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It is my birthday month! Woo! Forget celebrating just your birthday, your birthday weekend or your birthday week. Birthday month. It's going to be awesome. I actually feel more reluctant to celebrate my birthday as each year goes by but it is a nice excuse to get friends and family together. And usually those flaky types who may find excuses when it comes to casual catch ups will make an effort if it's for a birthday.
As we will be overseas on my actual birthday, we had some early celebrations this weekend. Nothing crazy, I am too old for that now.
Saturday morning I had to pick Ray up from the airport, then we came home and got ready to have lunch with our friends. I wanted to have yum cha and picked Tao Tao House due to it's high ranking on Urbanspoon.
Apologies for lack of pictorials, I was so hungry I was more focused on eating :)
Tao Tao House was a lot smaller than I was expecting. I think they have purchased new chairs, unfortunately I don't think they tried the chairs with the tables when they bought them as they are too low. I felt like I needed a booster seat. They do bring the food around on trolleys, but as it was quite a small restaurant, they didn't bring them around as often as I would prefer and there was not a large variety of food like you would find in the bigger yum cha restaurants. I'd say it would be better for smaller groups of up to 4 who want to have a quiet and intimate yum cha experience. It does miss that crazy hustle and bustle I am used to when having yum cha.
The food was of excellent quality though, all the dumplings were really delicious. The custard egg buns were good, the filling wasn't dry as I often find at our local yum cha place. The egg tarts were also delicious. It ended up costing only $25 per person, so wasn't too expensive.
Sunday night we went out for dinner with my mum, her partner and my brother for another early birthday celebration plus early Mother's Day as we will be in NZ. We went to Dainty Sichuan in Toorak. We had a 6pm booking and it wasn't too busy, but as we finished up at around 7:30pm the restaurant was full so I would recommend making a booking. You can choose to have hotpot or just normal stir fry dishes. We went for normal. Between the five of us we shared 5 dishes, plus I brought a cake. As the lovely FF says, I am a Follower and when I saw Cat's cake I had to get one too. It was really good! We were so full at the end and took some leftovers home as well so it was pretty good value. The first couple of dishes came out scary quick. As in we had just ordered and the food came out immediately. I loved every single dish we had, and would return to Dainty Sichuan with no hesitation. It was spicy though, so I don't know whether someone who does not enjoy spicy food would like this restaurant. But if you are a spice lover you gotta try this place!
Cold noodles, sweet and sour pork ribs
Spicy fish
Chong qing chicken - the bones got a bit annoying
Fish flavoured eggplant - my favourite dish of the night
Vanilla slice cake from Tanner's Swisse Patisserie ($32)
Total for dinner was $134 (includes corkage $2 per person, chinese tea and soy milk)
I'm still full now.
On our second morning in Kauai we had booked a helicopter flight with Mauna Loa Helicopter Tours. We decided to go with this company as they have great reviews on Tripadvisor, and the maximum occupancy is three plus the pilot, so everyone gets a window seat. We decided to go for the doors off option, as I wanted to get photos without the glass reflecting.
It was our first ever helicopter flight and I loved it. The feeling of rising up into the air is difficult to describe, and the turns were just amazing. I didn't feel ill at all, I think Ray may have a little as he is prone to motion sickness.
Exploring Kauai by car does not do it justice, as there are so many areas which aren't accessable. Seeing it all from the air was amazing.
I'll let the photos speak for themselves!
It was a bit of splurge for us, but absolutely worth it. Particularly for the stunning view of the Na Pali coastline. When the ship did the sail-by later that day, it was so misty/foggy you could barely see a thing. So I was really glad we had gotten a great view of it earlier that day. I would highly recommend the Mauna Loa Helicopter company for anyone who is visiting Kauai.
OK so I'm aiming to finish my last holiday recaps before we head off on our next trip! (11 sleeps to go wooo!)
You can see the rest of my Hawaii posts here.
The next stop on our cruise was Kauai. I was most looking forward to going here as I heard how beautiful the scenery was. We had a day and a half here, and decided to spend the first day driving around the island and on the second day Ray and I had a helicopter flight booked. In hindsight, I would have preferred to have done a hike on the first day knowing that we would be seeing everything from the helicopter the next morning.
A lot of the day was spent driving, and it wasn't the best day to go sightseeing as after around lunchtime everything went grey and misty. We made stops at: Hanalei Valley Lookout, Maniniholo cave, Ke'e beach (should have spent more time here, it was lovely and sunny), Waimea Canyon, Kalalau lookout.
Lots of wild chickens running around. So awesome.
At the Hanalei Valley Lookout in our must-have matchy-matchy Hawaiian shirts.
Maniniholo Cave
Waimea Canyon
Kalalau Lookout
Look how round my face is! That's what a week of unlimited cruise food does to you!
Next post: Our helicopter adventure!
