Round about Bariloche

Apparently the drives round Bariloche are beautiful. Perhaps because we have been spoiled or perhaps because we prefer natural beauty, we did not find the drive we tried today quite so pretty as expected. I felt it was too built up with human buildings, the beauty being more of a combination of development and natural beauty. Still, we saw a lovely resort building and church with cedar trimming. Inside were intricate paintings, which could be viewed only from the back, the aisle being roped off.

The boys enjoyed a toboggan ride after a chair lift took us to a viewing point. I just rode the chair lift up and back.

Some photos of our accommodation...

Samuel and Eric went to visit the Bariloche chocolate museum where Sam spotted the very rare chocolate cat

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Dining in Denpasar

A key part of any holiday experience is food. During the first week of our stay in Bali we had two nice and very contrasting dining experiences. Merah Putih is billed as the best Indonesian restaurant in Denpasar. It was just a few blocks from our Seminyak villa so we prebooked well ahead of time for a visit. The restaurant venue is very impressive - from the inside it looks a bit like a giant greenhouse, including the plants. The food was spectacular. While every dish was good, the Bak Pao Sapi (Beef steamed buns) and Semur Sapi (slow roasted beef cheek) were incredible. Then for Christmas Eve lunch we had booked at Starfish Bloo at W Bali, one of the swankiest Sunday Brunch venues on the island. Sunday brunch buffets are a signature Bali experience with many of the big international hotels putting on all you can eat extravaganzas once a week. Needless to say the meal was jaw dropping. We had a great table close to the beach where we enjoyed un...

Santa Cruz

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New York: National Museum of Mathematics

When we first came to New York we all wrote down where we wanted to go while we were here. All of us included the math museum (confirms our status as a family of total geeks) so that is where we headed today. On the way we went to the LEGO shop. There was plenty of great Lego art and some pretty cool sets that Samuel hadn't seen before. The best part was the machine that used a palm print to generate your Lego avatar. Eric: Check out the six pack. Not sure where they got the toupee from though. Samuel is Johnny Depp? Amazingly accurate this one. The famous Flatiron building A nd the math museum? Of course we enjoyed it! It was all interactive with loads of old and new problems to solve. We even got to use maths in an artistic way. Tessellating Samuel and Eric were most entranced by a floor exhibit which changed periodically but had a range of practical problems. The museum was well populated in the morning with ...

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