very dark area. We started down this road but then suddenly heard what sounded like fighting and possible gun shots. Scary! We’d come this far however so Jonny and I decided to check it out. The rest of them stayed behind! Anyway, turns out we’d come the back way and though we have no idea what the gun shots we thought we heard were no one appeared to be dead or injured so we didn’t think we needed to be worried. The club turned out to be three different buildings (you had to pay for entry into each building.) The buildings were very simple – a long rectangular room with a bar down one side and you tube videos projected on the wall at the back.

It was certainly a full on night. For some reason our group got a lot of attention from the locals. I guess they don’t get too many obvious tourists going into these clubs. Perhaps the fact my dress was a little revealing was part of the draw. Ha ha.

Saturday

After very little sleep after going out on Friday night we all surprisingly woke up relatively early to explore the attractions of Basel. Our first stop was a quick visit to the fair to get some “breakfast” before we headed out to the Museum Jean Tinguely.

Every city seems to have a modern art museum, a history museum etc. etc. but what Basel has is this museum dedicated to one of Switzlerland’s greatest sculpture artists Jean Tinguely. What makes this museum so interesting is that lots of the pieces are interactive with lots of moving parts and sounds. It was fantastic. Loved the giant chess set outside too!

After a quick break for afternoon tea we then proceeded to take an over seven (!) kilometer/three hour walk to find the spot where the three borders of France, Germany and Switzerland met. We walked EVERYWHERE trying to find this point and when we found it – boy were we excited!

We certainly deserve the dinner we ate after that.

Having exhausted ourselves with the walking by the time we got back to the hostel we decided that we’d rather have a night than hitting the clubs again. It still ended up being quite a late night but it was good to get in some bonding time.

Sunday

Sunday was a relaxing day enjoying the beautiful blue skies and taking a relaxing stroll through the town.

Basel isn’t that big on attractions. In fact the most entertaining attraction for us this weekend was the fair which is where we ended up again on Sunday morning. Jonny, Laney and I decided to hop on a few more rides including the very scary big swing type ride. It was so tall and there was so much pressure that a blood vessel actually burst in Laney’s eye! It thrilling that’s for sure. The most wicked ride at the fair, however, was the transformer. You spin in circles, you go upside down whilst you’re spinning in circles, you go up and down. It was wicked!

The funniest sight we saw, other than the numerous sex shops, was the church service being held on the dodgems! Plus they seemed to be having some sort of circus theme with juggling. It was very strange but I was loving the originality of the concept!

Last Words

I had a fantastic time on the trip to Basel. I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in my life as I did on the trip (laughs even extended to our plane trip when Laney pointed out that the pictures on the back of the chair in front of us. Yes they look like ordinary safety pictures but doesn’t the first look like the man has boobs, the second makes the girl look like a transvestite and we love how in the third the picture says don’t bring glasses OR dentures!)

For months now Pauline and I have been desperate to visit Tunisia. We started looking into planning a late summer holiday months and months ago. Tunisia was one of the very first countries we thought might still have a chance of being decently warm at this time of year. The fact that there were adverts everywhere we looked
didn’t hurt either – I even saw the adverts when I was in Italy and Spain!

Tunisia is found at the northern most tip of Africa bordered by Algeria and Libya and the Mediterranean Sea. The fact that Tunisia has both coastal waters and access to the Sahara made it an almost ideal destination for our holiday.

Our planning was not without hiccups.

When we first started researching a trip to Tunisia flights were relatively reasonably priced but because we left it a month or two and because perhaps the advertising campaign was starting to have some effect flights suddenly skyrocketed and our holiday to Tunisia was suddenly in grave danger. Luckily we managed to find a packaged holiday (7 nights bed and breakfast in a supposed 5 star hotel plus flights) for about £375 and our holiday was back on.

Except it was very nearly off again when I managed to enter our names in backwards! Oops.

At any rate the past week in Tunisia has been pure bliss and the following is our tale.

Photos photos photos.

The Experience

The adventure that was Tunisia started with our visas. As an Australian tourist arriving in Tunisia we had read beforehand that you only needed to buy your visa when you arrived at the airport. Because we were so excited about arriving in Tunisia we totally missed the stall where you buy your visas and headed straight to passport control. I went first – thanks Pauline! Ha ha! However, the passport guy was pretty friendly about it but told us we had to go back and buy our visa first. Well, wouldn’t you know it, they only accepted Tunisia dollars! But there was nowhere we could see to swap our pounds for TD. We were giving a “pass” to give to the guards standing near passport control so they would let us out into the airport to swap some money. Other than the startling find that the dude manning the foreign exchange booth was happily puffing away on his cigarette in his booth and inside the airport (I keep forgetting coming from England where smoking is virtually banned everywhere) it was straightforward enough to swap our money and go back through passport control to get our visas. We just couldn’t believe how relaxed they were about letting people in and out at passport control. You know what would never happen at any London airport.

Once our visas had been pasted into our passports another aspect of the whole process further emphasized just how relaxed Tunisia border control is: our visas expired as follows – mine on the 8 October, Pauline’s on the 9 October but we were actually leaving the country on the 10 October! And finally on Pauline’s visa they’d used her middle name instead of her first!

This was when we first heard the soon to be often to be repeated phrase “No Problems” apparently used to calm excitable tourists. Though worried that we would have problems on leaving the country with expired visas we could really do nothing about it as they practically pushed us out of the airport once they’d given us our visas. All in good humour of course.

So, how did we occupy ourselves for our six days in Tunisia (eight days if you include the day we flew in and the day we flew out)? We wanted to balance it between relaxing (spending time on the beach) and exploring the country that is Tunisia. In the end we split it about down the middle with three days beach-side and three days on tour. The three days on tour was, whilst amazing to experience, absolutely exhausting so the beach-side time was very much appreciated.

The Beach

With a large coastal line and a few islands to choose from we were almost overwhelmed with choice about where to stay. In the end we found a package at the Sindbad Hotel in Hammamet. It is rated as a 5 star hotel (though ratings like this are dubious when there is no international standard for rating a hotel and most often it refers to the facilities available rather than quality ) and #7 out of 118 hotels in Hammamet we were expecting something pretty nice. I’ve read both good and bad reviews of this hotel and I think in fairness it was actually a pretty decent hotel especially for the price we paid and considering it is located in a country which cannot as yet, development-wise at least, be compared with the likes of nearby cities such as Dubai.

We expected a fairly simple room but ended up with a gorgeous room with separate lounge, two giant flat screen tvs (including one in our bedroom), a bathroom which had both a stand up shower and a bath tub/shower, and an outdoor patio area.

Most hotels or resorts in Hammamet or the nearby Yasmine-Hammamet and presumably across many other tourist regions in Tunisia try to be self-contained offering, as our hotel did, a choice of several restaurants, bars, pools, a spa treatment centre, and a private beach.

Apparently due to the timing of our visit our fellow tourists mainly consisted of big tour groups of the, shall we say, older generation German or French citizens. To presume that most of them were already retired wouldn’t be too a far flung assumption! According to one of our taxi drivers if we’d arrived just a few weeks earlier the tourists would have consisted of people at the opposite end of the spectrum, namely Ibiza-clubbing age party goers and the place would have been heaving. In fact he commented that it isn’t the best time to visit as its almost too busy! I think in the end it was good timing for us because the beaches were not unreasonably busy. The main difficulty with not having many people around is that aside from eating at your own hotel (most people take advantage of half board options) is picking the good restaurants to go to as restaurants were practically desserted with seemingly low turnover. Our hotel actually had a couple of restaurants to eat at including the lovely beach side bar where in fact you could order off the menus from the other restaurants so we ate at our hotel a couple of nights and ventured out for a couple of other nights. The most successful non-hotel venue was Chez Achour. Its not number 1 on the tripadvisor listing for no reason.

Like any beach resort its important to grab your spot on the sun beds as early as possible in the morning – a lesson we didn’t really learn until our last day! However, it wasn’t made easy at our beach to be self-sufficient as quite often there were no towels available without asking and sun beds often had to be dragged to your chosen spot for you. There were a few guys working the beach but they were hardly in a rush to help though they were friendly enough. Perhaps a big tip at the beginning of our stay rather than a little bit everyday might have helped.

We had no complaints about the beach area. The beach itself was beautiful and gorgeous fine white sand and water so clear you could see all the way to the bottom for as deep as we went (we didn’t go that deep but it was deep enough for us!) Up the coast you could see clear to the Hammamet Medina and to the pirate boats blaring their party music out on the horizon. Everyday on the beach we also enjoyed partaking in the light pizzas that they serve as part of the lunch menu. It felt awfully decadent! I love the fact we didn’t even want to leave the beach to eat!

I’ve mentioned that we had a few dinners at beach bar. This has clearly recently been remodeled as it had a very new feel to it. It faces out onto a lovely pool with a clear wall on the side facing the beach. It was fabulous to take a tip. Not very popular either so I often had it to myself! Even in the evening the bar itself wasn’t exactly popular – I think something to do with the type of holiday-makers present during our stay. We weren’t complaining though as it was nice to have the space to relax in the evening. I can imagine it would be pretty popular in the height of summer.

The three days on the beach was absolute bliss. Working on my tan and only waking from snoozing to eat my pizza lunch!

The Exploring

As I mentioned earlier our three days of touring was exhausting. For three days in a row we woke up at what felt like the crack of dawn: 4.45am (!), 3.45am (!) and 5.45am (!) and it wasn’t like we were going to bed any earlier than normal either!

Our first tour was a 2-day tour to the Sahara Dessert and the second tour was a day trip to the capital of Tunisia Tunis and the architectural ruins of Carthage.

Sahara Dessert Tour

Researching from London for tours in Tunisia was surprisingly difficult. Even once we got to their hotels we weren’t sure how to book the tours – sure the hotel offers its own selection but its better and cheaper to go with the local tour guides. We ended up booking with a tour group we found online anyway (luckily our Tunisian hotel had free internet in the lobby) with Visit Tunisia but I get the feeling they all the tour operators end up merging in one way or another.

Our first stop on Day 1 of our tour was El Djem Ampitheatre. This is the third largest roman ampitheatre in the world after the Rome Colosseum and Capua ampitheatre though I suspect it’s the one that is the most intact. We hit the ampitheatre at just about 8am (thanks to the early start) but even at that time busloads of tourists were disembarking from their buses. Though during our visit there (about a 40 min stop) it didn’t get anywhere as busy and full as did the Rome Colosseum.

After a brief stop at a palm tree oasis in Gabes we continued on to visit a Berber community in Matmata and their troglodyte homes. This area is famous for where part of the first Stars Wars film was shot. The homes of the Berbers are dug into the ground rather than being built up so it does look unusually spacey when you see it. Unfortunately it felt a little bit pathetic and invasive of us tourists to be traipsing through the homes of these Berbers even though clearly they welcomed the small change that everyone offered to get a photo of the “genuine” locals. I don’t honestly think we were brought to the actual location where the Stars Wars film was shot. For future reference I believe it is the Hotel Sidi Driss that you should seek.

After lunch at a local hotel (pretty simple Tunisian fair from a buffet) and from where we actually got some decent vistas we continued our drive south to Douz, which is considered the gateway to the Sahara. Just shy of sunset we mounted some camels for a nearly hour ride in the Sahara. Poor Pauline didn’t actually want to ride the camels and I think some of her tension transferred to the camel because it got a little freaked out and kept kicking out. Additionally our guide didn’t really put Pauline correctly on the camel and she ended up with some fairly huge bruises on her thigh. Still its pretty cool to be able to say we rode through the Sahara and it was very pretty especially as the sun started to set and despite the hordes of tourists we could see everywhere. To Pauline’s credit she stayed on until the end of the ride. We had to don a traditional outfit to take the ride. It was both a blessing (kept the sun off our skin) and a curse (we were so hot under it!)

After the camel ride it was on tour our Douz hotel (Mehari Douz) for dinner and an overnight stay. It was pretty simple hotel and though we couldn’t take advantage of it the hotel had two swimming pools including one which was a thermal swimming pool with naturally hot sulfurous water.

Day 2 started off early with our 3.45am wake up call. A quick breakfast and then a ride on the bus saw us delivered to Chott El Jerid Salt Lake to watch the sun rise. The salt lake is the largest in Tunisia and boy was it a sight to see as we drove up to our stopping point. Its actually dry during the warmer seasons and though you imagine seeing this lake in front of you it is more like you are surrounded by it. The lake has a surface area of 5,000 km² – so pretty huge. Though there are roads/paths to make your way through it mirages have often lead people astray. Watching the sun rise was definitely worth the very early wake-up call.

Leaving the salt lake we drove to our next transport vehicle – a 4×4. I was expecting an exciting 4×4 drive through the dessert reminiscent of the one I’ve done in Dubai and though it was exciting the drive was very short. About 5 minutes! It was a nice day in the dessert though. Ha ha! We were using the vehicles to drive to our next sight-seeing point: Chebika an oasis in the mountains and close to the Algerian border. Some of the more entertaining parts of this drive was seeing camels cross in front of us and also the road signs which warned of camels crossing!

At Chebika it is a decent 45-minute walk up and around the village. Lots of stall selling their wares so it was a strange mix of a tourist trap and genuine Tunisian article. It was actually really pretty and some bits almost looked like you were on the moon or something!

Finally we stopped in at Kairouan mainly to visit the Great Mosque of Sidi-Uqba. It was pretty though because we were not Muslim the closest we could get was to climb to the roof of a store facing opposite and take photos from across the street. Pauline and I were a bit like – why are stopping here for so long!

In all fairness after such an early start to the day most of Day 2 was about traveling all the way back to our hotel in Hammamet.

Our tour was not without incident. The worst incident was when we left this “Russian” guy (true nationality undetermined – just enough to know he didn’t speak great English) on the road after a pit stop. It was an unofficial pit stop because some of the kids on the tour needed to go to potty. What our tour guide didn’t realise was that the “Russian” got off as well and no one who saw him get off said anything until after about 20 minutes after we’d driven off and our tour guide failed to do a body count before we took off. It ended up being a 60 minute detour to turn around and find him! The other incident related to Faiz’s camera battery – he and Narimend had left it at one shop to charge before we went up to Chebika thinking we’d be back to the shop only we actually came down the other side of the mountain! By the miracle of the tour groups working together however they got it back – 50 kms away!

The funniest moment of the tour was when Pauline and I told some of the people we became friends with that we were doing the Tunis Tour, Ian and Basel were co-incidentally already on it and Faiz, Narimend, Jean-Robert and Corinne decided to join us! AND our tour guide was also going to be the same, Borhensa! as we were to find out! Borhensa, like all Tunisian men, was extremely flirtatious even though he was married and had kids. He was a harmless enough guy and funny though sometimes we felt a little creeped out by his flirtations.

Tunis Tour

The Tunis Tour was a simple day tour that took us to a few of the nearby places which included the ruins of Carthage, the National Bardo Museum (a museum in Tunis with a collection of Roman mosaics and other antiquities – great mosaics but otherwise a little boring), the Tunis Medina and, the highlight of the tour, the beautiful village of Sidi Bou Said with its pristine white buildings and brightly coloured blue doors, windows and shades.

Carthage

Sidi Bou Said

Tunis Medina

Food during our tours, by the way, were nothing to write home about. At least it wasn’t disgusting.

The Rest

When in Hammamet, apart from time at the beach and walking around Yasmine Hammamet, we also spent a bit of time in our hotel’s spa. The spa lady, who’d been chasing us since day 1, finally convinced us to buy into one of their packages. It was the Biya Wellness “Welcome-Zen” which for 170 DT got you a Hamman (Turkish Bath), a salt sea gommage, a royal wrap with blue algae, a hydromassage bathand a Cocoon massage. You could do all your treatments in one day or like us spread it out over two days.

During our Turkish bath we met some English guys (older men who were about 40+ named) who were entertained as we were by the whole spa experience. Sitting in the Turkish bath wondering what would happen next was an almost bonding experience (in fact we later had dinner with them and their friends and even came back to the hotel for drinks.) Soon enough Pauline and I were called for our salt sea gommage. This turned out to be one of the most vigorous scrubs I’ve ever had delivered by this middle-aged woman – she scrubbed so hard and nearly all over all areas of my body that I thought I’d lost my entire layer of skin. She even did my boobies and my face! Interesting. There was also a lot of bum slapping. Hmmm. I was expecting the wrap to go on next. Consider individually the wrap should have been 70 DT what she ended up putting on me (a big mud mask) was not exactly what I was thinking. I walked out to call Pauline who screamed like she was on a roller coaster when she saw me. She reckons I looked like The Creature From The Black Lagoon. It was so funny.

While Pauline had her turn at the gommage and the “wrap” I went back to the Turkish bath to wait. Before I knew it Pauline was shouting my name so I went back to the room. Apparently it was my turn to get hosed off but then after which I would be hosing Pauline off. Yep – there’s no modesty in Tunisia. After we were finally rinsed off it was kisses and high fives to the lady who scrubbed us and then a wait with mint tea it was time for our hydrobath which actually was pretty special. Imagine a jacuzzi ten-fold. It was divinely relaxing.

The next morning we had our cocoon massage. This was the first massage I’ve ever had which is on the floor and involved my masseuse (a girl) sitting on me and stretching me into random yoga positions. It was good massage if not as erotic as how it was described by one of the guys who had it before us.

Last Words

Unexpectedly a week in Tunisia was just not enough for me. I was very sad to see the end of our holiday.