Our last day in Sydney was around 100 degrees and quite oppressive. Jason and I went to the Sydney Tower Eye and saw the city from the highest point. I especially liked the interactive screens next to the windows that allowed you to click on a certain building in the view from that particular window and learn a little about it. After the Tower, we took a ferry across the harbor to Manly and wandered around the beachside tourist town for a little while. Jason even took off his shoes and socks and walked into the water a little bit. We went to a raw vegan restaurant, Native Feel Real, for lunch where we enjoyed some fresh juices and one of our only healthy meals of this whole trip. We did a little shopping, but due ... read more

Apologies - I don't have pictures for this one yet. The guys have taken the majority of the photos the past few days due to me being the driver, and the few that I've taken, I've used my actual camera for instead of my iPhone and haven't downloaded them onto the computer. Since it's late and this took about an hour to recap, I'm skipping them for now (but may go back and add them in a few days, we'll see.) We've covered a lot of territory over the past few days. Our supposed 5 hour drive to Fox Glacier from Christchurch actually took more than 6. We made a few stops to take pictures, and the road through the Southern Alps was filled with more twists and turns and ups and downs than an M. ... read more

After the last travel fiasco coming home from Iceland, we purposely built in a 7 hour layover for this trip to Sydney. Rushing through the airport was a wonderful thing and the 15 hour flight was mostly uneventful, though sleeping in a middle seat is just not that easy. Fun fact: they have Uber here, so when we finally landed in Sydney, we used the familiar app to grab a ride to Dave's apartment in Glebe. We were smart enough not to nap when we got here, and after showering and changing, the three of us headed out together. First stop, lunch at the adorable all vegetarian Badde Manors café, then we headed over to the shopping center to pick up a hair dryer and some hard ciders for the New Year's festivities. The walk to ... read more

After my four hour nighttime nap in Denver, I jumped on a plane to sunny San Diego to visit one of my oldest friends. We met during my senior year in high school, were on the yearbook staff together (nerds!), and even went to prom together. We’ve kept in touch through his going away to college, my moves to Florida and back and in polar opposite temperatures, his heading to Ukraine for the Peace Corps then later moving away “for good” to the west coast, but we still meet up every time he comes home. I figured it was my turn to visit him. (Plus, I had some use-it-or-lose-it vacation saved up!) I chugged my soy vanilla latte as we cruised down the freeway to his City Heights apartment. Apparently San Diego is a very expensive ... read more

I'm working at our European Operations Center this week, which is based in Heerlen. After taking the red eye Sunday evening, which was delayed an hour due to de-icing, we (me and my two colleagues) expected a straight-forward train ride in the morning from Amsterdam to Maastricht, and also expected one train change and a total of about 3 hours. Unfortunately, that's not how it went. None of us speak Dutch, and when the announcer on the train stated that everyone had to depart at Eindhoven because of a crossing issue, the three of us sat there like idiots while the train literally emptied of people. We knew we had one more stop before we should change, so we stayed put. For a few minutes, at least. Then we started to get nervous, so we scrambled ... read more