13. May 2010 10:54
by Rene Pallesen
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Last night we went to the Sydney Opera House to see the ballet Coppelia with The Australian Ballet.
It may be the last time for a while that Kim and I get the chance to go and see a performance together for a while.

It was a great show and I can highly recommend it...the story is nicer and easier to follow than The Nutcracker. Coppelia herself doesn't dance much (she is a doll), the story line if mainly centered around the other characters in the story...no one dies (come on...it is not an opera). It is just a nice love story where the right people get eachother in the end.
Yesterday we went to Chris and Yvonnes wedding. The wedding itself was a traditional catholic wedding held in one of the churches in North Sydney.

Kim was having a bit of a cold so to save herself (and the baby) we
decided that I'd go to the wedding ceremony alone representing both of
us. Chris asked me if I'd video the ceremony using his new camera...I hope it turned out alright as I'm not all that familiar with taking video. I did manage to take a couple of photos (using my spare hand) during the ceremony.

Later in the evening the reception was held at Wolfies at Circular Quay at the Rocks in Sydney. After resting in the morning Kim was fortunately able to join me at the reception. It was a really nice evening and we got a change to meet some of their friends who'd flown in from the US.

During the evening the photographers did a slideshow with some of the highlights from the wedding.

Needless to say that I was pretty hung over the next morning. I didn't take a lot of photos, but above you see a couple of the ones I did take.
27. April 2010 11:17
by Rene Pallesen
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27. April 2010 07:32
by Rene Pallesen
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This long Anzac weekend we drove up to Hunter Valley with a couple of friends.
Meeting up there we planned what wineries we were going to. Sasha had a couple in mind which was perfect as they were some Kim and I had never been been to before.
The first place we stopped was Petersons...Joanne wanted to pick up some pink bubbly stuff (pink champagne). They have some wines there without preservatives which are really nice.
On the way from one of the other places we drove past a new place called Noonji...sounded japanese and it was a new one, so we had to have a look at what they were doing.
They had just opened up for tasting recently and as soon as we walked through the door we could tell that this husband and wife were doing things differently. We were welcomed and were told that this was table tasting, so we all sat down at the table.
This was really good since it enabled us to taste five different vintages simultaneously (In other places you taste one vintage at a time). The prices were reasonable and they had a pretty good discount if you bought a case, so Kim and I ended up buying two cases of wine from here.
After this we did some more sightseeing and tasting before we drove back to sydney.
On the way back we stopped at a petrol station and someone has this cool car parked there.
26. April 2010 10:05
by Rene Pallesen
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On the way back to Zagreb in Croatia we decided to visit Lubjiana the capital of Slovenia as we had to pass through here anyway.

The old city was pedistrians only and was very nice and very clean and with small canals running through it.
There cathedral there has these amazing bronze doors.
There were a number of water water fountains and I let Aiden have a splash to the point where he was all soaked, but fortunately is was really warm so he dried quickly.

The butchers bridge is a new bridge. People who are in love put padlocks on the sides of the bridge to symbolise their unbreakable love for eachother (I wonder if they keed the key just in case or whether they throw it the river).
The Bridge also have some really special art pieces.

It is a fairly old city, so I expected a lot of stairs and a lot of carrying Aiden up and down. I was surprised as there were ramps everywhere and I didn't have to carry him once. I think it is because a lot of people use bicycles (they have a free bicycle system similar to Copenhagen).

The Tivoli park area was a really nice and relaxing area with a cute little 'Mansion' in the centre.

One of the things that amazed me was that they had a fantastic outdoor location for a permanent exhibition of photographs and artwork from different artists. When we were there is was a Serbian artist exhibiting his works and there were some really good pieces there.
22. August 2011 11:52
by Rene Pallesen
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Second day we went to a place called Vintgar Gorge. We weren't quite sure where to find it apart from it being listed on a not very detailed map. We punched in the closest town on the GPS and hoping that we could 'wing' it from there.

When we arrived to the town we were unable to find any any signs towards the gorge, but we did find a fign with a drawing of a car pointing left and a man walking pointing right.
We were sitting in a car so we decided to follow the left sign. This took us down this gravel logging road for a couple of Kilometres (Kim saying 'This is scary') and eventually we came to an open area with a set of stairs leading up to a building.
There some people coming down the stairs and we asked them if we were in the right place...yes we were.
Once we got up the stairs I was worried that this was going to be horrible getting Aiden through...so we asked some hikers coming out of the gorge and they said that most of the was was pretty flat and we shouldn't have too many problems with a Pram. I went a few hundred meters ahead to have a quick look and confirmed that it didn't look too bad and that there indeed were a lot of waterfalls in the area.
While there I also did some photos to be used for HDR - High Dynamic Range:
The Gorge was really nice and cool in the morning and there was a fine mist forming over the waters surface. The waterfalls, the river, the gorge and walking track itself was really amazing. There were people there, but it wasn't crowded and despite the track being really narrow it was easy enough getting through.

We walked for a fair bit to make sure we have seen the main falls (someone coming from the other direction said that the falls were fairly small after the point where we turned back) and by this time the sun had started entering the gorge and it was getting really warm.
We therefore decided to drive to lake Bohinj to go for a swim (see previous posting).
22. August 2011 03:31
by Rene Pallesen
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