Sunday, January 10, 2010
Fremantle Jan 2010
Hello worldDay 1 of the Outdoor Education National Conference at Norte Dame University in Fremantle WA.
I am currently taking part in the very interactive Technolgy in the Outdoors lecture, by Dr Ian Boyle. We are now uplaoding pictures and creating our own blogs.
Lucky for me my wife introduced me to this activitiy a few years back so i am finally ahead inclass!!. Now if I can just stay on task for longer than the time it takes to type with my two index fingers good things should happen.
The attached photo is not a shot from the conference but an example picture that we had to add.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Monday 13 July
We left New York this morning, and a very early morning it was! We were on a 7am flight, which sounded very reasonable when I booked it because it gave us almost a whole day in San Francisco. However, who was to know it was nearly a 2 hour trip from Harlem to JFK, which meant leaving at 4am!! And we all know that Phil and I aren't big fans of early mornings.
Sad but true, after a 6 hour flight, we arrived in San Francisco, booked into the hotel and spent the rest of the day sleeping and enjoying the comfort of the hotel room that was missed in our lovely but rather bare apartment in New York.
So nothing to report today!
Sad but true, after a 6 hour flight, we arrived in San Francisco, booked into the hotel and spent the rest of the day sleeping and enjoying the comfort of the hotel room that was missed in our lovely but rather bare apartment in New York.
So nothing to report today!
Sunday 12 July
We did have every intention to make it to a gospel church service, but just didn't get to it. Today was our last day in New York and there were still a whole list of things we wanted to do.
Our first priority was to find Trent's jumper (no, we hadn't got that yet), which we accomplished quite quickly. We also went on an extensive hunt for a smart pen but to no avail (sorry Mum). Then we hit the souvenir stores.
Our second point of business was to make our way down to Coney Island. There were thousands upon thousands of people there, but we really didn't see the appeal. Many of the attractions have closed, presumably hit by the financial crisis, and much of the area was run down and dirty. It probably wasn't worth the long train trip, but at least we can say we did it.
We then made our way back to Brooklyn, with 3 walks in hand of course. We found a lovely litte cafe for lunch and spent a little while watching the world go by. We decided that Brooklyn Heights was the most appealing area we found and that would be our choice if we ever lived in New York. Our walks finished up at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, which we walked accross to take us back to Manhattan.
We made our way back to Maddison Square Gardens where we found a nice little cafe called The Stage Door, which had an extensive and very reasonably priced menu. We stopped here for dinner before making our way home to pack and have an early (or not so early) night.
Saturday 11 July
No photos today, too busy shopping!
I read about an outlet shopping mall called Woodly Commons which has about 200 shops. They are name brand stores including Coach, Nike, Armani, etc but they are the old stock etc that are sold at discounted price. Unfortunately a $600 handbag marked down to $250 is still out of my price range!!
Because it is heavily marketed to tourists there are a number of options to catch a coach there and back; given that that was $42 each we decided to take the train for half the price.
The train took us an hour and a bit out of New York, through some lovely areas with lots of hills and forests. We arrived in Herriman with the knowledge that we could catch a cab. Low and behold there were some taxis waiting for the tourists but it was an interesting scene as the train station is a small platform in a large carpark surrounded by thickly forested hills. There was not a house or business in sight! We had also missed the opportunity to get cash out and found out that we had spent our last bit on chips on the train last night. So we were in the middle of no where, with no cash, taxis that didn't take credit card and no idea which way we were heading.
We declined an offer of squishing into the boot of a hatch back that already had 6 other people in it and waited for another offer. We finally got ourselves a lovely young taxi driver who was willing to stop at an ATM on the way and had enough room for us to have our own seat.
The shopping was good, but with so many stores I needed double the time and ten times the money. We did manage to get some bargains though. I found a handbag and 3 pairs of shoes and Phil got the best deal of the day with new footy boots for $20, needles to say he bought 2!
I read about an outlet shopping mall called Woodly Commons which has about 200 shops. They are name brand stores including Coach, Nike, Armani, etc but they are the old stock etc that are sold at discounted price. Unfortunately a $600 handbag marked down to $250 is still out of my price range!!
Because it is heavily marketed to tourists there are a number of options to catch a coach there and back; given that that was $42 each we decided to take the train for half the price.
The train took us an hour and a bit out of New York, through some lovely areas with lots of hills and forests. We arrived in Herriman with the knowledge that we could catch a cab. Low and behold there were some taxis waiting for the tourists but it was an interesting scene as the train station is a small platform in a large carpark surrounded by thickly forested hills. There was not a house or business in sight! We had also missed the opportunity to get cash out and found out that we had spent our last bit on chips on the train last night. So we were in the middle of no where, with no cash, taxis that didn't take credit card and no idea which way we were heading.
We declined an offer of squishing into the boot of a hatch back that already had 6 other people in it and waited for another offer. We finally got ourselves a lovely young taxi driver who was willing to stop at an ATM on the way and had enough room for us to have our own seat.
The shopping was good, but with so many stores I needed double the time and ten times the money. We did manage to get some bargains though. I found a handbag and 3 pairs of shoes and Phil got the best deal of the day with new footy boots for $20, needles to say he bought 2!
Friday 10 July
We spent today in Washington DC. Washington is an easy 3 hour train journey from New York, which 
made for a long but enjoyable day. We had to be on the train by 6:05am, luckily we made it in time, but it was very close!
made for a long but enjoyable day. We had to be on the train by 6:05am, luckily we made it in time, but it was very close!Given our lack of time in the Nation's Capital, we decided to do the 'hop on hop off' option that is most popular with tourists everywhere we go. We got to see all of the main sites, however briefly, including The White House, The Capital Building and a multitude of memorials. Our tour even took us out to Arlington to see the largest military cemetary in the country and also the resting place of JFK.
Walking the memorials was nice, reminiscent of a Simpson's episode too but none of the Presidents found the time to speak to us. We particularly like the World War II memorial which was spectacularly done. It is lucky they have some spare space because a number of the memorials are real estate hungry.
We ended the day with another National Treasure photo moment, namely the replica of the liberty bell outside the train station. Following a recommendation from our View friends, Joe and Allan, we had dinner at the Thunder Grill, which was very nice.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Thursday 9 July
Today we were determined to be at ABC even earlier to get good standby tickets for The View. Despite being there the earliest time yet (7:45am) we were still 27 and 28 in line. The saving grace was that there are 2 tapings today. So we went back out for breakfast (Strawberry and banana crepes were awesome), some shopping at Barnes and Noble and rejoined the queue at about 9:30. Again they didn't let anyone in from the standby line and things weren't looking good. We decided to stay in line this time, where we had a pleasant 2 hours with fellow standby people, Joe and Allan from Arizona and Beverly from Canada. We had a great time chatting and just passing the time.
For the second taping they eventually let in a few people from the standby line. When they got to us only 3 could go in, Allan and Joe were ahead of us so they went first, at this point I said goodby to Phil (with only a brief second thought) and headed in. Some batting of eye lids - from Joe, Allan and myself, saw Phil and Beverly join us fairly promptly.
The taping of the show was fantastic. It was a lot more relaxed than Letterman but we still had to give a huge effort to clapping, laughing and cheering, we were even allowed to woo hoo here! The ladies were really great and chatted to the audience during the ad breaks. Phil even got to ask Elizabeth for some recommendations for good gluten free restaurants.
It was 2:30pm before we got away from the studios. We headed off to try and find the elusive grey 25 Yankees jersey for Trent. No luck, but we did find a great little sports bar for a very late (4pm) lunch before heading home for a quiet evening.
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