Many would have heard of alternate names for New York City, such as the Big Apple and...well I am sure there is another one. I hereby add another name to that list, Bling City. The reason being is that it is a city full of bling and gangsters, and not much else. Even the buildings are blingy with all of their glass and stainless steel, fancy billboard adverts like in Times Square and whatnot. And of course, the people here like to wear lots of blingy clothes and jewellery. Not much is bigger than New York, save for the Statue of [View Full Entry]

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After a long flight with the fantastically boring Air New Zealand, I finally arrived in LA via Tahiti. My accomodation is in Venice Beach, the most popular beach in LA. It's right out of baywatch with lots of skaters and bodybuilders. It's also the cultural capital of LA. Plenty of galleries, hippies and cafes. The first thing I noticed about LA was that I couldn't see anything from the plane until we were about 100m from the ground. And no cloud cover. Just inpenitrable smog. Disgisting. I've never seen anything like it before. And the cause is immediately obvious. Ten lane [View Full Entry]

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So far the highlight of my visit in Vancouver has been the unexpected reunion tour of the very early Eighties dark rock band "Bauhaus". Yes, it beats the highlight of maybe being shot as an extra in a new Al Pacino Movie that's being shot outside my hostel!! And it even beats (hands down) the thrill of plane take-offs and landings!! If you want more info about Bauhaus before continuing then read this. Be sure to come back though! "Near The Atmosphere" is the name of the tour, and it was marketed as "A night with Bauhaus". Both were spot on, [View Full Entry]

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Walk up Mont Royal Sun shines and the air is crisp Lovely views up there. I saw the sun peeking through the windows and was excited to see that the nice weather is still with us. It's a perfect day to go for a nice uphill trek to Mont Royal. I believe it is one of the must see places when in Montreal. My Korean roommate kept pushing bagels on me. She bought a dozen and then realized she bought too many and didn't want to lug them all the way to Ottawa with her the next few days. So it [View Full Entry]

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Extraordinary from the ordinary! There comes a time when you have to test the outer limits of the human constitution, at least in terms of what the body can eat and drink and still manage to function in a mostly reliable way. The United States, and Philadelphia in particular, is perhaps the best place to put this theory to the test. To find the extraordinary in the ordinary is the only way to go. In Philadelphia, there is always talk about the best cheesesteak. Having sampled the entire range of purveyors from the pathetic to the authentic (over the course of [View Full Entry]

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Well, the European adventure is finally over and I'm back home in good 'ol Texas. I got back on Friday, Oct 7th. It's been a couple of weeks, so I figured I needed to close out the trip with at least a lil sumthin' sumthin', cuz nobody likes an unfinished story. My last week in the Netherlands was a blast. That Monday was the last quiz night, so the shoarma pizza tasted extra good, as did the sweet victory we pulled on the rest of the teams. Sure, I forgot that Nelly Furtado is the artist for 'I'm Like a Bird' [View Full Entry]

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It seems like forever has passed since Biloxi, but it’s only been a week or so. It was such an incredible experience. Our last day there was perhaps the most interesting, though I got less of a feel for the whole situation. We got up at the usual bright and early time and were going by 8AM. My group helped tear out the insides of a house. The house was rented, but the homeowner said he/she didn’t need us to keep anything. We kept what we could salvage, anyway. We were just a few blocks from the Salvation Army camp. On [View Full Entry]

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Our departure from Sarasota went well and we are once again on the road. The first stop of our journey was Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, Georgia. Neither of us have ever been there before. We plan to return sometime in the future and climb the BIG rock. From there we continued on to Nashville and visited the Parthenon. Yes, Nashville not Athens! Our visit was short but cheap since we arrived 5 minutes before closing. It was just enough time to see the new Athena statue. She was quite impressive at 18 feet tall. The gold and painted decorations [View Full Entry]

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We took a greyhound south from LA to continue the festivities in San Diego. Finally, after travelling all year we managed to stay at a YMCA (500 West) and it wasn't half bad. In fact, it was built in 1924 as the Army YMCA (there's lots of military still in San Diego) but now it's really just a 'hybrid hotel' (according to their literature)...no we didn't understand the difference either! We took in the sights: Santa Fe station, maritime museum and harbour (where they've got a very cool cold war soviet submarine), Embarcadero waterfront area (where the large cruise ships and [View Full Entry]

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in june this year i graduated from wellesley college....feeling extremely fortunate and a little confused. i thought seriously about travelling during the year and by the time graduation rolled around my plans were beginning to come together. so, tomorrow is the day. my buddy michelle and i head to fiji via la. we'll spend 5 days in fiji then we're off to new zealand for four months. the last leg of our trip will take us through australia for two weeks and then back to the us again. i am doing my best travel with no expectations, but it's difficult. i [View Full Entry]

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