travel

Part of this trip to Australia was to go visit a lavender farm in Melbourne, courtesy of P&G’s all new Fab Lavender. It was a contest held a couple of months back and the plan was to travel later in the year after Finn was born. But things sort of fell into place so we decided to travel last week instead, hence the crazy timing of the trip.

The place we visited was Warratina Lavender Farm, just off Yarra Valley – about an hour’s drive out from Melbourne city.

It was freezing cold and most of the lavender plants were bare but there were already some pockets of purple among the rows of plants. I imagine it would smell quite divine when all the flowers started blooming in spring. Not to mention the rows and rows of pretty purple everywhere.

There was a nursery with different samples in tiny pots so we could smell each one up close. Which Kirsten gladly obliged. She went along the rows taking a giant whiff of each plant and going “mmmm, smells nice!” like a real connoisseur.

But it did smell really nice and lavender happens to be one of my favorite floral scents. Other flowers like rose and peony all smell too sweet, almost annoyingly so. Plus they always remind me of little old ladies with big hats and crisp English accents.

Lavender, though, has that light freshness that’s just right.

It was quite an experience, strolling among the lavender plants and learning about how they are grown, harvested and pretty much distilled into a fragrance of flowery freshness.

Nice move by Fab to go with Lavender instead of the usual citrusy or overpowering floral scents in their new range of detergent. Incidentally, we had a truckload of clothes to wash when we got back and Kirsten saw the lavender on the detergent box and went “That’s lavender! Remember we smell the purple flower in Melbourne?”

Now every time we have a new batch of freshly-washed laundry, we’ll remember the magic of Warratina Farm in Melbourne.

Sea World turned out to be a whole lot of fun.

In fact, it was probably the most fun among all 3 parks. While there were some rides, it’s really less of a theme park and more of a zoo crossed with an aquarium.

There were the different enclosures, underwater viewing galleries, marine attractions and my personal favorite, the animal shows. I’m working on a video with some awesome dolphin show footage, hopefully that will be ready next week.

This trip, we discovered that Tru’s favorite marine animal is the shark and Kirsten’s favorite is the penguin. Looking at their personalities, I would have imagined it to be the other way around but there you go.

There was also a Dora show that Kirsten enjoyed immensely. I’ve never let her watch a single episode of Dora so I’m not sure where she picked it up from but apparently, she loves Dora. I thought this Dora seemed a little pudgy but the entire 20-minute show was basically about her going for a picnic so I can’t say that I was surprised. I guess all that chocolate has to go somewhere.

And the coolest part of Sea World has to be this play area. There’s this ride called Battle Boats, which is sort of like a boat ride but with a twist. All the boats are equipped with water jets that the passengers can use to shoot the people on land and those guys on land have their own water jets to shoot the guys on the boats – hence the name Battle Boats.

So that about wraps up all the theme parks for us. We decided to give Dreamworld a miss but I hear that’s pretty good too. Maybe we’ll try that the next round.

It’s day 4 in Gold Coast and we covered 2 theme parks – Movie World and Wet ‘n’ Wild Waterpark.

By now, we’ve acclimatized to the point that we’re able to run around in swimwear. To be fair, we had really nice sunny weather yesterday so we decided to hit the waterpark to check it out first. If it was too cold, we’d abort mission and head to Movie World instead.

Upon arriving and looking at the crowd in Wet ‘n’ Wild, I almost thought that it’s in the middle of summer. The place was packed with kids in their swimwear and it’s like these guys don’t feel cold at all.

There’s this super fun water play area that looks suspiciously similar to the one at Port of Lost Wonder at Sentosa.

And this insane water ride that the husband and my sister went on. They put you in a vertical chamber and the floor opens from under your feet so you plunge all the way down. And then it shoots you back up the side for a second drop.

I couldn’t ride anything but it was fun just sitting there looking at the faces of all the people who came out from the ride looking completely shellshocked.

Kirsten lasted 40 minutes in the icy cold water before she started shivering violently. Even then, she persisted  in playing some more until she finally gave up, shuffled to the husband and said she was c-c-c-cold.

So we wrapped her up in two towels and I held her under the sun to warm up a little.

We were done with the waterpark in less than 3 hours so we dried off and headed to Movie World, which was located just next door.

Movie World is an interesting mix of Warner Brothers characters, DC superheroes and even a Harry Potter shop. If I have to compare theme parks, I’s say it’s most like Universal Studios, but with a different bunch of characters.

The headliner rides are Batwing Spaceshot, Arkham Asylum as well as the Superman Escape and Green Lantern roller coasters – all of which are too intense for me even in my non-pregnant state.

The kids couldn’t go on most of the thrilling rides either so they spent their time with me at the kids area, which had all the tamer rides like the carousel, spinning cups and bumper cars.

This was the first thrilling ride Kirsten made the height limit for. It basically goes up and down vertically, but in a very slow and gentle manner. Just enough to feel a slight drop drop but really not scary at all.

Even though she looked terrified during the entire ride, when she got off, she was all “I’m so brave, I wasn’t scared you know!” But when we asked her if she wanted to go again, she thought for a moment and said “No need, because when I sit too many times, I will get a tummy ache.” Yeah, right.

The park was more crowded than I expected but there’s something about the cool weather that makes everyone more patient and friendly. I’m so not looking forward to the blazing heat back home.

Hello from Down Under!

I’m seriously loving the weather in Gold Coast. When we first arrived, all of us were wrapped up in 3 layers of clothes and still shivering while all the Aussies were strolling around in their t-shirts and shorts. It took us about a day to acclimatize and by the second day, we are equally badass. Ok, maybe not shorts but down to just one layer.

Given that I only had 2 hours to search for accommodation, it was quite a miracle that we got a really nice lodge at Ashmore Palms Holiday Village for like A$110 per night. The service was brilliant – they let us check in early at 9am and gave us a complimentary upgrade to a 2-bedroom unit.

It’s very kid-friendly, with 2 huge playgrounds, a pool and a whole bunch of kids activities like balloon sculpting and macaw meet and greets.

We usually drive when we’re in Australia but this time we thought we’d skip the car rental and try the public Surfside buses instead. That turned out to be a terrible idea. Each bus trip cost like $15 (for 3 adults) and it went round the suburbs so a trip that would usually take 15 minutes by car took about an hour by bus. Plus we had to walk almost 1km out to the nearest bus stop so by the time we arrived at the stop, the kids were already exhausted. Also, some stops didn’t have any shelter, which meant that we had to wait in the sun for 10-15 minutes.

After the arduous journey out, we decided to take a cab on the way back – which only cost us $20 and 15 minutes. Total facepalm. After that, we caved and rented a car for $30 a day.

When you’re in Gold Coast, one of the places you absolutely have to go to is Surfer’s Paradise.

We got there just in time to catch the golden light and OMG, the view was magnificent. The kids saw it from afar and started running towards the water, while we stood completely amazed by the view. I don’t know how else to describe it, except that it was like walking on a sheet of gold.

These pictures of the beach are almost straight out of camera, with minimal edits in Lightroom.

We’ll be at the theme parks the next couple of days. Be back with more updates!