Posts Tagged With: relaxation

Day 3: Lake Crackenback Resort

Today’s breakfast was a bit more of a shambles than yesterday – it was full! We had to wait for a table and then queue up for hot food which was mostly empty. So that was a little disappointing.

After breakfast we discussed options for the day and eventually we drove 10 mins down the road to the Wild Brumby Distillery where B sampled all their delicious schnapps and we had a wander around the beautiful outside area and sculpture garden. We also had lunch here – goulash – which was yum.

After lunch we both had a relaxation massage at the Lake Crackenback Spa and Wellness Centre which was….well, relaxing! It was also well priced at $100 for 60 mins which is far more reasonable than what the Thredbo spa charges. They also have a really nice (and warm!) lounge area you can relax in while you wait.

I then had another issue with Alpine Larder – the only dinner option at the hotel open – when I went to book dinner as they were fully booked for the evening and the weather had turned so sitting outside was not really an option. They suggested ordering take away which I thought was great except I couldn’t phone it in. So I would have had to walk down, order, wait 30-40 mins outside, walk back. Ummmm no. I gave up in frustration and walked up to the tony supermarket to see what they had available. We ended up having a delicious cheese platter and wine for dinner instead while watching cheesy movies ❀️

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Phuket time in a week!

I am super excited!! This is my first trip to Thailand.

We are flying with Air Asia again after a very positive experience with them once before and have forked out the extra for flat beds. It’s like a business class seat without the business class cost! Unfortunately we have to do a few stop overs which is the downside to traveling from Canberra.

The goal is to do a whole lot of nothing while we are there, which means minimal tours. Boat tours to the islands are also off the table with Bs nasty travel sickness issues. So far I have only booked two things for us to do since the focus will be on relaxation. We are going to:

– spend a day at the Burasari Spa being pampered and spoilt http://spa.burasari.com

– spend a half day at the Elephant 🐘 Retirement Park which is an ethical animal sanctuary https://elephantretirementparkphuket.com

The rest of the time will be spent relaxing at the resort, relaxing on the beach and maybe exploring Patong a little bit. Oh, and enjoying my private balcony spa of course.

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Woohoo, Phuket booked for Jan 2019

We are going to Phuket in Jan 2019 just before school goes back! Super excited to have a week of relaxation after the stress that will be family Christmas ❀️

We will be staying in a mood suite at the Burasari Resort which looks something like the pics below. Needless to say, having my own jacuzzi has me ridiculous levels of happy.

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Fiji Day 5 – home time tomorrow

Today we enjoyed our included breakfast (I’m a bit obsessed with muesli and banana at the moment) and then opted to laze around on the deck in the illicit stolen beanbag and in bed for most of the day.

After lunch at Vulcani Restaurant at the resort….and some pina coladas…..we wandered up to the other end just to see what there was and then continued to laze around because that’s what the last day of holidays is for right?

we watched our final sunset from the private deck and then in the early evening ….with the cover of twilight…..we returned the stolen beanbag to the beach! We had dinner at Tavu Grill on the beach, paid the final bill and arranged an express checkout for early the next morning and packed our bags.

Alarms are set for 4:30am tomorrow (waaaaaah) to begin the journey home. At least we get a breakfast box to go at no charge in the morning. I am excited to see Bear and Jet but sad to leave the relaxation here to return to the go-go-go of real life. Not to mention the frozen nightmare that is Canberra winter – it was -9C at home two days ago! We will definitely be back though – vinaka Fiji πŸ™‚

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Fiji Day 4 – lazing around

Today consisted of doing this at the resort all day:

Dinner was Fijian BBQ at Sunset Point. We watched the sun go down, ate delicious BBQ and then sat near the open fire enjoying the night time beach vibe. On the way back to the room, a horse chased us….which was kind of exciting / terrifying.

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Fiji time!!

Today was the last day of school for semester one, 2018 and tomorrow we fly to Fiji for a full five nights of glorious relaxation! When we decided to do a relaxation trip I settled on Fiji pretty quickly (only a 3hr flight from Sydney) and immediately started researching for my two main requirements – a swim up bar and an ocean front villa or room. Turns out those are damn hard to find in peak season! I also initially had “childfree” as a main requirement but all the strictly adults only places needed another flight from the domestic airport so B vetoed them this time around and we just aimed for a smaller resort without a huge kids club to attract families. I’ll come back to you another time LikuLiku Lagoon Resort.

We are staying at the Doubletree Resort by Hilton which is on Sonaisali Island. It’s very close to the main island and is only a 25 min taxi ride from the international airport with a 2 min boat ride across the inlet.

We have booked to stay in a King Premium Ocean Bure (hut) facing onto the beach. The pricing was exceptionally good (this whole trip is cheaper than what it cost us to go on what we politely refer to as “the Perth trip from hell” in 2016) and the inside of the bure looks amazing!

We have one short day trip planned to visit the mud baths and the garden of the sleeping giants but other than that it’s basically all about relaxing together, drinking fruity drinks with umbrellas in them and frolicking in the water while Canberra freezes through -5C temps. Here are some photos of my recent suffering – working on a farm school site requires multiple layers, thermals, a beanie and good gloves at the moment!!

The doggos (yes – note the plural! We have formally adopted Jet as of two days ago) will have a family of pet sitters coming to stay – highly recommend Emma Lily Grace Services in Canberra – and the big babies won’t even miss us a tiny bit while they have kids to dote on them and give them all the pats they want.

Fiji, here we come!! 🏝 🍸 🍹 πŸ– 😎

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Easter weekend at the NSW south coast: Tomakin, Broulee, Batehaven and Batemans Bay

We headed to the NSW south coast this weekend for our second stay in Tomakin. We chose Tomakin, NSW again because it is a small town and they have a wonderful 24hr off leash dog beach. It’s also only a 2hr (with good traffic) drive from Canberra.

Coming out of Canberra on Good Friday we didn’t really understand just how bad the traffic would be! This was obviously what people meant when they talked about “coast traffic” and we got stuck at Braidwood for a good 15 mins and then for at least 40mins trying to get into Batemans Bay. No way around it unfortunately! Coming home we left early and missed most of it, with just a short delay in Braidwood.

This time we stayed at “Mutleys on Deakin” in Tomakin and it was amazing! A huge, dog friendly home. Very affordable as well with a 7 min walk to the beach and to the local social club for meals. As you can tell from the video below, Bear was pretty excited! Accomodation link: http://wagsawaypetholidays.com.au/mutleys-deakin-tomakin.html

Every morning and evening we walked on the off lead beach and met lots of locals (and lots of Canberrans) with their beautiful dogs. Bear made special friends with Leo the Ridgeback.

This time as part of our stay we had a wander over to the Tomago River as well, which feeds into the beach we walk along with Bear. It was a beautiful area, very calm and still, but there were boats loading off the ramp and lots of shore fishing so it wasn’t really Bear-friendly. Looked stunning at sunset though, even on a cloudy day.

We also took the opportunity over the 4 days to visit Bernie’s in Batehaven again (excellent fish and chips) as well as check out the Birdland Animal Park. I read a lot of reviews beforehand so was prepared going in that it was mostly a rescue and rehab place that was small. Within the first five minutes I got to hold a baby wombat so I thought it was the best zoo visit in ages! I didn’t read anything about the wombat cuddles online so I think we just got lucky πŸ™‚

We also saw lots of other animals (goats, alpacas, many birds, deer, kangaroos, echidnas, wallabies, koalas, more wombats…) and fed nearly all of them. I had one particularly memorable run in with a peacock which tried to steal my bag of food and then chased me. I of course ran away screaming – as you do.

It was $29 each to get in but as we got to hold the baby wombat and hand feed lots of other animals in a quiet, non-crowded setting we felt it was well worth it.

We also stopped in at Broulee Beach for a walk on Easter Sunday. Tomakin is about 15 mins out of Batemans Bay and Broulee is another 5 mins along the coast. It’s a town with few amenities but beautiful beaches and walks.

To finish this post off, here’s some “Bear in action” shots for his fans πŸ‘πŸ˜ƒ

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Singapore Day 3 cont’d: Chinatown and Marina Bay

Today we did our first ever cooking class at Food Playground in Singapore! I wrote more about it in a separate blog post, including lots of photos, which you can find here: https://travelseeshare.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/singapore-day-3-food-playground-cooking-class/

After finishing the class at 12:30pm, we decided we were full of good food (naturally – since we cooked it all) and energy, so headed off to explore Chinatown for a little while. I think we will go back again as some of the food looked amazing. It was very humid today, and the markets were very crowded, so after about 40 mins of wandering we opted to head back to the hotel. Let me tell you, the walk up the stairs from the MRT station was KILLER.

The afternoon was spent relaxing in the pool – which we pretty much had to ourselves – and napping.

Our evening adventure was a trip on the Singapore Flyer with champagne. I read quite a lot about the history of the Singapore Flyer before booking this as it seems that the Marina Bay Sands viewing deck has basically put it out of business given that they are notably cheaper. I figured as first time visitors, we would give both a go at night to see which one we preferred.

Singapore Flyer

After doing some research, I opted to buy us two “champagne flight” tickets at $79 each rather than standard entry for $36 each. In theory, this meant we chose a date and time, got priority boarding and also had a glass of champagne.

I did consider the dining option but it was very pricey and you share the capsule with others which felt a bit weird. All went well until it got closer and closer to our boarding time of 7pm. Something was obviously going wrong and I was getting grumpy….at about 7:15pm they took us through a different way to other VIPs and in front of a whole queue of people we boarded A COMPLETELY EMPTY CAPSULE! Maybe we were the only champagne people? Maybe they were planning to put us with a later group and my grumpiness scared them? Who knows, who cares….it was amazing!

After alighting from our marvellous, child and people free flyer experience (40min round trip) we walked across the river on the Helix Bridge – visible to the left of the below pic – to Marina Bay shops.

We then had dinner at the DC superhero cafe. This was full of memorabilia and totally themed to DC heroes!

I had a Batman burger box and an atlantean hero cocktail. B had a Green Lantern quesadilla and a Mr Freeze cocktail. While it’s not an experience I’ll ever repeat (the bill for that was a whopping $137!!) it was worth doing it once it for the novelty value. My wagyu burger was also pretty damn tasty.

We also had a beautiful view of the colourful fountain and light show while eating.

After resting and rejuvenating, we headed for the sky park to complete the Marina Bay Observation Deck (SkyPark) comparison. What a failure that was! We got down there at 9:20pm and the lines were obscene. The queue for tickets was winding into the queue to actually go up.

Nope. Nope. Nope. I literally went down the escalators and straight back up. Maybe we will try again next week but for now….Singapore Flyer is a winner!

HFC Perk 3: we have seen very few kids staying here and the ones we do see are very, very little. This means the pool is actually RELAXING and there is minimal screaming. Sorry friends with kids but I think it’s awesome and wish more hotels we stayed in were like this!

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Hamilton Island day 5 and home time

Yesterday was a blissful day. We woke up early and had koala cuddles along with breakfast. The koalas name was Willow and she took a real liking to B. Me…not so much. Excuse the derp face.

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After koala cuddles we went to Hamilton Island’s Spa wumurdaylin for a couples treatment including massage, facial, scalp massage and foot/hand treatment. I enjoyed it and B reckons he will do it again, although maybe without the foot bit as he is too ticklish.

After this we went to the tavern for lunch and then spent a few hours lounging around the pool, before relaxing in the room watching the sun go down.

Dinner was another great meal (have struggled to find bad food here!) and I wore my beautiful new opal jewellery out πŸ™‚

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As far as last days go it was pretty fabulous. The whole holiday has been very relaxing and it has been great to just switch off from work and worry and try to get away from it all. B was right, there really is a difference between a “trip” and a “holiday”. We need more holidays!! Hehe.

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We have checked out this morning and are now having a final holiday cocktail before heading to the airport for the 7hr trip (plus stopovers) back to Canberra.

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See you again soon Hamilton Island.

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Hamilton Island Day 1-3

Day 1: we arrived! It was an okay flight although the process of getting off from Brisbane was delayed which was (as you would expect) frustrating. Delay me going home dammit!

We checked in at 2pm and went off to explore the resort area and for a quick swim at catseye beach before a sunset sail. Unfortunately….no sunset due to cloud cover

The view from our room at the reef view hotel is amazing.

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Day 2: was a lounge around day. We had complimentary breakfast with the koalas and then basically just vegged out in the pool area and kept the bar busy πŸ™‚

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For dinner we went on a twilight cruise on the Denison Star. Delicious! Shame anther sunset was obscured by cloud cover…

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Day 3: today we slept in and then had breakfast with the koalas again (those guys are awesome) before preparing to adventure out to Whitehaven Beach. Unfortunately this was cancelled due to the wind so we went back to the pool for more relaxing and cocktails. B had a go at paddle boarding which was equal parts hilarious (when he fell off) and unhappy making (motion sickness). We then went off to One Tree Hill bar to try again for the sunset but…cloud cover! Haha. Thwarted at every turn!

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Tomorrow we are off to the Great Barrier Reef for a full day of snorkelling!

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