washington dc, usa (and back for a little more ny)

25 Saturday Jul 2015

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After our quick escape from Tony, we headed to Indiana, Pennsylvania for the night. It was a college town and school was out and therefore, nothing was open. So we ate some cheese and wine for dinner, went to bed and left the next morning for DC! There were a bunch of signs for Punxatawney that delighted Jaymin to no end. He was absolutely certain this was the town from the movie Groundhog Day that was the namesake of Punxatawney Phil. He was right. However as he made a few wrong turns we elected not to investigate any further and continued south to Virginia to spend some time with Casey, Liam, Brooklyn & Ashton.

We had a beautiful 5 days of family time, sightseeing and long overdue late night discussions. The weather was hot and so we were able to spend evenings outside bbqing and sipping on sparkles. We felt so comfortable and relaxed thanks to our amazing hosts and left a bunch of our things in the basement to ensure a return visit in the not too distant future!

Not sure why, but I’d had a strong desire to eat at an Italian chain restaurant called Olive Garden for the whole time we’d been in the States. Virginia was the place this dream was to be fulfilled, endless salad and breadsticks included. We spent an afternoon at a very dog friendly winery and Jaymin and Liam had an eventful night at Chics n Wings that left them feeling rather hung the following day. Jaymin also mistakenly attempted entry into the CIA which resulted in some stern words and the threat of arrest. He responded by parking around the corner and being moved on by a patrolling police vehicle. Thankfully escaping the authorities, but most likely being tracked, we then visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Museum of Natural History and took a few snaps at the Whitehouse.

Such a lovely time and we can’t wait to come back to play and read Brooklyn some more stories and to see Ashton growing into a little man!

We drove back North and had a couple more days in NY before we were due to fly out to the UK. Since we still had wheels we thought we would check out the Hamptons. Ainslie was in town staying with Rhenny so she jumped in with us and we spent hours travelling through miserable wet weather, in backed up traffic before arriving to see the mega mansions on the beach. Unfortunately due to the weather, we didn’t really want to be out walking around so we found a little pub to eat delicious chilli for lunch and then headed back in the car to Brooklyn.

That evening we had a girls night out and went to a really cool bar in the West Village called The Happiest Hour to chat and sip on some delicious cocktails. The following day, accompanied by Ainslie we wandered through Brooklyn one last time, enticed into a restaurant for brunch by a waiter giving out free cookies. One last meal before going home, packing our bags and heading for JFK. We forgot to fill the car with gas before returning it but the Budget guy was super nice and let Jaymin burn around the corner only to return it within minutes of the deadline. Goodbye for now North America, we will be back early next year on a one-way ticket!

T & J

On Rhenny’s rooftop

detroit (rock city), michigan

13 Monday Jul 2015

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america, demf, detroit, movement

“Detroit hustles harder”, so they say in the motor city.

There’s a lot of good shit that’s come out of Detroit from mo-town to techno, Fords, Chevrolet, Eminem and Kid Rock…..well maybe not the latter. But it seems the most we hear about Detroit nowadays is how broken it is. So we decided to spend a week there post Toronto to see if we could scratch the surface of what has become a bit of a mystical city.

Arriving late in the arvo via Windsor and taking the bridge back into the US we navigated our way to our 3rd airbnb stay in Corktown, just north west of the city centre. Turns out Corktown is the old Irish area from back in the day but in its current form is pretty sketchy with lots of vacant blocks and sporadic homes with a little stretch of hipsterville on the main drag (if you could call it that).

We had decided to do a room share this time as there wasn’t much accommodation left in Detroit due to the Movement Festival on that weekend. Our host, Tony was a bit of a quirky guy who turned out to be a bit of a Detroit die hard who only seemed to want to talk about the city. Things started off OK but just got more awkward throughout the week where it seemed like he was our Dad waiting down stairs and we were trying to sneak out to avoid talking to him. So we decided that was the last time we would be doing that. We even checked out a day early and bailed while he was out things got that awkward. Cheers Tones.

But that aside, Detroit turned out to to be damn interesting, you really do need a car to get around – it’s the Motor City after all – and was designed for driving, lots of it. Locals were genuinely happy to have a chat and inquisitive as to why we were actually there but we learnt a lot to the history of the city and why it seems to be coming back from the dead. Plus it’s foodie heaven! Since arriving in North America we had become a bit addicted to a show called Diners, Drive-ins and Dives where this dude called Guy Fieri cruises around America eating at said establishments, good thing is you can look up where he’s eaten and we ended up eating at some sweet spots (mainly due to not wanting to be around Tonemeister at home). Slows BBQ for lots of slow roasted BBQ like it says on the box, Traffic Jam & Snug for more meat this time in sandwiches, Vinsetta Garage for burgers and beers and Astro coffee for a bang on flat white. We also got in some more baseball action, this time the Tigers vs the Houston Astros but didn’t even make it to the end as it was so bitterly cold despite being in the company of Kid Rock who was also in attendance. We arrived back to find Tony dancing around the lounge room to Polish music (weird factor increasing even more).

Driving around the city is surreal, there’s just so much space! Some areas have no houses, just trees, long grass and streets with homes being demolished due to being in such bad shape. Others have notices of intent to demolish adjacent to a cluster of homes that are inhabited. Large buildings lie abandon and the overall vibe is strange at first, but then you get used to it and start to enjoy and just go exploring. There’s also a lot of roads with not too many cars to add to the feeling of space, lots of space.

Movement Festival began on the Friday of the Memorial Day weekend. It’s a rather large techno festival with well over 100 artists crammed into Harts Plaza on the riverfront overlooking Canada. I’ve always wanted to go so was excited about it but turns out that I think I’ve moved on from such festivals. 30,000 people crammed into a tight space for 3 days can get a bit much. The first 2 days were good fun but by the 3rd we were over it and went and watched Mad Max at the cinema next door. Hard core!

A week staying with Tone-Loc was a bit too much but we will be back to the ‘D’ for sure if not just to stuff our faces some more.

J & T

montréal and toronto, canada

21 Sunday Jun 2015

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canada, montreal, toronto

Back to Canada ! There was a fair bit of hype going into Montreal…probably a little too much!

The drive from New York through upstate into Canada was pretty epic with plenty of lush green forrest and cops doing way more over the speed limit than me (it’s advisory right?). I might have mentioned before about America’s craft beer scene, typically they have gone nuts and you can get amazing beer almost anywhere, even at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, 6 taps….really!? The rain started as we crossed the border into Canada, selling point!

Quebec is a strange place, so staunchly French yet very bilingual, at least in the south. Which means you have this weird dilemma with the language. If you were in France you would give French a crack but in Montreal they speak both so you end up with this awkward hello in French then switch to English followed by awkward goodbye in French. Montreal was stop number 2 on our “places to check out that we might want to live in”. We were lucky to have a place to stay with our friend Parker who, originally from the West, had been in Montreal for 4 years and was happy to show us around. With the places we we were looking to possibly live we tried to keep it “local” and get in the mindset of what it would be like to actually live there. To be honest it’s not easy and you can end up dissecting and analysing the place to death which isn’t that enjoyable.

The time was spent wandering around the city talking about what it’s like to live there, watching the local hockey team the Canadiens falter in the finals, checking out Parker’s awesome performance in a local theatre production, the local markets, old town and generally just soaking it up. Alas you have a vibrant heart but there was something missing Montreal and so we move on to Toronto in search of bigger better things.

Toronto, T dot, TO. You are a big mofo! The last stop on our tour of potentials. Best be showing up for the party hey!

Toronto is big, sitting behind NYC and LA but strangely doesn’t feel that massive when you’re there. Well unless you try and get around it then it takes ages! After a large amount of time spent on peoples floors we decided it was time to splash out and get ourselves a place. Good old airbnb delivered in spades and we had a last minute (en route) warehouse apartment not far from the rather cool west end of Queen Street (Vogue magazine calls it second coolest neighbourhood in the world after Tokyo). Again the time was spent milling around pretending like we lived there. There were a lot of things we could have done tourist wise but like Montreal we figured we would be back so used it as a time to chillout, something that’s hard to do when always on the move. So that meant brunch and a BBQ with new friends Dave & Denise, dinners at the apartment, wandering up and down Queen & King streets, Little Italy and Little Portugal (hipsterville) and catching the street car (tram). You can pretty much say that Toronto is the Melbourne of Canada in that sense and we got a good feeling from it which pushed it into the frontrunner position (along with….New York!).

Not many pics from both of these cities, I think we were to busy doing our heads in on if they might be the right places to live rather than enjoying it from an casual point of view.

J & T

we heart new york (and a roadtrip to 3 states)

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

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atlantic city, baltimore, new york, philadelphia, usa

We both love New York and have been several times before so it was nice to come here and spend time with one of my besties while enjoying life without having to feel like we had to be anywhere or see anything in particular. Each day entailed a different neighbourhood and thinking of each one ‘we could live here’.

We arrived on a Friday evening to really chilly weather and were thankfully picked up by an uber driver in a big chevy suburban at JFK at the end of a very long taxi line. After arriving at Rhenise’s sweet pad in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, we went out for dinner, caught up on life and got excited about the ‘hood. The weekend was spent in Brooklyn going to the markets, rooftop bars, hipster bars, watching the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight (zzzzz), having a bottomless mimosa brunch (which turned out to have a bottom after about 2hrs), wiling away the afternoon at a brewery and immersing ourselves in the neighbourhood.

At the beginning of the week we spent our fist day walking around midtown enjoying the Rangers finals fever and spending hours in B&H (an insanely large and well organised Jewish electronics store) trying to find camera supplies. The next day was filled with walking around Brooklyn and then into the meat-packing district, highline and along the Hudson River to downtown where we toured the 9-11 memorial and finally making a feeble attempt to celebrate cinco de mayo (at an Irish bar). Day 3 we took a ferry down the East River and walked over the Brooklyn bridge and then in and around Little Italy where we had an amazing Italian lunch at Rubirosa (thanks Cath & Mick!). Finally, a perfect weather day in Central Park and an evening wandering the bars of Williamsburg & Greenpoint ended by a huge authentic Colombian dinner that left Jaymin in agony and ecstasy, unable to sleep that night.

On Friday morning we got up early and took our time to get to Chinatown before realising we had about 5 blocks and 5 minutes to get to our bus to Philadelphia. We ran through markets and smelly streets before hopping on the bus just in time without having eaten and completely without hydration. 2hrs later we arrived in Philly and dismounted the bus to be greeted by a psychotic woman swearing at me that she knew me and a guy who was ‘robbed’ on the bus and needed our assistance to get home. Obliged by Rhenny we hastily walked away in desperate need of food. The city looked cool but once our starvation was sated we ubered ourselves to the airport to pick up our new car, a Ford Focus and got on our way to Atlantic City.

Atlantic City ended up being a big night. We met new friends, danced in an 80’s club, drank too much and woke up 30mins before we needed to check out (at midday). It was a fun time in a city that we all hope to never return to. We then drove to Baltimore to see one of our best friends Casey, Liam and their 2 sons Brooklyn & Ashton. It was a beautiful afternoon catching up, enjoying the warm weather and wondering how we had all ended up here together. Our prior evening had ruined us so when we all said goodbye it wasn’t long before Rhenise & I were in the hotel room trying to convince Jaymin that Pitch Perfect was the best movie option.

Our return to New York the following day was arduous. We decided to detour through Amish country in Pennsylvania and even though it added hours to our journey were pretty happy that we had seen such a completely different snapshot of the US and were able to watch cars overtake horse and carts on incredibly busy intersections without a bat of an eyelid. The traffic coming back into New York was nothing short of horrific and it ended up being an 8hr day in the car preceding another long journey the following day to Montréal. Au revoir pour le moment!

T & J

lost vegas

28 Thursday May 2015

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las vegas, nevada, usa

Our return trip to Vegas was fun, warm and relaxing. Everyday we slept in, went to the gym and spent time by the pool. We checked out a bunch of hotels along the north of the Strip gambling along the way and planning our next visit, headed downtown to frequent dive bars (I lasted 1 drink), walked back to the Strip from downtown at 3am (blisters, bad neighbourhood and bathroom desperation), indulged in a buffet at the Aria and attended an impressive cirque du soleil show, Zarkana. After 4 nights, we packed our bags and headed back to LA to say goodbye to the west coast and the Yaris (+5000km on the little beast) before flying out to NYC.

T & J

nice murse

street drinking like a boss

mating call?

hurdy gurdy

denver, colorado (via utah)

21 Thursday May 2015

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alkaline trio, colorado, denver, usa, utah

Alkaline Trio are one of my favourite bands in the whole wide world. Months before our departure from Australia we found out they were playing all 8 of their albums over 4 nights in only a handful of cities. We quickly went online to purchase tickets and Denver was our only viable option. We basically planned our whole west coast jaunt around this event.

We decided to take a couple of days to get to Denver and stopped in 2 towns along the way in Utah. This state has some of the best scenery I’ve ever encountered. We only chose one park to explore which was Arches National Park and it did not disappoint. Thankfully, because our accommodations did. Jaymin’s ultimate wish was to stay in “one of those motels like in the movies where you park in front of your room”. The first night we ended up at a little motel in Cedar City and boy did it deliver. The following night was at the Robbers Roost in Green River which was a huge improvement, but that may have been due to relativity.

Onto bigger and better things…Denver. Such a cool city! We had a great basement suite that we got through airbnb in an up and coming area to the north of the city. Only in town the 4 nights of the show, we did most of our touring by day. We visited the Red Rock Ampitheatre where Jaymin discovered that running up hundreds of stairs at high altitude was a bad idea, we did a tour of some microbreweries, ate some great Mexican food and indulged in a bottomless pint for $10. But the highlight of course was 4 nights of amazing music that left us almost voiceless and happy we had remembered to bring our earplugs.

It was getting pretty cold in Denver so we decided last minute to do a long haul and drive ourselves back to Vegas where we could get a room at the Hard Rock for $30/nt and be back in 30 degree weather. As we were leaving that morning the weather started turning ugly, we saw a Fedex truck in a ditch and a temperature gauge that continued to drop. When we started seeing cars coming from the other direction covered in snow, we knew we were in for it. Within minutes we were in white out conditions, barely recognising the existence of a road and seeing car after car sliding off the road. Jaymin and the tire chain-less Yaris held fast though and after hours of expert driving we made it out of Colorado and back onto the dry Utah roads. It was then my turn to take over and ensure we make it to Vegas before midnight.

T & J

las vegas, nevada

18 Monday May 2015

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las vegas, nevada, usa

Our first visit to Las Vegas had us leaving Phoenix and driving via Lake Havasu to Laughlin. A poor man’s Vegas where we stayed at the cigarette perfumed Colorado Belle hotel for $19. We watched the Canucks lose a playoff game, sharing a plate of nachos that could feed a family and then sunk a buck into a pokey machine that kept on giving and therefore kept us hydrated on free rum & cokes until the wee hours of the morning. Still, we weren’t at all saddened to depart in the morning for the real Vegas!

We were picking up my friend Ron who was flying in from Vancouver later that night so avoided all temptations to start partying when we arrived at our hotel (LINQ) in the early afternoon. We had procured a 1.75L bottle of Captain Morgan from Costco for $18 and stopped in at Wholefoods for some green smoothie ingredients – it’s all about balance! We purchased a personal blender while in Phoenix in an attempt to maintain some element of health while on the road and surprisingly we used it almost daily on this stop. After picking up Ron we found out that Jaymin’s friend Dave and his sister were in town for the night also. Let the fun begin!

Shall we start at the end, when Jaymin climbed onto the bed fully clothed and shoed, complete with drink still in hand. Needless to say it was an eventful night filled with drinking, gambling, random new friends and probably a lot of other things that may never be remembered! The bottle of rum was almost empty. Yikes. Still, by midday I was up and ready to hit the pool and Jaymin had no choice but to join. Ron met us and we resumed where we left off with a round of ciders. It wasn’t long before we were playing beer pong in the pool. We were most likely the worst contenders the pool had ever seen. Our opponents weren’t much better so anyone else wanting to have a go soon gave up hope. The rest of the day/night took a sharp turn towards fatigue and an early night it was.

The next morning we woke fresh and decided to attend a day club. After waiting a long while in line to get in and then waiting even longer to buy a bucket of beers we were front and centre of the stage splashing and dancing the day away at Daylight at Mandalay Bay. The DJs disappointed Jaymin to no end but clearly Alesso was keeping everyone else happy…

The rest of the weekend was filled with eating, drinking and gun shows. You know, the usual stuff.

T & J

lake havasu, london bridge

phoenix, arizona

17 Sunday May 2015

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arizona, phoenix, usa

So this blog thing is tracking nicely! It’s been well over a month since the last post! The thing we forgot about after the push to get the thing up and running is that it is that it is always there nagging you to be done after each major stop and that that kind of pisses you off a bit as it’s supposed to be a “holiday”, thing is yes it’s a holiday but a very long one.

Which leads me to the next reason why there probably hasn’t been too much blog action, and that’s that the honeymoon was well and truly over by the time we got to Phoenix. The kind of travel slump that comes in after the 2 or so weeks of “fuck yeah we are finally away” and the realisation that we have no jobs, no place to live or everything else that goes with it, like direction and life purpose. It’s taken probably a month to get past this stage and into a bit more of a groove.

So back to Phoenix, not sure why we ended up there but it may have something to do with the fact that it was super cheap!? It was a long drive from LA to a dry and hot city. We saw the US border fence we got that close to Mexico. Phoenix was all about being somewhere where there were no distractions in which to get the blog up and running. Definitely no distractions in Phoenix! A strange city with what turned out to be not much to offer to us. It was early spring and already the heat was oppressing, with mid 30’s temps and no breeze – no wonder they air condition the baseball stadium. We went to a Dodgers and Diamondbacks game, did a bit of outlet shopping, I did a few drop ins at a local gym and that was about it. Probably not the best destination in terms of excitement but you get that sometimes.

J & T

gourmet dinner

los angeles, california, usa

11 Saturday Apr 2015

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california, los angeles, usa

LA is one of my favourite cities. I love the grit and glamour and everything in between. Taking 1.5hrs to get somewhere that the GPS told us was 10 minutes away due to traffic doesn’t even bother me – this may be helped by the fact that we don’t really have to be anywhere!

We made our way down from Van, upgrading to business class with our frequent flyer points. Unfortunately there was no lounge access to enjoy and a car waiting at the other end of the flight, so not much indulging to be had. We picked up our Toyota Yaris, tuned the radio to KROQ and headed out to Santa Monica where we had arranged to stay at a friend’s place while he was out of town (thanks Dave!). His landlord turned out to be a little unhappy with the arrangement (and also a little crazy) so we only stayed a couple of nights but got to spend the next day walking around Santa Monica in the beautiful spring weather, chasing chipmunks with the camera, window shopping and eating frozen yoghurt. In the late afternoon we headed to check out the Getty centre but due to the traffic mentioned above, got there just after closing time. We drove into the hills and walked up Runyon Canyon just in time to watch the sunset. Jaymin had researched the best taco trucks in town and after a few missed freeway turnoffs we managed to get ourselves some delicious dinner for a few bucks.

The following day we checked out of Santa Monica and drove down to Newport Beach, OC to have lunch with my friend Lorraine and her gorgeous 14mth old son Ryland. That night we shacked up in a hotel in little Japan and went out for Sapporo and ramen in an area that seriously had us questioning whether we were in fact not in Torrance but Japan! We spent hours walking the aisles of the Daiso discount store and the Mitsuwa marketplace where we returned the following morning to procure various Japanese treats for our roadtrip to Phoenix.

T & J

whistler, british columbia, canada

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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british columbia, canada, whistler

Hello Whistler! My oh my you have changed so……..oh hang on you are exactly the same. Like a reliable old shoe, but with not much snow (by Canadian standards).

I’d been on the snow reports from some time in January watching the spectacularly crappy season slowly grind out. I was wondering if there was going to be anything worthy of riding when we got there and if Tash with her “powder only” requirements looking like she might be propping the bar. Turns out as she was still a little under the weather instead made good use of the hotel Adara’s king size bed, free cookies & warm apple cider and stole many hugs from Kate, the resident golden retriever.

Somehow, the snow gods came through and there was fresh April powder with only a week to go before the season close of Blackcomb! As you can see in the pics below there was no chance of a ski out, a whole lot of muddy slush at the base but up top there was about 20-30cm which had me having to reacquaint myself with riding powder and Whistlers much longer runs and steeper gradients and in new boots…..ouch.

Village life seemed much the same except I wasn’t boozing on at the bar under the hotel like old times, but rather passed out due to extreme tiredness. I found myself running into people I did a season with 10 years ago, the Whistler bubble!

J & T