Tag Archives: shopping

London marathon

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Chris Gammill | 1 comment

DSCN6567

I don’t recommend a London crash course weekend! Yet, that is exactly what we did thanks to my poor planning. We flew from India to London for 3 nights/2 days before our final destination, Brazil. While we maximized our feet walking 26+ miles and seeing some wonderful history and culture, London deserves more respect and I hope that someday we may stay longer.

Double-decker Bus

Take a deep breath, put your power walking shoes on, and enjoy the snapshot. We essentially took 4 walking tours in 2 days:

During a typical London fashion rainstorm, we trooped through with our free guide (but not so free) who entertained us with royal history on Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and a canceled changing of the guard – when it rains…

The second tour was a night trawling for the grim reapers of London’s dark side. Sebastian & I saw criminal history including Jack the Ripper.

Our third was a self-guided walk of Kensington Palace & Gardens where the most talked about royals, Prince William & Kate, reside. This included a lovely fashion exhibit showing the royal styles over the years including many Lady Diana dresses.

Nice hips!

Kensington Garden

Fashion Rocks

Finally, London would not be complete without a Tower tour. The fortress that guards the Crown Jewels and has kept many a DSCN6555 criminal jailed as well as queens and consorts that fell out of favor. The Nepalese Gurkha guards happened to be on duty which reminded us of our times in India and the shakes of Nepal’s earthquake only weeks earlier. We walked across London Bridge to Borough Market for a fantastic lunch on whatever your heart desires. Louisa and I shared a meat pie from The Pie Minister while Sebastian and Leti chowed down on pulled pork and dogs.

Nepalese Gurkha

London Tower Ladies

Borough Market

For our big night out, we went to the Royal Drury Lane Theater for Charlie & Chocolate Factory. Despite our nosebleed seats from above, the show was fun and entertaining for the whole family. And if that’s not enough, we did our best to eat like kings. We dined on burgers and beer at famous Patty & Bun – something we all craved. Leti ate her favorite meal – chicken livers while I enjoyed a classic fish & chips at the Royal Automobile Club where we stayed. The girls had a chance to spend an afternoon shopping and English tea at 5 star Brown’s Hotel while the boys climbed Monument that is like a lighthouse in the center of the city with great views!

As you can imagine, we departed London in exhaustion and ready for some Rio beach time!

English Tea @ Brown’s Hotel

Love the dress!

Royal Automobile Club

The Red Box

Horse Guard

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Posted in London, Places

Tagged food, history, London, shopping, tea, theater, tour, walking

Singapore is a fine city!

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Leticia | 2 comments

After the 3 weeks we spent in Indonesia we flew on AirAsia to Singapore. Already at the airport you start to get the feel for how organized and clean everything is. We headed to the Holiday Inn Atrium for a (almost) free stay thanks to our hotel points. Kids were all excited to be in a nice and comfortable hotel and they had their own room down the hall from us. A bit of independence and separation after 4 months of travels is certainly positive. We unpacked and relaxed, while everyone got connected to the super fast wifi and then headed to dinner at a nearby food court with plenty of food stalls to choose from.

To my fellow Brazilians who love shopping malls, Singapore must be a dream destination. I have never seen so many malls in my life. It is one next to another with plenty of shopping and amazing food to please any taste. I also thought I had visited some foodie places already (i.e Melbourne) but Singapore is right up there with a diversity of restaurants to please anyone from anywhere.

We spent a day around Marina Bay, which has incredible views of the city. The Marina Bay Sands is quite remarkable and we all loved the Gardens by the Bay. Also had some delicious dim sum nearby and visited the very interesting Da Vinci: Shaping the Future exhibit at the ArtScience Museum.

The following day we had lunch at The Tanglin Club, which is the sister club to the Olympic Club in San Francisco. From there were walked to the Singapore Botanic Gardens (separate blog post to follow) and all the way to the famous Orchard Road (more malls!) and watched some street performers and the city lights. Did I mention how amazingly organized and clean Singapore is? Quite impressive to see. It is indeed a fine city – you get fined if you litter or smoke in public, or even if you do not flush public toilets after using it.

Our stay in Singapore felt short, we could have easily stayed for an entire week as we were quite impressed by the city, the food, the sites and the diversity of cultures. Unfortunately it is also an expensive city but we found that the food and transportation (mainly taxis) were very reasonable for us, budget travelers. Most definitely a place to visit again in the future.

Gardens by the Bay

Marina Bay Sands

Marina Bay

Chinatown

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Posted in Places, Singapore

Tagged food, shopping, Singapore

Bossa Noosa LIVE!

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Chris Gammill | Leave a comment

The tunes of BossaNoosa (we reserve right to copyright this!) played and this is an absolutely totally awesome place in the world! My dad, who claims NorCal as God’s country, may even agree that Noosa matches up. Ok, so there is no Golden Gate Bridge to San Francisco but there is a fantastic beach with great ocean water for swim and surf. The hills roll and it feels like a mellow California beach town. There are some great hikes on your doorstep that take you into a koala preservation park as well as along the cliffs and beaches of the coast. Then, for a bit of shopping/dining, just over the hill is Noosa Heads, a small time South Beach (without the trash and chaos). Can you hear the bossa beat playing now?

We spent one afternoon hiking trails and beach head; Leti and the kids spotted a nice snake in the trees but no koalas! We lunched at a local spot in Noosa Heads and ate some scrumptious sandwiches with acai smoothie. One night we hit our grill for some steaks while Sebastian mastered his bellyflop in the pool – see the pain below. We were so content in our BossaNoosa life that we could easily stay there a long while and it gives pause to reconsider that there may be more than one God’s country or at least more Gods. Thank you Noosa!