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Hey Guys, I know it’s been ages since have posted a workout…or ANYTHING FITNESS RELATED…if we’re going to be honest with ourselves :/ :/ :/
I guess we have sort of taken a Sabbatical from our personal training careers…
We have been working out and staying fit, but because our workouts are very basic and “maintenance” oriented, I guess we felt they were a bit boring to share.
Sorry, if some of you missed our posts/emails about fitness and healthy recipes.
We’re honestly going to start sharing some stuff about fitness more often. We promise! ***with our fingers crossed behind our backs*** 😛
So for the first workout post, we have Ruby to thank. She liked our 1000 Rep Workout Challenge (back in our Maxfit days) and wanted to do it again, but she couldn’t remember the whole workout, so she contacted us…
So Ruby, here it is, just for you…and of course for anyone else who wants a good challenging and sweat inducing workout!
Please note that it’s a bit revised (from the one we did at Maxfit) as we know not everyone has tires, battle ropes or sledge hammers available 😛
Happy Workout and May the Muscle Aches Be Kind to you the Day After 😛
Bittersweet beginning to our South to North American journey. Stefan will take the bike to London on his own which means we will be apart for 4 days…this is the longest we’ve been apart since we married and I hate missing out (didn’t want to spend the mullah and the time to get a UK visa for only 2 days)
..but oh well, every dream has it’s sacrifices.
On the bright side.. ARGENTINA HERE WE COME!! ?
Hi All…
Seems like our blog has started the new year on a tardy note..SORRY.. ?
But to make it up to you…
Here’s Stefan being a crazy fireworks unicorn for the New Year…
We gonna write more, we promise!
Right now we busy prepping for our South American journey.
And it hasn’t been as straight forward as we hoped. Visas…bike transport…route etc…
But we’re gonna get there ?
But for now we’re off to a holiday cabin to celebrate Stefan’s Grandma 80th birthday…
Catch you laters xxx
We went paragliding!!!
Yup, we decided to be spontaneous and try out paragliding during our last day in Macedonia. Actually, it was on the back of our minds to give it a try since we saw folks jumping off Mount Vodna when driving into the city (Skopje)…
But because the weather was cold (around 4-5 degrees) and there was some snowfall on the surrounding mountain peaks, we assumed there weren’t going to be any flights. But on our last day the sun was out and it was a warm 12 degrees so we thought to give it a shot.
Around 1pm we messaged www.2glide.com Tandem Paragliding, and asked if it was possible to fly. They said “YES” and we booked our flight for 3.45pm on the same day…
Watch a bit of our flight prep here:
Stefan was first to jump…actually, you have to run OFF THE MOUNTAIN…
So yeah, basically it’s just like a plane take off. You have to “taxi” first and then keep on running till you’re off the mountain.
Stefan’s first try was a bit exciting. He did a bit of rolling on the grass after an unsuccessful first try but the second try was a success and he flew off the mountain without any trouble.
I was so excited!
I also had a bit of a false start the first try. My para-sail didn’t open enough, or something. I’m not sure why my first try was stopped as I was facing forward and focusing on running…but my pilot told me to stop running..he adjusted the lines a bit, and then it was time to run again.
I was told to start running…again! I ran and while the sails unfurled it felt like I had 50kgs of something holding me back and I was taking one step forward and possibly 2 steps back…I was told to keep on trying to run…this time I was able to run (a little bit) and then poof! I was running in the air and my pilot was telling me I could stop “running” and he adjusted my position so I was “sitting” in my harness.
I really had no preconceived ideas of how parasailing would go so I just followed instructions and had a great time flying over Skopje and feeling a bird. 😀
I was the lucky one as my pilot had a GoPro so you can watch my complete flight here. Sadly, I only have footage of Stefan’s take off as we lost our GoPro and haven’t had time to purchase our replacement.
But yeah, everyone should try paragliding at least once!
Now I’m trying to convince Stefan to let me parachute out of a plane 😛
Ever since we started our journey we have been looking forward to when Stefan’s mum and sister could come and join us for a mini vacation somewhere along the Balkan coast.
Our first idea was to meet up in Croatia, but somehow the plan evolved into meeting up in Montenegro a country none of us have been to before!
We entered Montenegro from the Serbian border while Stefan’s mum and sister (Alice and Jolanda) flew from Rotterdam to Dubrovnik, Croatia.
From our town in Montenegro it took about 1.5 hours to cross the Montenegro/Croatian border to pick them up with our rented Fiat Panda.
In the small space that is Montenegro..they have it all! The cool mountains, the lush forests and the magnificent blue beaches. ***Check out our photo gallery at the top
We stayed in a small town called Kumbor close to the beautiful, and more famous, Herceg Novi township.
Even though Montenegro is small, due to the mountainous terrain and the narrow roads, it still takes 1-2 hours to travel to the next town which might be only 50km away.
For this reason we stayed mainly around Herceg Novi and Kotor.
Visiting Old Towns has become a bit of a hobby for us especially since being in the Balkan area. The history of each old town, with their preserved ancient churches and magnificent buildings and forts seem to deny the ravages of time. Despite being centuries to millennia old; they have also somehow managed to integrate our into our “modern” culture.
Some for better (quaint and true to their culture and history) and some for worse (too touristic and full of merchandise that have nothing to do with history or their culture)– but despite some negatives–I for one am glad that we can see and walk through these time capsules.
The walled city of Kotor is a prime example. The ancient walls still stand and the roads are still paved with rocks made smooth and slippery with the countless number of footsteps– but inside is a bustling modern city enjoying the touristic spotlight.
We visited towards the end of September so the crowds have dwindled down quite a bit. But during the height of summer, this town overflows with tourists, to the extent that they have to close the gates, and refuse entrance, to manage the crowds. We were thankful that we missed all that chaos.
Herceg Novi is a small picturesque coastal town that has it own small Stari grad and 3 surrounding fortresses. During the Ottoman invasion the main coastal fort in Herceg Novi (formerly called Castelnuovo) stood strong and withstood occupation despite being vastly outnumbered.
It is said that the fort in Herceg Novi had only 3,500 defenders, and they were able to withstand the Ottoman fleet/army of more 50,000 for over 2 months.
You can read all about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Castelnuovo
Besides wandering around old towns, forts and castles we also explored Montenegro’s beautiful countryside.
We found this amazing hiking trail on mount Subra. The views were amazing but what impressed us the most was how well maintained the hiking marks/paths were. Every 20-50 meters we saw a well positioned mark and there hiking trail info signs at every cross roads showing how far to the next destination etc.
Here’s a short video of our hike:
So if you enjoy hiking, Montenegro should be on your map!
But let’s not forget the beaches…
We chose Montenegro because of it’s beautiful coastline. While they do have beautiful crystal clear water beaches, we found that most of them are not “sand” beaches so be prepared to bring a thick blanket or yoga mat to relax and tan on.
Also the water is a bit cold by the end of September so be prepared to swim and move around otherwise you will feel too cold.
I’ll end this blog post about Montenegro with a general price comparison observation.
Montenegro is cheaper than it’s neighbour Croatia but is a bit more expensive than the other Balkan countries.
All in all we thoroughly enjoyed our family vacation in Montenegro and would go back.
***Stay tuned for our video about our Montenegro Adventures***
Whoop Whoop our latest Vlog is finally uploaded and ready!! Uploading our videos have been our greatest challenge recently…
Well, besides navigating Bosnia without our Garmin. And if you have traveled for a long distance or in “unknown” country… Google maps on our phones only can take us so far…
FYI: Bosnia and Herzegovina is not included in the Europe Garmin package. AND Google maps have only mapped out a percentage of the small city roads. Many a time we ended up driving a road only to have it end up leading to stairs!! Our next challenge was doing a 180 degree turn in a road that was about as wide as our bike…hopefully we’ll share a video of this later…
This video will be about our adventures when visiting:
>>>Mt. Vesuvius in Pompeii…
>>>Chilling in Agerola and the Amalfi Coast, Italy
>>>Separated Bari due to passport misfortunes (Stefan’s lone adventure to Matera because Marie went ahead to Dubrovnik)
>>>Reunited in Dubrovnik, Croatia
And oh yes…
We just had to do the Games of Thrones tour in Dubrovnik…
Yes, that is rather geeky of us…but we are shameless Games of Thrones fans so watch our next video to see Dubrovnik through a Games of Thrones fan 😀
Massive Grins! We’re too happy to be sitting on the Iron Throne 😛
We have been trying to post a video update about our travels…but the internet has NOT been our friend so we’ll post about how our 20,000km service went yesterday…
First off, finding a place and getting our precious BMW GSA serviced while traveling is a bit hard.
1…it’s tough getting an appointment because we are in one place for only a short mount of time…
2…we are never 100% sure which city we will be at any given time so making an appointment beforehand (like 2-3 weeks in advance which is common practice) is almost impossible…
Thank God for email! We shoot out an email to the BMW service centers that on our way and we let them know we will be in the area soon and that our motorbike needs servicing.
Whoever answers us back gets our business and we make sure we are there when there is a spot available… ?
Our first 1,000km service was in Funen, Denmark.
Our second 10,000km service in Den Haag, Netherlands.
Our latest 20,000km service in Slavonski Brod, Croatia.
We have only praise for the AC Vuko team. They were quick, efficient and very professional.
Our bike was in and out in less than 2 hours and it was a BIG service. Besides the regular first class BMW service they:
Our bike came back like new and they gave us a bottle of wine to celebrate!
THANK YOU AC VUKO TEAM for taking care of our baby…
Start with 20reps each and countdown by 2’s.
Go through the exercises with only 30sec rest before starting the next set.
20-18-16-14-12-10-8
Enjoy! ?
Stefan is proving that you really CAN workout anywhere and at anytime if determined enough 😉
He did this workout while waiting for the ferry to Mariehamn (The Aland Islands)
I admit to have chickened out on this workout as it was actually quite cold and I was all geared up and not ready to strip down for a workout.
But here it is, Stefan’s Viking Workout while waiting for the Ferry 😀
If you’d like us to design a training + nutrition plan for your body, and the equipment you have available, check out our Online Personal Training option–we give a 30 Day Free Trial + 60 days money back guarantee… 😀 😀 😀
YOU’VE GOT NOTHING TO LOSE…
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