Some good American fun

First off - let me just say it.  I left my iPad in my seat pocket on an airplane.  I called the airport's lost and found section, and it isn't there.  I've emailed the airline and have my fingers crossed.  I am mad at myself, obviously.

Anyway.. before that tragic incident, I had a great time over the past few days!

Thursday night, a group of girlfriends and I had tickets to see Dirty Dancing at Marina Bay Sands!  This is one of my all time favorite movies, and I love to see plays and shows, so I was super pumped.

This was the only photo I was allowed to snap!

Pre-dinner dim sum

To be honest - it was not the time of my life.  The show was staged pretty terribly, and all the actors sounded explicitly like Eastern Europeans trying to do an American accent.  It was pretty dreadful.  The dancing was really good though, so that was fun to watch!

Friday, I flew over to Manila to celebrate another friend's 30th birthday!  Cebu Pacific was a pretty fun airline to fly.  They had games in-flight, they gave Brian a prize because it was his birthday, and I am also the proud owner of a deck of Cebu Pacific playing cards now!

But they still cannot spell.

We landed at sunset.. beautiful!

Once we all got checked into our hotels, we headed out for dinner.  We were staying in the Makati area, and our hotel was just across from a gigantic mall called Greenbelt.  It had tons and tons of shops, restaurants, and bars to choose from.  We settled on a Filipino BBQ restaurant.

Look - you can get a liter of gin and juice!

A few of us shared a bunch of stuff - tuna, chicken, pork belly, and shrimp.  The food was really good!  Then the servers all came out (with a tambourine!) to serenade Brian.  

The free dessert that you can barely see is purple ice cream.  We were all a bit puzzled and took turns trying to guess what flavor it was.  Apparently, it was taro root skin flavored.  Shockingly, nobody guessed that.

We spent the rest of the night dancing to a great band in a bar that we randomly came across but ended up loving!  The hospitality and service was great :)  And it was really affordable!  The Philippines is SO much cheaper than Singapore.

Saturday, the birthday boy said that he wanted to go to Chili's for lunch haha.  Half of the group we were with was British, and most of them had never heard of Chili's before.  (Apparently, they aren't in the UK at all?)  After a lot of southwestern eggrolls, chips and queso, and reliable Tex Mex, I think the Brits were sufficiently impressed, and we were all stuffed.  We ended up hanging around on the patio playing card games (thanks Cebu Pacific!) for the rest of the afternoon.  I'm talking five hours!!!

We went to Manila, and all we saw was Chili's

After our long lunch, I made a stop at Pinkberry (we don't even have that in Singapore!) before heading back to the hotel for a quick rest.  Dinner was a fast casual Mexican place before heading out on the town for the night!!

Good times with good friends!!  It would have been even better if I had not left my iPad on the plane!!!

Things I Am Missing Lately

Not too long ago, I shared some things that I have been loving lately.  Now let's talk about things I am missing lately.

Space - I miss space.  Personal space, closet space, space in the office, space in restaurants, space in elevators.

Exercise - I've been pretty busy lately, so I have slacked off on both yoga and running for a while now. It is wreaking havoc on me. I need to get back on the wagon! Hopefully, I get a small lull after this weekend, so I should be able to start getting back to it!

Game of Thrones - So the Red Wedding finally aired in the US.  I'm in the middle of book four right now, but I haven't made much progress since I went to South Africa.  I want to make sure that I stay well ahead of the television show, so I'm wanting to get some reading done on the way to and from Manila!

Summer foods - Since it is basically the same season all year round, I pretty much have the same foods all year. I was hoping that food would get cheaper as it comes in season, but apparently that concept doesn't exist here. Blueberries are still way too much money. Besides those, I'm missing summer tomatos, grilled corn on the cob, summer squash, and cookouts.  Sigh.

Checking in

Hi friends - sorry for the lack of posts, but it has been a crazy week.  I'm heading off to Manila on Friday, and I have barely recovered from having friends in town last weekend!  Life has been busy, but in a good way, so I don't mind :)

I don't have time for a full post today, but I just wanted to pop in and say hello and share a few pictures. Below you'll find my fancy ride to a fancy lunch, the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel, sunset OECD the infinity pool at Marina Bay Sands, and Gardens by the Bay at night. Hope you all are having a great week!

Weekend at the Cape

Hi friends - I am exhausted.  This week I have suffered from massive jet lag!  I am usually pretty good about getting back into the swing of things, even after a very long trip, but for some reason, this week I have been SO incredibly tired and unable to sleep at night!  It must be my old age.. you know, now that I am 30 and all..

Anyway, I want to tell you all about my trip to Capetown!  It was so so so much fun.  Capetown is a really great city.  I had really high expectations (my friend Stephanie, who has basically been everywhere, lists Capetown in her top five cities in the entire world), and I was not disappointed!!

We flew over on Friday morning, and the weather was sunny and gorgeous.  Capetown is really unique in that it has gorgeous waterfront scenery and mountains all right next to each other.  Makes for some great views and lots to do!  We grabbed some lunch on the V&A Waterfront and walked around the shops and enjoyed the mild weather and the beautiful area.

Look at that gorgeous sky

Lots to do at the V&A Waterfront!

Cape Union Mart - kind of like REI.  The Rand is so low against the dollar that we ended up coming back here again and again :)

Lunchtime!

Oysters!

I love love love to see boats

As it got close to sunset, we went up to this mini London Eye/Singapore Flyer.  It was only 80 ZAR, which is about 8 USD, so we figured we might as well!

Sunset in Capetown

Great view of Table Mountain and the wharf below

The other side of the view

Shortly after our 12 minute ride, it was dark.

We spent the rest of our evening at a local brewery pub just hanging out and playing cards.

We called it a fairly early night because we had a big day ahead of us!  Saturday morning we hiked up Table Mountain!  This was definitely the highlight of the trip for me.  I love to hike, and this was an absolutely great hike.  Nice climb, great guide, fun people, perfect weather.

Water and snacks packed!  We are ready!

View from the bottom.. check out that blue sky!

Our guide was an Italian named Pietro who had lived in South Africa for years, and we had a German couple hiking with us too - we were a pretty international group!  We went up the back side of the mountain, on a trail called the Skeleton Gorge.  The hike started in a botanic garden.. beautiful paved walkways and flora and fauna on a gradually upward sloping hill.  But pretty soon, the gradual slope started to get sharper and sharper.. and then there were some stairs.. lots of stairs.. and then there were tons of rocks to scale and ladders to climb. The first two hours were a pretty challenging (for me) hike.  I loved it!!

A little cloudy, but so far, so good

Starts to get steeper as we get into the woodier areas

Ugh.. steps up the mountain

More steps

Ladders to climb!

Beautiful green trees.. Capetown was full of color

More ladders!

Stephanie leads the way up some rocks

We hiked and hiked, and finally, we reached a high clearing, and I thought we were finished!  In reality, we still had almost three hours of hiking to go.  Haha.  Luckily, the rest of the climb wasn't nearly as tough as the first half.  We did a bit more climbing, but we also walked across the "top" of Table Mountain (the flat part that you can see in the pictures) in order to get to the other side.  There was still definitely some tougher parts, but the first half was definitely much more difficult than the second half.

Hi!

Highest point

We made it up to the highest point on Table Mountain, which is 1085 meters (3560 feet) high.  Took tons of pictures.  Ate some snacks.  Drank in all the views.  Basked in the blue sky and chased clouds.  It was amazing.

View from the top

 

The city below.. looks so tiny

The weather got pretty cloudy as we were walking across the top, so we didn't get to see much of the water from the top of the mountain.  We made it over to the other side, and then we took a cable car ride down.  (You can also take the cable car up the mountain if you don't want to hike it!)  It was a great Saturday.

My pants look too short

On Sunday, we were up early (again!) to go on another fun activity!!

We did a bicycle winery tour!

The weather was a bit dicey (it was raining during our first leg of the bike ride), but it was still good fun.  For those of you who don't know, I crashed my bike a couple of years ago, so I don't do much riding anymore.  But it was so fun being back on the bike!  We rode through the vineyards in the Constatia region, which is the oldest wine region in South Africa.

We stopped at some vineyards along the way and did our share of learning and tasting..

I fell off my bike (twice haha), but it was such a great time!  Definitely a great way to do a wine tasting and get in some exercise.  The scenery was beautiful even though it was cloudy, and it stopped raining after the first winery, so it turned out to be a pleasant day for a casual bike ride.  Since many wineries are not open on Sundays in South Africa, they were all pretty empty, so it was nice to have most of them all to ourselves.

Monday came way too soon (as it always does), and we left Capetown to head back to normal life.  As I mentioned at the top of this post, I've had a hard time adjusting this week, but luckily, it is already Thursday night!  Tomorrow we have a fun celebration planned at work for something special, and I have plans to go wakeboarding this weekend as well!  Should be fun :)  And just to be a broken record - can you believe that it is basically June already?!