these are a few of my favorite things

Each time I go to Granville Island, I have to urge to wear a flowy white dress and load the basket of my bicycle with a baguette and a bouquet of yellow daffodils. If I had a bicycle, that is.

I could spend a whole afternoon walking around the Granville market looking at (and eating!) the deli cheeses, antipasti, freshly baked breads, organic produce, teas, fudge and little, elegant desserts. I can get a full meal with all my food groups covered and street artists to serenade me . . . that's a pretty sweet deal!

baby, it's cold outside

bluer than blue

What's better than spending almost a week of eating nothing but fresh seafood, lounging around in a bikini and basking in the sun until the salt water crystallizes on your skin (all you need is a shot of tequilla and a lemon wedge!) with some of your favorite people? Well, it's doing all that in a place like this:

Panglao Island and Balicasag Island, Bohol







Definite pluses of this trip were the friendly boatmen, an unexpected dolphin sighting (you have to leave the island early in the morning to see these marine mammals) and our fish feeding frenzy. My Aunt was smart enough to bring some loaves of bread with us on our snorkeling trip to Balicasag Island (there's an underground cliff with an awesome coral reef here and I heard that it's the third best diving site in the Philippines). The bread worked like a charm and it didn't take long for schools of fish come up and swim next to us. I think it may have worked too well though, because after a while, they became too friendly that I had to swim while holding the bread above the water!

This has got to be one of my favorite beaches. I love it so much that I didn't mind going back with some friends a few weeks after!

p.s. I stole some of my sister's photos. Might as well, since she got herself a nice, new digital SLR.

what? no strawberries?

We did eat a lot of other things though. It was hotter and busier (we were complaining about the traffic being bad!) than I remembered and we no longer had the house with the sloping yard to live in but we had fun nonetheless.

Baguio, Philippines

selamat datang!

Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia