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Last weekend (I seem to have a habit of being one week behind in my sharing, don't I?!?!), Gus and I went away for a final getaway (or Babymoon as some like to call it) before the baby arrives.
Warning: Another photo heavy post. Click on the photos to enlarge as usual, but especially with the panoramas this time. ;)
We stayed here from Thursday to Sunday:
Peppers is a relatively top end luxury hotel/resort chain that we've stayed at previously and have loved each stay - this time was no different. Port Stephens is a lovely bay area about 2.5hrs out of Sydney, famous for lovely beaches, dolphins in the bay, and lovely seafood eateries.
This is a 360 degree panorama of the resort that my talent hubby took and stitched together:
There were three "houses" where the rooms were. We stayed in Dalton House. Ours is the second room from the left on the ground floor:
Inside the room. Nice huh?!?
Our first night and we were treated to an awesome rainbow right outside the window:
Practically every day (except the last one as it was pouring rain!), we were also treated to gorgeous sunsets:
The sunrises were awesome too, although we only managed to wake up and catch the tail end of them, and it was far too early in the morning to try and work a camera for a good photo. LOL
As I hinted on last week's Thankful Thursday, I was going to get pampered, and I did! I had booked in for a one hour massage on the Friday morning. Whilst it was a little strange having a massage half reclining and only restricted to my limbs and shoulders rather than a full body massage, I do have to admit that it was absolute bliss. I completely felt like jelly afterwards and very much refreshed. It was awesome!! LOL :D
Having thus been reduced to a mass of wobbly jelly, the rest of the activities that day - which included having lunch at Soldiers Point and then a brief walk at Tilligerry Nature Reserve - all passed in a bit of a blur. LOL
However, the next day, after refuelling with a lovely buffet breakfast, we went for a walk around Corlette Head, of which Peppers Anchorage is cosily nestled behind:
The clouds were doing lovely things:
We even managed to see some dolphins, although much to our disgust and frustration, they decided not to resurface again by the time we fumbled around and put on the telephoto lens to try and get a better photo. Typical wildlife!
Since the dolphins weren't playing nice, we headed off to Nelson Bay for lunch where the pelicans and seagulls were being a bit more cooperative:
The Nelson Head Lighthouse was our next stop. It was disappointing though as it was no longer a lighthouse, but had been converted into a Marine Rescue Headquarters:
We then headed to Gan Gan Lookout where Gus took another 360 degree panorama:
And I had to get this photo of him in the act of taking the panorama. LOL
Our final stop for the afternoon was Stockton Beach. You can drive on the beach and the sand dunes if you have a capable 4WD. What amused me greatly was seeing the camel rides! I was disappointed that I couldn't ride one - maybe AFTER bubby is born! LOL
We didn't spend much time at Stockton beach because it was very windy and cold, and besides, we had to get back to the hotel for High Tea:
Here I will admit that, being the gluttonous pigs foodies that we are, we finished EVERY CRUMB of that afternoon tea, AND managed to have dinner four hours later. Needless to say both of us had a very restless night. LOL
All in all, it was a very lovely and relaxing weekend (despite actually getting out and doing more sightseeing than resting in the resort!). I thoroughly enjoyed it and it certainly helped to ease some of the stress I've been feeling in the past month or so. I know it's only going to get worse from here on, but at least I have this lovely weekend to look back on.
Finally, I'll finish off with some obligatory food photos. We ate so much over the weekend and every meal except breakfast contained some kind of seafood. Living in the Mountains now, we don't get as much fresh seafood as we used to when we were living in Sydney, so this weekend we were definitely making the most of it! LOL (Unfortunately we only had these two presentable photos of all the food we ate. The other photos were taken with our mobiles and they turned out pretty shocking! Oh, and sorry if you don't like seafood, we love it!)
Thanks for persevering to the end of this post! Hope you found my trip interesting. :D
*hugs*
Right now... I'm at home instead of being at work, feeling awfully sick. I'm frustrated because I thought things were going so well for a while, but now I feel as though I'm back at square one. :(
At least Gus has been able to stay home with me today. His presence is comforting, even if he is in another room.
Falcon was on the sofa, but not anymore as he's gone to sleep in the crate. :)
Pepper is in her usual spot, right in front of the heater.
As usual, click on the images to view a larger image. All photos were converted to black and white using Alien Skin Exposure 2 plugin for Photoshop CS4.
*hugs*
Did you join me during Earth Hour on Saturday night? What did you get up to? As I mentioned previously, I was going to challenge myself to take pictures during that hour.
Low light photography is pretty difficult in any circumstance, let alone for an amateur photographer with no experience! But armed with a tripod and hubby's technical knowledge, I think I did pretty well.
All the photos I'm sharing with you today are SOC (Straight Out of the Camera), no post processing whatsoever except to add the watermark. The photos are a bit grainy, but that's because I used the maximum ISO setting in order to deal with the lack of lighting. The first two photos were taken by hubby and the other three were taken by me. Click on each photo to get a larger view (and they look much better than the preview that Blogger has inserted here in this post!).
This is our {fake} fireplace, roaring along nicely. Thankfully it was cold enough to have the heater on as it provided us with a bit more light.
The other light sources came from three tealights - two on the mantlepiece and one at the rear of the room. This was the tealight at the rear of the room. I wish I could remember where I got the gorgeous tealight holder from as I seem to only have one. :(
This was one of the tealights on the mantlepiece.
The next two photos are my favourites. I was experimenting with photographing the tealight and the Willowtree figurine in the background. Both times I managed to catch a flare of the tealight that looked like a heart, and so perfectly placed too!
So what do you think? Do you like my photos? It was certainly a great way to pass the hour. Wonder what I can do next year? :D
Oh, and yes, I do remember I said I'd scrap these photos too, but I'm waiting for some inspiration to hit. *grimace* Stay tuned!
*hugs*
I signed up for my first formal Shimelle course last month - Love Your Pictures Love Your Pages and it started today.
Well, it technically started yesterday (5 July 2010), but with all the time differences (Aus, UK, US), I didn't start until late last night and not really properly until today! Considering it was close to midnight last night by the time I saw the challenges, I wasn't going to stay up any longer to post them here!
Anyway, Shimelle had posted two challenges to do before the official prompts. Challenge 1 was to find a photo that makes me smile. This was hard because there are a lot of photos that make me smile! But here is one of my favourites:
Wherever we go, if there's a ball to be found, Falcon will find it - even if the ball is almost bigger than him. And yes, he will want to play fetch with it. LOL
Challenge 2 was to take a picture within the next five minutes (of having read the challenge). So I took this one of Falcon sleeping in MY chair!! Incidentally, we had ordered two new leather recliners and they arrived last Friday. Since then the dogs have spent more time in the recliners than I have. LOL
I really love this photo. Without trying, it turned out perfect with the leading lines, the thirds and the nice depth of field towards the back. The lighting was just right too as I bounced the flash off the ceiling, but left enough shadow to make it look quite moody. Maybe I'll even turn it into B&W and see how it turns out? We'll see.
Stay tuned for more Shimelle and Photography goodness (I'm already two prompts behind!!! *rolleyes*)! :D
*hugs*
