How To Take a Self Portrait

Knowing how to take good self portraits is a handy skill for any traveler. We at least try to get a few good pics of ourselves together on each trip, even though sometimes we'd rather not. But we're already sad about the lack of pictures we have of ourselves from the first many years we spent together, so we make a good effort. Here's how:

The person with the longest arms takes the picture. Since most cameras are made for right handed people, when you turn the camera around you have to use your left hand. It helps to have a view of yourself with a little flipper screen or a phone camera. Hold the camera slightly above your heads so you're both looking up. Take a ton of pictures in sequence as follows: 

Take your first picture. It looks good but inevitably your wife will complain that she looks waaay too short and you will think you can get a better shot. FYI, you can't so it's ok to stop the tutorial here. 

Take another one but forget to keep your eyes open or to adjust your stance to make your wife happy about how short she is looks. 

Attempt to smoosh your faces together but get a weird and blurry picture.

Try again with no success. Miss time the picture and make your wife look ugly.

Think "maybe a smooch will make the picture really sweet!"... It doesn't. You're just creepy now.

Try again but now you look odd because you're mid sentence when you click.

Ok ONE last try! Darn it, eyes closed.

Give up. Ask another person to take your picture.

Your wife will still look short but now it's not your fault.

Australia: Sydney Part 2

On Sunday of our trip we met up with a fellow HMB alum, Lynn (who writes facedowns) and we went to dim sum. How cool is it that we can travel the world and still find HMB friends? Pretty darn cool!

Next we took another ferry out to Bondi Beach, where we planned on doing a "short" cliff walk. By short, we were under the impression it would be a 1.5km walk... easy peasy. We were pretty tired from several days of walking and being on our feet, so this was supposed to be one short little jaunt we squeezed in before calling it a day.

Overlooking our starting point, Cogee Beach

First of all, no walk involving tons of stairs and steep inclines can be considered easy peasy. Easy Peasy is a stroll around a paved flat park, or walking through the climate controlled mall. However, we're both in somewhat ok shape and it was so breathtakingly gorgeous that we didn't notice the distance we were walking at first.

Random cove

 I would have wanted to swim in each little cove we discovered, except it was windy and cold.

Another cove

The sunlight and the ocean and the clouds seemed to be playing together. I think Mark stopped for a picture every five steps.

Being near the ocean, hearing the waves, and smelling the sea filled my soul. I guess a you can never really take the California beach out of the girl.

Creepy but cool old graveyard

We decided this would not be such a bad place to be put to rest. It was creepy, but really cool.

The last of the light fading away

After about two hours, we confirmed that we were completely wrong about the distance. As the sun started setting, we put away the camera and picked up the pace. Luckily the last of the path was well lit because we (stupidly) were not carrying our headlamps.

When I got home I mapped our route, and discovered our 1.5m walk was over 6km (nearly 4 miles!) Typically that distance would have been just fine, except it was super steep in many places, had a ton of stairs, and we had prepared for easy peasy, not moderate hike! Ahwell. It helped keep the cheeseburgers and gelato in check.

The next day we had a really big day planned. We spent the morning in Featherdale Wildlife Park and the afternoon at the Blue Mountains. In retrospect, we should have split those into two separate days.

The Featherdale Wildlife Park promised me a chance to meet and pet a koala bear, and they did not under deliver! We got to pet koalas, feed and pet kangaroos, watch a penguin talk/keeper feed, hold a snake and an owl, and see all kinds of neat birds and native animals. It was not like a zoo-- these animals were all tame and more like pets than anything. I think I have about 300 pictures so you can check those out in our Picasa albums if you're so inclined. Here are the highlights:

baby koala... aww! 

I'm REALLY excited about the baby koala... can you tell?

Adult koala

Our feed cups were cake cones filled with yummy green stuff

My possee 

Will accept pets for food!

This dingo thinks it's Sundog. 

 Koala climbing with the cool bird song in the background

There were lots of different kinds of owls... most were impossible to get a good picture of but still very cool!

After the wildlife park we continued our way by train up to the blue mountains. Rail travel is awesome, when it's not amtrak.

Once at the Blue Mountains we walked out to Echo Point. I was disappointed to learn that the hike I had hoped to do was nearly a six hour hike and we didn't have enough daylight for it. Mark and I were also reaching a point of exhaustion on our trip. So we just decided to do another "easy" cliff walk that was far from easy but still really cool.

View from Echo Point

 All that haze isn't smog.. it's oil from the eucalyptus groves. No wonder I felt so sick! (I'm allergic)

But the views were so worth it.

This video was part of our hike. Again, a far cry from an easy sidewalk stroll, but not too bad. And we had lovely birdsong to keep us entertained!

Tuesday was our last day in Sydney. We stopped by the Royal Botanic Gardens, listened to some buskers, did some shopping, and rode around on ferries.

Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens 

Another adorable ferry

We just didn't get tired of riding around ferries and enjoying the harbor views!

Can you believe this is a ferry dock? 

We spent our last evening in Watson's Bay and exploring a little of the Sydney Harbor National Park.

Another cliff walk.. this one actually was short and easy!

And so, after 10 exhausting but wonderful days, we spent our last Australian sunset eating gelato in the park. It doesn't get much better than that, folks!

Australia: Sydney Part 1

No apologies... just shameless procrastination on updating with our Sydney trip! Better late than never, so here goes.

Standing in the harbor with a view of the bridge

We left Melbourne early in the day on Friday. After getting to Sydney, checking our bags at the hotel (it was too early to check in) and having some lunch, we made our way out to the famous Harbor Bridge. Apparently you can walk over the top of the bridge with ropes and such (which was a road block on the Amazing Race a few seasons ago) but we opted to skip the fees and terrifying height in favor of a leisurely stroll on the very pedestrian friendly walkway.

Walkway over the bridge (lovely views, despite the fence)

View from the bridge

Bridges are cool. 

At the harbor, shortly before our bridge walk 

After returning to the hotel to check in and get changed, we headed back to the harbor for dinner and to catch the Sydney Symphony performing in the Opera House.

Our view of the symphony inside the opera house

 Seeing a show in the opera house has to be on any musician's/artist's/visual/performing arts fan's bucket list. So basically everyone's bucket list! We knew we wanted to catch the symphony but we also didn't want to spend all of our travel money on it, so we bought the cheapest tickets. They were dead center in the very back row. It turns out this was a great thing because not only could we fully appreciate the perfect acoustics, but we were able to see the entire concert hall. It was an amazing concert, though we were both so exhausted we had trouble staying awake.

Literally the BACK row. 

After sleeping in a bit on Saturday, we headed out towards Padington to explore an open air market and a really cute neighborhood.

On the other side of the street from the market

The market was full of locals and though it had a lot of cool stuff, none of it really peaked our interest enough for us to buy anything. The neighborhood really was cool though so we took a nice walk (we love foot tourism!) and Mark enjoyed snapping some pictures. This was the first neighborhood we visited that didn't feel like a generic American city. Even so, the row houses could have easily been plucked out of San Francisco or New England.

San Francisco? Not quite... notice the side of the street the cars are parked on!

After the market, we made our way towards Manly Beach. A lot of our trip was spent just cruising around on ferries, enjoying the views, and relaxing. At Manly Beach, we took the time to walk on the beach and put our feet in the water too!

One of our many ferry rides. Always special to us since we got engaged on a ferry boat!

The ferry view at night

I love the ocean.

And that was the first half of our Sydney visit!