A Day at Yarra Valley

From the Melbourne Airport, we got a car from Hertz and drove straight to the Yarra Valley where we were going to spend the night. We made sure we had a Hertz Neverlost, which is just a nice name for a GPS. It's essential specially for people like us, who drive on the "other side of the road"!

Drove straight to Healesville so we could have lunch at The Innocent Bystander. We had heard so much about this place and wanted to try it. We were driving and didn't know our way around yet, so decided not to do any wine tasting yet. We were more hungry...

The Four-Cheese pizza was delicious with a very thin crisp crust. It was a bit salty for me but what wonderful flavors. We also had something like a hummus dip which came with fresh country bread and full-flavored olive oil for dipping.

The place had free wifi, and the password is "buyourwine". The ambience reminded me of NY. Funky cafe. 

And the first of many delicious lattes I was  going to enjoy here in Australia. These people take their coffee very seriously. No weak brews here, all espresso-based coffees. 

Those are canelles in the background. They had a promo--a coffee and a canelle for $6 (less $1 for buying it together), and the canelle would be free if you weren't thrilled by it. Well, I really wasn't thrilled by it, but my canelle reference is directly from Paris, straight from a canelle cart called Le canele Baillardran. I remember it fondly being hot, very crisp on the outside, and soft and almost empty on the inside. I was blown away when I first tried this five years ago that I googled what a canelle was then.  I was now pleasantly surprised to see it in Melbourne, as a regular pastry in many of the coffee shops.  Altho it was less than spectacular here, I decided to be nice and not say anything about not being totally thrilled. I still enjoyed coffee and canelle very much.

Patterned Floors

Paoay Church in Ilocos

I've always been attracted to cement tiles/encaustic tiles. I came across a website that explained everything about encaustic tiles--it's history, and even how to care for them. It's an American site. It also listed the suppliers who still make these tiles all over the world. Unfortunately at the time I discovered the website, there was nothing listed for the Philippines. I quickly fixed that by emailing them!

The Laguna house where my father-in-law grew up has cement tiles in all the rooms, in different patterns. His ancestral home was turned into a library for kids.

Quan An Ngon in Hanoi

Only when I started being more observant of floors did I start noticing how ordinary these tiles were in places such as Vietnam, where even the streetmarket stalls had them. Maybe they were once the cheapest tiles? They are definitely not the cheapest tiles in Manila, where a lot of people refer to them as "Machuca tiles". Machuca is actually a name of a person, a Spanish dude who started making if here at the turn of the century. Today, many old tiles are "harvested" off old homes and resold to collectors and people who restore homes. The thing is, there is no reason to buy the worn out ones when Machuca still makes tiles in Manila the way they did for many decades. Many homeowners and commercial establishments still use them.

Most of the Machuca patterns are multi-colored. They hardly have any which are just one color like the one above, although you can customize and specify what you want, after all, a one color tile is much simpler to make than the many-colored tiles The only other manufacturer in Manila I'm aware of is Malaga tiles or Habitiles.

A restaurant in Saigon

After growing up with the Machuca patterns, it was refreshing to see the selection of Malaga Tiles. Malaga Tiles/Habitiles has many one-colored patterns and reproduce older-looking ones. It's owned by  Edwin Espiritu who is extremely accommodating. I had a clear idea of the effect I wanted, but I didn't know how to achieve it.  Finally after a number of meetings in his shop, he decided  he would make a pattern one just for me (copying a pattern from Architectural Digest). We changed the colors to the colors I wanted for my kitchen, and voila! I love my kitchen!

My kitchen during construction days..

For my  foyer, I just chose something from what he had because I wanted black and white only. I love the look--it has so much character.

The rest of the house has wooden floors. It's a very nice contrast.

Out of Africa?

Flying above Kruger National Park in Africa--everything looked quite "manicured". I think I was expecting a jungle.

We stayed at King's Camp in the Timbavati Reserve, right outside of Kruger. They had about 12 cottages, and they were quite luxurious. I loved the crystal and silver details in the room.I always take photos of interior details observing how designers solve "termination" problems. Lots of times I copy things I see years later and I usually refer to these pictures. Why reinvent the wheel?

This was the sitting room in our cottage. English style furniture. I lay on the couch and had a sherry which was in a crystal decanter on the coffee table. I don't even drink sherry, but I had to feel the part.

The whole room smelled very "natural", like raw grass.  The roofs of the all cottages are thatched grass. Nice effect. Very comfortable bed, definitely didn't want to leave it at the crack of dawn to look for animals.

Days started very early, but there was lots of free time in between drives--just to hang out, swim or read a book.

The safari--or the journey. Which was driving around until we spotted the "Big 5". Sometimes we drove for hours not seeing anything. We would stop in the middle for coffee/tea in the middle of the morning drive. In the afternoon drive, we would stop for "sundowners", which would consist of a cocktail and hot canapes. Very chi-chi touches. But I wasn't impressed with driving around for hours to spy wild animals that were living in their habitat. It all seemed staged to me. I was told that I would really feel the wilderness in the Okavonga Delta and not here in the reserves.

I don't think I'm an animal sort of person because I enjoyed the luxe part of the trip more than the animals. (I have more photos of the camp than of the animals!) But Africa still is alluring--I still love Out of Africa, for many things: the period setting, romantic angle, beautiful soundtrack, captivating cinematography, and of course, Robert Redford.

In the Heart of Rome

What a wonderfully-located apartment we had in Rome. 

I found it as Residenza Lucina online but it is also called Teichner Suites. It is located in the "Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucina", a little piazza right around the corner from the Spanish Steps--or basically a 5 minute walk.  Our suite (couldn't really be called an apartment because it had no kitchen!) was right above the Bar Teichner and I think the three suites above are owned by the same family that owns the Bar Teichner. 

Bar Teichner shares a building with the Carabinieri office--but I hardly saw the carabinieris. Tsk tsk, too bad. In the piazza also is the Basilica di San Lorenzo, where we heard mass.

There are two other bars in the piazza and were told the one across the street had the best gelato in Rome. Unfortunately, we weren't able to try it because we were so busy walking away from the piazza to try things far away.

This location was perfect for the kids. In the mornings, the hubby and I could come down from the suite at our leisure and while waiting for each other, the kids could play around the piazza. We didn't need to worry about cars or that they would get lost because they would always be within sight.

This is the view outside our first floor window. Our place had free wifi, and the cafe below also had free wifi.  My cousin Bea, who was  also in Rome the same week we were, actually wandered into the piazza and sat down at this cafe and caught up with all her email. The apartment she rented had no internet connection. She did this without knowing that we were staying in a suite upstairs (this window is actually right above the Bottega Veneta store!)

The suite is not plush but it was very spacious for the four of us. The kids slept down in the living room--one on a rollaway bed, and the other on the sofa. We had a very comfortable queen bed up a few steps.

The bathroom was spacious and new too!. The tiles on the floor were glazed tho--they should have used matte tiles with a rougher texture. I think it would be safer. But it was nice and bright.

Oops, this is our unmade bed. They had maid service and our beds were made and towels changed everyday.

This is the view  of the Piazza San Lorenzo from the Spanish Steps side. The umbrella on the far left is Bar Teichner. If you walked through the square and and out the far end, that road would lead you to the Pantheon and the famous ice cream stores: Giolitti, De la Parma and San Crispino.

note: The Teichner Suite site doesn't seem to link to a correct email address.

Moving In...and Feng Shui

Someone told me that January 29 was a good day to move, according to the Feng Shui calendar. We're not Chinese, but I thought that it wouldn't hurt to target that day--since we needed a deadline anyway! Then someone told me that the best time to move was between 6 to 9 am. What?!?! How do I move into a house in 3 hours? Even if I started at 6 am (which the village association is NOT going to allow anyway) I will be moving things starting at the lucky hour, and then overlap into the unlucky hour, and probably end the move during a bad day!  This was all too confusing.

I was pacified when my cousin told me that it was just a "symbolic move", or just the start of the move, and the symbolic thing was to bring into the new house: a container of rice, salt, sugar and water, plus a religious symbol. I don't know if she just lumped  a whole bunch of Chinese/Filipino/Spanish beliefs together, but that's what I did.

The kids had to be in school at 7:15 am, so we left our old place at 6:30, dropped our  "moving symbols" in the new house, looked around a bit and then we were off to school. We definitely made our symbolic move within the luckiest hours of the luckiest day of the month. I was belatedly told that I should've included a container of coins too.

Soon this dusty, empty (there was still minor work going on in different parts of the house) house was going to be full of boxes and junk that I didn't have the time and energy to sort out before moving.

Now these "moving symbols" are all sitting on top of the upper cabinet, and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use them or if I'm supposed to keep them there forever. Maybe it should've been the first thing I consumed during my first days here? Who knows? Good thing were not Chinese, or Spanish, and we really don't believe in these things anyway.

Knowing an "auspicious date" got us to make that move, and that was the whole point anyway.

Roman Holiday with Kids

It was fun having the kids in Rome. We were able to find a brilliantly located and  spacious apartment for the four of us (wifi and CNN included!) for the 5 nights we were there.

Before the trip, which also brought us to London and Amsterdam, we made sure the kids read Vacation under the Volcano and also the Ancient Rome Research Guide of the Magic Tree House series. Of course  Roman Holiday was  our feature presentation during one of our Friday movie nights at home. Required watching before this trip also included My Fair Lady. I also got them a simple version of Anne Frank's Diary for the Amsterdam part.

 
I had to condition myself that this was going to be a "kid trip" meaning no late-night dining and no leisurely shopping.

 

 But I found that in Rome, so many things interest small kids. Just playing in the piazza with a balloon kept them entertained while we sat for coffee.

They had a great time trying out all the gelatos we passed, making special stops in Giolitti, dela Parma and San Crispino. For them gelato was gelato and they were just thrilled that they got to eat so much ice cream in one day. Food was easy with the 6-year-old preferring cream sauce or olive oil pastas, and the 8-year-old preferring red sauces. 

We had lots of pizzas too. The nice thin-crusted ones hot and crisp from the oven.

I read somewhere that water that comes from fountains in Rome is potable. I didn't remember this until I saw tourists filling water bottles from the fountain in front of the Spanish Steps, as well as drinking from the many hydrant-looking fountains around town. The kids were thrilled to follow them.

And of course since the kids loved this part of Roman Holiday, we had to visit La Boca dela Verita, something I never visited in any of my previous trips to Rome. We had to fall in line and when we got to the front, the guy controlling the front would take only a couple of shots. It made the line move fast and it was obviously only for photo ops. No time to do a little skit about asking a question and seeing if one is telling the truth--which the kids were expecting.

Too bad, but we got a nice shot of the family anyway.

The Colosseum was very interesting for them because they knew a lot about it already from their books, and because B brought things to life for them as he described how gladiators and animals were made to fight during those times.

Actually children are really easy to please and can entertain themselves with the simplest things. They're lucky to have grandparents who like to bring them along on their trips!

Moving Out!

We did it--we moved last January 29! I mean we started moving on January 29 and were in the new house on Feb. 1, a day before my birthday. I didn't know the act of moving was going to be so traumatic! I was freaking out when the movers were packing up MY things--and treating them like, well..THINGS!

I felt enormous sadness thinking-- this was our first home after getting married, this is where the kids were born, this is where they were babies, etc etc. Whaaaaaa!  I stayed in my room and cried for awhile.   I'll NEVER move again after this! I'm going to die in this "new" house.

It was hard the first two days, but as soon as the house didn't look like my place anymore, it was easy to just go with the flow and mechanically pack like everyone else was doing. I looked out one last time to the my view for the last 9 years..

Whenever there would be a "rally of 30,000 people", all I had to do was take a peek out my window and it would always only be a couple of thousand people, all "hakot", laughing, eating, taking pictures of each other!

It was also easy for me to assess the traffic situation and plan an alternate route before I left the building. One of the big advantages of living in a condo--NO mosquitos! I guess they can't fly that high. 

I Found It!

I saw this pull at a restaurant in Macau two years ago and knew it was exactly what I wanted for my sliding kitchen doors. I stood up from the dinner table just to take a picture of it. Over the next months, I searched high and low, scouring even the internet for something similar. 

Of course I  visited many  hardware stores in Manila, but everything here is very sleek and modern (and either chrome of stainless). I really had my heart set on that ornate thing I saw in Macau.

This is a selection they had in Belmont Hardware in Palo Alto.

Then on a recent stopover trip to HK, I saw a similar pull in one of the hardware stores in Lockhart Road, HK. I wasn't sure because it looked to small for the doors. I didn't buy it. But I kept thinking of it! 

On my second trip back to HK a month later , I just went ahead and bought the pulls because I couldn't find anything else I liked. It was also the closest I got to the image I had in my mind.

Lo and behold, looking back at my iPhoto files, it's the EXACT same pull! Of course! Macau is next to HK--why would a restaurant look farther than that! (unless they are as OC as me?). I don't even know why I thought it was too small for my doors? 

I should just trust my instincts and stop second guessing myself.