sydney

Sydney was really full on, 1000 people at the convention, all the big brands from the Luxiottica group, so much food, all we did was eat! Have huge big lectures, filming, speeches from big sportsmen, a night at Luna Park to ourselves with all the rides open to use: I rule at Dodgem cars! and fancy catering and a big awards night where we all glammed up and they gave me nice vegie food! Overall it was exhausting, exciting to be involved in a sorta...managerial event and I am about 10 kgs heavier! Im lucky I didnt get charged excess luggage for my butt. The days were held at the Convention centre where we filled it up, we stayed at the Sheraton which was a 5 min walk away right on darling harbour, which for those who dont know is where the Sydney Harbour bridge is, the opera house and luna park and centrepoint tower is. Our hotel was right infront of centrepoint tower, we saw the bridge and opera house at night whilst we went to Luna park. We were down the other end of the harbour with the aquarium and some big naval ships which were visiting and the huge Imax theatre. Sydney was way colder than Brisbane, though last night was freezing! It was beautiful sunny weather through the day, cold in the morning and a lil brisk at night. Sydney centre is massive, the buildings look great and it is super clean. I wouldnt wanna live there again though as some of the western suburbs are pretty dodge, but the harbour and the beaches in the city, its easy to see why its one of the nicest cities in the world. Here are some pics! I didnt get home until 8.30pm last night and was really exhausted. Thankfully I had a good sleep and had today off, I need a holiday to get over conference. Next year it is in Febuary when I have booked our cruise, hopefully its before the cruise, so I can recover from it on a big ship with more eating! I wanna take stevie down to sydney for two days, so I will look up some cheap flights and use my new Luxiottica discount card which will give me some great discounts on hotels. yeah!

My hotel is the white hotel just infront of Centrepoint tower on the right, the pics are only of darling harbour from a walk at lunch one day, and a few from Luna Park. My flash decided not to work that night so my Bridge and Opera house pics were rubbish.The harbour is amazingly clean, you can see through the water, even at the docks.

spotted chook b&b

The day view from the b&b: you can see the coast in the distance. The green area was the main enterance and had a sitting room and the dining room connected to it, it had full verandahs overlooking the above view. Our room was the blue room which had a deck overlooking a hydrenga's and rose garden, the gazebo area and amelie's cottage. The back deck overlook the above scene.

The misty view was taken from the room in the morning and the sunset one with the fire was taken as we were heading off to dinner.

You really need to click on them to get a better view, it takes soo long to upload pictures on this, I just did them as small so it was a little quicker. It still has taken the better part of 30 mins for the pictures alone!

montville shops

Montville shops: some of the beautifully presented Montville shops including a fruit bat sculpture hanging from the trees and some great mosaics,

Montville and the spotted chook and some beautiful kittens.

I haven't blogged on here for ages..its been just too busy of late and our computer is dieing. We will have to go look at some next week, going to get a proper computer and not a laptop this time.
We have just gotten back from a few lovely days up at Maleny and Montville where we stayed at the very beautiful (and french inspired..but a qldner styled huge house/ b and b) The spotted chook. The bird life was great, sparrows, lorrikeets, rosella's everywhere aswell as some very noisy bowerbirds, they have the best call as does the kookaburras. In the morning it sounded so beautiful. I think I would like to live in the mountains. I like wearing winter clothes!
I was expecting it to be quite coolish up at the mountains, but no, it proved yet again we are having the never ending summer at the temperature was like 30 degrees plus, not a cloud in the sky though I was cold at night! We went out to the Mapleton pub for dinner where we got gorgeous huge meals and I had a cardigan and light jacket on, whilst sitting on the verandah.
We firstly drove up to Maleny where we did a little bit of browsing the shops and then went onto Montville where we stopped at a Cheese factory and stevie and mum tried every cheese possible and bought quite a few too! We then went into the town of Montville which is soo lovely and did a bit of shopping, stevie got a few tin christmas tree ornaments from the Christmas shop and we also visited a Scottish/Irish shop where there were alot of things Scott (including IrnBru and Tizer. Speaking of Irn Bru, Stevie is finding it everywhere at the momment). We had a lovely lunch at a little cafe after purusing a few chocolate shops and stevie's favourite shop the Swiss Cuckoo shop. The funny thing was, just before we saw the shop, stevie was talking about how Montville reminds him of a fancy swiss mountainous town. After being shopped out and enjoying the view, we went to our B&B which was only a few minutes away. Its this huge huge qldner which is split in two, the b&b down one end which has four suites over two floors and also a lovely cottage called Amelie which had the most amazing claw footed spa bath. Our room was called the Snow pea room, and it had a huge queen sized bed and two single's. The house was built on a cliff and had amazing views over the valley towards Lake Baron. The owners had two gorgeous little kittens and quite a few chooks and a dog called Freckles and a cranky goat who tried to butt mum. We had a bit of a nap before going out to dinner at the Mapleton Inn, it was packed last time mum and I went to Montville and we now know why. The food was great, Mum got a seafood platter that would have fed four, and we also got some steaks and fish and chips, it had the best gravy I've had for ages! We sat on the deck overlooking the mountains in snug jackets and you could see some smoke from a small bush fire which was burning. Dessert for some was sticky date pudding with butterscotch sauce and ice cream and profitoroles with raspberry sauce and icecream for stevie. We went home to all watch the dvd Me, You and Dupree which was rubbish! Seriously the worst movie I've seen for ages. I snuggled under the best sheets Ive ever slept in, I swear they were like 2000000 thread! So good. Stevie stayed up and watch Holy Man with Eddie Murphy but I flaked it pretty early. Stevie had a horrible asthma attack at 4am and didnt bring his ventolin so it took about 2 hours for his breathing to go back to normal, by the time we woke up at 7.30am we all collectively had not a huge amount of sleep. Breakfast was on the deck overlooking the mountains which were clouded in mist, there was cereal and museli first up, followed by yoghurt and fruit, crossiants and then a full cooked breafast made with the eggs from the chooks in the back yard. It was lovely and I could barely walk..and I had the least amount to eat!
We then took the drive up the coast to Eumundi where we went to a huge markets, I got some hand made soaps and roasted chilli macadamia nuts and home made ginger beer and was tempted by the numerous people doing reflexology and massage but it was pretty warm, and we had, had a huge few days. I fell asleep in the car for the hour long drive home. So overall a great few days off, I now need a holiday to recover from our holiday. Next is my trip away for work to Sydney, the 'gala' dinner/awards night at Fox studio is causing me a little grief, who would have thought it would be so hard to get an evening dress with sleeves! I think I have found one, a 50's one on ebay, black with silver thread which I can get brought in a little. Its only $20 so far with a day to go, and it would mean I'd only need shoes to get to match it, which is good as most of the 'very fashionable' evening wear at david jones by top designers was like $300-700 and theres no way I'm spending that!
I'll post some pics!