Last night's photo club meeting

I was excited to go to the photo club meeting last night, considering I hadn't been since April I think. I was also excited to show some of my favourite photos from our trip, which I entered into the competitions.

(Excuse the additional white space around some of the photos. The photos were cropped as sort of panoramic photos, so there is an excess of space around some photos that will just show up as plain white.)

I got two third places - 'House of Bols' for 'Pure Talent' and 'Storm over Stonehenge' for Enhance It.

'House of Bols' - taken at the House of Bols (hence the creative name) in Amsterdam. I just loved the colours.

'Storm over Stonehenge' - pretty self explanatory, really. I just did some creative Photoshop editing to make it a bit more lively and colourful than the original photo.

The other entries were:
Mykonos Sunset (Pure Talent):

Budapest Bridge (Pure Talent):

Rhode Island jumpers (Enhance It):

Venice (Enhance It):

Napoleon's Chateau (Monotone):

Birkenau railroad (Monotone):

Eiffel Tower (Monotone) - for some reason this never printed at Harvey Norman, so wasn't actually entered into the competition! It was supposed to be, though:

There were some photos last night that were so stunning, just really beautiful. I was glad to get anything really!

The current monthly topic is 'Cities', something which I have some great subjects for now!

I'm still trying to even think about where to start with all my photos. Apart from choosing these ones and editing them for the club meeting, I haven't really touched any of the photos! I would really love to have some made into canvases for the walls, but which ones to choose? On which walls? What size/shape/how many? And don't even get me started on the photobook! I've decided not to scrapbook the photos as such, although I do plan on scrapping some of my favourites just for my normal 2010 album. I won't do a scrapbook of the trip though, I intend on making a photobook. Something like this one, from Nicole Southworth:

I love the simplicity of it, how the photos stand by themselves, but how there's still flexibility for some journalling and text if I want it.  I'm going to design it myself in photoshop and upload it to Harvey Norman Photos or Big W or Snapfish or something. I've started working on the templates already, but haven't even started choosing photos or editing them. Hey, plenty of time, right?

Anyway, any ideas for canvases/large prints etc just throw them my way. Our walls are still quite bare, despite being in our house for 3.5 years. The only things on the walls are some blank canvases that I covered in some fabric a couple of years ago now, which still look great. But there are still lots of blank walls that would love some decoration I think.

Mum and Dad are up this weekend - yay! They haven't seen my ring yet, so I'll get to show them.  Here are some photos I took of the ring on the weekend.  (The photo club had a creative workshop, where I was able to sneak in a couple of minutes to take these.)

A bit cliche, I suppose, but I still like them!

I wasn't going to post these, but while I'm at it, these are a couple of other shots I managed to sneak in on the weekend. Nothing too spectacular, but not too bad.

Not sure if you can tell, but the whole idea of my particular station was 'reflections'. Because I was manning the station, I didn't really get to play around at all, but some of the shots that others were getting were great. There was also some ink photography and some coloured smoke photos that from what I saw turned out fantastic!

Anyway, I'm at the end of my lunchtime now, so I'll be back again in a little while hopefully with some more stuff.  I've been working on putting some things together with some of the photos from our photoshoot last year that I still haven't really scrapped, so I'll post them next time.

The last of the trip photos - for now!

I just realised that I hadn't even posted the overview photos from the last couple of weeks of our trip - and the places we visited were probably the most surprising of all of them.  So here goes:

I had previously described most of the places visited on our second part of the tour, up until Krakow. So here are the photos that go with those cities:

Our day at Wimbledon:

'The Queue'

John eating strawberries and cream

We saw John Isner play (after he'd finished his epic 11 hour match the day before)

In the stands

Next we headed to Berlin:

The Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie (one of the four 'gates' between East Berlin and West Berlin)

The Soccer World Cup fanfest (when Germany beat England)

The Brandenburg Gate (yes we're a little sunburnt)

Next was Prague, in The Czech Republic (not Czechoslovakia, which is used to be called.  Slovakia is a different country.)

Overlooking Prague from the castle

On one of the bridges that crosses the river

John writing his name on the famous 'Freedom Wall' which played a large part in the downfall of the Communists

Then we did actually cross through Slovakia, which was very picturesque.

One afternoon and one morning in Vienna:

John eating a famous 'Sacher Torte' at the Sacher Hotel (where it was invented)

Then onto Budapest, which was one of my favourite places.  I'm not sure why though (well, is was just so pretty)!

Overlooking Buda (on the left) and Pest (on the right)

A Hungarian Bath

The beautiful Hungarian Parliament building

One of the beautiful old bridges that crosses the river

I believe my last descriptive post was on our way into Krakow, in Poland.  We had a day tour of the city, including the Jewish Quarter, the Old Town Square (which was apparently National Geographic's Most Beautiful Place in the World in 2008 I think) and the Salt Mines.  The Jewish Quarter was really sad - I can't remember the exact figures, but Krakow had a Jewish population of over 110,000 before WWII, and there are now less than 100 practising Jews in Krakow. 

The Salt Mines were amazing - over 300 years old, although not actively used any more.  We walked down over 900 stairs to end up about 145m underground.  Luckily we got to catch a lift back up and not walk!  Everything in the pictures below was carved straight out of the salt.

Streets of Krakow

The Krakow Old Town Square

We ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe

The salt mines tour - some of the walls are braced with timber for strength.  Because of the salty atmosphere, the timber is almost petrified and as hard as concrete.

Figurines carved out of the salt by the miners hundreds of years ago.

A hallway, where you see the salt very clearly.

The chapel, which is fully made of salt.  The salt is just like rock, and this is the only part in the mine where they used explosives to carve out the 'hole'.  This is over 100m underground.

A carving of 'The Last Supper'.  Although it looks like is has a lot of depth, it is actually less than 10cm into the wall.

The altar part of the church.

When we left Krakow for Warsaw, we stopped at Auschwitz for a few hours for a guided tour.  Very sobering, and I don't think there's really much I can say that would do justice to this place where 1.1 million people lost their lives over the course of 4 years.

The famous entrance gate 'Arbeit Macht Frei' (Work brings freedom)

Birkenau - the 'sister' camp to Auschwitz.  Birkenau was built as the extermination part of Auschwitz, and was actually responsible for more deaths than Auschwitz, although it is not as well known around the world.  Hectares upon hectares - very confronting.

We then continued onto Warsaw, which was again surprisingly pretty.  I don't know exactly what John and I expected from Poland, but it wasn't what we got anyway!

The day started with a tour of the city (like normal).  Warsaw has such an incredibly tumultuous past, and what the people have been able to achieve since then, particularly when they were still under communist rule, is amazing.  They rebuilt the city centre off their own backs, with no help at all from their government at the time.  They used old photographs of the buildings to know what they looked like, and painstakingly catalogued all the demolished bricks and stones so that they could be reused.

The destruction of the city during World War II was absolute - we saw pictures of it and there was literally nothing left.  Some of the stories about the Warsaw Uprising and the Ghetto Uprising were mind-blowing. Poland was absolutely screwed by both sides in the War - by the Germans (obvisouly) and also by the Allieds (The Red Army) as they stood back and let the Germans destroy them so that they could come in and be the heroes.  What the city has become in only the past 50 years is really wonderful.

Warsaw is the home of Mozart, a fact of which they are very proud.  We stopped at the main gardens in Warsaw (for a very brief time) and saw this really pretty statue of Mozart surrounded by a rose garden.

I really loved those houses on the left - they looked so quaint and doll-house like.

The city is very green and quite clean, with a bit of construction work going on.

Eventually, we left Europe (with all the hassles that came with the delayed flights, etc) and made it into Singapore.  As you know, due to the flight delay, we had very little time in Singapore, and missed out on the tour of the city.  We did get to go to the Zoo and to Chinatown at night, but we don't really have any photos of the city itself. 

Singapore is really quite remarkable - it split from Malaysia in the 1960s - a tiny, tiny country with little to no natural resources and a brand new government.  With very careful planning and expert advice from professionals they engaged to plan their new country/city, they have built Singapore into one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and it was a very pleasant place to visit.  Everyone speaks English - there aren't even any road signs or any other signs in languages other than English.  It is incredibly clean, and very very regulated. There are so many tourist attractions, that have built for that specific purpose.  The harbour and airport are their main source of revenue, closely followed by the banking/commercial sector and then tourism.

Although the country is clean, there is air pollution and smog that is so thick you can barely see. Together with the humidity, which was so high it was like you were wading through the air, it is quite an opressing heat.  You can see this photo where the background just looks cloudy - that was the city, only about a 5 minute drive away.

We visited the bird house on Sentosa Island, which is just like a big tourist/beach/attractions resort.

We had a night-tour of Chinatown, which was really cool. There were the night markets operating, chinese lanterns everywhere and a lot of atmosphere.

The tour included a trishaw ride for everyone, so we each got our own little man to take us around the city. We all felt so bad, because these guys were really little, but they were lovely and friendly, and were quick to assure us that 'it is no problem'.  It was so much fun, and neither of us could wipe the smile off our face.

They got up quite a bit of speed at times.

At one stage, there was out little convoy of about 14 people on our trishaws, riding down a multi-lane inner city road.  My guy decided he wanted to be up the front, so took off on the outside lane to do some overtaking! It was frightening, but fun at the same time.

We also went on a bumboat river cruise throug the city, which was really the only chance we had to see the city itself.  Because it was on the river, it was very calm and enjoyable.

This is one of the newest buildings in Singapore, only open for about a week when we got there. It is supposed to be a large cruise ship on top of three cricket stumps - go figure! It's an expensive casino and hotel, and stands out like anything everywhere you go.

We had our breakfast with the orang-utans the next morning at the zoo.  I was a little disappointed that there were so many people there and we literally got the 30 seconds to get this photo taken and then we had to move on.  From the marketing, I was expecting an 'intimate' experience, not just something where you're one of 200 people trying to eat their breakfast and then line up for a photo.  They are still amazing creatures though.

There were of course other animals, like elephants, lions, white tigers, giraffes etc.

Well, that's about it really - you know the rest of the story.  We eventually made it home safe and sound, and very tired!  Thinking back on it now, we were go go go for 53 days - it was like having 53 days of work with no days off! Of course, it was more enjoyable than going to work, but anyone who knows me knows that I like my sleep-ins and a little bit of 'do nothing' time.

I think that's pretty much the highlights reel in terms of the photos that document our trip.  I've been doing some photo editing and sorting (nowhere near as much as I'd like just yet) and there are some photos with some definite photo club potential.  For the most part though, I just let ourselves take photos of us doing things and seeing things, and didn't concentrate too much on taking any prize-winning masterpieces!

I'm yet to take any 'good' photos of my ring. You may laugh (and I'm pretty sure some of you are) but I just absolutely love it, and still stop to stare at it numerous times every day! I think a scrapbook page may be in order...!

I'll be back soon with a post of the photos that I've edited to enter into the next photo club meeting. There are some I'm quite happy with how they've turned out.

We're home at last

And once again I'm slack with no photos just yet! We arrived home on Sunday afternoon, and we've spent this last week getting everything back to normal again.

We left Singapore and arrived in Sydney with no real hassles. I started feeling sick on the plane ride, and all the smells on the plane (food cooking, the guy drinking wine next to me) made me want to be sick. When we arrived in Sydney, we transferred to the domestic airport and had about a 6 hour wait until our next flight straight back to Mackay. That was about 1/2 hour late, but the flight was pretty quick.  I was still feeling so sick the whole time waiting at the airport and then in the flight back home, but managed to hang on until we arrived at the Mackay airport.

It was so good to get home.  Despite knowing that I should stay awake until bedtime on Sunday night, I had a couple of hours of sleep in the afternoon, and woke up feeling a lot less sick that night.

The first thing I did on Monday morning was drop my ring in to the jewellers to get resized! They had to send it away, and apparently I'll have it back tomorrow. I can't wait!

John's parents came up on Tuesday (which was also John's 30th birthday) and brought back Roxy and our car. Roxy has completely fallen in love with John's dad, but has settled right in again. I've had this week without work (I start again tomorrow, boo) and over the last few days Roxy has even bonded with me a little and will let me do the one thing that is reserved for John and John only - scratches. She's laid another egg though, so there'll be a few more on the way.

The house is getting back to normal again, and I've got a roast in cooking tonight. Not having to do any cooking or washing up for 8 weeks or so has meant that getting into cooking again has been fun! It's not even bad doing loads of washing any more - it's way easier than doing the washing while we were away in the bathtubs!

Back to work tomorrow, which I'm not looking forward to, but it will be nice to start earning a wage again!  I will of course get some photos prepared over the next week or so and post a bit of a highlights reel soon.

The home stretch

I know I haven't posted any recent photos like I said I would (surprised?) but there's sort of a good reason for that!

We left Warsaw for our flight to London on 7 July in the morning, and made our connecting flight from London to Singapore with plenty of time. As it turns out, after we boarded the plane, they kept us sitting at the terminal (with everyone on the plane and not allowed to leave) for over 4 hours due to a mechanical issue. After 4 hours, they told us that the plane would be leaving at 11pm that night (instead of midday as scheduled), and we would all have to get off and wait in the terminal. Half an hour later, they changed their mind and told us the plane would be delayed until 9am the next day, and they would be taking us all (400 passengers) to a nearby motel for the night. Of course it was frustrating, and because there was 400 people - who were all more important, tired and hungry than everyone else of course - patience was definitely a virtue.

After having boarded our first flight at 7am in Warsaw, and our second flight at 11.30am in London, we finally made it into our room in the motel in London at about 8pm. All bags had to stay on the plane, so we had to make the most of the free toiletries from the motel, and then put on the same clothes the next morning.

Our plane was supposed to leave at 9am the next day, but was further delayed by over an hour. We finally took off after 10am, and we arrived in Singapore this morning at 5.30am local time (the flight was about 13 hours).

Because of the delay, we had to cancel two of our pre-booked and paid for tours in Singapore - the city tour and ride on the giant ferris wheel, and the night zoo safari tour. But, our next tour started at 8.00am this morning, so after we checked into the motel, we had a shower and some breakfast and then headed straight out.

So, now we're in Singapore, having arrived this morning at 5.30am, went on our first tour around Sentosa Island at 8am, came back at lunchtime, but were just too tired to even have any lunch. I actually got bus-sick on the ride back to the motel, and we had a sleep for a few hours. We had another tour at 6pm tonight around Chinatown (including a Chinese dinner, a trishaw ride and a bumboat ride) and are now back in our motel. It's nearly 11pm and we are completely knackered.

We leave Singapore tomorrow night at about 8pm and arrive in Sydney on Sunday. We then catch a flight a couple of hours later from Sydney straight to Mackay, where we will arrive on Sunday afternoon.

We'll give everyone a call when we get back to let you know how everything went, and to work out when we'll be in what city (whether we'll go down to Rocky etc) but if you don't get a call straight away on Sunday night don't worry - we'll probably just crash the moment we get home (into bed I mean).

Tomorrow morning is our breakfast with the orangutans at the open plains zoo, which I can't wait for. At least I'll get to see the zoo animals eventually!

It's my baby sister's 20th birthday today. I'm sorry when I called you I couldn't talk for longer, but it really has been a crazy day! Hope you had a great day, and we'll see you when we're back home chicky.

The finish line is in sight... xxx

In the east

We're currently in our second last country, with only a bit over a week to go before we come home.  I haven't really been homesick during our trip (although it's certainly the longest I've been away from home), but lately - I know how silly this sounds - I have been missing Roxy! I know she's probably not even aware that we're not around and probably fallen in love with John's dad (after all, she does like the men) but I just can't wait to see her.  John is thinking about our lawn, and wondering how dead it is!

Since my last post, we've spent time in Amsterdam in The Netherlands (not Holland, which is only the region in The Netherlands), which I really enjoyed.  We went through Anne Frank's house, took a 'granny' bike ride around Edam (just outside of Amsterdam) and a canal boat cruise. Our tour manager took us all on a walk through the red light district, which was definitely an experience! It's a very 'easy' city, that is very different to any of the others we've been. No one has to worry - neither John nor I partook (is that even a word) in any sort of mind/body altering substance. I think we were two of only four people on our tour that didn't! I enjoyed Amsterdam, but there's certainly a side to it that is a little uncomfortable!

Our last day of our first tour was pretty much just driving back to Calais (in France) through Belgium, taking the ferry across the English channel and then driving back to London. Nothing too exciting there.

The next day we got up early and took the very first Underground tube to... Wimbledon.  We joined the queue a bit after 6.00am, and were queuers number 2,600 or so. We waited until 9.30am to be let into the ground, where only 1500 tickets were available to get into the important courts, where Roger Federer, Justine Henin, Lleyton Hewitt, Andy Roddick and Venus Williams were all playing that day. We did manage to get into the court number 3 (which is actually called Court 5) to see John Isner play against the dutchman Thiemo de Bakker. John Isner was the guy who had, two days earlier, won the longest match ever after 3 days (11 hours) of play.  He lost the game in straight sets, but it was great to see a live game at Wimbledon.  We then found a prime position table and chairs on the terrace, right outside of Court 1 watching the big screen of live play. We saw Lleyton Hewitt win his match and also Roger Federer. It would have been great to have been in the courts, but we're now thinking we'd love to arrange a trip to the Australian Open in January.

The day after we flew to Berlin (Germany) to start our next tour. Berlin was a wonderful surprise. I didn't have too many expectations really, but I loved it. We learned so much about its really quite recent history, that made both of us feel very naive for not knowing much about it in the first place.  We saw the remnants of the actual Berlin Wall, saw Checkpoint Charlie and a number of other historical buildings and sites. We also happened to be in Berlin the day that Germany played against England in the soccer world cup, which has been absolutely massive over here.  The two of us went into this huge park where there was an official 'Fanfest' celebration showing the game live.  We were amongst over 200,000 Germans when Germany won the game, which was madness!! A once in a lifetime experience though.  Anyway, both John and I loved Berlin, and would go back more than likely.

Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic was next.  Again, a lot of recent history was very eye-opening, where we visited the Communism Museum and I was almost in tears at some of the things that we learnt. This part of Europe (including Hungary and Poland, which came next on our trip) has had such a turbulent recent history, that this trip is really opening my eyes to.  Prague was a beautiful city, which lovely old buildings and a very Viennese feel to the buildings and architecture.

After Prague, we had one night in Vienna (Austria) which we'd visited on our previous tour. It was good to have more time to visit some of the not so common sites, so we saw the crown jewels of the very old and very successful Austrian Empire.

This morning we left Budapest (Hungary) which would come close to being one of my favourite cities. It was absolutely stunning, really beautiful, and just a really pleasant city. In terms of well known sites to see, there aren't really any, but the city itself and some of its castles and lookout points are wonderful.  I'll  post the photos at a later date to show you.

This evening we arrived in Krakow (Poland), which is nothing like I thought it would be.  In fact, most of Eastern Europe has been unexpected, although positively so. It's really been beautiful. Tomorrow we will be exploring Krakow with a city tour in the morning, and a visit to the Krakow salt mines in the afternoon.  That will be something a little different.

Our next destination is Warsaw (also Poland) in two day's time, where we will visit Auschwitz extermination camp.  I don't know how we will handle that, but it's something I've been looking forward to since we booked the trip.

This second tour has been very different to our first tour so far - our tour manager is very different, and I think we both preferred our first guy, and the mix of people is also very different.  On our last trip, our of 50 of us, there were two Kiwis, one Canadian, one South Korean and everyone else was Aussie.  This tour, there are three South Africans, a couple of Kiwis, two Singaporeans, quite a few Canadians and Americans, and a handful of Australians.  Let's just say that the group dynamic and interaction is very different!

We're having a ball, and the time seems to have flown by so quickly, yet our first day seems so long ago.  While I don't want to wish the time away at all, I think when we get home, I will be glad to be home. Not looking forward to starting back at work though - how difficult is that going to be!!

In the meantime, Linda and Gerry (neighbours) have had a big event with their son getting married - we were certainly thinking about you over the last couple of days and hoping that you got back home safely. Glad everything went well.

I fully intend on posting again before July 9th, but consider this my back-up plan.  It's my baby sister's 20th birthday, and I can't believe that she's not 12 years old anymore! I'll see you when we get back, chicky.  We'll literally be in transit somewhere in Singapore, and will try to give you a call.

Love you all,
Caitie and John xx