Boston

Oh Boston, how I love thee. Boston put its best foot forward for my visit and I didn't want to leave! First off, my Airbnb apartment was the best- great location (Beacon Hill) and friendly host (who also happened to be a two time olympic rower nbd). I arrived in from Vermont kind of late, so I got dinner at Tip Tap Room (chicken tips + good wine = yum), picked up some food from Whole Foods for breakfast and headed to bed.

Leaf Peeping in Vermont

After a great trip to DC, I headed up north to visit my friend Emily in Burlington and do a little leaf peeping. I had never heard of leaf peeping before this trip and while I still think its an odd expression, the leaves are LEGIT and I had an awesome time.

DC Visit #2

After last year's tour of DC, I was really excited to head back for Gabby’s wedding. I ended up flying out a couple days early to get some sight seeing in and visit with my friend Tracy. I got into DC a few hours before Tracy and spent the time drinking good wine and eating delicious tapas from Barcelona - would definitely recommend that spot.  The next morning, neither one of us was up bright and early as we were both still on CA time so we enjoyed being on lazy vacation mode before heading first to the White House and then to the National Portrait Gallery. My favorite was the Bill Clinton because it was just so unusual- the artist grids all of his canvases and then uses random shapes within the grid to form the image. Within the same building is the American Art Museum and they had some cool stuff especially the neon map of the US. After getting caught in a downpour, we got a couple drinks at Penn Social before meeting up with Bonnie at Founding Farmers (chicken and waffles yasssss). 

Visiting The City of Brotherly Love

Next stop on the East Coast trip? Philly! My hotel was in the historic area of town so I was able to jump right into American History mode first thing in the morning. I was only in Philadelphia for the day so I had to try and fit a bunch of stuff in. Per usual, I didn't make much of a plan for this stop of the trip but relied on my tried and true method of wandering around until I found stuff I liked. After a quick Starbucks stop, I found myself at wandering around things like Betsy Ross' house and Benjamin Franklin's grave... history like whoa! I kept up with the history lesson with a visit to the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall (and other crazy important historic buildings). I wasn't into doing the tour inside Independence Hall (there was a high number of obnoxious and loud people in line) so I headed over to Washington Park before stopping by Fat Salmon to get my sushi fix (yum!). 

#13 Visit New York

For my 30th birthday I decided that enough was enough and it was time for me to see the East Coast. Yup, up until the ripe old age of 30 (whaaa??!??), I had never been to the East Coast of the US until last month. Crazy town. I was trying to hit up as many places as possible in a week and the first one was New York. As soon as she heard the words 'New York' my mom was in! My aunt lives on the East Coast and was willing to be our tour guide as she does work in NY all the time. It was awesome! I loved NY- way more than I thought I would and now I totally want to go back since we just got a small taste of it. We stuck mainly to Manhattan and tried to fit in as much as humanly possible- in addition to cabs and the subway, I made my mom and aunt walk 26 miles all around the city. Basically if I ever start a walking tour group company, I can only accept marathoners. They kept up like champs, even my aunt who had recently fractured her hip- ouch!

Red Fest 2014

What is Red Fest you might be asking yourself? Well only the greatest redneck festival in the world!!! (That I know of). Basically my fav little Texan Nicole aka Bus, texted me with 'Red Fest in May. Look it up and book your ticket here now!'. Country music, BBQ and excessive amounts of 'Murica pride??? Um yea soooo down! I packed my best USA gear and got my spray tanned butt on a plane.

Trip to the Homeland

Blogging took a back seat to life (again) but wanted to catch up on a few fun things that happened in the past 6 months...btw how the eff is it already June?!?! Anyways after coming back from such an amazing trip, I only made it until the end of February before I was in desperate need of a break again so I booked myself a ticket to the homeland. With a crazy work schedule right before I left, the break couldn't have come at a better time. It was a very mellow trip (mostly because I didn't have time to tell people I was coming) that involved lots of fam time and sleep. First things first though was to shove some of my favorite Canadian foods into my face asap: the Legendary burger from White Spot (just sauce, gravy on the side for fries/heart attack) and sour keys!!! 

Bali

Ubud | Day 21-23

I woke up early and enjoyed one more morning on the sunny rooftop deck of my Brisbane hostel before heading to the train station. I got to the airport early without any problems and then spent the next hour lying on a couch watching AFL game coverage (which I know nothing about) before my plane boarded. I will watch anything on TV- literally anything- its a problem which is why I do my best to avoid it. Right before we got on a plane a woman loudly announced that she packed 5 different kinds of diarrhea medicine for the trip- A) major TMI and B) I got freaked out that I didn't have any (was unnecessary thank god). The flight was uneventful but way longer than I expected it to be (Australia is huge)- I just wanted to get to Bali!

Koalas and Kangaroos and Wombats Oh My!

*Yea that title isn't as catchy as the orig but it'll have to do- also it was less 'oh my' and more me shrieking 'oh my god oh my god oh my god this is the best!' repeatedly. 

Brisbane | Day 20
I flew in the night before and checked into my awesome hostel- the Brisbane City YHA. This was the best hostel I stayed in and here's why:
-the views from the rooftop deck are beautiful and there is a rooftop pool! Yup rooftop pool!! The kitchen and dining area was on the top level too so you could enjoy the view- also the herb garden outside was easily accessible
-there was an onsite bar and restaurant with well priced food (had dinner there both nights-veggies tasted awesome!)
-awesome elevator floor (see shark image below :-))
-the multi-share rooms have individual lockers to hold your backpack (with outlets inside so you can lockup your stuff while it charges <-- soooo smart!)
-each bed has its own light so you can stay up reading without pissing anyone off
-and most importantly (since it was super hot) each room had AC

The hostel was near a huge supermarket so the first night I picked up some food for breakfasts/snacks (Tim Tams!) and then headed back just as a huge thunderstorm kicked off. I was exhausted and had a big day ahead of me so I ended up crashing early (after getting some much needed laundry done).

Kaikoura

Kaikoura | Day 18

This was the last overnight stop on our tour and so we knew we were going to have a big night. None of us wanted to spend too much time in the hostel- it was probably the least nice one of them all (bathrooms were NASTY). Some people spent the day on the water (fishing, dolphin watching, whale watching, etc) but my friends and I hung around town shopping and hanging out on the beach. 

Wedderburn and Christchurch

Wedderburn | Day 16
After an awesome nights sleep at the Wedderburn Tavern (real beds, real linens, and a big CLEAN bathroom), we hopped on our school bus and headed to the Naseby Indoor Curling rink. We got a quick lesson on how it was done and then we split up into teams.

Team #GreatSuccess: Vicky, Mia, Kaisa and Cam
Team #InMyPants: Me, Kate, Anna and Bastian

Why team #InMyPants? Well in Doubtful Sound Vicky told us about a game where you add 'in my pants' to the end of sentences. For example 'That's a crazy looking party...in my pants'. When you're on a bus for hours on end, its the little things that keep you laughing. Anyways, back to the curling rink, team #InMyPants were the winners thanks to Anna's...uhhh...unique curling style of falling hard every. single. time. Black and blue hip for days.

Queenstown

Queenstown | Day 12
Best day ever. Pretty big statement right there...maybe it should be 'best day in NZ'? Whatever, the point is that my entire trip was fantastic but there were three days in particular that stood out and this was one of them. It stood out so much that this day gets its own blog post- also I took a crap ton of pictures so the post is long enough already.

Early in the morning, we were picked up and driven along beautiful Lake Wakatipu to the little town of Glenorchy. Along the way, our driver stopped to show us Lord of the Rings filming locations- I haven't seen the movies but was still impressed by the beautiful scenery. Our driver also talked about what it was like to be an extra in the movie. You had to get up at 5, get you and your horse ready, get into hair and makeup, then finally get into your heavy (and hot) armor costume for filming. It involved long days of filming and he told us that during one scene he fell asleep (on his horse) and woke up startled in the middle of the scene...yea that one needed to be reshot.

Franz Joseph and Queenstown

Franz Joseph | Day 10
Franz Joseph is known for its beautiful glacier which I'm sure is very cool. However, to get to the glacier you have to take a helicopter making the trip a couple hundred dollars. You can walk to a lookout point but that isn't close to the glacier since the end is so unstable (you can't walk onto it because its unsafe). Knowing all the fun things I wanted to do in Queenstown, I decided I would save some dollas and pass on the glacier heli hike. Instead I slept in (yayayayaya!!!!), did laundry and wandered around the town. I ended up at the South Island Wildlife Centre which had great kiwi and glacier exhibits. There are five kinds of kiwi birds and all of them are endangered! The centre is working on helping grow the population and had three baby Rowi chicks on display. The kiwis are nocturnal birds so you had to go into a very dark room (only a couple red lights were on and absolutely no pictures allowed) and be super quiet. After a bunch of loud tourists left disappointed that they didnt' see anything, I sat down and waited. Soon enough I heard the snuffling and rustling of little baby kiwis! They were so cute and walked right in front of the glass where I was sitting- such odd looking birds with their thick legs, round bodies and long noses/beaks.

Abel Tasman and Punakaiki

Abel Tasman | Day 7
I had googled Abel Tasman before I left and this was one of the stops I was most excited about on the tour. I mean just check out these pics and you'll know why. So I was a little bummed that we woke up to MORE RAIN!!! It wasn't too bad so I hoped it would pass quickly, we hopped on our Aqua Taxi and headed out. I may have been running a little late (mornings aren't my strong suit) so I was in the back of the boat aka the part that was not covered by the awning- always good when its raining. A little rain soon turned into a lot of rain especially when the boat is flying across the water. Us back row seats were drenched in no time but it was a blast and I was laughing the whole time so being wet didn't really seem to matter....plus we saw a little blue penguin!!! Yup a penguin! Everyone should be jelly about that one as they are adorable. We had stopped to look at some seals and since I didn't have my glasses on I shouted 'Is that a fucking penguin?!?!' as soon as I saw its little head over the waves...lucky everyone ignored my...umm...colorful outburst and freaked out themselves over the little guy.

Windy (and wet) Wellington

Wellington | Day 4
A quick flight in the morning and I was in Wellington being welcomed into the airport by Gollum...creeeeeepy! I made it to my new hostel Nomads Capital but couldn't check in until 2 so I stashed my bag in the luggage room and headed out to find food...by that point, I had reached epic hangry levels. Luckily right next door to the hostel is Finc: Food Incorporated where I had the Sticky Tamarind Chicken Skewer with Vietnamese salad and chili jam...yum status. Also I took full advantage of the free wifi- its funny how obsessed you become with free wifi when traveling...anything to avoid paying $4 for an hour of internet. Anyways by the time I finished lunch it was officially a shit-tastic weather day so I cancelled my usual plan of wandering aimlessly around a new city and headed straight for Te Papa.

Auckland Adventures

The following things have been on my bucket list for years: go to New Zealand, go to Australia, go to Bali, hold a wombat and a koala, go bungee jumping and go on a spa vacation. Well what better time than the present right? After deciding to take a month off of work (and getting approval from my manager) and waiting a looooong 7 months, I packed up and headed out for an adventure! On the itinerary was New Zealand for 3 weeks, Bali for 5 days and Australia for 5 days. To say I was excited was an understatement....focusing at work the last month was near impossible. Luckily my trip exceeded my expectations. In an effort to help my poor memory (worst. memory. ever.) I'm going to try and write down everything that I remember meaning these will be long and most likely rambling...although the longer it takes me to actually get through all of these the less I will remember so you never know. Either way you have been warned.