Over and out from blogspot

I've recently registered a new domain name for the Chambers' adventures. The new site can be found at www.ckjchambers.com and will be used as our blog from now on.

Please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to the new site.

Cheers,
Chris

Photos from Hawaii

We spent 6 nights in Hawaii, which was the last leg of our 6 week long holiday in the USA. Hawaii is a great stop on the way from the USA to AUS, breaking up the 14 hour flight home. In a story which will be shared later, our attempt to circumvent the high baggage fees US airlines charge we upgraded to Business Class for the flight from Montrose (Telluride) to Hawaii.... the plan was foiled, but the upgrade was nice.

Kylie's Mum and Dad joined us in Hawaii. We hope they had a great time, it was nice to have them join us.

Highlights of Hawaii ?

* The drive around the island
* Taking a submarine ride off Waikiki, to the depth of 100 feet
* Visiting shops like WalMart and seeing fireworks on sale
* Yummy food & Honolulu Coffee Company coffee
* Jackson playing on the beach

Here's a slideshow of pictures, which includes captions & info


http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157613162841901/show/with/3242458614/

Watch the slideshow here is you don't care for the captions

Photos from our Disney Cruise

Our 100th post! *yawn*

This weekend I've worked my way through another big chunk of the 2,600 or whatever photos we took and have now picked out my favs from the Disney Cruise.

Click this link to see a nice big slideshow (you know you want too!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612939854559/show/

Watch the piccies here:



Some of my favs from this lot:
Photographic evidence of Jackson having a doughnut for breakfast
The shots of Kylie and I's toes with the Caribbean waters in the background
The price of water vs beer in the Caribbean

Photos from Kennedy Space Centre

Allo, allo! Happy Australia Day long weekend!

This morning I sorted through the photos from our time in Port Canaveral and at the Kennedy Space Centre. I've put them into a slideshow:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612900843609/show/

Or you can view them here, but it's better in the bigger slide show you will see by clicking the link above



The receipt looks wierd as a photo, but it was from the restaurant we went too and they had some great items on the meal. Spicy Taters, which is fried balls of mash potato with Jalapenos through it and Fried Beer Shrimp (speaks for itself!)

The Kennedy Space Ctr is an amazing place, where the native fauna thrives under protection of a "National Park" type set up. We saw many 'gators, some massive Eagles and vultures. The tour was great as you tripped around on bus to several stops and took in stories of the USA's magnificent defeat of outer space (that's how the story was told in places I thought) and of some of the tragedies of the space race. A great facility and way to spend a day!

enjoy

ps - yes, I've skipped over New York, photos to come soon enough....

A day out at the Brisbane International

Yesterday Mum and I went to the Brisbane International Tennis tournament at the newly opened Queensland Tennis Centre. It was the first time I had been to a live tennis match since mum and dad took us to Melbourne for the Australian Open ages ago and we saw Steffi Graf play. Bob Hawke was in the crowd that day, apparently listening to the horse races on his handheld transistor (could you see Kevin07 doing that?)

We had a great day yesterday, getting there early and being in line so that we could see the first match.

The stadium and grounds themselves are easy enough to get too. Dad dropped us off, but we had free train travel included with our tickets and caught the train after the tennis from the Yerongpilly station. That was one piece of confusion for us - how to get to and from the stadium. Everything we read said to go to Corinda and get a shuttle bus, but the Yerongpilly station is only a 10 minute walk over pretty flat ground. I'd recommend going to Yerongpilly and walking.

The main arena - the Pat Rafter arena - is very impressive. It seats 5,500 and is an intimate arena with everyone pretty close to the action. Our seats were row BB - very close - but right behind the umpires chair. We got to see the players up close as they came for a rest at the change of ends, etc. I'd suggest trying to get any seats which you access from doors 6 or 7 for a really good view, these are opposite the umpire / players, but will be unobstructed by the umpires chair / tv camera which were stationed by the umpire.

There were three matches to play during the day session and we got to see two of the matches. The stand out highlight was the women's singles match which was first up, with Amelia Mauresmo playing Julie Coin (Prononced Kwon). That match ended up being an epic 3 hour plus match, which went the full distance of three sets and a tiebreaking third set. Coin could have won the match a couple of times, but in the end Mauresmo won out. It was a very entertaining match - both ladies would have been completely worn out by the end of it, but they put on a great match.

Today Amelie Mauresmo plays Ana Ivanovic which should be a great match.

The food situation was a little grim, with limited choice. This could be something that is worked on I think. I'd suggest some strawberries and cream, a la Wimbeldon or another signature Queensland fruit / cream dish ;)

All in all a great day out and I can highly recommend a visit to the Queensland Tennis Centre to watch a match. I'll be gong back next year.

More info from:

Queensland's definitive holiday web site: http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au/events/brisbane-international-austalian-open-series

or

The official Brisbane International web site http://www.brisbaneinternational.com.au

piccies

Photos from our day at Yosemite National Park

For some reason, in spite of me knowing full well Yogi was from JellyStone National Park, whenever I think of Yosemite National Park, I think of that great Yogi Bear line "Smarter than the average bear booboo...."

I can't explain how beautiful the Yosemite National Park is. This pictures do go part the way to showing you and I'm glad we did get a couple of great shots to share.

The tour to the Yosemite NP was a long day, we were up and getting ready at about 5am and we didnt get home until about 15 hours later. But, it was worth it.

We saw waterfalls - BIG waterfalls, beautiful granite cliff faces, dense forest, hiked to huge sequioa trees, stopped at magnificent look outs and had a lovely pickernick lunch by a creek.

A top day - worth the 6 hours travel on a bud for sure!

Click this link for the big slideshow with the cqptions and descriptions:


http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612236645596/show/

Watch this for no captions / descriptions

A few photos from San Francisco

So, I've got onto a bit of a roll with the uploading and organising of our photos and managed to get our photos from in the city of San Francisco sorted. We didn't take many in town. We were there three nights, which was two full days and one day we went to the Napa Valley and the next we went to Yosemite. So, we didn't spend much time in town itself. Anyways, we got a few good shots in!

Same deal as the other set. Click the first link to go through to a slideshow (recommended), or if you're lazy (or not really that interested in captions and the like) watch the slideshow below.

:)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ckjchambers/sets/72157612182587203/show/




Chris