Nick n Ants Holiday Diaries

2009-11-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

US / States / French Canada Tour 09

After yesterday's longish day - we decided to have a bit of touristic/lounging start to the day - I don't think we left the hotel to late morning (past the hoardes of Wushu - aren't they some sort of blacklisted terrorist group or something?).

I had breakfast at (the shameful) Golden Arches because maybe I had one two many Saporros at the Japanese restaurant the other night - but Ant did the muffin thang from the nearby deli-style restaurant at the train station.

We walked downtown to the Olde and Semi-Olde City Hall. The Olde City Hall is a very lovely old style building - and the Semi-Olde City Hall is a Cameron Offices/1970s concrete nightmare. Speaking of concrete nightmares - the Semi-Olde City Hall was designed by the same architect that made the attractiveness that is the UN Headquarters in NY... Holler! Speaking of semi-olde - everything here in Canada seems to have peaked in the 1970s (the CN Tower, the Semi-Olde City Hall)... Sort of feels like the economy might have peaked back then and everything is on a slow decline towards "Dawn of the Dead" apocolyptic goodness...

We headed through Chinatown (which didn't really exist anymore - but not due to some ethnic clensing from the Toronoto City Council) to the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was a bit of steep entrance fee ($18 CAD) but it was quite interesting in the way it was put together - very thematic. Sometimes - it would have very "ecletic" art in terms of age or style - but it would always have a common theme and an explantion which would draw everything together. There was a less impressive bit about Canadian Art (come on - who has ever heard of Canadian Art - and no... Bryan Adams or Celine Deon do not count) and some group of eight or something who were all a bit shit. Nonetheless - I think it was worth while checking it out - if not for the cool building which was all new-a-zied and swish in a timber sort of way.

For lunch - we headed to the only other cool building in Toronoto - a Design College (which sort of looked like the upper levels were standing up by several thin straws). I had some more Japanese and Ant had some underwhelming Mexican (more Mexi-can't than Mexican).

We went for a bit of wander after lunch up to the Ontario Parliment House (which is the equivalent of visiting the ACT Legislative Assembly - errr no thanks). We wandered back to the hotel - after which we did a bit of browsing at the shoppes (excitement she wrote at 15% sales tax).

I did another bit of a workout at the gyme (there were hot wushu players in the spa - making it look like hot gay pron). But instead of the crazy Russian Wushu guy from the other night (almost swift kickboxing me in the head) - there was an equally crazy Brazillian guy who seemed to be overdosing on the roids...

For dinner - we headed to (how original) Gay Street (aka Church Street) to the Rainbow Cafe (not affiliated with the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara). Tis a bit hard to distinguish the food here in Canada from the food in the States - portions are still super huge - and most things are fairly calorific. The Rainbow Cafe was no exception (despite it being on gay street and most gay men being fairly body conscious). We called it a night after dinner (which is sorta hard going to bed after a full stomach of calories).

2009-11-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

There have been a distinct lack of early starts for us these holidays - but today wasn't one of them. Before we left for the States/Canada/French Canada - Ant bought some half price Canadian train tixs including a return trip from Toronoto to Nigeria - and today was that trip.

The ride to Central Station (or whatever it is called) was fairly smooth (considering it was peak time). The Canadians seem to have this weird thing going on about queueing for trains (hours in advance). Probably has something to do with not having any seating allocation. Anyhows - the station was sort of weird because you queue up in the basement - and catch an escalator (only if you have a ticket) up to the train platform.

As the trip to Nigeria is a NY bound train - the train was an Amtrak train (ie: no windows). But it wasn't too much of a hassle because there was not much of a view to Nigeria (very industrial grunge if you like that sort of thing).

The train ride took a couple of hours and when we got out - it was quite cold, miseriable and sort of wet. Arrival at the station was a bit random - we weren't allowed to go into the station from the platform - rather we had to navigate thru several nigara sized puddles to make it out to the street.

Downtown Niagria city makes Queanbeyan look like a busy metropolis (no hyperbole here). I'm sure it would make a great setting for a Resident Evil 6 game. There were random chinese restaurants which looked like they had served their last customer in 1983 and a complete lack of any signs of life anywhere.

We walked for about 30 or so minutes until we saw the US/Canadian "Rainbow Bridge" (I hope they rename it the "Frrwrendship Bridge" to make it sound cuter). This is a link over Niagara between the two countries and acts like a border crossing (duh). Once we got a bit closer - you could make out one of the falls (on the US side). There were also some dodgy looking Holiday Inns and stuff on the US side. I remember commenting to Ant "Trust the Americans to build some much tacky shit next to something of great natural building". However I spoke way too soon - because the best tacky shit was all on the Canadian side. Did I say tacky shit - because I meant to say more tacky shit than Vegas and Reno combined. The Canadian side was full of dodgy casinos, revolting restaurants (aka revolving) and lame arse tourist attractions. I like tack - but tack is not right in some places - including Niagara.

Anyhow - one of the attractions Ant wanted to do was ride the Maid of the Mist (no - she isn't a prostitute, rather some old boat where they hand out raincoats and get everyone abosolutely drenched under the falls if that is your idea of fun). However - everything had the same abandonned look that Niagara Falls City had and the Maid of the Mist was closed from the 25th of October for the winter (we missed it by a couple of days). Dang! (Ant said). Yes! (I said - because getting soaking wet when it is 5 degrees isn't my cup of tea).

We walked over to the Niagara Visitors Center (which is sort of smack bang on the top of the Canadian side of the falls). The falls were pretty awe-inspiring. Volumes and volumes of water gushing past was fairly spectacular. Coming from Australia - you aren't really used to this much water in one place at any given time. Anyhow - you could almost forget about the tack for just one minute standing up close to it.

We headed into the Visitors Center for our first Tom Horton's (hears a who) experience - underwhelming filtered coffee with sugary buns and the like. Although I was really expecting rip-off tourist prices here - they appeared to be normal prices.

We made the call to buy a dubious "Winter Magic Pass" thingy (sounds very peterphile-y)- which gave us entrance to some dodgy Butterfly Park (which we never went to), "Behind the Falls" experience and "Niagara Rage" 4D movie... The whole thing set us back $20CAD (plus tax which is a super rip-off here in Canada - it can be up to 15% sometimes). Apparently we saved up to 45% - woop woop...

Our first stop was "Niagara's Rage" a 4-D movie. We were all given plastic ponchos which had the "Niagara's Rage" logo on the back - superstylin... We were all ushered into a room to be greeted by a 4th-rate Pixar movie about some fat squirrel/chipmonk thing who is teleported back in time (who got detention from an owl) and meets a bear (with a bad Canadian accent) and discover how Niagara falls were created... I made a fairly audible comment to Ant during the first 30 seconds "WE PAID MONEY FOR THIS???!".

After the lame, non-4D (what is 4D anyway) - we were ushered into another room with screens all around and a metal platform on which you were supposed to stand on - which was precariously positioned about a pool of water. The movie then sort of went into "IMAX" mode - with real shots of Niagara (from a helicopter) and occasional blasts of water, fake snow and wind coming from the ceiling. I was more afraid of getting electrocuted from the pool of water beneath than anything else.

After the 4-D experience that was "Niagara's Rage" (I think all that makes something 4-D is if someone switches on a fan or something), we were ushered into the "Niagara's Rage" giftshop - where Ant's urge to buy plush animals was somewhat rising.

After that - we did the "Beyond the Niagara Falls" experience - where you don another sexay raincoat, catch an elevator (with the woman operator who is almost suicidal) and go through a tunnel and see from behind the waterfall. It was quite cool (temperature wise) but all you could see was just a wall of white with the occasional splash back if the wind was blowing the right way.

You could also go out and visit a viewing platform at the bottom of the Falls which was pretty cool and well recommended. Thankfully - when we did it - the weather was a bit dryer and less windier than before - so we didn't get wet.

After that - we had some more "Tim Horton Hear's A Who" for lunch (another ridiculously underpriced meal given the touristic nature of the location). Ant did a bit more "...ummm should I buy this overpriced stuffed animal??" action - but his urge to buy the stuffed animals wained. What these giftshops had in abundence were mini personalised licence plates... Although "Anthony" was a fairly rare name - but apparently - Chastity and Destiny weren't... I repeat - we are out of Bort licence plates...@! Hell - you could even get the "Nicolas" Cage variation of Nicholas...

Anyhows - we had a bit of time to kill to our train back to Toronoto - so (when in Rome) we headed to the Casino... which was surprisingly packed of old people (median age was about 86). It's sort of weird being a couple of thirty somethings and getting carded to go into a casino. Perhaps I should be taking this as a complement - but it appeared as if they were carded anyone who looked like they had a pulse. My favourite slot machine was the "Alien vs Predator" slot machine (when you think of people getting hidiously murdered... wait I mean - when you think of lucky - you think of Alien vs Predator".

We wandered for a bit until we found the epicenter of tackiness in the known universe - "Clifton Hill". It is about a half mile stretch of pure tackiness. Hell - it not only has one Ripley's Believe It or Not - it has two... And several haunted houses including one where it claims to have made 900,000 people wet their pants or something. I really didn't expect anything like this to be in Canada - let alone - right near Niagara Falls - but it was... and we took some pictures. After a very underwhelming experience at Wendys (where I ordered a thickshake (emphasis on thick, with a dollop of whipped cream and cherry on top - vomit) - we spent $5 on tokens at the "Great Canadian Midway Center" - where we played those ticket machines for about half an hour (you know - the ones where you throw basketballs into a hoop for tickets which are redeemable for really lame prizes). We did the whole Simpson's cheating thing (you know - two fully grown men passing each other balls to score maximum points) - and managed to get about 82 tickets - which only equated to a dodgy Mickey Mouse keyring and plastic head thing (which is too lame to talk about).

We headed back to the station and it either was pissing down (or it was mist from the falls pissing down on us). Either way - we were really really damp and miserable. I felt really underdressed for the day (just wearing jeans and a light hoodie) which sort of added to the effect of being depressed in Niagara.

The train trip back to Niagara was fairly harmless - it gave us a chance to recoup and dry ourselves (my socks were damp the whole day) :-(

We chilled for a bit at the hotel and tried to avoid the Wushu players as much as possible (Damn those Wushu!!).

We headed back out to gay-ville for dinner and we had Japanese/Thai confusion. Ant thought it could be a decent mix - because those two countries hadn't been to war with each other. Japanese food here is hella cheap (when compared to Wagamama) and usually comes out at the same time (unlike Wagamama). High Five...

I sort of felt a bit tired and Ant felt like going partying in Toronoto - so I headed back to the hotel whereas Ant went out and had a bit of an underwhelming Toronoto gay bar experience (or two)...

2009-11-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

After the fairly unsatisfying lunch - we hit the streets to the gay part of town (aptly named "Church" street...). Toronto has a fairly bigish gay scene and it was used (X-Files style) to shoot the Queer as Folk US TV series. Things didn't really feel happening (cause it was mid-afternoon) - but there was one club packed to rafters - full of retirees or something.

It sort of felt like Toronto had been beaten rather hard with the ugly stick. There was some gawd awful architecture to be had, and everything was rather flat. Ant made the comment that Tornoto reminded him a bit of Melbourne - flat, with trams...

Anyhows - we did some walking down Church Street in the direction of downtown Tornoto. We checked out the main train station (in order to work out where we had to catch the train to Nigeria falls the next day). Everything felt rather dead - lack of people, lack of shops (a lot of closed down things about) - perhaps it is the GFC at work here?

From the station - we travelled down the "Sky Walk" - a fairly gawd awful Cameron Offices / Belconnen Bus Interchange vintage above ground concrete pedestrian overpass which wouldn't look too out of place in a zombie/apocalyptic movie. Again -there was a complete lack of people which added to the errie feel of the place.

The Sky Walk links the train station to the CN Tower - the world's largest free-standing structure... or something. Sort of think like the Telstra Tower or a Communist Communications Tower (which are sort of the same thing) - and you have the CN Tower. At the base of the tower - there were plenty of "Ticket Offices" and some bizare "eco herb farm" - but no tourists or open ticket offices... We managed to find an open ticket office - and forked out $28CAD for a ride up to the tower and the "Sky Ball" (no it isn't a porno - rather an extra lift up to a higher observatory). We bailed on the "3D ride of Tornoto"... We may be tourist suckers but aren't complete tourist suckers...

It all felt really dead quiet (ie: no tourists) and felt like this could be a bit of a money-losing operation. Let's hope they could afford the upkeep on the lifts. After the ticket guy (who seemed a tad gay) commented on my negative body language - we made our way through the 2 mile queue area (sin tourists) before heading up the lift. At the observatory level - you got to see a fairly decent view of Tornoto and surrounds - pity that Tornoto was raped by the ugly stick tho...

Of interest was the "Glass Floor" - where you could walk out over a "glass bottom floor" and look at the ground. I did a bit of dancing around and jumping (to freak Ant out). After 5 minutes - Ant finally found the courage to walk out by a couple of inches onto the glass floor (but he had to hold me and was somewhat shaking violently the whole time).

The Sky Ball was another lift ride up - with even less tourists - but funnily enough - it was the sameish view.

We headed back to the hotel - when suddenly there was a bit more life in Tornoto. Probably had something to do with it being 5pmish.

It was sort of hard to find differences between here and the US (except for the funnier accents - "It's aboot dignity. It's aboot respect."). The food seemed the same. The shops seem the same. The TV sort of seemed the same... Oh well...

We made our way past the Wushu hoards to chill for a bit at the hotel. I've been on a fitness kick ever since the calorie-horror that was NY - so I did a bit of a gyme session at the 27th floor gym where I almost got a swift kickbox to the head by a Wushu competitor from Russia or somewhere who was going a little bit too crazy near me while I was on the exercise bike.

For dinner - we headed back out to Church Street where we went to a sort of "Mod-Oz" restaurant which doubled as a bar. I had a pizza, Ant had a steak and the 50 yr old woman who served us (who looked a little out of place working as a waitress at a flashy club) was super friendly and very interested in our itinerary (just like the Canadian Immigration peeps). Until next time... XOXO...

2009-11-01T06:15:00.000-08:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

We caught a shuttle for $7.50 Canadian (which was a bit of pain because we had to have the exact change and the ATM machine machine only spat out $20 bills). In order to get to downtown Toronto (which appeared to be a very long distance from the airport) - we had to catch this shuttle bus to a nearby subway stop - then transfer onto a subway till we got to the Yonge Street station. The trip was longish - about an hour and I was still venting about the Canadian immigration to myself.

At the subway station - it was sort of weird because you had to walk through a foodcourt and mall in order to get out on the street. We had no probs finding our hotel (Delta - not affiliated with the airline). When we checked in - Ant was a bit pished that we weren't given a single bed (hotwire bookings seems to do this to us a fair bit) - but she was fairly apologetic by saying the hotel was full... The room itself was pretty good - sort of a similar standard to the Doubletree - but you know you feel kinda lame when your room is on the fourth floor of a 27 storey hotel...

There was a bit of strange mob in the hotel lobby. Apparently - the "Wushu" Martial Arts World Championships were being held in Toronto and that the Delta Hotel was the "Official Hotel for competitors". Never really heard of Wushu before although it does sound like the name that Paris Hilton would call one of her toy dogs... (Come here lil wushu!). I've subsequently checked out wikipedia and it all appears to check up... although it ain't an Olympic sport and Ant did spot an Australian team - who aren't endorsed by the AIS... or something.

Anyhows - we wandered back to the Food Court for lunch and I had (the shame) some calorific Taco Bell monstrosity. Not only do you get the badness of french fries - but here at Taco Bell - they pour that plastic liquid cheese and some dodgy mince all over it for that added calorie effect..

XOXO

2009-10-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

Amazingly - we have been into this holiday for a week and a half now and we have, today, had our first early morn start. We had plane tixs from Boston to Toronto and the plane was due to leave about 10am-ish - so we had to set an alarm (with that hideous Sony Ericsson "Pop piano" ringtone thing) for 6ish.

I thought we were functioning quite well considering we had been rather sloth like for most part of the holiday. Hey - we never left the Boston hotel before midday previously.

We headed back to the Hospital for our breakfast. Thankfully - Ant had spotted porridge (aka oatmeal) the other day - so I had a bowl of porridge.. ahem oatmeal instead of all that sugary muffin crap - which hit the spot.

We went back to Hooker Central (aka Doubletree Hotel) - grabbed our bags, checked out and were on our way to America's most terrorised airport - Logan International. It was good because you could get a $2.50 subway ticket to a stop near the airport - then catch a complementary shuttle to the airport - probably the cheapest airport transport I've seen for a while. No wonder Al'qaeda choose Logan...

Anyhows - we checked in for our American Eagle flight (apparently it is like Qantas Link - eg: cheaper nastier version of AA if that was possible). After a fairly underwhelming security search (not surprising because it is America's most terrorised airport) - we made our way to the Admirals Lounge where we made use of the free internet (finally made a new entry to this blog) and had to hostage negotiate us some free drinks at the bar.

Despite the flight being run by American Eagle - it wasn't too bad - we did manage to get a whole can of tomato juice. Pity it didn't come with something to eat...

Arrival to Toronto was sort of weird - because we were let onto the Tarmac to our own devices (well almost), we let ourselves into the airport, and had to open (ourselves) the door into the customs area. It all felt random. Speaking of random was the Immigration into Canada. Ant walked up to one immigration person - who just asked Ant about the Ashes and whether he follows the Rugby. He got through no probs. I on the other hand - managed to pick Ms Grumpy Pants - who instead of asking me irreverent questions about irreverent Australian sports, started asking me 20 questions about my life, my job, my intent of coming to Canada, my previous visit to Canada... blah blah blah. She then did some sort of "colouring-in work of art with a highlight" all over my customs/immigration form and handed it back to me and let me pass through.

Ant and I then walked down a corridor to another immigration woman. Ant handed in his form - he got through. I handed in my highlighted form - and was ushered into another room (sin Ant) which was full of other immigration officers. High-five... Secondary screening. Anyhows - another woman saw me (one who wasn't Ms Grumpy Pants and had a bit more common sense) and she does the whole 20 questions routine. She wanted to vet whether I was a valid tourist and asked for an itinerary... Unfortunately - Ant organises this and carries all of info in his purple bible folder (...I just rock up). Anyhows - after a couple of minutes - I think she realises that Ms Grumpy Pants wasn't really onto anything with me - and they let me through. It's a bit bizarre. I've been to loads of places (and I've seen Border Security a bit as well) - and I've never had any problems like this before. It's also a bit annoying that Ant was AOK without the 20 questions - yet I'm subjected to all of this crap. Thank you for coming to Canada...

XOXO...

2009-10-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada is the only Canada Tour 09

Another day in Boston - another somewhat lazy start to the day. In lazy start - I mean I hit the gyme for an hour (the Y was full of random school kids running amuck on... funnily enough.. the treadmills). We headed over la hosptiale for breakfast (again some sugary muffins and mediocre coffee).

Today - we hopped on the Boston metro for a ride out to Harvard - probably the best uni in the states, if not the universe or something. Harvard is situated to the north of Boston in the district called Cambridge (not to be confused with the uni in England like I did). As soon as you step out of the metro stop into Harvard - everything feels really different. There weren't as many homeless guys/gals on the street, and it felt a lot more WASPy (a la New Canaan). Everything was fairly tweed-like, and I can't remember the ANU having "Body Shops" in their union.

We wandered into the actual university - which feels very swish, prim and preppy (students look like they have stepped right out of a Abrecombie and Fitch catalogue or store). It was very green (huge big trees and stuff) and the buildings all looked rather ye olde. There were masses of tour groups roaming around the grounds - they put on free tour groups but you have to tip the guide at the end. We weren't being cheap skates - but Ant and I decided to skip the tour because it didn't appear as if they walked around any great distance.

Harvard seemed to make ANU look like some cheap and nasty ghetto. Apparently - tuition fees cost about USD 40K a year - so you had better have a rich mommy and/or daddy (or your own crystal meth lab) in order to pay. Harvard felt a little religous-y cause there were several ye olde churches around the place (can't remember any ye olde churches at the ANU) but they were prruwdy so I took some pics. We wandered past the ye olde Harvard Law School and the Coop bookshop (which was fairly impressive) before we both decied to head back to town via foot down the riverside.

The walk into town took a bit more than an hour and was quite enjoyable. We could see the Harvard Business School (which is on the other side of the river from the rest of Harvard), the Red Sox stadium (Boston's local famous baseball team) and Boston Uni (which is like UC compared to the ANU or something).

We had lunch at the Prudential Center - Boston's big tall building - which is ugly, world trade center ugly... According to a big billboard outside the mall underneath it - it was "New England's premier site for shopping and food" - however I think Belconnen Mall and the Tuggernong Hyperdome are probably better - which wasn't saying much for the Prudential Center. Everything felt a little quiet - like the area is suffering due to the recession in the States. None of the shops were busy and there were a few vacancies around the place. Speaking about the GFC - it sort of felt like most people in shops around NY were actually tourists not locals...

After lunch we headed down to the nearby Newbury Street - which is really Boston's premier shopping strip. It was quite picturesque, quaint and full of more upper-end concept stores. We walked past "Johnny Cupcakes" - and Ant couldn't resist himself. However upon entry - Johnny Cupcakes don't sell cupcakes rather tee-shirts and undies. It was a cute store (T-shirts displayed in fridges and cupboards) and the sign had "Zero Calories, Zero Fat" - but there were definitely a lot of confused people walking into the store.

It was quite enjoyable walking down Newbury Street - but I had to go and spoil it by buying a smoothie from Starbucks. Memo to Starbucks and Boost - you don't make a good smoothie by using a tonne of tasteless ice~! Grrrr...

Anyhows - we wandered back to the hotel and surfed the free internet where I wanted to go see "A Serious Man" - the latest by the Cohen Brothers - so we headed to the nearby AMC to the 5pm session. I really enjoyed the film (which was about a jewish guy whose wife was divorcing him) - it was very quirky but Ant thought it was a bit so-so...

After the cinema - we headed out to the Little Italy district for dinner. The restaurant we went to was fairly cute, the food was good but the service was a bit patchy (seems to be a theme of this holiday - I thought 15% tips were supposed to encourage good service?!).

2009-10-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

We had a fairly restful sleep at the Doubletree - we couldn't complain about the big room and comfy bed. However we were yet to find the prostitutes as alluded to by the tripadvisor review.

Thankfully - the Doubletree had a fitness centre (well - it had a YMCA next door that you could use). Due to the horrible amount of weight we had been stacking on in NY - we decided to hit the gym first. YMCA downtown boston - where you can hang out with all the elderly chinese women...

Don't say that Ant doesn't take me to classy places - but we went to some bakery across the street from the hotel in the Hospital lobby for some stale-ish muffins (just to undo the work from the gyme) and some weird asian-bakery-esque random bread rolls...

After that - we headed down to Boston Common - where we stumbled upon some weird Halloween Dog Fancy Dress parade thing... where there was one dog dressed up as a "BUSY BEE...!" (Where's the busy bee?! Find the busy bee! Agggh!) High-five. There was also some other Glee-like band playing some unfortunate songs (Bust a Move).

From here we made tracks to the "Freedom Trail" - a touristy trail that leads you through a lot of historic sights associated with the revolution in the States. However in true american style - a lot of people weren't walking it - rather they were getting driven around in Ducks (half bus/ half boat) and mock-federation trams. I must admit - I'm not a big American history fan - so a lot of this stuff on the trail sort of went over my head. We were also sin guidebook for Boston - so we had to resort to some free tourist map from the hotel for information on things - which wasn't very informative.

We wandered around an old grave site which had Benjamin Franklin there (another dead president or something). We did our best to avoid the screamy tourguide - dressed in ye olde hat and pantaloons (you can't buy dignity) and went to a museum where something to do with the independence of America was declared or something - someone help me out with this American history please...! I made use of the ye olde toilets (where an american was bitching about the state of the ye olde basins) and we headed out to the Market area (something else I vaguely remember from my last visit to Boston). T'was full of ye old fast food shoppes and stuff.

We continued down the Freedom Trail (wouldn't it be funny if the States became a communist country and the "Freedom Trail" would be renamed to the "Revolutionary Trail" or something?) and headed through Little Italy (which looked rather cute with cobblestone roads and touty Italian waitstaff) and headed over some bridge - when we went to the U.S.S Constitution - a still "commissioned" navy ship from the ye olde times. Getting into the ship involved almost doing a strip search by navy staff (sounds hot) and going through an ye olde giftshop (complete with such patriotic items such as Rosie the Riveter action figures (which was made by the people who make "Jesus Action Figures" and "Librarian Action Figures" - not sure if the gift shop knows about the camp kitsch appeal of Rosie the Riveter or the fact that you can find her in most gay pop shops everywhere).

Anyhow - we had to wait a little bit in a holding pen - until we were allowed to board the "commissioned" U.S.S Constitution (praise the lordah!). It sort of looked like the "Bounty's Revenge" ride from Sydney's Wonderland (you know - ye olde pirate ship) - and it had some sort of great cultural significance to the States because it had never lost a battle or something. The tour was taken by several actual US Navy people - including a woman from Mississippi who I'm sure could do a deadpan impression of Britney Spears' voice ("hey y'all - I had to poop for a week to look this hot y'all!"). God bless Britney.

We headed back to the direction of town where we stopped by the market for some ye olde fast food (pizza) and perused Borders for about an hour.

We chilled for a bit in the hotel room - catching up on some Home Land Network action and Fox News of course! We sort of left it a bit late to find some dinner because we sort of forgot we weren't in NY anymore where people eat at 11pm at night. We wandered around an alleged eat street (from Ant's recommendation) - but it was either too eccey or too crappe. We wandered around for a bit more - and found some gay clubs which looked rather ye olde tragical-ee. We wandered around a bit more thinking - shit are we going to have to have the Golden Arches - when we walked back to Chinatown and settled at a Malay/Chinese (con)fusion restaurant for some sort of mediocre Char Kway Teow which was a little suspect because it made Ant feel super queasy afterwards.

After dinner - we decided to hit the Under Club - a ritzy sort of nightclub that did a gay night once a week (Sunday night of course). It was at the basement of the Sheraton (of course!) and was quite swick but the DJ's were a little random in their choice of music. One minute - they would be playing a Beyonce crowd favourite - the next - they would be playing some gangster rap (and everyone would clear the floor) - or playing some third rate mashups with Britney Spears background music with the Killers signing "Somebody Told Me"... que? The crowd was a bit odd - very preppy but that probably has something to do with Boston being a big uni town (hello Harvard). There were also a few randoms in costume - perhaps they got the date for Halloween wrong (it is next Saturday duh!). I was a bit bored - so I headed back. Ant stayed (for a little bit) before his Char Kway Teow wanted to come back up through his mouth - and he headed back to the hotel.

2009-10-31T05:45:00.000-07:00

US / Canada (Fake States) / French Canada (Fake France) Tour 09

After our really big phos, we headed in the general direction of downtown Boston. The shopping strip felt a bit underwhelming (after being completely spoilt in NY) and a whole lot more quieter than NY too (we were spoilt for people watching choice in NY)..

I had been to Boston ages ago with my parents - and I didn't really remember much except that everything was cold, icy and I was sick. I remember seeing the "Cheers" bar (excitement she wrote), doing bits of the "Freedom Trail", and having a really subdued NYE (hey - I seem to remember that my best NYs as a child was being stuck on a houseboat in Northern NSW with no TV or radio reception and falling asleep by 9pm - yay).

Anyhows - when we walked past Boston Common (the big park in downtown Boston) - I started to remember a bit more of Boston.

We check out a nearby AMC (US version of Hoyts - or is that Greater Union...?) to have a looksee on what is on. We didn't really know what half the films were because there were no posters or synopsises anywhere. Ant choose "Astro Boy" - one of those CGI animated films. It wasn't that bad - but I admit I prefer the 80s cartoon.

After the movie we chilled out at the hotel and caught up with some crappy American TV. Amercian TV has a lot of channels to fill with content - so you get a whole lot of rehashed news stories (like the Bubble Boy) over and over again. Admittedly - I was getting addicted to all of those shock jock right wing news stations (a la Fox) - this is more out of a morbid curiosity than me believing in anything they say. Tis funny at the moment - Obama is steadfast reviewing to be interviewed by Fox News - nor is he inviting them to press galleries. This is sort of big news - and it has the Fox News of the world up in arms. I would have thought they would have toned down their retoric since Obama got in but apparently not. They even had 2 one hour specials "RX Nightmares" - a "fair and balanced" report on the Obamacare legislation.... And I found out the other day that that Gretta woman is member of the church of scientology - woop woop. I was also getting addicted to some other weird channel "HLN" - Ant called it "Home Land News"... LOL... Until next time xo xo...

2009-10-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

The Margaritas and beer from last night were sort of catching up with me the following morning and I had to do some panadol. Chris, who is currently working at U-Haul, had to leave really early on Saturday morning (stepwid early) – so we didn’t have a chance to see him again.

At about 9am – Ant tried to make contact with Samara via text for her to come pick us up (she was living with her mum at New Canaan so she would need to drive over) so we had a bit of time to kill.

It was a really beautiful area, lots of big foliage and colours and precipitation. Lots of precipitation. Chris bitched last night that about 4-5 days per week is raining.

We let Izzy go mental for a bit out in the woods near the house. Although it was very pretty – it also felt a bit sinister in a Friday the 13th sort of way. You could imagine some homicidal manic waiting in the bushes with a machete whilst you were taking a shower or something. Also - I swear I saw multiple squirrels getting rapped by each other in the bushes.

Samara came to rescue us (again) around 10ish – and we drove for a little bit. Ant had confided in Samara the night before saying “your driving scares me shitless”. She took this on board and said “I’ll pay attention to my driving!”. Although there were some slight improvements in her driving – I still think Ant was fairly close to wetting himself.

We drove to a diner (which felt like in the middle of nowhere Friday the 13th style). It was quite busy and had to wait for a table for about 5 minutes. Once seated – the menu at the diner was typical diner fare – calories with saturated fat. Samara did her thing of hostage negotiating with the waitress (who was fully deadpan) some alteration to the menu. I just kept it simple by ordering a “He-Man” (French toast with bacon, eggs and sausages… I’m sure He-Man wouldn’t look so hot if he kept eating this on a regular basis). Ant the American way by also attempting to alter something on the menu but he was very intimated by the old dead-pan waitress and somewhat scared.

After breakfast (which was good in a fatty/calorific way), we did a bit of a car tour of New Canaan. As Samara described it – New Canaan was full of shops selling bits and pieces for your home. Because you had a super-sized mansion around New Canaan – you had to fill it up with stuff. The mansions around New Canaan were big and everyone around here are millionaires. Of note -someone out the front of their house had a “Obamacare is Suicide” billboard (Americans are totally crazy about this health care debate at the moment. The right and Fox News are worried that Nazis might ride on dinosaurs with lasers if Obama passes his health care reforms).

Anyhows – we headed to the station around 1ish (as Samara had an appointment to get her roots done). It was really cool catching up with Chris and Samara if only for a really short amount of time. I hope it isn’t that long until we catch up again – and wish them both the best for the future. Hugz.

We caught the train back in the direction of NY – to nearby Stamford where we bought an Amtrack ticket to Boston (our next destination). Stamford sort of seemed to have the same vibe as Campbelltown does with Sydney… ghetto baby. On a grey Stamford morn, another baby is born in the ghetto… In the ghetto…

Anyhows – our Amtrack train to Boston (although sort of delayed) was fairly comfortable and relaxing and about 3ish hours.

There was lots of foliage to see in this part of the world. Speaking of foliage – local news stations have a “Foliage Report” as part of their weather report – reporting on the state of foliage around the area and where it is most prettiest.

We arrived at Boston early evening. I was feeling a little flustered because my backpack was giving me spinal injuries due to the amount of NY shopping. It took us a bit of time to get our bearings at the station and how we were going to get to our hotel (Doubletree Downtown). We hoped on a subway (which was sort of confusing because it would have a “Silver” line and “Red” line – but everything was in an 1970s futuristic orange colour.

Anyhows – we made it to our hotel which was opposite a big hospital near Chinatown. We had booked this hotel with Hotwire (the website where you don’t know what you are booking until you have paid for it with your credit card) and it had some pretty bad Tripadvisor reviews. One was talking about it being really sleazy with prostitutes everywhere. But sometimes you need to take Tripadvisor reviews with a grain of salt – because it wasn’t sleazy at all and the hotel room was really big, clean and nice.

We headed out in the direction of Chinatown and had dinner at Pho Pasteur restaurant (a Vietnamese restaurant). The service was a bit rushed but the food was really good (big bowl of Pho for about $6US) and it hit the spot. Until next time - xoxo...

2009-10-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

It was our last day in NY and one of the reasons we had come here was to shop. And shop we did… and then some.

I went to a nearby H&M (which Ant thinks is torture) and Zara combo. We fingered some merch at Zara, whilst I bought a couple of Tees, a shirt and a new belt for about $60USD at H&M. Of note – I had brought about 7 items into the changerooms and I gave a pile of stuff to the attendant on the way out where she screamed at me “These are supposed to be on the hangers!!”. She then made me stand there whilst she was slowly sorting out the merch. If I had more energy I would have just dumped the stuff on the floor and scream “Deal with it bitch!” but I didn’t. I had the mind of complaining about her behaviour to the checkout but I forgot to.

I continued to subject Ant to more torture by taking him to Best Buys across the street. I perused the movies this time for about 20 minutes and decided to buy a couple of Blu-Ray movies. I had bought a PS3 when we were in Singapore a couple of years ago – and whilst it plays Australian PS3 games, it doesn’t play Australian Blu-Ray or DVDs or PS1/2 games. It is supposedly in the America/Asia zone for Blu Ray – so these are a bit hard to come by in Australia. Touch wood they work when I get back home.

We headed in a downtown direction on 5th Ave where Ant “Spotted” a Gossip Girl Cupcake store – “Crumbs”. Ant, being the cupcake aficionado that he is, couldn’t resist himself and bought a couple of $4USD cupcakes (white choc and choc fudge). He was nice enough to get me the choc fudge one. Just to spoil the moment, I went to the nearby Starbucks and got an underwhelming caffe latte (which is a Flat White).

From here – we decided to split up as Ant wanted to queue up for an Asics Store foot measurement/assessment doodad, whilst I wanted to shop for more clothes. I headed by foot to Macys which is apparently the biggest department store on the planet. It was having a “One Day Sale” on the Saturday, and because it was Friday – it had a “preview sale” today… whatever a preview sale is. That said – it was super busy and it took a long time to get to the change rooms to try things on. I ended up buying a pair of Levis and a shirt for about $100USD. The other day – we signed up for a visitors Macy’s Card – which gives you the ability to get 10% off the price of most things – including if the good is already discounted. Most things at Macy’s seem to mysteriously end up as less than the ticketed price at the checkout for some reason. Sort of feels like Myers back before those pesky Sth Africans took it over.

I then went over to (the shame) K-Mart which was across the road from Macy’s and Madison Square Garden. There wasn’t just one, not two, but three levels of clothing you wouldn’t want to be seen dead anywhere… I bought a cheap coke (coke is super cheap here - $1.75USD is the going expensive rate for coke – and it can be cheaper than this) and yet another PS3 game (which again are super cheap compared to Australia – US$60 for a new release game).

I met Ant back at Macy’s – where he had been assessed by Asics as having one normal foot and the other having a high arch. Not only had he been assessed by Asics – he bought a pair of them (they are really cheap again - $120USD for high-high end runners) and was given a free pair of socks just for the heck of it.

We continued some more shopping at Macy’s – where I bought a couple of retro tees for about $30USD each and a pair of gym shorts. Ant bought a couple of tees and some sports apparel as well.

From Macy’s – we headed down to SoHo in an attempt to find the Brooklyn Exchange store. It was super cold and freezing – feels like there had been a cold change because every other day in NY was nice (except for the first). We made a pitstop at Starbucks where I had to make use of their disgusting facilities (whilst Ant did something sacrilegious and bought a Hot Chocolate).

We ended up finding the Brooklyn Exchange store – which Ant had spotted the other night and thought it looked OK. I walked into the store thinking to myself – I’ve bought enough and I don’t need anything else. I walked out with a “Future Fierce” t-shirt and a hoodie – Ant bought a few t-shirts and a man bag.

We walked around outside for a bit more around SoHo where the weather appeared to be closing in and I was only dressed in a light hoodie so I was frreeezing. We walked into a Hollester store (it is an exact clone of Abbrecombie and Fitch, owned by the people that own A&F – with half naked guys and girls plastered all over the walls, and the same shit clothes but instead of “A&F” it says “Hollester” instead). They also have another store called Reuhl which is a clone of Hollester which is a clone of A&F… genus! It was quite hilarious walking in because they have half naked door attendants who say “Wassup?!” as you walk past. Do you come with the jacket? Anyway – we did a quick lap of the store and made an escape to the next door Zara – where I walked away with a $150US jacket (despite me not wanting to buy anything else).

I think we were well and truly shopped out in NY – and it was sort of getting dark so we made a bee-line to the hotel, did some repacking (where my bag was in danger of exploding with all of the stuff in it).

We were catching up with Chris and Samara who moved from Australia to Connecticut about 6 months ago(?). For those geographically challenged like myself – Connecticut is just north of NY and they live right near the border.

We booked some tickets on a train at Union Station for about $14USD each. It was giving me flashes of the series Mad Man where the man character commutes to and from Manhattan to upstate NY via train back in the 60s. It had felt like the train hadn’t been renovated since the 60s either. The more upstate the train got, the more WASPy things felt. There was this group of African American girls sitting next to us – and I couldn’t work out if they were heavily pregnant or heavily obese (or both). It was sort of like a bad racist stereotype – as they were chowing down on fried nuggets and grape Kool-Aid.

Anyhows – the train to New Canaan took just over an hour and we didn’t really get much of a view of outside (because it was dark outside). When we arrived at New Canaan station – we were a little anxious as our ride hadn’t arrived… and it was pissing down. There was the added bonus of the station not really providing any shelter to the rain. High-five. Anyhow – we waited for about five minutes when Samara finally arrived in a big f##k off SUV to save us.

She gave us a quick tour of New Canaan which was where the Stepford Wives movie with Nicole Kidman was shot… if that gives you an idea about the place. (ie: big white houses, big white picket fences, white people).

We drove to a nearby Mexican restaurant – which was aptly named “Tequila Mockingbird”. There was definitely an emphasis on Tequila – with the restaurant serving over 100 different types of Tequila. We waited for Chris to join us by drinking a margarita except for Ant that was wanting to have a quiet detox night by sticking to “beer”.

Chris shortly arrived - and there was more Mexican food and margaritas to be had. Sam was funny by doing the American thing of negotiating with the waiters to order something a bit different (margarita in a big glass hold the salt)… although they kept serving them maragritas sans salt.

Anyhow – about $300USD later (I think there was four or five rounds of maragritas) – we left to a (as Samara puts it) WASP bar. It was definitely getting all WASPy up in my gash tonight. Samara thought it would be funny if Ant and I kissed which might clear out the bar in no time. Anyhows – we had another drink – and then called it quits for the night. I’m not sure how anyone drove back home sober – but everyone drove back nonetheless.

Chris took us to his place which was about 20 minutes out of New Canaan. It was a three storey (if you include the attic) house which sort of felt a little isolated and Friday the 13th creepy. Izzy – their golden retriever was there to greet us in normal dumb happy golden retriever style.

2009-10-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

Although I had set the alarm for 10am (we had to check out this morning by 11am) – I woke up around 9am and stumbled down to Starbucks for another underwhelming parfait and coffee. When you are dazed and confused and suffering from lack of sleep – what better way to kill time than to walk down 20 city blocks to Best Buys and splurge on video games…!

Anyhows – meanswhiles – Ant woke up around 10am and was slightly concerned that I wasn’t around and we had to check out by 11am. I had attempted to text Ant saying I was on my way – but his phone was turned off – so he was freakin out.

Anyhows – I got back around 10:30am and started to pack my bags (leaving it really late).

We checked out (with 15 minutes to spare) and we decided to catch the subway to our new Hotel (in Midtown but closer to the Rockefeller Centre than our current hotel). We found the hotel – but we couldn’t check in because we were way too early.

We left our bags and I took Ant to a nearby deli for him to have breakfast and try and recover from his hangover. During breakfast – we decided to do a bit of “relaxed sightseeing” and catch a train to Coney Island (which is located at the southern bit of Brooklyn). I had a bit of a burning desire to visit it – somewhat due to the grungy kitsch factor but mainly so I could mark off another “Wiz” shooting location. (I luv the Wiz. 40 year old Diana Ross playing Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow – need I say more!).

The train trip was about an hour – and we could use our subway tickets to get there. The train went from subway to above ground during Brooklyn so you got to see a bit of it. Everything feels a lot more spread out compared to Manhattan – but everything is fairly built and dense still.

When we got to Coney Island (which technically is not an Island) – it was quiet and the train station felt shiny and new.
Once you got out onto the street – there was a “Dawn of the Dead” vibe from the place. Like someone had left off an A-bomb and zombies were lurking in boarded up shops (these existed!) waiting to eat your brains.

We walked onto the main broadwalk where there were these middle aged biker guys with no shirts on having really loud conversations about “banging unconscious chicks” with frequent course language. Klass. Speaking about klass – there was a gang doing a drug deal half way down the pier. Suddenly – I’m getting these flashbacks to the Requiem for a Dream movie (which was semi-set around Coney Island). Well – the real Coney Island seems to keep with the vibe of the Requiem for a Dream heroine junkie vibe.

Everything (or just about everything) was shut. There was a shut amusement park (which was also giving me Grand Theft Auto 4 vibes) and a “Shoot the Freak” sideshow where you could shoot a real “freak” with paintball bullets – but that was shut too. We walked down to the rollercoaster (which appeared in the Wiz) which was also shut. But it was sort of interesting because they had some info about the history of the rollercoaster – which was almost going to be demolished with a plan by the nearby Aquarium to purchase the land – but the locals protested and the roller coaster has remained.

We had lunch at the LP recommended “Nathans” – which sells hot dogs and german sausages. It was about the only open thing in Coney Island but it was very busy. We had to queue up for about 15 minutes for hot dogs – which were much better than the Central Park dogs – and put your faith back into NY hot dogs. The chips were excellent as well – but calorific. Speaking about calorific – all fast food items have their calorie amounts displayed in NY. So now a visit to Krispy Kreme is not completely guilt free.

Despite almost everything being closed – I really enjoyed going out to the grungy kitschy apocalyptic site that is Coney Island – and would recommend it to others just for the thrill of it. It would be interested to see what it would be like in the height of summer – school kids going on not-quite-safe rides mixing it up with junkies and middle aged biker rapists.

We headed on a “N” train back in the direction of Manhattan – but we stopped off at “Downtown” Brooklyn to visit the MTA (Mass Transport Authority) Museum. Downtown Brooklyn felt a bit more spacious than Manhattan – and maybe a bit more grungy – but still interesting. The MTA museum was in a very interesting location – a decommissioned subway station. You walk down a set of stairs to the ticket booth (like an old fashioned entrance to a subway station) and make your way around exhibits about everything you could think of about MTA (buses, trains, subway, tickets, money trains (minus Wesley Snipes), etc). Even more interesting was that you walk down another set of steps out onto a platform which contained a set of old subway trains – all of which you could walk around. I’m sure train spotters would love it – but I enjoyed all of the old advertisements in the train. There was one about Women not having the right to vote, but they do have the right to buy laundry detergent! Women’s lib ahoy. Because we got to the museum really late – we didn’t have much time to see everything – but it is well worth the trip over to Brooklyn for it.

We headed back to Manhattan – where we finally checked into the Best Western Hospitality House. We totally lucked out with this hotel – it was a one bedroom apartment (which equals one huge bedroom, one classy bathroom, a kitchen (full kitchen not kitchenette) and a big lounge room – all in Midtown Manhattan). Our only complaint was that it wasn’t in the Upper East Side. This hotel totally s###ed all over the Thirty Thirty Hotel – and the strangest thing was that it was about the same price… Happy happy joy joy…

We chilled out for about an hour or two at the hotel before heading out to Fifth Ave in an attempt to shop (cause NY has zero sales tax on clothing). We attempted to walk into the Diesel Shop when the door woman was giving me the “slit throat” gesture… probably meaning that the shop was closed but you’d expect that level of service at Walmart not a Diesel shop. We had the same thing happen to us at an Adidas store where the guy shouted at us that the shop was closing.

We caught a subway near the Home Alone 2 hotel in a downtown direction to SoHo (South of Hudson). SoHo is a fairly ritzy shopping area – not ritzy like uptown Fifth Avenue (where we were with the female guard slit throat action) but sort of uber edgy cool. That said – just about everything was shut. We stumbled onto a pizza place for dinner which kept up with the tradition of bad service for the evening.

Given the crazy night we had last night – we called it a night and headed back to our hotel to sleep.

2009-10-30T15:03:00.000-07:00

US / Canada / French Canada Tour 09

Wake up again at a Latino Time – either we are on a Latino Time zone or we are just not getting used to the NY time zone…
Breakfast at Starbucks again… How original yet unsatisfying.

Keeping in concert with the theme of this visit to NY – we wanted to go somewhere different so we walked on foot from our hotel to the UN Headquarters – the headquarters of the most relevant political body on the planet… ahem cough.

On the way – we stumbled onto a filming of either a bad sci-fi movie or bad sci-fi TV show. There was this guy who ushered Ant and I off a footpath – and around the street corner – there was a mock protest with people wearing balaclavas holding up signs saying “Back off Clones” or something. It felt a bit half arsed and straight to video or bargain basement bin. A few cars then drove past – and they finished filming and let us through. Speaking about film shoots – the other day we found a poster on 5th Ave saying that you could not park in a particular area for three days due to the filming of “Wall Street 2”… wall street harder… Also of interest – we spotted a flyer stuck to an apartment entrance which pretty much said “Ugly Betty is an emmy award winning series” and “we are looking for loft apartments to film in and if you are interested ring 555xxxxx…”.

The UN Headquarters was built in the 60s and had been unrenovated since the 60s. At the entrance – we had to do an underwhelming security screening in a tent (felt like a 911 afterthought). When we finally gotten into the HQ – it felt very Thunderbirds. I felt Thunderbird One might blast out of the visitors centre and the eyes on the portrait of Kofi Annan might flash or something when he is needed to launch Thunderbird Three.

We bought some tickets to a UN HQ tour. In true UN style – they had all different languages available but we had to wait thirty minutes for the next available engrish tour. While we waited – we read through the meeting agenda for the UN today. Excitement she wrote – I couldn’t wait for the “Rights of Woman in the Internet Age” at 10am chaired by the People’s Democratic of China.

When our tour started – we all were given visitor passes (this is just like work) and did a quick tour of some of the gifts given by member countries. Tackiest of them all was a tapestry given by Belarus which depicted in tacky 80s style the nuclear fall out from Chernobyl. There was this gay / captain planet-esque who was half naked and was supposed to represent something (which was lost on translation). Ant and I thought it was a scream and I had him take a picture of me in front of it posing.
Our tour guide was this really nice African (African African not African American) who was super diplomatic and tried to explain how relevant and important the UN is. We liked throwing in curb balls about why the US hasn’t paid its membership fees during the George Bush Jr era, which "China" was she talking about and other shit stirring tid-bits.

We visited the General Assembly Hall (you know – the one with all member countries). It was very tacky with some horrible murals on each side painted by some blind kids from Korea or something. When we asked what they mean – the guide said they were painted in a manner where you can interpret what it means by yourself… or something.

It was kind of funny how they assign seats in the General Assembly each year. They do a ballot and pull a country out of a hat (or powerball ball dispenser) and that country gets to sit in the front. And then all the other countries get to sit in alphabetical order from there. This nearly always means that Iraq, Iran and Israel always sit next to one another. Hey hey hey! We spotted Australia (third row from back) and took some pictures. Also of note – the seats had the most crummy interpreter equipment which makes a Sony Walkman from the early 80s look cutting edge technology.

The UN is fairly broke – and I guess that is evident by the state of the building. But the US is going to start up its membership payments so they have commissioned renovations for the Security Committee room and something else which escapes my mind.

We might have saved the best UN part for last – after the tour we went down to the basement for the… you guessed it… the “UN Gift Shop” – where you can get all the tacky UN merchandise that you would ever want (or never want). Ant bought a “UN To Do List” post it note magnet thing. UN Things to Do… “Buy milk, blow up Iran…” There were UN T-Shirts (hot hot hot), UN Spoons, UN Stamps (not food stamps), UN bears, and flags. Shit loads of flags. In fact – there was a flag for every UN member country… and yes – you can get flags for Nauru and North Korea. And there was a section for each country in the store where you could pick up tacky country-themed overpriced crap (Akubra Hats… etc). Speaking of overpriced – even though the UN Headquarters is officially on international territory – they still charge US sales tax. Basterds.

We had lunch at the nearby Union Square with some overpriced premade sandwiches.

After lunch – we headed to the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) which we had tickets for from the other day with our “Top of the Rock” tickets. It was big, large and had lots of art from the Impressionists onwards. I think we had managed to get a good deal with the $30 Top of the Rock / MOMA double ticket because entry to each attraction was $20. Although the MET is the bees-knees when it comes to NY art galleries – MOMA was still pretty good and beats a hell of a lot of other galleries. We had a bit of a browse at the MOMA shop afterwards. I liked the “DIY Stencil kit” which taught you how to stencil like Banksy – and even gave you stencils you could use to spraypaint grafiti or decorate a birthday cake!

From MOMA – we did a bit more walking around Midtown and Times Sqaure. We were contemplating going to another play or musical and we were walking around the front of “West Side Story” when a tout tried to give us merchandise. We ignored him (like we do to all touts) and he then screamed out “you are ignoring me because I’m black isn’t it! All you south Africans are racists!” – to that we just laughed and headed across the road to the TIXS booth.

We started to contemplate going to the “39 steps” – the Hitchcock comedy spoof play thinking it might only cost us about $30 each – but they were going to charge us about $90 which was a little step and we passed on it.

We headed back to the Hotel where we did some hotwiring and booked us a new hotel (for about $220US for a night) because we wanted to stay an extra day in NY. Unfortunately – we couldn’t book another night at the Thirty Thirty hotel – because they were full.

We headed by subway to the East Village district. When Ant and I stayed in NY last time –we stayed at here at the East Village Bed and Breakfast which was really cool because the woman that ran it was super friendly and it made it feel like you were at home. She took care of me whilst I had my “worst ever” hangover last time (which I will get to shortly).
Taking the L train to the East Village brought back memories of our last stay in NY (mostly good, but sometimes I would remember the rats crawling around the train tracks). Speaking of rats – I finally spotted my first rats this visit. (Spotted. R at the L train.) I think the MTA have been introducing better pest control – so the rats spotted counter has been a lot lower than our previous visit.

The East Village (like all districts in NY) has a distinct feel – a much grungier, artsy feel which is cool. We decided on a going to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. Ant collected most of the fake spider web decorations getting to our seat (Halloween is next week and NY seems to be totally decked out with pumpkins and ghouls and corpses hanging from window ceils, etc). Dinner was really yummy – Ant had some Udon noodles and I had my fav dish – Katsu Chicken Curry. It was super cheap too – tastes the same as Wagamama but at a third of the price of Wagamama. And the service was three times better than Wagamama.

After dinner we headed to a bar called “The Cock” – and before your mind goes to the gutter – there is a picture of a giant rooster at the front. This bar used to be the sister bar to the “Hole” – where we went last time we were in NY and I had the worst hangover ever. But before you judge me – the Hole had a $10US cover charge and a free bar where you could order anything. Before you know it – I had befriended the bartender and he was pouring half cokes, half vodkas and vola – I had passed out in the gutter. Klassy with a K. Now the “Hole” has closed down and the “Cock” is now at the former “Hole” location. The “Cock” was a lot grungier than the “Hole” but still had the $US10 deal – although you had to stick to bottom shelf sprits and some weird beer. Anyhows – we had a great time and didn’t have a repeat performance of the “Hole” but didn’t get to bed til 4am.

2009-10-29T06:19:00.001-07:00

US/Canada/French Canada Tour 09

We decided to take a subway down to Downtown to the TIXS office (instead of going to the Times Square TIXS office) in an attempt to beat the enormous queues at the Times Square office. However - upon arrival at the Downtown TIXS - there wasn't anything we really wanted to see and there was a bit of queue for tickets. Last time in NY - we had great success in buying cheap tickets from it (we saw a preview of "The Boy From Oz" with Huge Jackman in it (the irony of seeing this in NY), and "Take Me Out" (some gay play about baseball complete with full frontal shower nudity). But we were finding it hard to find really cheap tickets this time around.

After having a sugary muffin for breakfast at a Deli (which are a cross between a 7-11 and a Brazilian buffet/weight restaurant), we decided to hop on a subway train and visit Harlem. This time in NY - we both wanted to visit places we hadn't necessarily been before and I wanted to see if weave shops existed... which they did and I took a picture of one.

Harlem was a bit different from what you would expect it to be... Gone are most of the old buildings that you would expect to find - everything feels shiny and newish... Although Harlem is very afro-centric - it is undergoing heaps of change and it was a bit unfortunate that most of Martin Luther King Ave was full of strip-mall esque shops and stuff. The Apollo Theatre was still there and we took some pictures - but nothing else was very recognisable. Although it was a bit of a treat overhearing old grannies shouting "that N####r owes me 10 bucks!". Hey hey hey...

We headed off the main drag of Harlem and noticed that there seemed to be a lot of rich rich people around driving Jags and stuff... The housing was all old-style but probably renovated to an inch of its life from the inside. Maybe all of the working class have moved out of Harlem and perhaps off the Island altogether?!

We visited some exhibit (which you could see from the street) which documented notable african american politicians up until the very minute with Barrack Obama. There was this weird Western European tourgroup which looked so out of place here (as did we). We decided to avoid them and head on the subway to the Central Park North station which is on the South side of Harlem (for those geographically-challenged).

We made our first mistake of the holiday - ordering a half cooked Hot Dog. We had reasonable experiences ordering street food in our last visit to the States (I remember ordering Hot Dogs at Wall Street) - but my stomach felt really queasy about 10 minutes after eating this one... And to top it off - it didn't taste all that great either.

On the topic of visiting places that we hadn't really done before - although I've been to Central Park a couple of times - I sort of wanted to walk the whole thing - which is what we did. The northern side of the park is a lot more deserted than the Southern side (which is in Midtown). The Northern bit had lots of "deep dark old rape bridges" which reminded me of the Ashford & Simpson "Solid" video (favourite Singstar song ever) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWKKJgJfwKY

We traversed around a big lake (which you had to do in a anti-clockwise fashion otherwise the police might arrest you) and reached the Jackie O Reservoir (not to be confused with the Kyle and Jackie O show).

The MET (which is the only building in the Park) was nearby so we made a byline for the MET gift shop (which we didn't have any time to visit the previous day). I bought a large coffee mug with an Egyptian Hippo done in a Andy Warhol pop style, and Ant bought a pencil holder MET bag (as you do) and a book on Impressionists. Apparently the MET shopping bags are "icons" or something and Ant could overhear people attempting to get them for free.

We headed back to the Park and continued our trek to the South side. We bypassed Strawberry Fields (the Beatles ruined rock music) and made a b-line for the Home Alone 2 bridge and hotel (Ant's favourite movie of all time behind Dave and Mrs Doubtfire).

We made our way out of the park and walked to the Midtown area where we decided to climb the Rockefeller Center. I've been on the Empire State a couple of times (and the now-defunct World Trade Center) so I though it might be a bit different to do the Rockefeller instead for a different perspective on the city. We bought a $30USD double pass which gave us entry to the Tower and the sister museum - MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) which was established by Mrs Rockefeller back in the day.

Of course any visit to a stewpidly tall building wouldn't be complete without the obligatory green screen photo. For the Rock - you had to sit on a steel beam (a la those iconic photos of builders sitting on the beam). I did my patented next top model fierce posing and got the photo guy all excited - who started laughing and screaming out "Yo Yo Yo! Pop it!".

The elevator up to the top of the Rock was kinda trippy and cheasy - it had a clear plastic roof so you could see out of the lift. Everything had trippy lights and there was an overhead projector beaming out images. It was like your own little rave party minus the drugs and half naked people.

On the top was very prewidy - you not only get to see great views of Downtown (including the Empire State) but also of Uptown and Central Park. It wasn't overly crowded and was is recommended as an alternative to going up the Empire State. We checked out the gift shop which had a book about the Art of the Rockefeller Center. You might know about the infamous mural Diego Rivera was commissioned by Rockefeller to paint. Being the communist Rivera was - he painted a very communist mural including pics of Lenin. And Rockefeller being the staunch capitalist he was - he got Lenin removed out of it - but you still get the sense that everything looks communist.

After the Rock - we headed to the theatre playing "Wicked" the musical (which was a few blocks away from Broadway). Thinking we could easily get tickets - we were confronted by a loud usher guy screaming "tonight's performance is sold out. If you want tickets you need to line up in the "Cancellation" line"... Cancellation what?? Anyway - we did what we were told and we got to the front of the queue after waiting about 10 minutes and unfortunately - they shut the "Cancellation" window. We were told to wait because they weren't sure if they still had tickets. We ended up waiting for about an hour for them to reopen the tickets. The first half hour of this wait was completely boring but the second half was rather interesting in that we were watching the masses of human traffic coming into the theatre and attempting to get tickets. One lady (in a wheelchair) was informed that she couldn't go see the play because there was no wheelchair access to the theatre - this pissed her off something big time because she said she was told that it would be OK when she bought the tickets....

Anyhows - after waiting for about 1 hour - the Cancellation line reopened - and we managed to get two full priced tickets (@ $110USD). Cause we had just been in daggy clothes all day - we felt a little underdressed for a night at the theatre. But we didn't have any time to go back to the hotel and change because we had about five minutes till the play started.

Our seats were fantastic - row G (6 from the front) and very close to the centre. We seemed like we were sitting in the "Cancellation seat" block - because to our left and right were other couples who were in the cancellation queue as well.

Wicked was great - Ant had seen it before in Melbourne (the week after Rob Guest had died) - but he said the broadway version was better in terms of the music and staging. The Melbourne theatre only seated about 500 people - but our theatre seated about 2500 - so the stage was huge and the staging was better than the Aus version. The plot is very clever (not to give it all away - but I guess you think the Wicked Witch of the West is evil but after watching this - she is just misunderstood) and is quite adult-oriented (not really aimed at kids). It was definitely worth the $110USD for the seats and would recommend it to those visiting NY.

We headed back to our hotel and got changed and headed straight back out to Chelsea - another gay ghetto in NY. We attempted to follow LP's advice and go to a diner called "Empire" - but it all looked shut when we got there (apparently - it was supposed to be 24 hours) - so we headed up the street and found another 24hour diner. I had ordered a pasta dish (which was absolutely huge) and Ant thought he was ordering the light option when he ordered a pastrami on rye - but it was very greasy and also huge. What is it with America and ridiculous sized portions?? Quantity definitely rules over quality in the States.

We headed to a bar called "G" (not to be confused with my alter ego "The G.B.H"). All bars in the states seem to have "Go Go Boys". Ant made an accurate observation that Australian bars don't normally have these - and they seem to be a very much Amercian thing. Is it because Australian guys are better looking than Amercians and we don't have to resort to watching go go dancers?! I also noticed that the music in NY bars aren't very hand-baggy (a la Cube. God I hate that place!). XOXO

2009-10-27T05:44:00.001-07:00

US/Canada/French Canada Tour 09

I'm way behind schedule writing this so I'm going to keep it twitter-y short and sweet.

This is sort of embarassing but we had coffee for breakfast at Starbucks. Beggars can't be choosers in a country where coffee is fairly consistently shit and Zagat's number one rated coffee is Starbucks - well go with the flow.

We headed down Fifth Ave from Midtown and walked past the Chrysler Building (which is probably the most attractive NY skyscraper) to Washington Park (which is at the end of Fifth Ave) where we were pounced on by a sprucker selling "pick-me downs" as you do.

From there we walked back to the Village attempting to go to the shop which sold (amongst other things) Rod Stewart t-shirts... (My mum has wet dreams about Rod...). But alas it was shut.

From here - we walked down Christopher Street till we hit the West side of the Island. Some freaky druggy guy enjoyed playing frogger (would pretend to jump out in front of trucks and SUVs which were speeding about 60 miles an hour on a freeway). Although maybe his sense of self preservation kicked in when, at the last minute, he pulled back.

We wandered along a newish looking park along the Western side of the Island. So did the Frogger guy who we did our best to try and avoid his antics. New Jersey was visible across the river - it looked a lot less dense than Manhattan - but it did have a "W" hotel which is one up than Australia.

We headed down to Ant's favourite site in NY - the World Trade Center ground zero site (in Downtown). Last time we were at NY - it was only a couple of years since 9-11 and the site was still in a bit of a mess. However - it seems as if they are finally constructing a new site (a split between new office buildings and memorial parks). Everything was covered up so you couldn't really see much of the site from the street level. Anyhows - after "paying our respects" - what better way of following that is to shop at Century 21 (a big department store right next to ground zero). $5US 2-Xist undies - high five.

We had lunch at Battery Park (a newish/90s development on the western side of Downtown) and had a greasy Panini.

We continued walking down the southern most tip of the island was - the Staten Island Ferry terminal where we caught a free ferry to Staten Island and back. I hadn't done this since I was first in NY back in the 90s - where I seemed to recall the ferry terminal being really run down. However it was all ritzed up with big f### off LCD monitors displaying ads for gender reassignment surgery. The Staten Island Ferry is a free way to ride past the Statue of Liberty (Hollywood's most blown up statue) instead of forking out $30USD for a trip to Liberty Island. We did our patented "push old people and children out of the way" to get the best seats on the back of the ferry - and we were treated to some excellent views of the Statue and Manhatten Island (mind the smog).

It took a bit over an hour to do a round trip to Staten Island (we had to faff around at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal for a bit) and when we got back - we headed into Downtown and did a bit of shopping at NY's "JB Hi Fi equiv" J&R. It was a bit like the downtown Melbourne JBs (with shops specialising in different things all over Downtown). I bought some cheap games and perused the CDs and DVDs and avoided the urge to buy "Creepizoids" on DVD for $6.

We did a few sights around Downtown (ie: Wall Street, City Hall) and then headed over the Brooklyn Bridge and followed the masses of tourists (and crazy cyclists) over the bridge to Brooklyn. It was very pretty (around dusk) and slightly dangerous in the way that cyclists shoot past pedestrians. We also had to navigate around an annoying pack of russian teens who seemed hell bent on making our walk unenjoyable.

Once at Brooklyn (which was sort of a first for me to get off the Island) - we found a little Pizza place in DUMBO (Down Underneath the Manhatten and Brooklyn Overpass) which served great NY style pizza. Luckily we got there before the hoards of Russian students. High five.

We wandered around DUMBO for a bit which was sort of pleasant - lots of nice organic supermarkets, cafes and artsy stuff. It had felt like this place had been gentrified somewhat (could imagine it to be fairly grungy 10-15 years ago).

We headed back to the Island on the nearby Manhatten Bridge (just north of the Brooklyn Bridge) - although this bridge was fairly un-touristy as it was a lot louder and ear drum destroying than the Brooklyn Bridge with several trains going past at high speeds...

Once you get over the Bridge - you arrive in NY's Chinatown. Although not as iconic as say San Fran's Chinatown - it isn't without its charm. Right next door to Chinatown is Little Italy (of course!) full of touty restaraunts and shops with Godfather and Sopranos posters and stuff...

We headed back to the hotel (quite late) and dumped our stuff and headed back on the Subway (our first trip of the day) to Chinatown. Although when we got there (around 11ish) most things appeared shut. We stumbled onto a busy Chinese Restaurant where we had to wait for a table for 20 minutes. The wait was worth it. Thankfully we got our own table because for the most part - they made you share your table with other people. Also thankfully - we didn't have to share our table with the local serial killer who was sitting on a table near us (sort of had the whole Dennis Ferguson pedaophile look down pat).

2009-10-27T05:36:00.000-07:00

US/Canada/French Canada...

After the MET (and after taking a "sitting on the stairs of the MET like Gossip Girl" photo except it was pi$$ing down) - we wandered for a bit around Park Avenue and the Upper East Side. All very swish, expensive, ritzy (as Kath N Kim would say) and very Gossip Girl.. Ahhhh!

That night we headed down to the Village (the gay one) for dinner and drinks. I have to say the subway station there is a bit weird - combining my Dad's first name and second name or something. We headed to a "fusion Thai" restaurant down Christopher Street - and had Thai Tacos for an entree (or an appetizer as the Americans call it) and some Pad Thai for our main (or entree as the Americans call it which makes no sense because entree means beginning...). Of course everything is Supersized in the states so we could start to feel the carbs and calories count up with every taco bite...

After dinner (which was about 11pm because I think we are still jet lagged) we headed back to the bar area around the Village although nothing was really pumping. We went to a bar called "Pieces" which was decked out with meat cleavers and plastic sheets everywhere (sort of like a Dexter episode). I had to check the bar in case someone was going to jab me with a syringe and then disembody my corpse.

2009-10-21T16:14:00.000-07:00

United States of Tara/Canada/French Canada Tour 09 - Part 4

Wakey wakeies... Despite only having a couple of hours of sleep on the flight - I think I only managed to sleep for 6 hours in our first night in New York. I woke up stewpid early time of about 5:30am as someone was going medieval on their car horn outside the hotel. Yay noise pollution and jetlag...

We sort of moped around the hotel for a bit before getting out on the streets (which we didn't really want to due to the disgusting cold windy wet weather). Ant's pissweak umbrella which he had bought the night before at the Canberra Centre wasn't up to the task.

We made our way back to Times Square as we wanted to check out the TIXS office (you know - that half price theatre box office where all the cheap skates go like us two). We perused the menu but there wasn't anything on their list we really wanted to go see. The only thing both of us wanted to go see was Wicked. We had already seen Chicago (in London with David Hasselhoff as the lawyer - yes!) and I had seen Avenue Q in Sydney on the Sleaze Weekend and we weren't really keen on things like "Shrek the musical"... so we gave the TIXS office a miss.

It was still blowing a gale and we were getting a little hungry (it was around 10ish). We bypassed the Stardust Diner (with singing waitress... not strippers as the name sort of suggests) and went to Ellens Diner with "world famous cheesecake".... (as world famous as the "St Kilda Road" we thinks). The prices were steep... stewpidly steep - with bacon and eggs costing $20 USD. We did a "world famous Nick and Ant walkout" and went to a nearby diner which was cheaper (around $10USD) and had the added bonus of us sitting near a waitress station where the waitresses would scream in a thick latino accent "ORDER IN FOR TWO LUMBERJACKS WITH EXTRA CRISPY BACON HOLD THE NUTRITION". After sitting there for 15 minutes - we had a photographic memory for their menu and all combinations and permutations. Breakfast was OK if a little bit on the stewpid US style portions size. Maybe I could appear on "Dance Your Ass Off"?

We went to the nearby subway stop (right outside the diner) and picked up a couple of 7 day unlimited metrocards for $27USD each.... which is pretty good value considering each train ticket costs $2.50 and these trips can add up pretty quickly. Another bonus with the NY subway system is that it is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week (except for the occasional dodgy maintenance closures on the weekend). This makes going out and getting trashed fairly cheap. Ant was having nightmares catching the trains though - as he watched both versions of "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" (the 70s and the dodgy Travolta remake) - so he had nightmareish versions of John Travolta with a bad crew-cut and facial hair boarding a train or something.

We headed to the Upper East Side to get some Gossip Girl vibes. The Upper East Side is where all of the super rich live - everyone has bellboy door attendants, limos and stuff... Maybe we should have done our homework about where the filming locations of Gossip Girl are because we didn't really "spot" any - apart from the front steps of the MET which is a bit obvious. Speaking of the MET - the two of us thought it would be a good idea to do indoor things (given the shithouse weather).

The MET is sort of like a Disneyland of archaeological art (Egyptian, Pre-Colombian, Middle Eastern, African) and classical and modern art. There are even bits of Egypt which have been shipped over (wholesale) and planted into the museum. The entry was sort of steepish ($20USD recommended "donation") but it is definitely worth it. We had spent about 5 hours wandering around - the highlights were probably the Impressionist-era stuff (Van Gogh, Monet, ABH - another bloody haystack) and the modern stuff as well. I also really liked the African stuff because I hadn't really seen any of it before - it was a bit out-of-this-world-esque and a bit Resident Evil 5-esque. We had been to the MET before on our last trip to NY - but it was a great way to kill a day.

You could tell that the GFC was having an effect on the museum. Several galleries (which looked like there was nothing wrong with them) were closed and we were kicked out of the Islamic Art museum (by a loud and somewhat incomprehensible guard who could be a friend of "Ellen/Martina/KD") when it wasn't even close to closing-time. Because their collection is so huge and all of it appears to be on display - running the museum must be fairly costly (in terms of guards, etc) - so because revenue is down - so too are the number of open displays. The Onion (the States version of the Chaser magazine) had a funny satirical fake news story on the MET allowing people to touch and lick the works of art in order to boost numbers and money...

Until next time... XOXO

2009-10-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

US/Canada/French Canada Tour 09 - Pt 3

The flight to LAX was sorta funny in a kinda Flying High sort of way... There was a medical emergency mid flight and they were asking over the PA for a doctor. Don't they know not to order the Fish?! Anyhows - when we touched down at LAX - they had some medics ready and waiting which delayed our already delayed flight that bit more.

LAX seemed a lot more jazzed up then we remembered. Everything was being renovated and the new bits were like all shiny and new... like a virgin... We had a connecting flight from LAX to NY and only had five minutes to quickly update the blog before rushing off to the next flight.

The flight to NY was not bad even though we had proper economy seats. There was a fantastic view for most part (all of LA and OC, the Mojave Desert and the Grand Canyon were all visible). Due to the bad hangover from the previous flight - we toned down the alcohol consumption.

We arrived at NY JFK airport at around 5:30pm new york time. Feeling really tired - we grabbed our bags, circumnavigated around the Skytrain to the MTA subway, got lost at Queens (Ant was trying to be clever with the trains but due to the really tiny font size of the LP subway map - we took a mostly stupid long route) and got to the "Thirty Thirty Hotel" at around 8:30pm (which is funnily enough at 30E st and 30 ave)... Ughh...

Feeling super tired - we checked into our 3 star midtown hotel in Manhattan. We attempted to swipe into our room on the 6th floor with the room card about three times - until we sort of figured out that they were trying to give us a room with someone else in it (getting flashbacks of the Traveldodge in Sydney last month). When they decided to give us a different room (one sin guests) - the room was a bit small and somewhat prison like - but it had a comfy bed which sort of made up for it.

We hit the streets wanting to get some food (despite the fact that we had been overfed on the flight(s)). We did a bit of wandering around - noticing NY didn't feel all that busy. We came across a Mexican restaurant (right next to the Empire State) and had some cheap (and oversized) black bean burritos. Damn those American sized portions. I can feel the need to appear on the next series of the Biggest Loser if we keep up this diet.

We wandered around for a bit more being all vague and jetlagged. We stumbled across Times Square which was chock full of people (sin locals). Everything felt a little different than what we had experienced about 5 years ago - mainly due to the City being Clover Moore-ised with several lanes of road traffic permanently blocked off as either bike lanes, parking, seating or more pedestrian footways. Sort of gave the place a different vibe (a bit less claustrophobic). Ant got a coffee at Juan Valdez - a Colombian Coffee Starbucks clone - it had mediocre coffee with that mediocre South American service...

On the way back - I did a "high five" with Ant as I found "Best Buys" and a "H&M" plus a "Zara" all within a stone throw away from each other. I'll be back...

2009-10-17T08:33:00.000-07:00

US/Canada/French Canada Two

Hanged out at the Melbourne Qantas Club for about 2 hours... We started to hit the grog (around 10am) which could be some sort of record...

We had premium economy seats (despite Ant only forking out $1100 for his tickets return from Canberra to NY with a stop over at LA on the way back). Let me hear it for the GFC and low passenger loads on flights... High five.

Watched Transformers 2. You know you are watching a bad movie when the emotional highlight is a chihuahua humping a miniture bulldog.

Then watched (I'm so embarassed) Star Trek - but I fell asleep in it twice and didn't understand a thing.

Then got a bad hangover (high five). Drinking one too many bottles of Shiraz (aka four) ain't good.

Watched the doco on Valentino which was sort of interesting in a "September Issue" sort of way (Valentino is a big drama queen) but they skirt around the issue of his sexuality...

Watched "Bronson" which was quite good. I don't think I've ever seen a movie with so much male frontal nudity and the "C" word on a plane before...

Until next time.

2009-10-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

States/Canada/French Canada is the Only Canada Tour 2009

Blogs - I usually only associate blogs these days with downloading music not people writing shit... So I'm going to keep this like "Gossip Girl blast" / Miley Cyrus twitter whore short and sweet... Woop Woop...

4:50am - Worst night sleep evah... Been awake for hours... Alarm goes off... I almost fall back asleep.

5:20am - we catch a cab to "Canberra International Airport" - cab driver friendly - there's a first. We also confirm that we are getting Premium Economy seats from Melb to LAX. High five.

5:45am - we head inside the Qantas Club - which is full of Rivers Clearance Store Models (which is an insult not a complement). Maybe there was a River Store convention in town? We soon find out it is a bunch of Defence dickheads who all seem to have shares in the Rivers Clearance Store at DFO. Anna Wintour would be rolling around in her grave if she were dead.

6:20am - we get near business class seats. Neoice leg room. High five.

7:30am - land in Melbourne. We are going the scenic way to LAX. Urgh!

7:45am - go thru the cluster-f### that is Melbourne International Security where there are lots of random old grannies who have difficulty understanding the concept of a metal detector and removing all metalic items...

8am - Qantas Club @ Melbourne. Swish. No natural light. Rivers Clearance Store guys keep getting bounced from getting in (attempting to get in with a Qantas Premium FF card and a Singapore Airlines ticket)... High five...

Spotted - "A" attempting to upgrade our LAX-JFK tickets to premium economy @ the Qantas Club. If you want those Premium Economy seats - it looks like u need to move up to the big league of Gold FF status "A". Until next time XO XO Gossip Girl.

2009-01-25T20:34:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 30

Our flight from Oaxaca to Cancun (via Mexico City – the very round-a-bout way) was at the unholy time of 7am – so we had to get up at the even unholy-er time of before 5am to get a cab to the airport to catch our flight. The airport was a bit of a fair distance from the hotel – and we paid about $10AUD for the privilege.

When we arrived at the airport – there was a big long queue (Canberra Airport-esque) to check in. We were flying with Click Mexicana (pronounced “Klee Meh-hick-cana”) which was the “low-cost” equivalent of Mexicana.

Even though we were the first flight out of the airport – we were late by more than half an hour. This wasn’t all that good because we had a connecting flight from Mexico City to Cancun – and only a 50-minute gap between flights. We raced from the plane across to the other side of the airport – where surprisingly – our plane was still at the gate (we were both convinced that we wouldn’t make the connection). We were one of the last people to board the flight (everyone else were sitting down).

Although we made the flight – we were a bit sceptical that our bags were going to make. Speaking of which – we spotted my bag sitting outside the plane – a couple of minutes before we taxied off to the runway. I asked Ant – “Do you think it is going to make it??” and Ant replied – “No…”. Yay… And upon arrival to Cancun – the luggage carousel sin bags confirmed this. We rocked up to the lost luggage counter – where there was this super-mad Mexican – shouting expletives en espanol to the Mexicana woman. She seemed to be doing a rather good Ren impersonation (of Ren and Stimpy fame). We were a bit more pleasant to deal with because we understood why our bags didn’t turn up and felt pretty confident that they would just turn up on the next flight to Cancun (this afternoon).

We left our bag details with the luggage counter – and bypassed the “USD 50” taxi to the city booths (what a rip off) and caught the ADO $3.50USD bus ride to town. Although catching the bus - I could understand why it was so cheap - because they subject you to "Mexican Movie Torture" - aka making you watch High School Music 2 en espanol. It is bad enough watching it in English or on "Ice" but watching a badly dubbed spanish version takes the cake.

After about a 20 minute bus ride - we arrived at the ADO bus station in the middle of downtown Cancun. We were feeling a bit peckish and because we were in Cancun (a quasi-American city in Mexico) - we went to Mc Donalds for lunch (...when in Rome...). We both ordered Mac Nifica meals (sort of like a Mc Feast) - Ant got his straight away - but mine took about 15 minutes (true Mexican Mc Donalds experience). I was loitering around the front counter and they kept shouting in the kitchen "Mc Nifica! Mc Nifica!". I was sort of getting the feeling that they were bagging me out (Mexican Clown style).

To be continued... XO XO - you know you love me... Gossip Girl...

2009-01-25T20:31:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 29

Another day at Oaxaca – another bread roll and drinkable yoghurt for breakfast from the Super Mercado… Hey – it at least it was relatively cheapish…

We decided to check out the mega-market which was just beyond the bus station from where we had caught the bus and it was a huge market indeed. Probably a whole lot less touristy than the other market we had went to yesterday – but probably about 4 times bigger. It’s always fun wandering around markets in a different country and checking out the different types of produce and see how much we get ripped off in Australia for fruit and veg prices (you get about 10 avos for 10 pesos here in Mexico). The market also had the requisite pirated DVD section - which we both had a little mosey but didn’t buy anything.
We both picked up a big plastic cup of fresh pineapple and (gawd bless) rockmelon (“you can’t elope kimmy!”) for 10 pesos each.

The market was sort of broken down into sections – so all of the zombie chicken sellers would be in one area, the carne in another, the tacky touristy stuff in another, and the horse-riding equestrian gear in another… and so forth. I was on the lookout for cheap touristy gifts which I could bring back home for gifts for work colleagues. I had about 40 requests for stuff from not only Mexico – but Cuba as well (felt like I had to bring an extra bag just to bring back all of this stuff). I tried my hand at bargaining with a guy who didn’t really speak English – but what he was trying to sell was a bit of a rip so I passed. Although Ant got some enjoyment watching Drawn Together En Espanol on the guy’s TV while I was haggling.

Ant had an idea to go back to the other market for lunch at one of those meat selling/cooking places at the other market. This was a good idea on paper – but in reality – I started like I wanted to throw up everywhere like Linda Blair in Exorcist One. After wandering around the other market for about 20 minutes trying to find the “carne” section – I finally came clean about my vomit tendencies to Ant and we thought it was best to rest back at the hotel.

I had a bit of chill at the hotel (maybe it was our dodgy hot dogs the other night that was making feel like Linda Blair) – and Ant did a bit of reading. So much reading – that he had finished all of his books and needed to get some more. I actually started to feel a little better – so we headed out in the direction of the (LP alleged) “Best. English. Bookstore. In. Mexico” – which was near that cathedral from the other day. When we found it – it was closed so we went to the nearby Oaxaca Cultural Centre (which was next door to the Cathedral). It was about 40 pesos to get in and everything was en espanol – but I think it was worth it. It had a few temporary exhibits including one on Mexican “Day of the Dead” artwork (I love those wacky Mexican skeletons in drag), a “ye-olde” book and illustration exhibit – and a “ye-olde” map exhibit (Ant hearts “ye-olde” maps). In the permanent collection – there was heaps of stuff on life in Oaxaca – including pre-hispanic – and Spanish colonial stuff. The Oaxaca Cultural Centre is housed in an old Dominican monastery – which is all really neecye in a Jennifer Lopez latino video clip sort of way. On the grounds were the Oaxaca Botanical Gardens which was full of guurgezzsly manicured catci (or is that cactcus??). Although it was visible from the top floor of the museum – it wasn’t accessible to tourists today which was a bit of a disappointment.

After the Cultural Centre – we headed back to the English bookshop which was open this time. I bought a Mexican Cookbook – which was smallish – but looked great in replicating actual Mexican food (not the tex-mex variety). We had seen it at the Monte Albon giftshop – where it didn’t have a price. When we asked at the front counter – they said “350 pesos” (aka $35) which was more than a price for a Donna Hay cookbook. We said “no way joe-se” – but luckily – the same book was at the English Bookshop – but with a price of only 79 pesos (or $8ish AUD). Me thinks the Monte Albon giftshop people didn’t really know how much it costed. Ant also bought about $70 worth of books (he was becoming desperate) – but all of which were on Mexico’s history.

We dumped the books back at the hotel – and headed for another one of Ant’s patented “death march” walks around town. We walked out of the historical part of town and into the more grungier non-UNSECO world heritage parts which was interesting. Did I mention that we spotted our favourite Mexican woman’s fashion shop – Liz Minnelli…? Liza should be filing a litigation suit as we speak.

When we headed back to the main piazza – there was a local ye-olde bandstand band and several old Mexicans dancing like a comatose Gene Kelly in Xanadu. All of the old people had probably escaped from the local nursing home and all had probably missed their meds. There was an outlandish couple dressed in purple – the guy dressed like a 1930s purple pimp (sort of looked like Gene Kelly from Xanadu).

Despite it being a couple of weeks into January – a lot of Mexico still had all of their Xmas decorations everywhere. Although tonight – the locals were finally pulling down the main piazza Xmas decorations. Ant had calculated that it was 12 days after Xmas – but I always thought the “12 days of Xmas” were the days preceding xmas…?

We decided to have dinner again at the piazza – this time in a restaurant which was super close to our hotel. This restaurant was actually pretty good and probably one of the best meals we had in Mexico. And despite the prime location (and mariachi band playing at the restaurant) – the prices were fairly reasonable – and the service was pretty good too (the trifectta).
After dinner – I was doing my last minute dash to buy some more cheesy Razzie movies. Stuff that I got included the Bodyguard, Indecent Proposal and amazingly – “Roller Boogie” – I couldn’t wait to watch it.

2009-01-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 28

For breakfast – we decided to go “up-market” and buy a bread roll, a banana and a drinkable yoghurt from the Super-Mercado down the street from the hotel. We were on a bit of a mission to go to Monte Albon, a nearby archaeological site which involved getting a 15-minute bus to the site. Ant found the LP bus station but it was sin staff… We happened to get touted a couple of minutes later by a couple of Mexicans… One was offering us a price of 60 pesos with a guide, the other 40 sin guide – we went for the latter – not because we are tight – but we kinda get pretty bored with guides that go on and on and on about stuff that you probably won’t remember or care about.

We got our tickets and about 10 minutes later – we were on our way. Like many buses in Mexico – this tourist bus seemed to pick up random locals at non-bus stops and would drop them off along the way – all of which didn’t appear to pay anything to ride the bus… which makes you sorta pished about paying top dollar for a non-express clapped out bus. The bus ride up to the mountain was a little reminiscent of our Culca Canyon bus ride with Elvis – however this bus driver enjoyed accelerating into corners with steep cliffs on one side of the road. LP seemed to make the daft suggestion that you could walk up to Monte Albon – but:
a. there were no footpaths;
b. there were heaps of slum parts along the way which wouldn’t be all that safe for Gringos to walk around; and
c. it would take you half a day to walk up there…

We survived our ride up to the Monte – and bought our tickets for about 50 pesos. Monte Albon is another one of those UNCESO World Heritage Sites which we could tick off. I had Ant take my picture in front of the sign just for some proof on file. Also of note was the “No-Carbonated Sugar Based Drinks” rule at the site. Although – technically – I think Diet Coke by-passes this rule (there isn’t any calories) and I had smuggled a couple of bottles in.

Monte Albon is a fairly big Aztec site where the top of the mountain had been completely excavated to build the site. There was an impressive ball court (where they used to play gladiator-esque ball games), a few pyramids (a couple of which you could climb to the top) and plenty of stealthy touts who were playing it rather low-key due to the rules on the site not allowing the selling of goods or artefacts. We also spotted our nemisises – a couple of british tourists who were on our bus from Pubela. We had spotted them yesterday outside the cathedral in town – and again here at Monte Albon. There was also another couple (an American girl and british guy) who were on our tourist bus here – who strangely reminded us of some friends we know back at Oz (American girl, Australian guy… and a pizza place). We were a little disappointed that the tombs at the site were closed – Don’t Know said that “Tomb No. 7” was a highlight – but all you could do was walk on the top of the tomb – not go underneath. We weren’t sure – but we sort of got the feeling that the tombs were permanently closed and that Don’t Know was now out of date…

Our bus back to town didn’t leave till 2pm – and we had pretty much finished the site around midday. So we decided to eat at the overpriced touristy restaurant at the museum next to the entrance. And to kill some more time – we ordered three Coronas each (as you do). Our british nemsises were there at the restaurant – as well as the loud American girl/quiet british guy couple – I think everyone was killing time until the bus arrived to pick us up.

After paying our bill at the restaurant (or La Quanda) – we headed back outside where the bus had left us. It was really pretty hot and not much shade – so it was a little bewildering being out in the sun after knocking back tacos and three beers. And there was some freakish European couple who kept hogging our bits of shade.

We caught the bus and decided to jump out early (due to the really slow Oaxaca traffic jam) and headed to a nearby market which was absolutely amazing. It was quite hot outside – but when you enter the indoor market – there was this big rush of smoke and heat – and a truck load of people selling and cooking meat on charcoal hot plates. I hadn’t really experienced anything like it before and had started to wish that we hadn’t had lunch back at the restaurant. The rest of the market was pretty cool too – you could buy heaps of fruit and veg, bakery stuff, chickens (all of which had a “yellow-zombie” look), aquarium fish (!), junky market stuff, piñatas, clothes and everything and anything else. I was rating this place as one of the better market experiences in the world.

We were being a bit slack and decided to chill out at the hotel room for the rest of the afternoon (given that we had drunk 3 beers in the heat at Monte Albon). Ant and I did some more unnecessary facebook updates and I did a bit more blogging.
When it was dinner time – we headed out to the piazza for dinner. I had spotted a Gringo-couple at one of the touristica restaurants drinking Maragritas. I usually associate Mexican food with Margaritas – and for this trip – it was completely devoid of them. So I dragged Ant to the restaurant – where I ordered some Tostardos (tortillas with salad and chopped up sausage on top) and Ant had some tacos (non-tex-mex style). I of course ordered a Margarita – but Ant instead had a beer. I was a little worried about the food and drink (lettuce and stuff in the dish which probably involved washing it in water and ice in the Margarita – which I thought was a sure-fire way of losing 7 kilos in 4 weeks) but I think it was OK. Because we were in a prime-position at the restaurant to get touted – we did – about 7 times including by a tone-deaf girl with piano accordion who might last two-seconds on “Mexico’s Got Talent!”. Both Ant and I were dumbfounded to see people paying her – which only encouraged her to play more excruciatingly bad “music”.

Speaking of bad – I settled back at the hotel for another bad movie – Jean Claude Van Damn in “Wrong Bet”. You know you are in for a bad movie when you see “Story by Jean Claude Van Damn”. My favourite scene is where Jean Claude’s brother is doing a coke deal on the mean streets of LA where he announces in a bogus French accent “Hey Man! This s### is sugar!” before he is doused in petrol and set on fire… LOL.

2009-01-25T20:21:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 27

We had to get up-and-at-em fairly early as we had a 10:30am bus from Pubela to Oaxaca today. We got dressed, packed and headed out to the main square where Ant had some evil idea to have Mc Donalds for breakfast. Mc Donalds appeared to be setting up when we went past – so instead – I had an evil plan for “Hot Cakes” at the Cow restaurant where we had the chilli-con-carne hot dogs the first night here. Although we were the only customers, and there was about 5 employees for each of us – they seemed to take an eternity to take our orders (traditional Mexican service). The menu was en espanol – and there was a half page section on Hot Cakes in the menu. I thought I was going to be ordering something crazy like hot cakes and bacon – but instead – we ended up getting hotcakes with cream and maple syrup… which hit the spot somewhat but was a bit Mc Donalds-esque.

We grabbed our bags from Hotel Noisy, checked out (the front woman sort of spoke about 2 words of engrish) and grabbed a taxi to the Autobus Terminal. We were a bit spoilt by our last bus from Mexico City to Publea (was “Ultimate” class or something) – but this time we had only on “First Class”. The leg room was a little tighter – Ant did the whole “red-hair-banging on the seat in front when a woman reclined her seat” – but that didn’t seem to make much difference as she had it fully reclined the whole 3 hour trip.

The bus ride was very scenic to Oaxaca… so much so that people who had their curtains pulled down for some bits – had to pull them up so they could see the spectacular view. Everything was a little bit like the Grand Canyon, but without Americans. The area was quite arid, there were plenty of eagles (unlike the Culca Canyon) and I had a good time looking at the views. ADO continued in its tradition of playing bad American movies (en espanol). They played the Denzel Washington/Jerry Bucahemier (class act with a K) film Déjà-vu – but I was getting a distinct feeling of Déjà-vu of watching this the first time and falling asleep through it.

We arrived at Oaxaca (pronounced Wah-Haw-ker) after lunch at the ADO “First Class” terminal – which was so new that the LP didn’t know where it was on the map. Feeling a bit bewildered and not knowing how much a taxi ride would cost – we hopped on a local taxi to take us to the Hotel Gala which was right next to the main piazza in town. I have a bit of a rep of getting Ant to do all of the hotel bookings and flight arrangements… Ant was stressing out about the Oaxaca hotel booking – so I did it and had booked the Hotel Gala (a 3 star) which had somewhat mixed reviews on Trip Advisor – good ones if you had a room facing the street – and bad ones if you had an internal room (which were apparently noisier than the street rooms due to the guest noise).

After paying the taxi driver double the value of the taxi ride (I need to practice my Spanish numbers) – we had to lug our bags a block (down the pedestrian only road) to the hotel. The lobby was fairly impressive (in a 70s sort of way) and amazingly – the hotel reception dude spoke pretty good English. Thankfully – we had one of the better rooms (facing onto the street). According to LP – the rooms facing the street were more spacious – although – you really question whether the LP authors had stayed in the hotels they write about – let alone even visit them.

What was a bit more apparent about Oaxaca was the number of gringo tourists in it. Pubela (and for that matter – Mexico City) seemed fairly devoid of tourists. Although Mexico City had a high number of tourists in museums or art galleries – you didn’t really spot them outside – and Pubela only seemed to have a handful of foreign tourists. But Oaxaca felt like a 10 fold increase in the number of foreign tourists (which was a bit of a pain in the arse). The piazza was almost like a double piazza – with two squares situated opposite one another. There were the requisite touristy restaurants adorning the sides of the piazza – and the world’s tackiest nativity scene – complete with a tourist path – where you could get a bird’s eye view of the nativity action – almost 10 days after the fact. Give it up people – pull down those xmas Christmas decorations on Xmas-eve – Guilin Sheraton style (those Chinese really understand xmas decorations and the punctuality of pulling them down).

We found a little “fast food” taco place which was about 3 blocks away from our hotel. It was fairly cheap – under 50 pesos for a meal deal including 5 tacos and a soda-pop. It was good, cheap and did its job effectively.

After lunch – we wandered down to one of the town’s biggest drawcards – the Oaxaca cathedral. No one does over-the-top excess than the Catholics – and this Cathedral was fairly O-T-P in terms of its excesses – just about the whole cathedral was decked out in gold. It was pretty amazing and we could tick off another item off the “Don’t Know” front cover of Mexico – some golden statue thingy in the cathedral. The outside of the cathedral was also pretty impressive – it was a big sandstone Spanish-mission style cathedral with a beautifully presented garden (sort of in a dry Mexican arid way). The garden also seemed to be some sort of Oaxaca gringo-Mecca – as they seemed to be a lot of back-packers and flash-packers hanging about.

After the cathedral – we made our way through a “Gringo” market – with all products (eg: tacky souvenirs) appeared marketed towards non-Mexicans. We then did a bit of an “off-the-beaten-track” stroll through the non-touristy bits of Oaxaca. Everything was old (and probably UNSECO sponsored) and colourful – with a lot of houses painted in bold, different colours. One thing noticeable was a complete lack of convenience stores (unlike Pubela and Mexico City) which made buying coke a little difficult. Also – a lot of stores in Oaxaca seemed to subscribe to the “Latin America” school of business – where there were about 10 refrigerator stores in the same spot. We did manage to track down a super-mercado about 3 blocks away from our hotel where we could get our usual supply of diet coke (aka “Coca Light” in Mexico) and bottled water.

It was starting to get dark – and we decided to chill for a bit back at the hotel (with free wireless internet and Mexican “Lucha libre” wrestling on TV – which sort of felt like WWE but a lot more athletic with added gimp masks). After the Mexican wrestling – there was WWE but en espanol with a mexican host and a fairly strong emphasis on “Mysterio” the Mexican wrestler in the American WWE.

After a chill out and about 50 facebook updates – we headed out to a nearby street market - which was chock-full of people (mostly locals). Of course – there was the usual mish-mash of bad developing country clothing (think worse than “K-Mart”), illegal pirated DVDs, porn and MP3 CDs, toys (which were probably banned last Christmas by the NSW Office of Fair Trading) and various crap. Speaking of crap – I was becoming a little obsessed with tracking down all of the bad movies from my Razzie book of Best Bad Movies. According to the book – one of the best is “Exorcist 2: The Heretic” – which I managed to track down and purchase for about 15 pesos (or $1.50AUD). Ant bought a couple and I bought another few (including what was 4 Chucky movies on the same disc – which sounded highly dubious).

Also highly dubious was the food cleanliness of a street hot-dog seller. Despite the apparent lack of cleanliness and hygine (and refrigeration for the meat) – Ant and I had a hot dog Mexican style – which was pretty good (bit on the spicy side with some jalapeños garnishes). We will have to wait and see if we would lose 7 kilos in 4 weeks after eating them…

I was keen to check out the quality of the movies on Ant’s laptop – and we raced back to the hotel – where the Chucky Movie disc appeared to play bad Salsa music accompanied by pictures of dolphins and beaches and cliffs and stuff… que?!! Anyway – we headed to bed – where I started to watch Exorcist 2 – which seemed pretty amazingly bad. The first scene had some woman from the Middle East who was possessed where she screams in a normal non-demonic voice “Why me??? I only help feed the poor!!” before she catches on fire and dies a horrible death – only for the movie to cut immediately to Linda Blair tap-dancing (who might have lasted two-seconds longer on “Mexico’s Got Talent” than the tone-deaf piano accordion girl. Strangeness indeed. Also – I’m not sure what was more demonic – the Middle Eastern possessed woman exploding or Linda Blair tapdancing.

2009-01-25T20:14:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 26

We each had a pretty bad night sleep. Our hotel room is not only facing the street (which has a pretty loud market nearby complete with buskers playing suicide music) but the hotel restaurant next door and lobby – where they play really bad muzak until 11pm at night (which comes right through our hotel door) only to start it up again for breakfast at 6am. It sort of feels like the international economy Qantas of hotels. It sort of feels like we have been given a pretty crummy room in terms of sound.

We didn’t have breakfast included at the hotel and had read over the internet that it was pretty bad at the Hotel Colonia. We decided to brave it out on the street but alas the best we could do was a little bakery which only sold super-sweet custard-y cakes. We made the best of a bad situation and bought some (I was starting to wish that a bad bout of South American gastro would kick in by now so we could lose some weight). We headed back to the piazza – where we both bought some drinks ( I had bought some overpriced tomato juice to wash down my sugary cakes… strange combo). We sat down in the park (amongst the millions of copy-right infringement balloon sellers (Disney would have a field day suing these people) where we consulted Don’t Know in order to work out what we wanted to see.

We decided to check out Museo Amparo which was supposed to be a highlight of Puebla according to our almost 10 yr old copy of LP (was published in 1999). It was down a quaint street off the main square (where the local council appeared hellbent on ripping up perfectly old cobblestone paths) and there were a tonne of shoes hanging from overhead powerlines (maybe there was a drugdealer at the museum). Although all of the displays in the museum were in en espanol – at least they had these plastic cards which were in Engrish which attempted to explain many facets of pre-columbian culture in the Puebla region in fairly gory detail (with some mangled translations into Spanglish). One thing I’ve noticed about Mesoamerican art is that it is quite varied – some stuff looked Egyptian, some south American. There was also a temporary art exhibit with some Mexican artist who liked to do crazy stuff with VW beatles and vans which was pretty good.

We then wandered to the other side of town to the Museo Regional de la Revolution – which was the site of a massive shootout/siege back in 1910 when a band of revolutionaries were killed by the fascist dictator – Diez. Absolutely nothing was in engrish – but it was fairly interesting and LP did give a bit of a gist of what happened – a husband (Aquiles Serdan) and his wife (and 17 others) were held up in the building. Most were killed – but Aquiles and his wife stayed hidden in a hole in the house for a couple of days before his coughing gave them away – and he was arrested and executed a bit afterwards. The Museo was a little bit like a Mausoleum with lots of memorabilia of Serdan and the siege and the bullet holes around the front of the building were still evident,

We had lunch in a little restaurant which was bright and quaint – Ant ordered Mole Puebla (which was the famous dish from Puebla) and I ordered some enchiladas which were nice. We also did some guacamole with tortilla chips which is way tastier than the kind you get back at home. Although the typically bad Mexican service was extra and free…

After lunch – we made tracks for what LP called the “Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal” which was a “top-notch museum” (LPs words not ours). It appeared that the museo had changed hands since 1999 when LP was written – and it was a fairly half-baked concoction of “ye olde hospital” exhibit (all of the stuff which was on display was either a facsimile copy, a photo-copy or a (Ant’s favourite) diorama), a bad contemporary art display, a bad contemporary rug display and a bad ancient tapestry exhibit (where it was completely empty of tourists – yet completely loud and bewildering thanks to the 28 flat screen TVs all playing really loud at once different things – sounded like you had a bout of Spanish schizophrenia). I wrote all of these “hard but true” things in all of the visitor guest books including “I wouldn’t use these as rugs in my home let alone hang them in an art gallery” – signed under my pseudonym – “Nikky”.

After the somewhat underwhelming experience at “Museo de Crappy” – we headed back to the world’s. loudest. ex-Jesuit Church. Hotel – “Hotel Colonia” (note to self – never take any hotel suggestions from my mum) – we checked out the hotel’s laundry which was located on the top of the hotel. After climbing the somewhat Escher-stairs – Ant did a load of washing (Ant just can’t stand washing his clothes in the sink) whilst I had a bit of a chill in the somewhat noisy hotel room.

We headed out of the hotel around dusk where I showed Ant the “World’s. Lamest. Mall.” in all of its lamest-ness. Ant too concluded that it was fairly lame – and we made an exit for some nicely landscaped gardens right next door to the mall. It had all felt like the mall/gardens/conference centre district was all new and part of the same development – but because the economy could be falling down the toilet could be the reason why the mall is fairly lame.

We headed to a nearby mountain peak – where both Ant and myself were the butt of someone’s insult (en espanol) – but it wasn’t a clown – rather it was some guy in a hotted up 1982 Ford Laser hooning past. Well my 2002 Pulsar beats yours any day of the week… It felt a whole less touristy (even though Pubela wasn’t exactly chock-full of tourists). There was a strange looking hotel (which even had a write up in LP – saying that it had “well landscaped gardens”… but in a zombie-apocalyptic sort of way) and Pubela’s “World Trade Center” which looked like a couple of conference rooms in a deserted two-story office (circa 1980s). Also of interest was the local mayor’s house which looked way more like a drug baron compound complete with hired goons… ahem I mean Mexican police. Anyway – Mexican mayor – drug baron – aren’t they the same thing?

At the peak – we had a somewhat nice view of the sunset over Pubela (if you could see it through the Bejing style smog) and there was some military fort thingy where most Mexicans were tippy-toeing over the front gate (because they were too short to see over the 5 foot fence).

We decided to make a break back for town because this wasn’t the sort of place you would want to stay around after dark. We toured around the main piazza on the look out of some dinner. There was a place chock full of locals on the piazza – but we were being heavily touted to go in. At first we avoided it – but decided that it might be the best bet (after having a big lunch). Also – most other restaurants on the Piazza had the acid xylophone thing going on.. (Note to Pubela – the acid xylophone thing is highly annoying).

When we went back to the local touty restaurant – we had to wait (unbelievably) to gain someone’s attention to get a table. We were seated towards the back and were each handed a menu (en espanol) – which seemed to have a lot of the same thing (eg: tacos) but we couldn’t really decipher what all the meats were. I mean – we understood what chicken (pollo) and beef (carne) was – but nothing else made much sense. We ordered a couple of Sols (those Mexican beers you can find at Aldi) and also ordered the English speaking waiter – who explained what most things were. We decided to have a 30 peso plate each of beef tacos with cheese. The plate was fairly small – but it hit the spot. You got some beef with melted cheese on it and about 5 tortillas which you wrap the meat in. At every Mexican restaurant – you are always given about 4 or 5 different sauces or salsas. Some are fairly mild – and some can be pretty hot (but rarely are they pretty hot – most things in Mexico are definitely in the mild range).

After dinner – we headed out to the main Churro restaurant for some dessert. After only ordering a 2.5 peso churro last night (which was the size of a baby penis) – we decided to order about 10 each for 25 pesos (or $AUD2.50). It was neccye, different, and unusual. We also got a couple of bottles of water from a nearby convenience shop (Pubela was full of them). Although after dark – they go into “lock-down” – where there is a front window you can order things from (a bit like a petrol station in Australia after midnight). Although it would be pretty hard trying to hostage negotiate with a 7-11 clerk who doesn’t speak any spanglish.

2009-01-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 25

This was our last day in Mexico City – and we had a fairly relaxed morning. We got up, had our final breakfast at the hotel, packed and got a taxi to another one of those big bus stations (this was one a circular dome thingy which was pretty close to the airport). The taxi ride was only about $10AUD which was pretty reasonable. We had a great time in Mexico City – it is one of those places where you could spend an extended time there and not run out of things to do or get bored. Ant was comparing it to a Mexican version of Tokyo (eg: huge and massive). It was great too – spending our time in a nice hotel (it was allegedly 5 stars – but I think it was probably a bit too small and featureless to be a 5 star – even though the hotel rooms were really nice). Maybe the dodgy thing about the place was the cartel of maids who would hog the hotel’s only lift. Even if they saw hotel customers wanting to use it – they would hold it up for themselves and not give it up if they were inside it (I thought it was a hotel law somewhere for the maids to exit the lift if guests were wanting to use it…?).

We were on our way to Pubela which was about two hours away by bus. The bus terminals are huge at Mexico – they almost have an airport quality feel to it. We wanted to take the “premier class” bus to Pubela which was supposed to be even better than the 1st class bus. LP said that it was advisable to catch the first class buses from a security point of view – because they are more likely to not stop and go through toll roads than second class buses (ie: less likely to get your bags stolen or get hijacked or something). We booked ourselves on a bus (which costed about $15AUD – pretty cheap for a classy bus). The bus was pretty luxurious – upon arrival – you are served a drink (non alcoholic) and a bag of snacks (including nuts and cookies)… You also had to go through a metal detector which no one there seemed to pay much attention to if you set it off… The seats themselves where quite wide (I think the bus aisle was a bit smaller than normal to compensate for the wider seats) and the leg room was massive. The driver had some “bus DVD” thingy where he played Qantas-like intro videos to Pubela and played some stewpid Little Red Riding Hood Shrek-like movie with some snowboarding bungee jumping grannie (not sure what drugs they were taking when they thought up of that). We very much liked our first proper Mexican bus experience – they do buses a whole lot better than anywhere else on the planet.

We arrived at Pubela about 2pm. I diligently guarded our bags whilst Ant sussed out our next bus from Pubela to Oaxaca (pronounced “Wah-he-aka” in case you were wondering). He bought a couple of first class tickets (as the premier class was leaving at the non-latino functioning time of 7am) for a few days later. The Pubela bus station also had the whole “regulated taxi” system (a la Mexcio City) – where it was a flat fee to get into town.

We had booked into a hotel which my mum had stayed at when she went to Mexico – Hotel Colonia – which was a former Jesuit church – now a hotel a few stone-throws away from the main piazza. The taxi dropped us off near the corner (as the hotel was located on a pedestrian plaza – where the taxi couldn’t do a “Crazy Taxi – Take me to the Fila store” drive through the pedestrian mall…). When we arrived at the front desk – we were a little surprised to find that the people there were all speaking En Espanol and didn’t seem to be able to converse at all in engrish. Ant managed to check us in (we had made the reservation the old fashioned / 1999 way – by emailing them direct)….

We were staying in a double (eg: two double beds) room which was right on top of the front door into the hotel. It was a very characteristic room – a little old but neecye, different, unusual looking… and quite large for a hotel room. I did a bit of super fun happy laundry time - here in Pubela at least the sink was more than a one inch sink (unlike the very modern sink in Mexico City which looked nice but was as practical as a turd on fire). Ant had switched on the TV and the Fran Drescher movie “Beautiatian and the Beast” was playing (on the Film Zone – simpre mass! No less). I thought the movie had some really depressing soundtrack – but there was an outside busker playing suicide music.

We headed out to the main piazza of Pubela. Mexico City was missing one of these old style – Latin America piazza (we thought) and this one reminded us a lot of Peru. There was an ABC f##koff sized church to one side of the square (which also appears on the 500 peso bill according to Don’t Know). There was also a line (or two) of shops including ye olde Mc Donalds – and these restaurants that played all of this terrible “Xylophone on Acid” muzak for customers – it sort of felt like Mexican Xylophone torture. We wandered down the main shopping street of Pubela which was hella busy. It wasn’t helped that most of the narrow path was blocked by these giant balloon sellers who would had a big bunch of (copyright infringement) balloons for sale.

We checked out what could have been the free world’s lamest mall (we were on the search for lunch and this place was just selling nachos and popcorn). We stumbled on a VIPS – which is a Samborns-esque clone – but without the DVDs, CDs and TVs for sale out the front of the shop. We both managed to navigate through the En Espanol menu – and we had ordered some Mexican cuisine and a couple of cervezas which was neccye, different and unuuusual.

We headed back to the square (it was mid-afternoon now) and we checked out the big f##k off church which was probably more impressive on the outside than on the inside. There was a couple of Mexican clowns congregating on the outside of the church with a large crowd in tow. We decided to carefully avoid them (in order to not be part of a joke a la Mexico City) and headed back to the hotel.

Ant decided to rest for a bit – but I had decided to attempt to check out the mall which was just outside of the “old town” area which I had seen from the cab on the way to the hotel. It was a shortish walk (15 minutes) – and upon arrival I soon discovered that this was probably the lamest mall I had been to on the planet. It was a brand new building and it had a Krispy Cream Donut shop at the bottom as well as a couple of take out restaurants (eg: Subway). On the middle floor – it had all of the shopping you would ever need like a Swiss Army Knife shop and an overpriced furniture shop (that was it..) and on the top floor was a Cinemex movie theatre – which was playing all of the same s#ite from Mexico City. Most of the mall had empty shops which had never looked like they had anything in them ever… Good old GFC.

I headed next door to check out the adjoining building (which I had assumed was a continuation of the mall). However – I soon discovered that it could have been Pubela’s conference room centre. I was about to walk into a Kiddie’s Toy Fair and thought it would be best not to – in order to not look like some kiddie molester. I got a bit bored – and headed back to the hotel (con Diet Coke from a quickie mart).

Our hotel in Pubela seemed to have half-decent TV (not one but two “The Film Zone – Simpre Mass!” channels) and free wireless internet – which helped us both update our facebook status and the blog. We chilled out for quite a bit, watched one too many episodes of “Gossip Girl” and headed out for some dinner.

We had wandered around the square but thought everything was a little touristy or touty. We wandered around for a bit more (and then some) when we finally decided to go to a restaurant with a “Cow” for a logo. We both weren’t all that hungry (had big lunches) – so that’s why we each ordered a foot-long chilli-con-carne hot perro (or dog). It was strange and weird but neccye – and the service was the traditional “try and conduct telepathy with the waiting staff to get them to do anything” Mexican service.

We headed back to the square and bought a couple of Churros (eg: doughy-donuty sticks of cinnamon) which appeared to be a Mexican/Disneyland speciality. We ordered one each for 2.5 pesos (or 25 cents AUD) – not realising they were quite small and that you probably could have ordered 10 times that amount for a decent dessert.

I had spotted a couple of gay pride flags around the place – and this had Ant intrigued. There were a couple of gay pubs around Pubela - but one looked like it was shut (or divey enough to look shut) and the other one was just a dive so we gave it a miss. Mexico seems to be a fairly progressive country (despite the large catholic population). According to Ant – both abortion and gay marriage were legalised by the government on the same day just recently (are they trying to tell us something here??) which is way ahead of where Australia should be. Until next time – xo xo…

2009-01-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 24

I did one last solo ride - the Vudú - which was sort of like the old HMS Endeavour (at Wonderland... again!) mixed with a graviton on speed. You are harnessed in (like an upside down rollercoaster) - but you are swung from left to right (almost horizontally) and around in the circle at the same time. Sort of like a washing machine for your stomach and lower intestines... Neeccye.

Ant was being a real trooper - hanging in for me - and waiting patiently after each ride. It was very much appreciated and had felt like I had my own personal cheersquad at each of the rides... So I felt like doing something together - the ye old cars (a bit like the Antique Autos (at Wonderland!)... where you drive an old antique car around a fixed track. Since I did the driving at Autopia at Disneyland - I decided to let Ant do the driving today and for myself to take the backseat. We were attempting (in vain) to ram our car into the car in front of us (who were driving like "Driving Miss Daisy" on a downer) - but there was some weird strange magnetic force field which prevented us from doing so...

After that - we caught the ending of the most strangest show we had seen for a while - "Show de los Looney Tunes - Feliz Navidad style". It was a bunch of people dressed up as princesses and elves (the elves probably wished they were princesses). They were singing along to those Xmas classics including Wham!'s "Last Christmas" (not really sure if that is a real xmas song - Last Christmas I gave you my heart.. The very next day, you gave it away... etc). Most of the elves spent most of the show dancing like fairies and molesting toy soldiers (who all seemed to enjoy it). Twas the gayest land in the world.

We rushed over to the other side of the park - where we watched the "Presentaciones educativas del Mundo Marino" (aka the dolphin/seal show). When we arrived into our VIP seats - it felt like a nightclub with pounding techno music, people waving glo-sticks and a guy in a wetsuit/tutu dancing around (as you do). He was getting the crowd geared up by chucking a beach ball into the crowd and letting them bounce around. Whenever someone chucked the ball into the pool - the music was switched off and he gave them the evil mexican look. Alas - there was no mexican waves at the show... The show itself didn't really appear to be very "educational" - it was more like the seal/dolphin people making arses of themselves and riding the dolphins like they were surfboards... Another wikipedia fact - this themepark was where they had shot "Free Willy" (not a porno) - and the Orco who was in the film used to live here until animal rights activists protested against the treatment of Keiko - who was then probably smuggled out of the park by Moe from the Simpsons or something...

We then did the lamest of lame rides - Le Grand Carrousell - which was a double decker merry-go-round. We each got our own rocking horses - then I did the whole "ride-the-mechanical-bull-like-a-slut" look for the entire ride - with Ant taking pictures. Ant said I was getting some disturbed looks by people waiting in the queue with their tots...

We ignored the constants announcements for the 8:30 Magic Light Parade (hello - Disney copyright infringement!) and did one last ride on the Superman rollercoaster. As it was getting late and cold and dark - this ride was completely fantastic at night. It was sort of like a "Space Mountain" ride on speed - as you were plummeting through darkness at breakneck speeds. Ant liked it better in the dark because he didn't know how far we were off the ground (fear of heights thing). This ride was definitely my favourite (up there with the Tsunami ride). This themepark was a first for me in the way that almost 90% of the rides made you exit them through a gift shop or restaurant. The Batman and Superman rides obviously led you through to a Batman/Superman themed shop. The Boomerang led you through to the Dominio's we had lunch at (?!!!). Even the crappy Ferris Wheel had its own shop for christ sakes...!

We felt like it was time to head back into town (as the trip out here took a while - because the metro seemed to be having problems today). We had a look through the gift shop on the way out and there were tonnes of Speedy Gonzales toys. We would of got one - if it didn't look like a giant evil rat. There was some "Day-Glo" 6 Flags Mexico t-shirts in the style of those Supre "Choose Life" tees - note to 6 Flags - the whole fluoro thing died after Parklife in 07. Getz with the program! Ant was after something (other than a fluoro tee) that was 6 Flags Mexico specific (just to say that you have been) - but everything was more geared towards the cartoon characters than anything else...

We got on a more expensive 10 peso bus back to the Uni Station. We had flashbacks to Vegas - waiting for more customers to arrive in order for the bus to leave - but they were filling this bus to capacity, and then some. I was getting a feeling that the bus driver was thinking about getting people to catch it on the top of the bus - India style. Probably not a safe thing given the quality of the mexican driving here... Ant was sort of under the impression that this was an "express" bus back to the metro station - because it was newer (no bullet holes) and was more expensive. However - that theory went out the window when the bus driver would pull up at random places - pick more people up and be completely in excess of the maximum passenger number by 50%.

Our metro ride back was pretty slow - and was a bit of a sad way for our last ride on the system - given that it has been really good to us over the last week. The train kept inexplicably stopping in random places for inordinate amounts of time. We were just about to give up on the train (when we were a couple of stations away from Insurgente) when it finally took off.

For dinner - we did the whole street taco thing where I had gone for a greasy snack at our 5am session at the Papi Fun Bar a few nights before. The guy who worked there recognised me (just like "Cheers") and was happy I was back. We had a couple of tacos (un-fried tortillas - with delicious marinated chicken, onion and a little bit of pineapple!) and a Corona each. We were naughty afterwards and bought a 4 pack of Sol beer at a nearby 7-11 clone (OXO) and watched a bit of South Park DVD back at the hotel room... Until next time...

2009-01-07T10:24:00.001-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 23

We woke up a little earlier in what would be our last full day at Mexico City on this holiday. We had a bit of a plan... We were thinking about going to Six Flags Mexico earlier in the week - but Ant wasn't really phased about going to another themepark this trip. He had found out how to get their via public transport - but I was too scared/crazy/confused to go by myself - so we shelved the idea.... until today.

We had extended our booking at the Eurostars Hotel by another day to allow us to visit Six Flags (thanks Anty!). We had this crazy glass cupboard door - which had a crack in it on our first night here at the hotel. Over the week - the crack in the glass had progressively gotten worse. We had no idea how it was cracked in the first place - and we were a bit afraid that the hotel might charge us to replace the door. Luckily - when we extended the hotel booking by a night (over the internet) - they never mentioned anything about the ever-expanding crack in the cupboard door - and they let us keep our bling bling room for an extra night (didn't have to move rooms).

We caught a metro out to the Universidad station (aka University). The train was full of its normal eclectic mix of crazy touts (there had been this beggar dude who repeatedly smashed his face against a bag of glass for cash... as you do. The train for me got a little iffy towards the end when there were a couple of young guys who seemed to be acting up on us (whistling and acting moody) - but it was just nothing.

From the Universidad station - we had to catch a bus to Six Flags - but this is where our journey got a little hard (and I was thankful that Ant was here to help out). We got out of the metro stop at one side and walked up and down a 300m stretch of road - where it had seemed like there was only one bus which stopped along this road. Ant noticed a number 64 bus which had a "Six Flags" sign on the front. But we couldn't find any 64 stops... Getting a bit desperate - we went back to the station and exited along another stretch of road - this time it didn't seem to have any stops at all (just offloading of passengers). After the super efficiency of the train - it was a bit of a kick in the teeth to find that the buses were super hard, difficult and chaotic. We headed back into the station - and onto another bus platform - where we finally found a Six Flags bus stop. We climbed onto the bus - and paid an 8 peso ticket. The bus was a little bit ghetto - it looked like there were bullet holes in the front windscreen - and it looked like it had come direct from the 1960s.

The bus ride took about 20 minutes - and it passed through what looked like the Tuggernong of Mexico City - but it did have some really big f##k off malls (where "Sears" appeared to be the premier store... cough).

Six Flags Mexico City was apparently a Mexican-run themepark until a couple of years ago - where the Mc Donalds of Themeparks - Six Flags - bought it out and changed it to a 6 Flags (I did my research before we left on wikipedia). When we arrived - there appeared to be hordes of locals queuing up out the front... I was at this point getting flashbacks to Knotts Berry Farm and that darn Toys for Tots promotion. Ant and I just headed for the front of the park - where we found a relatively short queue to buy tickets. Again - most people seemed to be conducting hostage negotiations with the ticket office people - getting them to explain every single ticket combination and permutation. Admittedly - the tickets seemed a little confusing. There was a "General Admission Ticket" - at about 310 pesos (or $30AUD - now can you see why we wanted to go??!). There was a "Annual Pass" at a steal-esque price of 510 pesos (or about $50AUD), a Flash Pass for three rides for 100 pesos (or $10AUD) and a VIP Pass for 590 pesos (almost $60AUD) which was, at the time, inexplicably more than an annual pass. Ant and I just went for the general admission tickets and were on our way through the front gates.

Six Flags had a little bit of a "Main Street Mexico" theme out the front of the park - as opposed to the warped-Main Street USA at Disneyland. We decided that we thought it was a good idea to not go on the wet rides at the end of the day (like we had done at Disneyland) - so we got in the biggish queue for the "rocky river rampage-esque" ride (you know - those big tube things that go down rapids and stuff and you get wet). We had to wait for about 30 minutes (which is no good for the both of us since we are so damn impatient). We had noticed the "Flash Pass" queue - which was completely empty. If someone entered into it - they immediately bypassed the "regular" queue and hopped onto the next available ride. During our time in the queue - we came to the opinion that if got a "VIP Pass" - it would include an unlimited "Flash Pass" queue ticket (instead of just the three rides you get with the Flash Pass at the front gates) - and Ant was adamant that there would be somewhere in the themepark where you could upgrade your regular admission ticket to a VIP ticket - because themeparks always want to upsell stuff to you.

The "Rocky River Rampage" or the "Río Salvaje" as it was called got us all wet (as a good wet ride should). Ant commented at the part of the ride where there were statues with running hoses aimed at tubes "What sort of sick sadist came up with this idea!~".

After the Rio Salvaje - we went to the location where there was a "VIP Pass" symbol on the 6 Flags Map (the map was completely En Espanol - as to all of the signs, attractions and shows at the park. There was an office (yay) - where we both upgraded our passes for 290 pesos each (which was probably more expensive than just buying it at the front office). We were both given this yellow felt wrist bands with the words "V.I.P" in big bold text. Wow - I felt like Britney at Las Vegas ritzy night club...

We then put our passes to extremely good use by "by-passing" the entire long big queue to the Superman rollercoaster (or "Superman El Último Escape") and went straight to the front of the roller-coaster loading dock. I felt sort of bad for jumping in front of so many people (sort of felt like a middle-aged Chinese woman) but hey - I payed the extra money so I want to avoid the queues. The Superman rollercoaster was a giant, non-upside, coaster which was really really big and tall and had a huge big drop. It was fun and fast (and made Ant a bit squrimish because of the heights involved) - but we enjoyed it. I was a little anxious about our bag because the attendant took it from us and just left it above the lockers near the ride's exit - but it was still there when we left.

We did something a bit more tamer next - the Haunted House of La Llorona... but maybe it was a bit lamer instead... We had no queue whatsoever. There was a VIP gate at the entrance to the ride - so we probably by-passed a 15 minute queue. These VIP passes are sort of like the "Qantas Club" of 6 Flags... The woman at the front took our bag off us (they seem to have this phobia of taking bags onto any ride whatsoever here) and we got on a "on-rails" ye olde ghost train which was completely En Espanol and we couldn't make heads or tails out of any of it... Maybe we needed some drugs to help us...?

We started to notice that 6 Flags didn't really have any distinctive themes in it. The layout was quite confusing (for those trying to interpret a en espanol map which is not to scale (or has any resemblance to reality). They seemed to have some sort of tie-in with both Warner Brother cartoon characters (eg: bugs bunny) and Hanna Barbara characters (eg: the robot maid from the Jetsons). I was a little shocked to find a "Speedy Gonazles" Hamburger shop - thinking that Mexicans would find that character offensive and stereotypical. But you saw people buying giant Speedy toys and stuff...

Ant and I chowed down on some Nachos (which were about $4AUD and fairly plentful). We were thinking we where heading in the direction of the "Splash" ride - another wet ride which we could bowl over early in the day. But instead we found ourselves to be at the opposite end of the park at the wooden ""the beast" rollercoaster ride (aka "Medusa"). It was a big f##k off rollercoaster (bigger than that old wooden one at Wonderland - RIP - never forget... sob) and I'm sure we probably would have void any claim we could make on our travel insurance by going on it. According to the official website - it goes more than 80KM an hour. It was pretty violent and aggressive ride - Ant and I were bouncing all over the carriage (with the arm rest banging on our legs) - I was a little surprised that I didn't end up with extensive bruising on my legs. Both Ant and I got a really bad back and neck out of it... Ant was saying "do you want to do that one again" - I just looked at him with disgust...

We then went on something a whole lot more tamer - the ferris wheel (aka Rueda India) which was trying to out-racist Frontierland at Disneyland - with lots of hokey Red Indians everywhere... Our VIP "I'm a celebrity - get me out of this queue" pass again avoided a 20 minute queue - and we just strolled up to the front and they let us on the first available carriage. The load took about 15 minutes (to load and unload everyone) - but once we got off (in a non-blue sense) we got some neecye views of the park and surrounds. We noticed that it was quite bushy around the park (flammable).

We then finally worked out how to navigate our way to the "Splash" ride (and no - I don't think the ride had any relationship to the "Splash" movie with Tom Hanks and Darryl Hannah and that dad from American Pie). It was like a four-abreast ride which could seat up to about 20 people. You get lifted up a ramp, you go around a curve and then you splash down and not only do you get horribly wet - but you also drench the people who are crossing over a bridge and are making their way off the ride to the exit... Talk about sadistic. I thought I might as well brave this one - Ant sat out on it - thinking that he might pick up some cholera from the ride. I got to bypass the queue (again) and I got first dibs on a front row seat. When we landed - there looked like there was a 8 foot wall of water in front of the flume thingy - and yes - everyone got drenched completely... so much so - I had felt wet for pretty much the rest of the day. Although at this themepark - we were smart enough to leave our passports back in the hotel safe. On one of our pre-blog trips - we went to the Wonderland-sister themepark in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia - where we went on not just one wet ride - but two - in a row - with our money belts on.... We spent the next 40 minutes trying to dry our passports under a toilet hand-dryer. I don't think my passport has ever really recovered since.

We had lunch at (the shame continues...) Domino's. Here at 6 Flags - it seemed like that they have outsourced all of their restaurants to other companies to do - so instead of getting one of those fantastically underwhelming burgers at Tomorrowland Disneyland - you can get a pizza from Domino's or a hamburger from Johnny Rockets. We ordered a large pizza to share between us and a couple of "super-size me" drinks. The pizzas were cooked fresh and were OK - hey it beats the Tomorrowland Burger Cafe thingy.

We quickly finished our lunches (in a rather "my mum would disapprove at the speed at which we are eating" rate) and headed over to the VIP section of the Batman Inicia Stunt Show (or "Batman Begins"). The VIP section was a roped off section at the front of the theatre. No hanging around waiting forever for a show - bagging the good seats... You just flash your pass and the attendant lets you through (just like Paris at a nightclub!). The show was pretty hokey (as all themepark shows are). I think it was loosely based upon the "Batman Begins" movie and I'm sure if you hadn't seen the movie - that none of it would make any sense whatsoever. Everybody spoke En Espanol - but you could sort of work out who people were and when cars should explode. Everyone was lip-sync'ing the words (a la Milli Vanilli) and there were "added" sound-effects to the punches and kicks which made it completely hilarious when it was super-obvious that none of the punches were connecting.

We then checked out the "Boomerang" ride - which was a bit like the old "Demon" rollercoaster at Wonderland (is this a recurring theme about 6 Flags Mexico) - which is like a single-way track rollercoaster (not a loop) and when you reach one end of the track - you go backwards. There were a couple of loop-de-loops and Ant pretty much freaked out after this ride. He had very sweaty palms over this ride and had these giant marks on his hands from his fingernails... I promised Ant not to disclose this information on the blog - but hey - what are you going to do about it?? Log in and delete it??! Ahem - don't do that Ant!

We then went on the Canoa Krakatoa - which we thought would be a bit tamer than the Boomerang. It was one of those swinging pirate ships (like the Bounty's Revenge at Wonderland!) but this one didn't go upside-down. We again by-passed the queue (those suckers!) and we sort of felt a bit nauseous after this one. Maybe it was something to do with the ride lasting about 5 minutes. Anyway - if you did spew on it - then you would only spew into the face of someone else... klassy...

Anyway - I then checked out the Batman: The Ride (in english) which was one of those inverted roller coasters where your legs stick out (like the Lethal Weapon ride at Movieworld). To be honest - maybe I was starting to feel a little queasy after the Canoa Krakatoa - and this ride wasn't make the situation any better.

We then checked out the "Kilahuea" which was sort of like Anal Probe 7 at Wonderland - except you went upwards really quickly and bounced at the top - before being flung to the ground - only to bounce for a bit a the bottom. I had some solo fun on it (Ant hates heights and decided to give it a miss).

In order to lift Ant's spirits - we decided to BUY SOME ICECREAMS...! Although the place that we got the icecream had that distinct Mexican "lack of staff and service" feeling - where it took about 10 minutes to get a cornetto (for me) and a giant ice cream for Ant (try logging on and deleting that !).

I was still eating my cornetto when I was in the queue to the Catapulta ride (which is sort of like the Wipeout ride at Dreamworld - only that it doesn't twist around rather it goes forwards/backwards and upside-down. I had barely finished eating my icecream when I was strapped in on the ride and was flung upside-down about 10 times - whilst doing poses for Ant who was madly trying to take some kodak moments. As soon as the ride was finished - I raced back into the VIP queue - where I made it onto the next ride... yay... Strangely enough - I didn't feel like vomiting after that one.

Straight after that I did the sister ride - the Curandero (which was sort of like Bounty's Revenge at Wonderland). Although this ride wasn't such a hot idea because you weren't strapped in as tight as the Catapulta and you had this distinct feeling that you were going to slip out of the ride whilst upside-down (sometimes for about 10 secs or more). Also - being in the middle of the ride was probably worse than being on the outside - because there was less speed - and thus you were not sticking to the ride as you should have been. I had felt a little sick after this one. To be continued... xo xo

2009-01-07T06:59:00.001-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 22

We woke up pretty late (again) as we had been out till about 3:30am. I managed to get downstairs to breakfast before it shut. Again - I was feeling a whole lot more functional than Ant - who was having a bit of a chill in our hotel room.

I think we managed to leave the hotel after midday - and Ant needed a bit more grease in his diet in order to function properly - so we headed to... (cue dramatic music),,, Mc Donalds at Zona Rosa. Well - I guess it has been a bit of a recurring theme in Mexico of poor, slow servicio. Our experience at Mc Donalds managed to win our dubious award of "Worst. Service. Ever.".

We ordered a couple of meals - I did a Big Mac meal (the shame - I hadn't eaten a Big Mac since... well I can't remember) and Ant ordered some Mexican equivalent of a Mc Feast meal... OK - so there was nothing abnormal about our order (no burgers less meat or cheese requests) - just a burger, a coca light and some chips. Mexican Mc Donalds have this crazy set-up where there was one person serving the tills and customers, one person cooking the food and one person mopping the kitchen floor. When you order - you pay and get handed a receipt. Then you have to wait about 10 minutes before your luke-warm Big Mac appears with a Coke. They just sit the burgers out on the counter (sometimes with fries) so they get really cold really quickly. The woman tried to serve me some fries which had been sitting out on the counter for about 10 minutes. I refused to take them and did some "sign language" to try and explain that the chips were as cold as Heather Locklear's heart. She sort of gave me an evil eye - and eventually took away the chips. I sat down with my lukewarm burger (despite it being cooked fresh...?) and diet coke - ate the meal and then loitered around the counter waiting for my chips (this was about 15 minutes after I had paid for my meal). She gave me another death stare and said something in Spanish mentioning that she would grudgingly bring the chips over when they were ready. Meanwhile - there are customers everywhere and only three staff in the restaurant (with one of them still busily mopping the kitchen floor). The woman serving customers was still walking around the front of the shop at a snail's pace - not really seeming to care about anyone's predicament or food.

I sat back down at the table with Ant and began plotting my revenge. I was thinking - maybe I could throw a few gurkins at her on my way out... or I was thinking about pouring my drink everywhere (but that would mean the innocent mopper lady would take the flack - not that beetch behind the counter). But finally - about 20 minutes after we ordered our meals - we finally got the chips... Yay... cough.

We head to the metro for what was a huge long trip out to the sticks. It also involved a separate tram trip (which was 20 pesos a ticket) and about 40m touts on the train. We were heading out to the "Venice" of Mexico City - Xochimilco (there is no way in hell I want to attempt to pronounce that!). We get off the tram (sort of out in the sticks of Mexico City) and it felt a little touristy with touts on bicycles trying to court our business. We ignored them and attempted to interpret the LP map so we could make our way to the "canal boat terminal". LP said that you need not pay more than the signposted prices - which read "160 pesos per boat per hour not per person". Although the sign was En Espanol - I could still read it (despite me not taking a lesson in Spanish). We then had boat operators attempting to sell us a boat for 200 pesos for an hour per person... Que?! This all felt like our first holiday rip off - and although we aren't talking about heaps of money - I think it was more the principle than anything else. We were about to hop on a boat when the guy said 160 pesos - but then we realised he was going to rip us off and charge us for 2 lots of 160 pesos. We walked away - only to be touted by another guy who went down to 200 pesos for the boat not per person. We were getting ripped by 40 pesos - but we didn't want to come out all this way (90 minute train/tram ride) all for nothing...

We decided on a 60 minute ride (which ended up being plenty enough). The canals of Xochimilco are a little swampy/Disneyland Critter County - but they were filled to the brim of these ramshackle boats with big styrofoam front thingys. Each boat has a "gondola" driver person who rows the boat - somewhat unmerrily down the stream. The traffic on the canals were some what unbelievable. Being NYs Day - I think every man, woman and child were out here hiring boats and having picnics. The driving ability of the gondolas felt a bit like the driving ability of taxi drivers here in Mexico - pick a lane, any lane - and don't bother sticking with that lane for too long. There were even these little boats who would tout you food, beer, cocktails, flowers, toys and anything else you could possibly not want. There were even floating Mariachis...

Anyway - by the end of the trip - I was happy that I had experienced this - but also happy that we didn't book the boat out for 2 hours. There was a sign on the boat (well it was just written on the side with a magic marker) - which roughly translated into "Bribes please 50 pesos". We think it had meant "gratitude" not a "bribe". On one hand we felt a little ripped handing over more money after being ripped in the first place - but then we felt a bit sorry for the driver (who probably doesn't make much of a cut out of the money) - so Ant gave him the 50 pesos.

We headed back into town (again on the tram and train). We both managed to score seats on the tram on the way back. On the way to Xochimmilco - I had felt a bit guilty about taking a seat when there were lots of pregnant woman standing up... but there were all of these precocious obese woman who didn't offer up their seats - so I didn't feel all that bad. On Mexican public transport -there doesn't seem to be much in the way of rules (other than no big bags or no fumar) - kids seem to freely occupy seats when there are old decrepit people still standing. Speaking about no fumar - the no smoking in restaurants, bars and public areas is pretty amazing in Mexico. We were expecting to be stinking of it everywhere - but you can go out to a club in Mexico and not smell like you have made love to an ashtray afterwards.

I really wanted to go see a movie in Mexico (just to see what it would be like) - and all adult movies (not the blue ones) are in Engrish - only kiddie films are dubbed. We checked out the listing at the cinema at the Reforma 222 plaza. The ticket prices were cheap (about $5AUD) and I had decided to go see some Keanu Reeves alien movie - but Ant didn't feel like coming. Before the session - we both had Dominos at the food court (the additional shame) and I went to the cinema. It was "Cinemex" and it all seemed brand spanking new. The seats were relatively comfortable and the theatre was moderately full. When the trailers started to show - I was a little bit anxious because they were showing a trailer for "Marley y Yo" which was dubbed... However - that must have been a kids movie because the rest were subtitled.

The movie was OK - it was a bit of a message movie about global warming (I think?) but it was a bit predictable with a dumbish ending. Not to mention that Keanu was well type-cast - playing an alien sin emotions...

When I got back to the hotel - Ant's "I don't want to see a movie" mood had changed and he wanted to see the latest Woodies Allen movie. I was mentioning that he might be at risk at seeing a movie that could be 'En Espanol" - but he went anyway. Although it was a western movie - there were scenes in it that was "En Espanol" with sin engrish subtitles - so Ant found it a little confusing in parts... but it wasn't really his sort of film. xo xo gossip girl.

2009-01-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 21

This is becoming fairly formulaic but we got up at our normal un-gringo time for breakfast (10:50am). Today was NYE - and we were going to be spending in Mexico City (yay!). On Reforma Ave - right outside our hotel - the government had been setting up Mexico City's big NYs celebrations. They had been closing off a lane by lane over the last couple of days - and by today - most of the lanes had been closed with most traffic diverted off Reforma Ave. There were big screen TVs being set up as well as big marquees. We had sorted of been rather lucky with our location - not only that it was super close to all of the gay nightlife in Mexico City - but it was also just a stones throw away from the major NYs festivities.

We caught a metro out to the Coyoacan area which appeared to be very sin tourists (well... most of Mexico City seemed to be rather sin Gringos and overseas tourists - with the majority of tourists being local ones which reminded me of China a bit). In fact - I think we were the only "gringos" for about an hour until we reached the Frida Kahlo museum. On our way from the metro stop to the Frida Museum- we checked out an ABC (another bloody church) and a neeocye little piazza. Everything felt a little more richer here than other parts of Mexico City. All houses were fairly fortress like (eg: massive walls, security cameras, armed guards) - maybe it was the drug baron district, and everything was fairly leafy north-shore-y.

As I hinted out before - there were in fact gringos at the Frida Museum. The Frida Museum (or Museo Frida Kahlo) was the bright blue house where Frida lived for a lot of her life (and died there too). Another occupant of the house was her on-again-off-again lover Diego Rivera. The museum is a mixed bag of art work (by Frida and Diego) as well as artifacts from the house and furniture and stuff. Another famous part-time occupant of the house was Trotsky (of communist Russian fame or infamy?).

Speaking of communists... we then checked out the "Trotsky Museum" - which like the Frida Museum - was the house that Trotsky lived in for his last few years (before getting "capped"). Like other Mexican museums - everything was "En Espanol" - and the museum didn't really cover much of Trotsky's life in Russia - rather it covered his demise in Mexico. Trotsky himself was a russian red revolutionist (Ant can critique my crappy history lesson later) but he was part of the Lenin posse and when Lenin died - I think there was a power struggle or something with Stalin which led Trotsky to like leave Russia and go into exile (like Princess Ulladulla and Master Yoda in Star Wars or something - jedi style beetches). Anyone - after globetrotting around the world - he was granted exile in Mexico in the 40s and there were a couple of attempts on his life. On the second - he was "popped" off (with an Ice Axe to the head - very Sharon Stone Basic Instinct). The museum bit was a little small - but the house was really interesting and was basically left as the way he was living in it back in the 40s. Trotsky was on-again / off-again friends with the on-again/off-again lovers Frida and Diego (which sort of explains why Diego's art is a little on the communistic propaganda side of things - or should that be socialist realism for all of you art buffs). Well - I know who killed Trotsky - it was Ramon Mercader aka Professor Plum in the Study with the Ice Pick...

We continued our trek around the suburbs sin gringos and had lunch at another "Asian-bakery" style Mexican bakery - where nothing was quite what it seemed..... We eat our bounties in a nearby park (with completely no gringos in sight). I thought we were going to be raped by a pack of marauding small rabbies dogs whose owner had let them all of the leash and they were all a bit crazy).

After our near death experience with the pack of small rabbies dogs - we headed to a nearby military museum - only to find out that the place was shutting early on NYE (3pm). It had seemed like a lot of stuff was shutting early today - the Frida Museum had shut at 1pm - and we sort of came to the conclusion that maybe we should head back home to the hotel to rest before our big NYEs.

Back at the hotel - I did my final gyme session for the year (thank god most of the hotels have gyms - apart from the Luxor - which was going to cost us $10USD to use the gyme once - rip offf...!). We headed out to the streets around 9ish and the crowds weren't really happening along the Reforma Ave. The police had completely closed off all traffic and had this "facade" of security with metal detectors (most of them were switched off or the police were occupied elsewhere) and fences everywhere... But there were so many holes to their security (not to mention that you could plant a bomb before they installed the security measures- or you could just come through to the Reforma on the side of our hotel - where police were just letting people through the fence without being metal detected...

They had a big stage in the middle of the reforma playing all of your favourite latin american bands and performers.... cough. For all of the effort that the city has put together the NYE bash at Reforma - the crowds were a tad disappointing (considering there are 22 m or so people living here!!).

Anyway - we had dinner at "El Dragono" - a Chinese restaurant - which was the only Chinese restaurant in the free world (or not so free world) which didn't have any boiled rice... And it could also be the only Chinese restaurant to serve its short/wonton soups with massive amounts of soy sauce... More Confusion than Confucius. We had to make do with just having Oyster Beef and Chilli Chicken sin rice. The guy who worked there (a Mexican) had spoken some of the best english we had heard all trip (including the States). We sort of befriended each other - and he was wanting to go home to be with his family for NYE - and he gave us a free corona. Yay...

After El Dragono - we headed back to Reforma to check out if the crowds were getting bigger. They were - but still felt a little disappointingly small. We headed to the gay bar in Mexico City where everyone knows your name - Papi Fun Bar - which was packed. We had a couple of drinks but our friends from the other night were meeting up with relatives on NYEs so it was sin friends. The music was a little strange that evening. There was a lot more latino music than the previous night (the previous night it was non-stop beyonce and britney). They also had some cheap plasticy necklaces and ballons - which the bar staff where handing out to customers (sin Ant and Nick - sob!). We were still at the Papi Fun Bar at midnight - where there were a couple of party poppers popped and we saw the Mexico City fireworks live on TV. After midnight - the DJ (who really wasn't a proper DJ - just someone picking songs off winamp on a laptop) played only latino music - which was the straw that broke the camel's back.

We headed off to another club (Londres something) with the German couple. This was more of a club club - with a 100 peso cover charge and a free sugary horrible red mystery drink. There were a couple of shows - including a drag show - where the drag queen jumped off the stage and into the DJ booth - giving what was the best mix that we had heard all trip (which wasn't too much of a stretch). Anyhows - the story gets a little blue from here (my mother reads this)... Let's just say that this NYEs is going down in history as one of the best and wackiest NYEs ever (more so than the Brazillian threesome offers). Until next time.... U know u love me. Xo Xo

2009-01-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 20

We woke up (lateish again). Ant was up before I was (shock) - and we headed down to the hotel breakfast for our traditional 10 minutes before closure breakfast.

After we got back to the room - it was a bit "downhill" for Ant who was suffering a bit from a late night out last night con alcohol. I really wanted to do more sightseeing so I was sin Ant today...

I headed out of the hotel after midday and walked down the Reforma Ave down to "Bosque de Chapultepec" aka Chapultepec Park by myself to visit both the Castillo de Chapultepec (aka Chapultepec Castle) and the Museo de Arte Moderno (aka Modern Art Museum).

Ant had assured me that I wouldn't get lost finding these places as they were signposted - but alas I found the back of the Modern Art Museum (which looked like a closed down ride at Disneyland's Tomorrowland from the 60s) - only to realise that the entrance to the museum was on a major road next to the park - not in the park (thanks Don't Know for nuthin). The entrance fee was pretty cheapish (35 pesos aka $3.50 AUD) and the permanent collection was a rather impressive but small collection of modern Mexican art including a couple of Rivera's and Frida Kahlo's famous "The Two Fridas" (or is that "De la Does Fridas"?? - My spanish suxs). It had lots of blood and guts and stuff which was kewlll... There were a couple of other exhibits including this interesting glass/surrealist/art nouveau exhibit all rolled into one, a exhibit on the art of the 1968 Mexican Olympics (which according to the exhibit was the first cultural olympics) - it had lots of inflatable Mexico 68 balls and woman dressed as if they were extras out of an Austin Powers movie, and a somewhat freakish exhibit on human interactions with animals (my favourite was the video art of some guy tap dancing with chunks of meat whilst getting attacked by rabid dogs. Neecyce!). As I mentioned before - the building felt like it belonged at Tommorrowland - an almost lil' sister to the archeology museum that we visited yesterday.

I then got lost again trying to decipher Don't Know and the signs of the park in order to find the Castillo de Chapultepec - but I managed to find the locker area - and subsequently the road leading up to the Castillo. There was a Disneyland-esque train for fat Mexicans/Gringos - but I chose to walk instead. The Castillo sits on top of a hill in the middle of the park and has excellent views of the City. The castle itself is an 18th century castle (with fantastic gardens or "jardins" and great mexican murals (including one featuring a man falling to the pits of hell... rock n roll...!)) and it housed the National History Museum - which like a lot of things here in Mexico - was en Espanol only - so not much made sense (maybe they don't want outsiders to understand the history here??!).

I saw from the top of the castle what looked like to be "6 Flags Mexico" - a themepark where we had seen a brochure for in the hotel lobby which we were toying with the idea of spending a day there - but I was mistaken... it was another themepark (Mexico City has two).

I headed back to the hotel to see how Ant was doing and I surcummed to my first dodgy 7-11 microwave junk food experience. I had bought a coke and microwave burrito for about 15 pesos ($1.50 AUD) and had this big fight with the cashier when I tried to get a Coca Light instead of a Coke. He refused and took the can off me, walked around to the back of the shop and gave me a full-strength Coke. It was yet another international diplomatic incident - but I think I sought of made an "honest mistake" - the price of Coca Light (aka Diet Coke) is marginally higher here in Mexico than the price of Coke (only by about a peso usually)... So I swallowed my pride (and swallowed the full strength coke and attempted to digest the somewhat dodgy microwave carne burrito) and headed back to the hotel - where Ant had already left and was booking additional flights for our holiday. We had plane tickets leaving Cancun for Cuba - and had to get there - but that would involve a 24 hour plus bus ride (which didn't sound all that palatable).... So Ant headed down to the Mexciana (best. airline. name. apart. from. Cubana.) office and got some cheapish tickets from Oaxaca to Mexico City to Cancun for a couple of hundred dollars each.

I went back to the gyme (needed to exercise as most of the food on this trip is high in carb/fat/sugar/bad stuff except for the diet coke which is high in carcinogens). Don't you hate it when you go to a new gyme and there is all new equipment that doesn't do the "hill thing" program that you like on your regular cardio machine. I couldn't get used to the crazy programs the other day so I just set it to el manuale and controlled the strength myself.

Ant and I had a bit of a chill at the hotel - Ant was really getting into the "Drawn Together" DVDs that I had bought in the States. There were some funny references to Speedy Gonzales - who would be up there in terms of the most racist cartoons of all time (think of those slow and lazy Mexican mice sitting around everywhere in those cartoons). I like the Drawn Together take on Speedy - who seems like he has just taken a bit too much "Speedy" and "Coca Light" if you know what I mean... He ends up threatening a character with a switch blade if he "touches his stuff" and then has a blood nose and retreats to the bathroom... Klassy...

We headed out on the Metro to the stop where there are a tonne of Mariachi play. If you don't know what Mariachi are - they are Mexican guitar players (now with brass) who have big guns in their guitar cases and blow s$$$ up.... Well maybe not the last part... When we arrived - it felt a little bit early as most were just sitting around instead of playing. We decided to head into the middle of town to check out the "Latino Americano" Tower - which was about 40 or 50 pesos (cheapest. tower. lift. prices. ever). The Latino Americano Tower is the tallest tower in Latin America - which isn't all that tall (44 floors). We had to line up for about 10 minutes for our quick ride up to the top. Once there - we were greeted with a cafeteria with the same ambient lighting as a 7-11 - which made it really hard to see outside (due to outside being dark). We quickly passed through a pretty lame museum about the building - the only interesting part was some photos on the structural damage done via earthquakes...

We headed up a second lift (where I kept getting off on wrong floors embarrassingly) and headed outside to the "observation deck". The pollution wasn't too bad today - maybe it was something about it being almost a public holiday and less traffic on the roads... and the view was prwuddy...

There were a couple of annoying mexican couples who kept hogging all of the "situational signage" along the deck - Ant and I thought we might throw a couple of them off the ledge - but it might have been a more serious international incident than the "burritos and diet coke" incident.

We headed back to the main plaza (where the ice skating rink was) but we were in serious danger of getting impaled by children throwing 6 ft spear-like balloons with pointy ends. In order to avoid injury (which wasn't probably covered by our insurance) we headed back in the direction of the main Sanborns which was in an neecye old colonial building for dinner. We were seated on the second floor and had some neccye mexican food. Alas - we had to wait about 20 minutes to receive our bill and thus ruining our neeccye dinner. They had some over-complicated system where the waitress didn't actually deal with any money - rather there was a single cashier who would occasionally come out with bills and provide change... Mexican efficiency...!

We headed back to the Mariachi district (past a sleazy area which LP suggested not to go after dark) where the Mariachis were in full swing. You pay them $10US and they play you a serenade or two. There were even people getting "drive through" serenades with the Mariachis playing to couples or families in their big pick up trucks. Ant really wanted a song (La Cocaracha to be exact) but I thought that sounded a bit racist and we were too shy to request a Mariachi band to play with us - so we headed back to Zona Rosa via the metro...

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this but the Mexico City Metro system is a fabulous opportunity to shop! Crazy random people will board onto a train at a station and play a mexican CD cranked up to eleven (with big f##k off mobile speakers in their backpacks) and were selling them for about 10 pesos. You could buy all sorts of crazy crap on the train including oversized novelty pens, bad 80s disco CDs, karaoke DVDs, pocket torches, chewing gum... and a lot of the time - you could catch a train and get about 6 touts in a row... I think our record was about 12 on one trip. Until next time...

2009-01-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 19

We woke up (really late again) and struggled to get to the hotel restaurant for breakfast before 11am...

Ant had made a bit of a snap decision and decided that we should check out "Teotihuacan" (lordy don't ask me to pronounce that!) - which is a huge pre-Aztec pyramid city thingy about an hour and a half out of Mexico City. Because the day was almost half-over - we made a dash for the nearest metro stop (for us it was "Insurgetntes" (which I kept thinking it was about "insurgents"..?) which was just at the other end of the Zona Rosa to where we were staying.

We headed out to one of Mexico City's big f##k-off bus stations (they are sort of like the wicked which of the west/north/south/east - because I think there is one for each in Mexico City). It was almost like a (run-down) airport - with heaps of gates and stuff (even with the same hokey security as in some of Mexico City's tourist attractions). We managed to find the bus company who operated over 30 trips to Teotihucan and we bought tickets (which were about $4-5AUD each for a 90 min bus ride - bargain) and the next bus was leaving in just 5 minutes.

We made a dash for the gate (which was relatively easy to find) and a guy pulled us over and plonked us on the right bus. There were a fair amount of gringos on the bus (not surprisingly as this is one of the big tourist attractions in Mexico). The bus ride was initially slow at getting out of the city - but once we were on a freeway - it was really interesting seeing a bit more of Mexico. Parts of it felt a bit like Peru (eg: poor areas with cookie-cutter house square thingys) but I really digged all of the colourful ads along the side of the freeway and houses. At first - I thought it was all Mexican graffiti but upon closer look - they were all giant colourful ads painted onto the sides of walls and the freeway.

After our bus ride - we arrived at one of the four entrances to the Teotihucan ancient city doh-dad. The entry prices were a complete steel (at under $5AUD a pop) and there was a free loo which was just beyond the front gate. You probably seen all of those crazy "American Standard" toilets all through the states (with the 87 liters of water spewing out of them upon a single flush)... Well at these toilets they had the "Nigerian Standard" urinals - which seemed to have 87 liters of urine in each urinal just sitting in there -waiting for you to pee into it and splash it around everywhere like a p### party.... Neeocye...

Teotihucan was an ancient city, which was "re-discovered" by the Aztecs who believed it was a sacred site. The site remained hidden from the Spaniards until the 16th century and according to Don't Know - there are still archeological digs around the area unearthing things. There are several huge "f##k-off" pyramids and the Pyramid of the Sun is the third biggest pyramid on the planet (although it is only half the height of the pyramids in Giza). There is another impressive pyramid (Pyramid of the Moon) where you can get amazing Kodak Moment shots (maybe that Kodak sponsored - Honey I Shrunk the Audience has rubbed off on me ?) of the complex. This was the first tourist site which had plenty of Gringo tourists (everything yesterday was filled with Mexicans). Not only was it filled with tourists but also filled with really god-f###ing annoying touts who had these gimmicky flute things which sounded like eagles or pumas. I had seriously thought about getting out my Ipod and drowning out all of these a##holes with it.

Ant and I first trekked up the Pyramid of the Sun where we noticed that many of the locals and tourists are big, fat and lazy and couldn't really handle climbing up the pyramid with taking excessively long breaks... Come to mention it - it felt like a lot of Mexicans had inherited the "fat genes" from Americans because a lot of them were fairly portly. It had only taken us about 5 minutes to climb to the peak (it would have been shorter if they hadn't been big queues to get up to the top).

We then walked down the "Avenue of the Dead" - which the Aztecs had mistakenly thought that all of the mini-structures around the street were tombs... We were going to rename this avenue - the "Avenue of the Touts"...

We climbed up the smaller Pyramid of the Moon (which you were only allowed to climb half way up) and got some great shots (touch wood) of the city. There were a couple of smaller structures that we had explored including a palace which had pre-hispanic murals (must have been in their genes to paint murals).

We headed down to the less touristy end of the complex (where the touts were thinning out...) and checked out a small temple/pyramid on the south side which had some awesome/still intact sculptures.

We headed to the general vague direction to where LP said there would be a bus. Luckily - there was a friendly local who helped showed us where the "Autobus" stop was. We only had to wait 5 minutes before the next bus arrived. It was a much shorter trip back to the Bus Station in town (less traffic on the roads maybe??).

We were dead hungry (was about 4pm and hadn't eaten anything since breakfast) - and I stumbled across a quasi-asian style bakery - where you grab those trays and tongs and pick random bread rolls and cakes which might be filled of pig's testicles or something. Luckily - the Mexican version wasn't too extreme - and we settled on some breadrolls and donuts for lunch (mmm.. nutrition).

We had a chill/work-out back at the hotel - where Ant chilled out and I went and made use of the free gym at the hotel. It definitely wasn't the american standard of gymes - but it was probably better than most hotel gyms back in Australia. Plus - our hotel gym had a pretty good view of the city and the neeeoyce sunset (if you could see the sun through the smog).

Again we had a latino-time dinner. Instead of going to Sambons again - we decided upon a strange "Argentinean/Mexican" fusion restaurant which was more like Latin American confusion.... We both had some steak tortilla thingys which were OK and a couple of beers. Again - we had to use our ESP powers to call for the waiters to give us our GODDAMN BILL!!!! Does all restaurants in Mexico want you to occupy their tables in restaurants for extended periods of time so they don't make as much money as they would giving people their bills faster so they can pay and vacate the premises only for new customers to take their place... or something.

We decided to have a bit of explore of the Zona Rosa nightlife - and decided to go to a gay bar which was a total mistake (some freakish old man walked up to Ant and I (about a foot away) and didn't stop staring at us... At that point - I quickly finished my $2AUD beer and we headed to the "Papi Fun Bar" which could have been one of the world's most smallest and visible gay bars (all in a space no bigger than my living room and everything has big glass windows so you can see what is happening from the outside. We had a drink or two and befriended a group of Mexicans (Edgar, Diego and Marco) - who were all super friendly.... Edgar was a super keen Kylie fan (who knew her old 80s stuff) and was a part-time x-dresser... Marco was easy to fire up on any topic (eg: BA in Argentina is europe like, Britney suxs) and Diego was a little rusty at the old engrish but nice enough to leave us with his hotmail address. After a couple of drinks - it was 5am already. We exchanged facebook profiles (Edgar and Diego are now facebook friends with us)... and farewelled each other (outside the American Embassy where Marco mooned the embassy guards...) and we headed back for a bit of shut-eye at the hotel... Until next time...

2009-01-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 18

After lunch we headed to a nearby Metro station and bought five tickets for the bargain basement price of 10 pesos (which equates as about 20 cents per metro trip...). Mexico City Metro gave off this whole "retro-future" vibe - with "futuristic" lettering all throughout the stations but just the stations were a little on the run down retro side. It sort of felt like how a 1970s sci-fi movie with depict metro stations in the future... (Maybe that's why some of Total Recall was shot here in Mexico City...?). The trains were fairly quick and efficient. About one comes every couple of minutes so you don't have to wait long. Also - all of the trains were on "wheels" - so they all ran much smoother than real trains. The ride was a little bit squishy but that's probably because Mexico City has a population of more than 20m or something.

We headed to a metro stop nearby the "Bosque de Chapultepec" - a huge park with heaps of museums and stuff. When we attempted to get into the park - we had this female mexican cop (who sort of looked like she was dressed for drug bust) scream obscenities at us and not allowing us to enter into the park. We were a little bedazzled - and stood there for a bit to plot our next move. We managed to cross under a big road (via the metro station) and find an alternative entrance to the park. I think that entrance had closed early or something vague..!

We headed to the big "Museo Nacional de Autropeologia" which exhibits a lot of pre-hispanic artifacts. We were on a bit of a quest to exploit the city's free museums during Sunday - but we came to find out that Gringos had to pay normal price on a Sunday whilst locals (and ex pats) get in for free. There was another drug cop who looked at people whilst entering the museum and funneled both Ant and I off to the Gringo ticket counter to buy tickets... not that they where that expensive (less than $5AUD a pop).

Upon entering the museum - it had a courtyard that was "Cameron Offices in Canberra" on steroids - with a huge concrete water feature (sort of in the shape of a reverse funnel) which was spewing water at little mexican kids (who are likely to get gastro from playing with the water).

Everything in the museum was "en espanol" - which sort of was confirming that not many people here in Mexico speak Spanglish... There were a couple of pre-civilization bits on Mexico City and cavemen (which was a little hard to follow). We then (idiotically) decide to go to the upstairs exhibits which were a bit like a Disneyland exhibit of the different cultures and peoples within Mexico (as Ant had put it). It was a little boring and repetitive - but the museum was definitely worth a visit for the downstairs collection which housed heaps of kick-a$$, big f##k off archaeological finds of pre-hispicanic Mexico - including giant stone heads, a cool tomb thingy and heaps of art and decorative art stuff. Unfortunately - Ant and I had spent too long in the upstairs Disneyland section - and the stewpid guards were shutting all of the exhibits earlier than the closing time by 10 minutes - so we missed out on a couple of rooms.

After the museum closed - we exited the park and walked past a huge Xmas tree... Let go of xmas people - it is now closer to NYs!! We walked along the Reforma Ave and past what looked like the "Business/Finance/Wall Street" part of town. Also fabulous was the American Embassy (LP warns not to hang around this area in the "Danger and Annoyances" section - sounds like fun!). The embassy had big huge f###-off barriers and police with sawn-off shot guns (well - maybe they weren't sawn-off but they were shotguns). Speaking of shotguns - a lot of businesses and banks have the whole hired-mexican armada thing happening - with security guards all decked out with ammo and shotguns/riffles. It feels like you are in some bad Mexican-drug lord movie or something.

It felt like a really long walk (maybe because we were both tired) - but it only was about 40 mins from the big park to the hotel. We crashed for a bit. Our hotel in Mexico City had free wireless internet (this is where Ant's Macbook came in handy) - so I could finally update this blog (didn't really post anything whilst we were in the states). The TV situation in the hotel was pretty good - as we could play some of our DVDs that we had bought from the states (Ant was really getting into the Drawn Together DVDs)... Ironically - "In the Line of Fire" was on "HBO Extra" - so we ended up watching that... Ahhh the memories of the Westin Bonaventure - with the lobby, rooms, and of course - the lift where the finale was at (where John Malcovich gets shot by snipers) happened - opps did I give away the ending??! (not that that movie was half-predictable. I also started to watch "The Bodyguard" - which featured in my Razzies book. According to the book - Kevin Costner's haircut won a razzie that year for "Worst New Star"... Also ironical about the movie - Whitney Houston was nominated for worst actress and her character in the movie ends up winning the oscar for best actress...

Anyway - it was at a very Latino time of midnight when we decided that we should try and find somewhere for dinner. We braved the streets of Zona Rosa (past the hordes of prostitutes) and found a 24hr Sambons. Ant and I both tried the chicken tacos - which were completely unlike tacos back at home. They were in a slightly fried tortilla wrap and smothered with sauce and guacamole (which tastes a bit spicy here) and (my favourite) refried beans... We almost (again) created a international incident when we decided we were sick of waiting for the bill (after 15 minutes) - so we walked up and created quite a panic amongst the cashier and the waitress...

We were a little tired somewhat after dinner. I managed to catch the end of "The Bodyguard" where Kevin's haircut shoots the assassin (who had a camera as a gun) and takes a bullet for Whitney (why???) but Kevin's haircut survives and makes passionate hot luv on an airport tarmac although Whitney's acting career didn't (... wait - did I give this movie away...?!). Until next time....

2009-01-04T17:23:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 17

We woke up at a more Latino time of 10am. We had to quickly race downstairs for our free breakfast at the Hotel (which we didn't know we had!) and got there at 10:50am (breakfast closed at 11am). It felt good having breakfast at the hotel - where you could finally get toast and cereal (albeit sugary cereal with 170 calories a pop). Although the coffee was of the "americano-instante" variety.

I think we finally made it out of the hotel by about midday, stopped at a nearby 7-11 for a Pepsi Light (5 pesos aka 50cents Australia) and we headed down the "Paseo de la Reforma" (I'll just call it "Reforma Ave" instead) where it felt like it was a little reminiscent of BA in Argentina with the big broad avenues (4 or 6 lanes in each way, and the sidewalks fairly leafy). There were huge big fu##-off roundabouts (more so than the ones in Canberra) with big monuments (or moumentos) which were pretty kewl. The architecture here was fairly eclectic in New Mexico but a lot of it was fairly Art-Deco including the "Loteria Nacional" (which I'm guessing translates into "National Lottery" in spanglish) which was like a tall "Superman building"/Daily Planet office with little glass offices beside it (which looked like mini Bonaventures). There was also a funky yellow sculpture thingy (according to Don't Know - it was called the "El Caballito" or "Little Horse").

We were generally heading in the direction of the "Historic Centre" of Mexico City and we passed through a park with a cool little market.... where we basically came to the conclusion that we were about 2 feet taller than all Mexicans (who looked just as short as the Peruvian people). We dub this "Land of the munchkins" and Ant and I represent the Lollypop guild... word.

We wandered past a stand-up comedian/clown who started to scream "Hallllo! Halllo!" to both Ant and I where we attempted to ignore him (who was somewhat a ghoulish looking clown - think a Mexican version of Stephen King's It). He then burst out in laughter (as did his crowd). I think we had experienced our first Mexican gringo payout.

We got lost a little bit (we were armed with both Don't Know and LP - so we are not sure who to blame - maybe both??!) but we managed to track down the "Museo Mural Diego Rivera". Mexican artists are really big on murals - and Diego Rivera is one of the most famous muralists (probably just behind Frida in terms of famousisity). At the museum (which was free because it was Sunday! Yay!) - there was the giant "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central" mural which depicted many famous people in Mexico's history - all standing around Sgt Pepper style. There was Frida and Diego Rivera and a "Jew on Fire" (where the museum had a temporary exhibit on) and was pretty cool. Although everything was in Spanish - so we had to use DK and LP to make complete sense of things.

We walked out of the park - and went past the "Palacio de Bella Artes" which was a big impressive art-deco esque building with a mini-latin america piazza in front of it. On the other side of the mini-piazza was the "Latino Americano" building - the highest skyscrapper in Latino Americano - which looked a little worse for wear. Maybe something to do with the fact that Mexico City has heaps of earthquakes (or sisimos) or something.

We headed down a cobble-stoned street (which was paved with tourists) to the main plaza in the Historic Centre (the Plaza de la Constitucion) which was, believe it or not, decked out with ice-skating rinks, snow-tube rides and igloos (which sort of looked like they were made out of styrofoam). The weather here was mild (eg: t-shirt and jeans, sometime jumper weather) - so I'm not sure how they managed to build a ice-skating rink and snow ramp thingy - but they did. The plaza was stacked full of people (maybe something to do with Mexico City being one of the most populous cities on the planet - with more people than the population of Australia).

We first checked out the "Palacio Nacional" (aka National Palace) which was on one of the sides of the plaza. It is the home of the "presidente's offices" and had a couple of impressive Diego Rivera murals (which sometimes look a little communistic). We had to get "metal detected" going into the Palacio as well as showing the guard our passports (a tourist first!). Although the metal detection seemed a little half-arsed as everyone kept setting off the machine and the guards didn't even seem to flinch or care.

We then checked out the huge Catholic cathedral in the plaza (aka Catedral Metropolitana) - which is the biggest catholic church in Latin America (mind you - this diocese is supposed to be the largest catholic diocese on the planet). It was huge, massive, impressive but you couldn't help but get a sinking feeling about this place. Probably due to the fact that this plaza and Cathedral have been built on a bed of soft clay which is sinking. It sort of made it a little disorientating walking around the cathedral (almost a drunk sensation without the grog). There was also a pendulum hanging from the roof of the cathedral which showed just how "off-centre" the ground of the church was (maybe by a 15 degree angle or so).

We also visited the "Templo Mayor" (which gave me flashbacks to the Roman ruins in the middle of Rome). This is the ruins of an Aztec temple which according to Don't Know - was almost completely destroyed by the Spaniards after conquering the Aztec capital (by golly they are nice people the spaniards). It was quite interesting - as to the museum which housed heaps of pre-hispanic relics and stuff (all in hispanic languageoes). Even better was the free entrance (Sunday is the day where which most museums in Mexico City have free admission).

We wandered back in the direction of the Latino Americano Tower to find some lunchoes. We settled on a Sambons (which I kept pronouncing as "Sombreros" - which is sort of like a Mexican version of "Myer" with a big Mexican cafe adjoined to it (except the cafes are sort of like the McDonalds of Mexico). All of the waitresses are decked out in traditional mexican outfits including a traditional "Coke Zero Now Available" badge. We got given spanish menus - so it made it even more fun-er to order. I ordered a "Negro Mole Enchiladas" (or Black Mole Enchiladas) and Ant had some Pollo Tacos (aka Chicken Tacos). If you think Old El Paso is mexican food, or that hard shell tacos are mexican food or that enchiladas are mexican food, or burritos... then you are horribly mistaken because all of that is actually "Tex-Mex" food. (Note hard shell tacos, enchiladas and burritos were all "invented" in the States!). My Black Mole Enchiladas were some Turkey wrapped up in some tortillas and drowned in a thick black mole sauce (which tasted a little sweet yet spicy) with a little bit of refried beans on the side (ooohh I love my refried beans...!). Ant's tacos were more "burrito" esque with the shells slighty crisp and covered with a sauce. This feels a million miles away from the Mexican food that we have back at home. Even more so than Australian Chinese food vs real Chinese food. We both had a Corona - which tasted a bit different than the stuff we get at home - but it was way cheaper (try about $2AUD each). We then attempted to ESP the wait staff to bring us our bill. After waiting for about 10 minutes - we gave up and decided to walk up to the counter to pay - where we almost made a international Aus-Mex incident. We did a bit of spanglish hostage negotiations and soon payed for our meal - then we were on our way.... Until next time...

2009-01-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 16

We woke up at the non-Latino time of 6:15am because we had a super early flight from Las Vegas to Dallas. Because the Luxor was right next door to the airport - we thought we would take our chances with a taxi instead of catching the hotel shuttle for $6USD each. We were right - the taxi only cost us about $10 plus a small tip (you would have had to pay a tip with the shuttle as well...).

We checked into our AA flight (our first for this trip) and we managed to get ourselves an exit row at the front of the plane. As AA didn't have a lounge at Las Vegas airport - we had to wait out with the sluts and slots out in the gate. We had our second shameful Starbucks experience for the trip - where I got a couple of pastries/muffin thingies and a grande latte (which is pretty much a flat white back in Australia) and even though we were paying airport prices for Starbucks - it was actually cheaper than having Starbucks at the Luxor Hotel. Ant had the same (although he had a hot chocolate instead).

I had Ant take my picture on the "Wheel of Fortune" slot machine outside our gate. There were so many dodgy slot machines in Las Vegas - from the "Alien" slot machine, to "Star Wars" to "Star Trek" to "Indiana Jones" to "the Village People" to "the Pussy Cat Dolls" - there seemed like there was some dodgy slot machine tie in to anything in pop culture.

Our flight to Dallas was pretty terrible - AA style... We were sitting opposite a AA stewardess who was standing in the corner with her arms folder - looking bemused by all of the customers walking onto the flight. She was sort of sending out the body language signals of "...OHhhh gawd - not customers...! I hate those guys!". Even Southwest, which was a budget airline, had friendlier staff than AA. And at least Southwest welcomed customers onto the flight.

During the flight, the stewardess was giving out "I'm going to commit suicide" body language signals. She never made eye-contact with either of us. In between contemplating suicide and not looking at us - she would be on her phone texting people or something... Klassy with a K.

We had to sit on the tarmac for about 40 mins at Dallas because of the really fu## off strong winds at the airport.

When we finally got off that plane with the suicidal stewardesses, we had to go get our bags (because we were leaving in a different terminal with Mexicana (best. airline. name. ever.) in what looked like a prison cell. It was really bizarre (in AA fashion) that out of the blue at the luggage carousel - there was about 200 plastic bag bin thingys that came down the chute - which left absolutely no room for bags to be on the carousel. Ant and I were a fortunate because our bags were one of the first out... Thank god for this because due to the no room for bags on the carousel - there were some bags coming out which were getting stuck on the conveyor belt. Ant and I left before there were going to be any bag explosions.

We had to wait for a couple of minutes before the Airport Terminal shuttle bus appeared - but when it did - Ant asked the driver "Is this bus going to terminal four?" (in fairly loud clear engrish). The driver said "whuh?". Ant then got a bit red-headed and started to scream "terminal four terminal four!!!". When the bus driver finally understood Ant - he asked "what language where you speaking?". Ant replied "English!! English!" (it was like Ant's was having a attitude explosion..).

We finally arrived at Terminal Four (Ant had cooled down somewhat). We checked in at the Mexicana check in where we ended up with more exit-rows - although this time - we weren't booked siting together (despite us being on the same ticket).

We had to wait an hour or two at Dallas for our flight to Mexico City. I had some fatty sandwiches at some fast food place (gawd I'm missing light and lean food). I loved some of the T-shirts at the airport (cough) - such as "Don't Mess WIth Texas". I was thinking thank god I only have to spend a couple of hours here... cause I didn't want Texas to mess with me...

Our flight to Mexico was pretty uneventful and decent - we actually got a meal (albeit a fatty one) which was way more than any american airline. Although the inflight entertainment was a bit lame - an episode of "Small(penis)ville" en Espanol?!

We arrived at Mexico City at about 7:30 at night - but all time clocks are all out of whack (California was different to Las Vegas which is different to Mexico). Mexico had the whole crazy "push a button and find out if you get strip searched at customs" like heaps of latin american countries have - but both Ant and I lucked out and got "Green=Go" lights.

We had booked a hotel in the Zona Rosa district (eg: red light district) and were contemplating catching the Metro to there - but according to LP - you weren't supposed to take luggage on the metro. So we instead bought a taxi voucher (all the taxis from the airport are regulated and are all the same price). Zona Rosa was in "Zone 4" so it cost about 140 pesos (which equates to about $14AUD as $1AUD = 10 Mexican Pesos). We were a bit freaked out by the taxi (having those Southern American flashbacks of feeling like we are getting kidnapped/rapped/murdered) when the taxi driver was driving a bit erratic and was pulling into petrol stations and stuff. At one point of time - he stopped the cab at a petrol station and checked the outside of the cab. Ant thought that one of the tires could have been flat - but after a minute - he got back in and we were on our way to town.

It ended up being a rather short-ish trip to our hotel - "Eurostars Reforma" - which allegedly was a "five star" hotel according to its sign. We checked in - a bell boy took our bags to the room - which was a very modern and well equipped large hotel room with a big king sized bed, flat screen TV (with DVD player - yes!), a very swanky (if a little impractical) bathroom and a largish living area (for hotel standards). I think we were starting to move up from being "back packers" to "flash packers" this trip. I hadn't seen any pubic hairs in the bed this trip...

We went outside and walked to a nearby shopping mall called Reforma 222 (probably because that was its address on Reforma Ave - which is a major road in Mexico City). The mall seemed rather squeakishly brandspanking new - with a big cinema on the top floor as well as a food court. We decided to have dinner at.... Subway (the shame). We sort of started to pick up that not many people here speak in English as we had to negotiate (in spanglish) in order for the staff to make our subs.

We headed back outside and walked out in the Zona Rosa district. It sort of felt a little "poorer version of Kings Cross" with prostitutes and pimps soliciting their wares on the street. We were both taken back a little when we saw a mexican couple (male) hold hands, embrace and kiss (in the french variety) out in public... However we soon discovered that this area was gay-ground zero with a litany of gay bars, shops and sex-shops everywhere. We had a quick look at a "Rainbow Connection" shop - which was filled of lots of cheap crappy gay rainbow coloured crap (and 8 pesos gay DVDs which didn't look entirely legit). Until next time...

2009-01-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 15

We were a little groggy in the morning - Ant way so more than I was...! I thought I might hop downstairs to the Golden Arches before Breakfast closed at 11am - I had got there about quarter to 10 and bought myself and Ant a sausage and egg mcmuffin. Although shameful - it did the spot.

I got dressed and showered and felt OK (if a little tired due to the fact that we didn't get back to the hotel till 5am) - but Ant needed more rest - so I did some sightseeing/shopping down the strip without him.

I had decided to check out all of the hotels I had missed yesterday. First stop was the Tropicana Hotel (which was at the MGM Grand/Excalibur/NY NY crossroads). It was a little retro but high on cheese.

I then thought I might check out the H&M store at the Planet Hollywood Hotel (which didn't appear to have any relation to the Arnold restaurant - although freakishly - there was a Planet Hollywood restaurant at the Forum shopping centre next to Caesars.... which I had thought had all gone bust or something 5 years ago...?). Although there was allegedly a sale on at H&M (being Boxing Day and all) - hardly anything decent was on sale - so I bought a full price hoody and t-shirt. I've noticed I've started to lose my "bargin-whore" tag and am now finding myself buying the full-price stuff - I had spent $300 on new clothes before I left Australia at Sydney - and the tee I bought at San Diego was also full price... or something.

The Planet Hollywood hotel felt a little crappy (in a sterile sort of way) so I continued down the Strip on my trek of visiting all of the casinos I "didn't do" the previous day.

Right next door to Planet Hollywood was probably my favourite casino - "Paris" which was a bit like NY NY - in that the casino was a mish-mash of Paris landmarks including a mini-Eiffel Tower and a bit of a Louvre facade. The casino inside was quite classy (dare I say it with a "C") - with all of the hotel staff dressed up in Parisian style (including the drink waitresses looking like Moulin Rouge dancers). There were even metro stops and stuff inside the Casino.

I then checked out a collection of "cheap n nasty" casinos including Flamingoes (which was all 70s pink neon with a mirrored (and very low) ceiling and had Donnie and Marie shop (Marie needs to cut back on the Botox)), Imperial Palace (which gaming floor smelt like Subway... gross), Harrah's (I used the bathroom there) and Casino Royale (I don't think James Bond would be seen dead in there).

I decided to fork out $5USD and get a day pass to the "Duece" - a big double decker bus which goes up and down the strip. I caught it around Wynn and got off at the Riveria (which wasn't that far away really - but I was lazy American style). The Riveria was fairly clapped out (with a "k") - another casino which hadn't been renovated since 1962. I headed across the road to one of my retro favourites "Circus Circus". It sort of looked like someone had chucked a grenade at half of the Circus Circus sign (a scary looking giant clown) and although it was very retro - it had a big indoor themepark. I also think it was the casino that was in the Diamonds Are Forever movie (and didn't look like it had been renovated since). Circus Circus seemed a little bit like Excalibur in that it was a more "family orientated" casino, despite the acres of gaming tables and slots (of the machine variety).

Speaking about slots - I went to what had the best name in Vegas - "Slots A Fun"... It was small, dingy but how could you not like that name...?! I'm not sure if there is a sister strip club somewhere in Vegas??

It was getting late in the day - and I had promised to see Ant back at the Luxor by 3:30pm. I caught the Deuce back in the direction of the Luxor - but it was a big mistake. Firstly - it was chockers with the heater on high - which seemed like very appropriate climate control since I was wearing my big heavy winter coat. Secondly - the bus was slower than a snail's pace. An old invalid grandma with no leg or bowel control could crawl faster than the Deuce. The car traffic on the strip was unbelievable... Not sure why you would bother driving down it if the invalid grandma could beat you??! I didn't want to upset Ant and I wanted to be there by 3:30pm - so I hopped off the next stop (which was about 200m away from where I had caught it - which took 15 mins) and I had raced down the Strip on foot. It's quite a distance and you have to compete with pedestrian traffic - and there is a a tonne of overhead walkways (some of which force you to walk through private-property casinos??!).

I ended up being about 15 minutes late - but Ant didn't mind... Because of my lack of sleep - I decided to crash and Ant went out - did a bit of shopping at the Fashion Show Mall (including the man-whore A&F store) and he took my advice and had checked out the Paris Casino - which he liked...

Because we are cheap and tacky people - we decided to have dinner at the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Luxor (instead of the Excalibur). Because the Luxor is a "klassier" hotel than the Excalibur - the buffet was definitely more better quality than Excalibur's effort. It was a little more pricey (maybe $5USD more than Excalibur) - but the quality of food was way better. You could even get someone to cook you up a steak or hamburger (but of course - gratuity was extra).

After dinner (we were both pretty tired) - we decided to check out the more up-market sister hotel of the Luxor - Mandalay Bay which was right next door. This felt a bit more like the 5 star sister of the Luxor and Excalibur (the Luxor being a 3-4 star brother and the Excalibur being the 2-3 star dodgy uncle). Although we wanted to see a show in Vegas - we were a bit tired on our last night (also - we were to shy to buy tickets to the "Thunder from Downunder - although men were allowed to buy tickets"). Until next time...

2009-01-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 14

After the oversized lunch - we headed through the Venetian - thinking - is this the biggest casino in Vegas?? However we were mistaken as we walked through both the Venetian and its sister Casino - the Palazzo.

Our next stop was the Wynn Hotel and the Encore Hotel - which looked like an exact replica of the Wynn. Both felt pretty upmarket and were probably the closest thing to "classy" (without a K) that we had seen on the strip.

The weather started to turn and it was getting on in the day so we decided to head home. The weather got so bad in places - we had to take shelter in the Mirage Casino (former home of Siegfried and Roy - those wacky magician and lion tamer double act... and luvers...I think it was Roy who was attacked by a lion or something - and then the hotel axed the show). There was a tacky huge statue out the front of the hotel to honor Siegfried and Roy (with a tiger in the middle)... Klass. There was some dolphin exhibit in the hotel - but you almost got drowned by the torrential rain - so we gave that a miss.

We managed to make it back to the hotel (my umbrella almost didn't make it) - and we chilled for a bit. We had a bit of a wicked idea to do the Luxor's Buffet for dinner (as it was Xmas night and they were putting on a special xmas spread at $20-something a head plus a glass of champagne). Although we realised that the buffet was closed after 10pm after we rocked up about 9:30pm (latino dinner time) and there was a massive queue to get in. We both decided to give it a miss and attempt to go to the Excalibur Buffet instead (which was a bit cheaper). The Excalibur all you can eat buffet was a bit cheap and nasty - where quantity overruled quality. There was a pretty diverse set of food (everything from mexican to roasts to pasta to chinese food with toxic looking purple sauce (ungodly I tells ya) - all reminded Ant of College food at Uni. It was a little bizzare that you were expected to tip at a buffet (stewpid US minimum wage for everything!) but the woman who served us was pretty friendly so we didn't mind too much.

After dinner - we headed downstairs to the Excalibur sideshow game alley thingy - where all the games were crooked and nothing is what is seems to be... We had a go at a "spray water in a hole to make your ship win a race" game - where I was sure I had won it... but it was totally rigged and some little 7 year old winning it instead (despite the fact that I had continually sprayed water into the hole for the whole time - never missed - and my boat looked ahead of the little brat's). Grrr... But Ant had a bit of a revenge at a "throwing darts at balloons" game where he won a small teddy bear. I had a go at a "magnetic fishing game thingy" and won a mutated orange bear. I think we had both done enough gambling for one night.

We wanted to go out clubbing on a Xmas Night (as you do in Vegas) and the only gay club we could find on the net was one called "Krave" which was next to the Planet Hollywood hotel midway down the strip. We arrived at after midnight and you couldn't really make out of any of the club from the outside. Ant and I did our trademark patented "we are shy and will just stand around for 10 minutes before we enter the club" routine - then we finally decided we will take the plunge and go in. The cover charge initially seemed steep ($15USD) - but then we soon realised that it was all you can drink local beers and wines for the night... Yay. Xmas has finally arrived.

The club itself was a bit reminiscent of the old "Med" club in Canberra (which was like the Blue Oyster in the Police Academy movies) and Cube mixed up into one... eg - sort of lame. We were told by locals that normally the club is twice the size - but it was in a fairly cramped space with a stage with go-go dancers who occasionally popped out - but shamefully there were no poles! The DJ was a bit odd - he played a few songs more than once (Beyonce's Single Lady and Britney's Womanizer were a couple of examples) but then he went into this weird gangster rap mode for about an hour which cleared the floor... The crowd was a bit mixed too - there were these bizzare (what appeared to be straight group) who kept taking pictures of themselves (who brings cameras to nightclubs??... losers!) and we befriended a few people including a group of Swedish engineers working in San Diego taking a break in Las Vegas over Xmas, a couple from Florida and a couple of friends from Texas. After they started to charge for drinks at the bar - the club cleared out. I had jumped up onto the empty stage and started to convort around the place like Nomi Malone and then was told off by the woman bouncer who said sternly "Don' do that again!". Not to worry because Ant and I then left the club... not wanting to stick around.

I took a pitstop at the Golden Arches (and ordered a happy meal) - where we met up with the Texan couple. One was the son of the guy who invented white board markers - so he was pretty set (in terms of $$). His friend seemed equally as reeech... We had a bit of an insider joke where we would scream out "The Mac Ribs are Back!!!" (as that what the posters at the counter stated) which startled most guests at Mc Donald's. I also played a trick where I locked one of the entrances to Mc Donalds. I was quite shocked that the people working there put up with us - but they get paid so little and probably don't care too much about the restaurant or business...

We decided to follow the Texans to the MGM Grand (which has a lion cage thingy in the middle of the casino - would someone call PETA!) - where one of them proceeded to bet $500USD worth of chips on the Blackjack table. Although I don't gamble - it was really exciting to watch at the table. Because you have to be over 21 to gamble/drink/have fun/breath around gambling tables in Nevada - we all got carded before the started the game. Jordan (the guy gambling the $$) did quite well to begin with then started to flake. He managed to get out at $500 so he was even for the night...

Anyhows - by that time (5am) - it was time for some beauty sleep... Until next time...

2009-01-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 13

After the Bellagio - we headed next door to Caesar's Place - which had a bit of a Disneyland-esque mish-mash view of ancient Rome. The statues looked Ancient Greek and so too does the lettering and font of the Casino. Caesar's seemed to have some "big names" playing at it - including Elton John (there was an Elton John gift shop and Elton themed slot machines), the Pussycat Dolls (there was a PCD gift shop, PCD slot machines (emphasis on the slot) and PCD cafe/bar complete with poles), and Bette Middler and Cher (with their own gift shop but no slot machines?!). This place (or should that be palace) was pretty big. There was a big sports room with a big f##k-off TV and monitors for sports gambling - and an "Ebay" slot machine (not sure if Ebay should be associating itself with gambling?).

Next door was the Forum (I did another sound of music twirl as there were a couple of scenes from Shotgirls shot here) - a indoor shopping centre (no natural light in any of the casinos whatsoever) which had a tacky painted on ceiling with clouds and stuff where they simulate it being nighttime or daytime (anytime). I had Ant took my picture in front of the Versace store (pronounced Ver-sace in Showgirls) and there was this weird but tacky spiral escalator - which sorts of traps you in the centre and forces you to walk around the complex. There was this tacky fountain in the middle of the forum, complete with fog, which there were hoards of tourists hanging around. They all appeared to be waiting for a show (they put on free shows all over town in Vegas) - but we didn't see any sign of a show starting. One of the busiest stores there was the Apple Store - where we both logged on the internet (for free) and Ant updated his facebook status.

We headed outside (needed some natural light) and walked past "Treasure Island" - which has a pirate ship which circles the front of the casino (tack). The side of the strip on which we were walking seemed to be the "classy side" in that it was "classier" than the other side of the strip - which felt a bit run down. There was a few old casinos (see Hurrahs which had the "best 10pm shows in Vegas" with some unknown comedian, or Flamingos (with the Osmonds playing - hold me back), or Casino Royale (which looked old and crusty) but we crossed over to the "Venetian" which was a Venice-themed hotel - complete with indoor gondolas and signing gondola people (don't remember that in the real Venice!?!).

We had lunch at some Mexican fast food place in the Venetian. I ordered a taco salad because I thought it would be "relatively" light and lean - but in true US fashion - it was the size of about two Australian mains... You could get souvenir margarita glasses and klassy margarita slushes (you saw heaps of people walking around town with them).

Opps - I forgot to mention that this was Xmas Day. Ant and I were sick of spending Xmas in Catholic countries (see Chile) so we thought one place that would still be open (and happening) would be Vegas. I liked some of the Xmas touches in Vegas - my favourite was a tout along the strip who was singing "Tis the season to do strip clubs. Tra-a-la-a-la. La-la-la-la". More to come...

2009-01-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 12

We woke up sort of lateish - but Ant didn't have the best of nights' sleep. The bed was pretty soft (which Ant hates). It was a little hard to see out of our pyramid window - it was covered by some Cirque De Sol ad on the outside of the pyramid (sort of like those ads on the windows of buses where you can sorta see through them but not completely). Our room overlook the airport (!) - but alas the room was double glazed so you really didn't hear any of the airport noise apart from the occasional helicopter flight over the hotel.

The TV here in Vegas felt a little less CNN/News channels and more "Nick trashy channels" like MTV which was showing a marathon of "Parental Control" - a dating show where the parents of a kid (who can't stand their partner) interviews a panel of potential dates - selects them and then their kid goes out on a date with both the Mother and Father's selection. At the end of the show they make a choice of whether they stick with their current boyfriend/girlfriend or dump them and go out with one of the dates selected by their parents. I have not seen an episode yet where they dump their extant boyfriend/girlfriend for one that their parents' selected - but you never know...

We headed downstairs for some breakfast... We both felt like something "light" so we chose Starbucks (!!) (felt like we chose the lesser of two evils - didn't want the golden arches). I had some weird oatmeal in a box thing - where the woman had drowned the oats in some horrible skinny milk thing. It all felt a little expensive for $4USD and the coffee was about the same price (although it was surprisingly half-OK!).

Everything in Vegas is at "tourist prices" - nowhere near as cheap as anywhere else we had been to thus far on the trip. The Luxor hotel prices for things were even more expensive than outside of the hotel (eg: in a normal store on the strip). A price of Pepsi out of the vending machine was $3US which makes it way more expensive than what you would pay back in Australia.

I had Ant take a picture of me fake-playing the "Alien" Slot Machine... as in Sigourney Weaver/chest-bursting/"Get away from her you beeetch!" variety. I'm not so sure how lucky punters are supposed to feel playing an "Alien" Slot Machine - given that most people that appear in the movie get horribly killed or impregnated or both...?

We didn't have a plan (in terms of tourist stuff to do) - only just to further explore the Strip, the Casinos and the shops... We walked out of the main entrance of the Pyramid to get a better feel of the hotel. There is a giant fibreglass sphinx out the front as well as a little walkway filled with egyptian fibreglass cat sculpture thingies - where I sat down on top of one and had Ant take my picture.

We wandered past the Excalibur to the front of NY NY - where they had this tack-o-rama tribute to the "heroes of 9/11" out the front the casino... choice. Also - there was supposed to be some sort of river/water feature but the hotel had a sign saying "there is an extreme drought and the NY NY Hotel is proudly upholding water restrictions..." or something. Maybe if there was an extreme drought - it could be time to switch over from the double non-saving water shower heads and the toilets which flush about 28 L's per flush... And the cars here in the States (not sure if I've written about this before?) but they make my Medium Pulsar look like a micro car over here. Everyone drives around in big (and I mean huge) SUVs - and you start to get a good idea why the American economy is going down with everyone driving these gas guzzlers... We did see the odd hybrid car in LA and San Diego - but they had to be the smallest cars on the road in the States.

Anyhows - we checked out the Monte Carlo - which continued in the fibreglass tradition of the Luxor with old Greek statutes adorning the staircase to the casino. (Not sure if ancient greek statues are in the real Monte Carlo??! What's a bit of facts that get in the way of statues). Maybe the casino floor was a bit classier than the luxor - but it was still classier with a K.

We walked down the strip, past the mammoth construction site to the Bellagio Hotel which was very big and f##K off. It seemed more "classier" than any of the casinos we had seen - but it was still pretty gaudy and tacky - complete with this glass house / observatory complete with those water features which shoot over foot paths (maybe they got a bulk discount with the Westin Bonaventure?) and tacky glass features on the ceiling. What the Bellagio Hotel is famous for is their big lake out the front ("the Bellagio Hotel is proud in ignoring water restrictions in these extreme drought conditions"...) and the water show (which happens every hour and you might have seen it in the opening credits of CSI - I think?! Not that I watch that crap anyway...). The lake thingy wasn't immediately obvious when we walked into the Casino because we entered through this side entrance thingy - where the lake wasn't visible. We walked through a reech beeech shopping mall where everything was decked out in marble and stuff and lots of Channel Stores and the like.

My phone kept going off (I have global roaming on) and then my mum tried to call me saying that she was worried because I hadn't blogged or texted her. It's OK - I'll be sending her a bill for the $58 2 minute phone call when I get back to Australia...! Until next time...

2008-12-31T17:17:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 11

After the USS Midway - we trekked for one final time back to the Horton Plaza for some late lunch. The choices were pretty dire - and we both had some italian fast food which was a bit mediocre (in a fast food trough sort of way). We then headed back to the Airport, then walked over to the Sheraton, then back to the Airport (via the hotel shuttle)....

There has been heaps of news about the massive air delays/cancellations over Xmas in the States on CNN (either plane cancellations or plane running off the runway or plane on fire or Andersen Cooper with Kathy Griffin for NYE ads (which make me want to shoot myself)).... so I was a little worried about our flight being delayed. It wasn't too bad - it was only late by about 30 minutes which meant that we arrived at Las Vegas at about 10:30pm.

The Southwest flight was pretty good. It was a bit Virgin Blue-esque in terms of the friendly, jokey service - but instead of the drop dead gorgeous Virgin Blue people - it was more like the AA-esque old people.

When we stepped off the plane and out of the gate at Las Vegas airport - you are surrounded by slot machines. Ant and I exchanged glances and then began giggling like little Japanese school girls. And to top it off - people actually are playing the slot machines at the Airport (including the baggage carousels).

We had to wait for our bags for a bit at the carousel - but it wasn't too bad because you could check out all of the cheesy Las Vegas shows playing at all of the hotels. It sort of feels like every hotel in LV has a Cirque De Sol show on and that everyone has a French Canadian freeekish fetish going on. Although Ant and I aren't Cirque De Sol fans - so we wanted to give them all a miss. There were ads for "Fantasy - the hottest showgirl show in Vegas" playing at the Luxor (giant pyramid hotel in which we had booked) and "Chippendales Strippers" and "The Thunder from Downunder" strip show... Ant and I again started giggling like school girls.

If you didn't know - I have this incredibly unholy obsession with the movie "Showgirls" - the story of Nomi Malone who comes to Vegas with the dream of being a star... of a sleazy stripper show. It was made by the people who made Basic Instinct and they made it as a serious movie - but with lines like "She looks better than a 10 inch d##k and you know it!" and "Ohhh... Nomi - you are the only ones who could pop my t#ts right!" and sex scenes where she looks like she is getting attacked from the shark from Jaws (or as my Razzies book calls it - "When Flipper meets Stripper" - it is totally hilarious and one of my all time favourite... comedies. So I was in 7th Heaven finally being at Las Vegas (where the movie was set). I feel like a "Sound of Music Spin" happening again.

Anyhows - after a couple of sound of music (aka I'm happy) spins in the airport terminal - we headed to the $US6 shuttle. We had to wait for a bit in the shuttle (while the operator was madly waiting for more tourists to arrive) - but an American on the bus got medevil with him - so we left. There was this skeezy guy on the bus who kept asking Ant and I all of these skeezy questions - but I did my best impression of "I'm not listening and I can't hear you".

The Luxor Hotel (which is that giant pyramid/egyptian themed hotel located on the Strip) was just on the other side of the airport (! - seems to be a common theme on this holiday) and just past the "Hooters Hotel" (!) looked rather impressive at night - with a giant white beam of light sprouting from the top of the pyramid. We arrived at one of the tower entrances (there are a couple of towers - but we had booked a room in the pyramid itself) and we made our way to the hotel reception - which was more like a line at Disneyland (!). Ant waited in queue while I sat with the bags outside the "Fantasy" exhibit - which instructed guests that you could meet the Fantasy Girls every night and then went into really cheesy "It's my fantasy!!" 80s cock-rock (sung by a woman) music. Wasn't Fantasy the name of the show in Showgirls?? Or wait - it was "Goddess"....

Ant walked over to me and announced that they didn't have any king rooms in the pyramid (despite us booking one) so we have a room in the tower instead. We walked past the casino floor (full of slots... machines) and around a conference center (geez this place was big) and found the lifts (it felt like the ghetto part of the hotel). Our room was on the 3rd floor with a view of the carpark (! not happy jan) and we dumped our bags, I went to the loo and And did his nah-nah and we walked back to the lobby and demanded that they recheck us into a Pyramid room. They put us into a "twin" room in the Pyramid which wasn't a twin single - rather a twin double - which wasn't too much of a problem. We made the 10km hike back to the tower, collected our bags, walked over back to the Pyramid, Ant pushed over a family (maybe?!) and we caught the 1B lifts (there are mutiple lifts which go up at a 45 degree angle around the pyramid) and went to the 24th floor (which was a little better than the 3rd in the tower). The room was a slanted on the window (due to the pyramid shape) - and the room was a bit basic with a bit of egyptian decor (klass with a k) but it did the job. Ant was freaking out about the walkway from the lift to the room - there was a 24 floor drop from over the balcony and the balcony went to our hips... A bit vertigo-esque. All of the pyramid hotel rooms ran along the edge of the building - so each floor became smaller and smaller (although there were 100+ rooms on our floor). It was quite architecturally impressive if not tacky.

Because we were both excited to be here - we decided to head out to the strip and have a little look around.

The casino in the luxor is not overly big - it is in the middle of the ground floor and is mostly made up of slot machines (like most casinos here!). There was an "entertainment" area on the second floor where the Fantasy show and Carrottop (! - what a loser) was playing. There was also a couple of restaurants, nightclubs and a food court (with a Macca-Dees!) and at least 3 Starbucks. There was a mini pyramid inside the main pyramid - and a NY-esque style town (where the food court and the theatre was).

We headed along an indoor walkway (where I did another I'm happy Sound of Music twirl) to the adjoining/sister hotel - the Excalibur - a sort of Disneyland Castle on steroids and cheese with a "ye-olden English Knights" theme. The all you can eat buffet was called "Round Table" and everything else had cheesy Knights-esque names. There was even a wedding chapel called "Canterbury" something... It looked a bit more run down than the Luxor and seemed to be a bit more family orientated (amusement games downstairs and no night-clubs).

We headed outside from there to the Strip (where it was raining). The Strip is chock-full of Casinos and Hotels (nothing much else except the occasional dodgy looking Travellodge or Mc Donalds). Across the street from the Excalibur was "New York New York" - a hotel built with heaps of famous mini NY landmarks and buildings including the Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building (no Twin Towers... good taste) and a roller coaster which runs along the top. We had a quick walk through NY NY Casino (Lots of slot machines, a skeezy "Ugly Coyote" bar or two, crazy aqua massage thingys, more starbucks and a "strip mall" NY theme thingy).

We headed outside again (still raining) - where the famous MGM Grand was across the road. We stayed on the NY NY / Luxor side of the Strip for a bit - where there was the Monte Carlo casino (with some cheesy 60s looking Magician headlining the Monte Carlo or something.

Next door to the Monte Carlo was the mutha of all construction sites. It must have been about a km long and there looked like there would be about 6 skyscrapers as part of the new casino. As a foot note - I was reading Wikiepdia - and I think this was the site of the old "Stardust Casino" which the Showgirls show was set in (may it rest in peace... sob). It was imploded last year (2007) and is going to be the site of multiple casinos.

Because it was getting late - we decided to head back to the luxor. As we were a little bit hungry (had a somewhat crappy dinner at the San Diego Airport) - we had some... dare I say it... Golden Arches. I had a $1USD (plus taxes) Mc Chicken Hot & Spicy - and Ant had a small kiddie meal. I hate the States and the taxes situation - where it is kinda like Taxes Surprise everytime you buy something... Just include it as part of the stated price and be done with it dammmit!!! I also bought a bottle of water (which was kinda expensive but cheaper than the $3US asking price in the hotel's vending machines). Of note - this Golden Arches was open 24 hours, had breakfast till 11am (! thank gawd for some common sense) and didn't serve coke - rather pepsi products (probably the only Mc Donalds in the free world which does so). Ant thought it must have been something to do with getting a agreement with the hotel (which has Pepsi stuff everywhere).

As it was getting pretty late (and we had a late night the previous night in San Diego) - we decided to hit the sack... Until next time...

2008-12-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 10

We got up early enough so we could check out by the check out time. A lot of US hotels have late check in (sometimes 4pm...) but usually always have late check out (most are midday) which is so much better than Oz with 10am check outs... Did I mention that our Sheraton had a Starbucks in the lobby (damn them all to hell!!!! AGGHGH!). We avoided Starbucks and the expensive in-hotel breakfasts - checked out - walked to the airport and went back to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in town for some breakfast and half-decent coffee (take that Starbucks!). I wasn't so sure about the clientele @ the Coffee Bean because it mostly consisted of hobos who would order a coffee and sit there all day long...

This was our last day in San Diego - but we had a full day of sight-seeing because we weren't flying to Las Vegas until 8:40pm with Southwest Airlines. Ant really wanted to check out the USS Midway - a decommissioned US Aircraft Carrier which was docked in San Diego bay and was turned into a quasi-museum. The entrance fee was $17USD which was a little cheap - but surprisingly it was worth it. You could check out (just about) every nook and cranny in the ship (probably excluding any highly sensitive classified equipment which I'm guessing would have been stripped out by the Navy before opening this thing up to the public).

When we boarded the ship - I was doing my Cher impression of "If U Could Turn Back Time" - but Ant corrected me saying there was a warship in that video... ohh. I didn't realise Ant was a ship spotter as well!

On the first floor of the ship - there was a bit of a museum to the Midway (which was in service from the second world war until the end of Gulf War I). It didn't look like it ever got into any trouble except when a Turkish ship collided with the Midway - killing a couple of sailors (due to some oxygen plant thingy on the ship exploding). You could also explore just about all the areas of the ship too - from grunt messes, to the high class officers messes to the laundry area to the quarters and so forth. Of course - all of the non-commissioned officers (ie: grunts) had sh##house accommodation (where I think a 4 ft munchkin would have problems fitting in the bunk bed) and as the ranks got more superior - so to the accommodation. The Ship's Captain had the bling-iest accommodation - with a big bedroom, study and bathroom.

On the deck of the ship - there were heaps of old decommissioned aircraft - including Seahawks and FA-18 Hornets (which are still in use in Australia...!). I got a pose-y shot on a missile (a la Dr Strangelove aka How I learned to Love the Bomb) and you got a pretty heck darn good view of San Diego from the ship (golly gosh).

We had a guided tour around the top of the ship (where there was the captain's deck (or is that star trek?), the aircraft landing control thingy and other stuff - but I had felt like throwing overboard some annoying kids who were little s##ts and kept flicking at all of the switches on the ship... grrr.

There were also a range of simulators on the first deck which simulated navy ships or fighter jets (which go upside down - yay!) but all had a steep price so we gave it a miss... There were also some ejector seats which you could sit in and watch "the Navy's funniest home videos" - with (I kid you not) - Kenny Loggins' Highway to the Danger Zone song playing... Yeh. Until next time...

2008-12-30T15:06:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 9

We had a bit of a late awakening and had decided to go to the gyme before we head to town. The gyme at the Sheraton was even more impressive than the gyme at the Bonaventure. It had brand spanking new Life Fitness equipment with exercise bikes with touch screen TVs (sweeet). Ant made a comment that it was even better than the ANU gym (sorry Len!). Right next door to the gyme was a Wii room (another first) although there were a couple of 25 year olds hogging the machine playing Wii baseball.

We showered and headed out to the airport to catch the 961 bus to town. We arrived into town around midday and we wandered around the Gaslamp District for a little while trying to find breakfast (latino time ahoy). I tried to point out to Ant that the Gaslamp Quarter mostly contained irish themed pubs and bars, as opposed to somewhere where you could get breakfast. We had a bit of a public hissy-fit and both of us eventually cooled down and I picked out the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf outlet which was kinda near the Horton (Hears a Who) Plaza. It was cheap and pretty good - and their coffee wasn't too bad either (for the states).

We caught a bus to Balaboa Park (a hugeish park near the centre of San Diego) which houses one of the world's best zoos - the San Diego Zoo. We arrived there pretty late (2ish) and the Zoo shutted at 4ish - so we didn't have much time to dawdle. It was a little expensive to get in (about $35USD) but it was well worth it.

The zoo was pretty excellent - with a lot of big-ish exhibits and lush surroundings. Highlights include the gorillas (never had seen them before and we got up to a foot away to them (just a sheet of glass and us), pandas (where there was this annoying line to see them and people taking flash photography at them), the hippos (! It was excellent being able to see them swim from underwater), all of the monkeys (so many lil' monkeys everywhere), some little asian dog things (looked like dingo puppies and were very cute) and the koalas (!). I took some pictures of Ant in the cheesy koala gift shop lined with heaps of cheesy koala toys and bags (not made out of real ones). There was also this weird Dr Sesus memorial thingy next to the pink flamingoes (why isn't there a Divine memorial next to the pink flamingoes!?!). Dr Sesus used to live here in San Diego (hence the Horton Plaza Hears a Who thing) and maybe he had a book with pink flamingoes or something. We had an excellent time and did stick out a bit (lots of families everywhere with loud obnoxious kids and hick-hillbilly families who looked fresh off the set of Jerry Springer. The San Diego zoo is defintely up there in terms of the world's best (maybe the only one I can think of which may be better is the Singapore Night Safari zoo which is excellent in terms of seeing active animals at night).

We headed back into town and were feelin a little hungry (it was about 5ish and we hadn't had any lunch). I wanted to have another kabab at the Horton Hears a Who Plaza but the store was shut down (maybe due to lack of hygine standards or something). So we had to make do with a Philly Sub (sounds like a horse). I had some really greasy Italiano Sub which was hand-grilled on the fat stove. Ant had the "light and lean" mashed potatoes with plastic cheese... Mmmm.. heartburn.

We headed back to the hotel to dump our stuff and then back into town and caught a bus to the general direction of gay-bar-villes. It was getting pretty late (almost 10ish) and we were getting a bit worried about finding a place to eat. We stumbled on an old-USA style diner (which appeared to be managed by an old jewish family). I had a chicken pie and a light bud (light bud is low on carbs not alcohol content) and Ant had a rye sandwich - which were all completely over the top in terms of portion size. They had those little old jukeboxes on the table - I popped in a quarter and played some hokey old Four Tops song (which is on Singstar).

At about 11ish - we headed out onto the street and found a gay "video" bar - but before you can say "Debbie Does San Diego" - no it wasn't a porno video bar - rather a video bar playing really bad music from the late 80s and early 90s. Although I'm a 80s/90s bad music luver - this stuff was pure sh#te (hello - Toni Childs). We had a couple of drinks (more Bud Lights) and at about midnight - all the tables in the room were folded out to reveal poker tables and all the locals partook in some (what looked like illegal) poker. This bar was pretty strange - not in a weird Blue Oyster / Police Academy way but in a weird San Diego-bad videos illegal poker sort of way.

Because we had to get up somewhat earlier the next day (our last in San Diego) - we decided we might take our fourth cab trip for the holidays back to the hotel. We hailed a cab down and Ant was under the impression that this shouldn't cost more than $10 given we were just over a hill away from the hotel. But this taxi ride (which lasted almost 15 mins) felt like it had taken us to the far-flunged reaches of the universe. It was most defintely the scenic route back to the hotel and cost us almost $30USD (which is like 1m AUD) so we weren't very happy pappy. Have I mentioned how wacky US radio is?? Our cab ride from KBF Resort to the Amtrak Station was pretty funny - in the fact that the cab driver was listening to left-wing talk back radio - and I swear - it sounded just like a funny radio station of the Grand Theft Auto video game. The station ID promo went "Are you sick of all those extreme right wing lunatics...?! Then get the facts with (can't remember the shock jocks name) at (insert station name)." The San Diego Cabbie was listening to a religous ABC Classic FM equivalent with non stop 14th Century christmas songs - old skool style beeches. Until next time.

2008-12-30T14:07:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 Part 8

Ant had booked our hotel (Sheraton) through Hotwire - a US internet company where you get discounted accommodation rates but you don't know where you are booking into until you have paid for the room via a credit card. The hotwire "area" was quite big (for the San Diego harbor) but we ended up booking the Sheraton which was right next door to the airport (!).

We had thought about a plan to try and catch a bus from the Amtrak station at San Diego to the airport and then get a free Sheraton shuttle from the airport - but it was absolutely pisshing down and we didn't really know where to go to catch the bus (also Ant seems to have a morbid fear of umbrellas because he didn't bring one with him on the trip).... so we hailed a taxi right next to the station.

The taxi ride was fairly quick and cheapish (a bit over $10USD). Upon arrival at the Sheraton - it seemed like one of the classiest (not spelt with a K) hotels we have stayed at for some while. Even though the building is a bit 80s - the interior has been completely renovated (recently by the looks of it). Our room was pretty awesome - a big bed, a big flat screen TV, a recycling bin (! - a first for hotels), a water saving shower head (! - a first for hotels in the states - the LA hotel had two non-saving shower heads!) and a balcony facing the pool and nearby marina...

We headed out to the concierge desk to find out how exactly do we get to town. The woman replied saying "Do you have a car? If not - just catch a taxi!". (a somewhat typical American response - with no suggestion of catching public transport). We asked whether we could get a bus - and she said that we should take the Sheraton Shuttle to the airport and catch the local bus from there.

The biblical showers had eased and it wasn't raining anymore (just really overcast). We decided to walk (!) into town along the marina and harbor. The hotel was just about 500m away from the Terminal 1 (how convenient!). The walk into town only took about 45 minutes. The footpath was in quite good nick and Ant had spent most of the time plane spotting at the nearby airport.

Along the main touristica part of the harbor - we got touted (first tout for our trip). There was some manic woman who was riding a bicycle cart thing who said we could get a lift to the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego. We said no. But she must of interrupted that "no" means "keep bugging us for another 5 minutes". After we ditched the tout manic woman - our stomachs were hungry (it was about 2 or 3pm and we hadn't had anything substantial since our 7am IHOPs) and we wandered downtown to the vicinity of "Horton Plaza" - San Diego's big downtown shopping mall.

Upon arrival to the aforementioned plaza - it was a "Westfield shopping centre"... joy (cough cough). Horton Plaza was one o those weird "outdoor multi-level malls" where everything was pretty much exposed to the elements (including the OH&S slippery stairs everywhere). We were really getting close to Xmas (it was going to be in a couple of days time) - and the San Diego mall felt a little bit busier than LA malls - but you know - a normal day in the Canberra Centre still felt busier than here.

We made our way to the top level where there was a kinda food court (more like a food balcony) which had Cinnabon (which made sugary donut stuff), a pretzel shop (these pretzels are indeed making me thirsty), a Ben and Jerrys (an American ice cream chain - nutritious) and a Panda Express (think fast food franchise version of those dodgy chinese lemon chicken RSL deals). We settled on a Mediterranean Grill - which had really yummy kebabs which were much more delicious than the Australian varieties.

We had a bit of browse around the mall. We bought some dilly/toiletry bags at Macys which had mis-scanned at the checkout ($10 cheaper than already discounted price). I could finally say goodbye to my krusty old dilly bag which was over 10 years old and had been harboring new strains of e-coli or something. I also bought a t-shirt at Nordstrom (a big jewish-sounding department store which is all over the states). I had also bought a couple of DVDs at Sam Goodys (a sort of Virgin/HMV megastore which had a pretty good collection of new and used stuff). Ant checked out the Abercrombie and Fitch shop (sort of a really popular gay-esque store selling "frat-house" clothes). They had a big vaporizer machine out the front blowing out the scent of the new A&F cologne. But Ant and I thought it stunk like essence de $2-man whore. Ant was a bit underwhelmed by the selection and prices (some of this stuff is cheaper in Australia). Plus he thinks that the A&F brand isn't as exclusive as it once was because they are beginning to sell the stuff at crappy DFOs in Australia.

It was beginning to get dark (gets dark around here about 5ish) and we checked out the Gaslamp Quarter. It felt a little touristy (heaps of bars, restuarants and upper-end hotels) but was quaint enough - with gaslamp-esque lamps aligning the street (although I'm sure they were powered by electricity). We stumbled across a big old theatre in the Quarter where there was a 6:45pm session of "Australia" showing. I had this perverse desire to watch Australia in the states and was a bit surprised that it was still showing (thought it had tanked in the states). We bought some tickets (which were about the same as non-discounted cinema tickets back home in Australia). The theatre was quite quiet - and we were thinking - we might be the only ones here! But alas - there were a couple of guys sitting down the front (so a total of 4 people watching Australia...). I was trying to work out if the guys in front were gay. San Diego is a big military town (Marines and Navy are based here - obviously because it is right at the border between the US and Mexico) and there are a town of gay bars in town (obviously). The guys looked like marines or something and were sitting a couple of seats apart - but they were together.... but they were watching Australia... I couldn't tell. The trailers were running overtime - the movie was supposed to start at 6:45pm but it was closer to 7:10pm by the time the movie started. There were some weird propaganda army ads with "3 Doors Down" signing a song about a "Citizen Patriotic Solider" or something - which reminded me of Starship Troopers (want to be a citizen??).

I actually enjoyed Australia - I wasn't really expecting to given the dodgy reviews and the type of movie that it was. Perhaps the first hour or so felt a little jumbled (maybe if they re-edited with more - it could have been a much better film) but overall I liked it. Ant thought they could have separated it into two movies (the droving first half as one movie then the Darwin/WWII as a second film).

Because the film is almost 3 hours - we didn't leave till almost 10:45pm. We found a little pizza shop and ordered a Medium Pepperoni pizza to share between us for dinner (latino time baby). We hoped on a local metro bus to the airport (only $2.25 for a one way ride, $5 for an all day pass... cheap as) and got off at Terminal 1 (the closet terminal to our hotel) - and crashed for the night (after a bad sleep at KBF Resort with that little 5 year old s### that woke us up... Till next time..

2008-12-29T17:35:00.001-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 7

After arriving at the KBF Resort - we headed a mile or two down the road to get to the Buena Park Mall - a hugeish one level mall which was the size of Tasmania. But because it was almost 10pm - everything was shutting. We quickly checked out our first American Wal-Mart (last time we went to a Wal-Mart was in Nanjing China...). It was big, massive and I did a Sound of Music twirl at the front door in excitement. I bought a box set of Sth Park which was cheaper by $5 than Best Buys from the other day.

We hadn't eaten dinner yet (we seemed to be in Latino time) and the choices were fat ("Fatburger" - no joke) or gross (McDonalds). We decided to try our luck at a Chicago based franchise (which we hadn't heard of) which had excellent hot dogs and burgers (I had a chicken burger which was tasty and not too fatburger) and Ant had a hot dog and fries.

On the way back home - we had to quickly check out "Sears" (in a sort of road accident sort of way). Sears is the clothing equivalent of K-Mart (ie: St Vinnies has better clothes) and everything was pretty tacky and cheap. Ant and I love that line out of the Mean Girls movie ("I'm a size four". "Try Sears").

We had to get up fairly early the next morning because we had tickets on the Amtrak train from Fullerton (not the apartments) to San Diego. I had set the alarm at 7am but we didn't need it because our next door neighbors' kid decided to have a mindblowingly loud temper tantrum at 6am. Ant and I put up with it for about 20 minutes before Ant went Emo and banged on our interconnecting door... red-head ranga style. It put a stop to the whining.

Because we had spotted an IHOP down the road (aka International House of Pancakes) the other day - we had to keep up with our American tradition of having fat fat sugar sugar huge huge pancakes at IHOP (and for me - the bottomless coffee). We were greeted by a very camp "Juan" who was a bit surprisingly lacking when it came to the service (we waited for about 10 mins for the bill but he didn't come so we just walked to the front counter). I had the "light and lean" three stack of pancakes (3 is a small portion in America) - whereas Ant had the five blackberry pancake meal (which was calorific to the max). Although Ant's Blackberry IHOP pancakes were calorific - they weren't as bad as some of the stuff on the menu (ie: eggs, bacon, 5 pancakes and sauce - it was the kids meal).

We headed back to the KBF Resort to grab our bags and got the front desk to call for a cab (yes - a taxi in the states...). Ant attempted to find a bus route that would go past the Amtrak station - but alas - he couldn't find one - so we had to cab it. Although we thought it was fairly close, and that cabs in america were relatively cheap - it cost us about $25USD with tip to get to the station. When we arrived - it was pissing down (almost biblical style). We raced into the Amtrak Station (which was quite cute) and had to wait for about 20 mins for our train to arrive. We decided to check our bags in (instead of carrying them onto the train). It didn't seem like a great idea when we were waiting on the platform and Ant could see our bags getting drenched from the rain...

The train trip to San Diego was OK - although we thought we had reserved seating - we didn't so we had to settle on a couple of seats facing backwards for the trip. The view from the train was fairly impressive most of the way - the train ride was pretty much on the edge of the Pacific Ocean and you could easily see the beaches and ocean. The PA system people were fairly crazy - when the Food Cart man was speaking over the PA - he sounded like his cookies had more than just choc chips in them. And when we arrived at San Diego - a really camp guy screamed out "Whell here is what all of you have been waitin 4...! San Diego!".

We got off the train (sin bags) and it was absolutely pissing down (biblical style). We waited around for our bags to surface - but about 15 minutes later - a guy appeared on a kart thingy with our wet bags. We watched slowly as a decrepit Amtrak old woman and the fat man piled, one by one, all of the bags of their kart onto the ground. Then they wanted us to produce tickets and get them to find them - but Ant in true ranga style pushed a couple of old people out of the way, grabbed our bags and got the hell out of the station. Till next time...

2008-12-28T17:38:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 Part 6

After the racist boat ride - we decided to test our wits and sanity by going on the Old Wild West roller coaster - the very same coaster where someone died a few years ago. Last time I was in a Disney-related themepark (the Magical Kingdom @ Disneyworld to be exact) -this ride had been closed for maintenance not that long after the death at Disneyland at California. However - this ride was back in action and after a short queue (5 minutes) - we were off and rearing on the ride. Of note - they were letting people with broken legs on the ride. They were also letting trailer park trash on as well (complete with "Jesus Rocks" t-shirts).

We got one of those quick passes to the Indiana Jones ride - where you get a quick pass ticket to come back to a certain ride during a certain time and you get to by-pass the queue. As the Indiana Jones ride is probably the most popular ride at Disneyland (probably due to its relatively newness) - we had to come back at around 2:45-3:45 for the ride.

We quickly popped on board the "Jungle Cruise" - Disneyland's second most racist ride (complete with "stewpid" native people getting poked up the poop shoot by rhinos). Ahhh those colourful natives! Also - the ride mysteriously seems to go through Cambodia, Africa, South America and Central America - all on the one boat ride. Not like Disneyland to let some facts to get in the way of a themepark ride... Also the attendant was fairly animated. Although I sort of get the vibe that most people who work on these rides and repeat the same jokes 1000 times a day could be potentially sucidal.

We were sort of feeling a bit peckish - so we headed of in the general direction of Tommorrowland - Walt Disney's skewed vision of the future with rocket ships and plastic houses and such... We got some expensive crappy burgers from a place where a "Light Saber Jedi Training" Show was on. I couldn't see it but I heard dodgy Darth Vader pre-recorded voices appear over the PA. When I peered over some shrubbery to see the show - it looked fairly lame (some 3 year olds with those plastic light sabers pretending to battle Darth or something).

We then checked out the "Innoventions" building which is in a big circuluar revolving building - which was not so subtly disguised as a bit of marketing for several companies. As you enter the exhibit - you are placed in a kitchen with an overweight (and very camp) Disney attendant (half of the people who work at Disneyland are gay) who takes you through various "dream" houses (colonial style, modern psychofrenia style) but all were really "nightmare" homes with no taste or style. It was a 5 min presentation that none of us could escape and it was all just a shameless plug for some american building company. You are then forced to watch another camp dweeb who talks about what sort of entertainment he likes to do or something - which was another 4 minute shameless plug for some electronic company. After the detainment of guests for 10 minutes (where you start to wonder why I paid $69 US to go to this stewpid themepark) - you get let loose in a technology gadget room (which was more tolerable but still just shameless plugs for Microsoft). They had these flat coffee table computer things - but Ant was trying to find the direction to the Amtrak station from our hotel for tomorrow's trip to San Diego. I tried to ward off little brats who attempted to move the map on the computer. There was this other screen where you could write things with your hands. I wrote "FUK" and walked away. Ant said that he heard some middle-aged woman going "How mature!!".

After that we checked out "Honey I Shrunk the Auidence" - you know - one of those movie-tie in 3D films at Themeparks - although this one was tied in with those kinda forgotten "Honey I Shrunk/Blew/F##ked the Kids" series. I'm not sure what happened to Rick Moranis (did he die of a coke overdose - or is his career just dead) but I'm sure all of the tweens and tots would have no idea what the fudge this film is about. We were put into a holding pen for 10 minutes before the film started - where we were subjected to more toture techiniques (aka shameless kodak promotional videos). These were all absolutely corny - with all of these middle-america kodak moments. One story was about this black kid looking for his lost dog called "Champ" and he took his picture around the neighbourhood - but before you could say "Child Rapist" - he knocked on the front door of what looked like the neighbourhood rapist. I was screaming out "run away kid - he is going to touch you inappropriately!" (in front of shocked families and such). I swore I was going to get kicked out... The 10 min Honey I Shurnk the Auidence movie was pretty hokey in a themepark sort of way. It had all of the requisite "fake rats under people's seats" and "wind effects" to make it seem more realistic. Although I'd wish they bring back the 3D Michael Jackson film (Captain Eo - from the disturbed minds of George Lucas and Michael Jackson) which was much gayer and cheeser.

Speaking of distrubing George Lucas - we then went on the "Star Tours" ride. Although the indictive queue time said 10mins - our queue took about 20 mins because the queue splits off into two and there were two simulators for one queue and just the one for our queue (hence our queue moved at half speed). We were subjected to the ad-nauseum repetivtive robot story - where a couple of robots who were lazy (and possibly mexican) were kept getting shut down by the main computer for not being productive enough. Idiotically - they just reboot the robots (instead of blowing them up) so they repeat their laziness routine - just to be shut down again - just to pish off all those who are standing in the queue). Star Tours was one of the first simulator rides (that I can remember) - but I don't think it has really stood the test of time. Maybe Disney could use some of my $69 USD entrance fee to redo the ride and make it more violent and agressive... raaahhh!@

We headed back over to the other side of the park (Adventure Land to be exact) for our Fast Pass onto the Indiana Jones ride. It was sweet passing all those suckers who had lined up in the long queue. The Indiana Jones ride is pretty sweet (a sort of on rails ride going through some random Inca/Aztec/(Insert Ancient Civilisation here) cave thingy) - but my favourite ride of this kind was the Spiderman ride in Universal Studios - Islands of Adventure (over in Orlando) - which was a similar sort of deal except you had 3D glasses and some of the effects on the ride were pretty amazing (like being flung off a skyscraper only to be caught in a spider web at the bottom).

We treked over to the cheesiest place in the world - "It's a Small World" ride in Fantasyland (not to be confused with Fantasy Lane - the adult shop in Canberra). Because of the vicinity to Xmas - the It's a Small World ride had been "remixed" into a xmas version - so instead of repeating that annoying "It's a small world after all" song for 10 minutes -they intersperse it with "Jingle Bells" and other xmas songs to make it a little more bearable. Although I found the "Xmas" remix to be a little more racist than normal - because it had everyone (including those who don't believe in Santa Claus or Jesus) singing xmas carols. Ohhh Disney and your somewhat "Nazi are our supergods" mentality.

We did a couple of Fantasy Land rides including the Dumbo flying thingy (I got to sit in the pink dumbo yay!) but avoided the Teacups - as they had almost made Ant throw up last time we were at Disneyworld.

We headed back to Frontierland (aka Racistland) for our next fast pass at Splash Mountain - which ended up not being such a hot idea to go on at 5pm at night (LA was dark by then and it wasn't warm). The ride attendant had Ant and myself sit at the front of the log (big fat mistake) - which had meant all of the weight in the log was at the front which meant that the splash down was going to be 10 times worse than having some light kiddies in the front. Before we set off - Ant made a comment saying - because we are at the front - will mean that we won't get that wet.... Wrong. On the first little splash down (in the middle of the ride in the dark) - the front of the log started filling up with water (I had water around my ankles). On the drop down - I did a "America's Next top Model' pose (which actually worked quite well on those photos) but Ant and I were drenched, cold and miserable after the ride.

We headed back to Main St USA (the fakest place on the planet - maybe just behind Rodeo Dr) and Ant attempted to get a hot chocolate - but it had looked like you needed a fast pass to get one because all of the queues where 20 minutes long. We headed back in the vague direction of Racistland / New Orleans Square (which was sort of a half decent attraction now since the real version had been washed away or something) and hopped on the Pirates of the Carribean ride (which was really heated and warmed us up. It had looked like the ride had been tweaked just a little bit with a animiatronic version of Johnny Depp appearing in bits of the ride - in a shameless attempt to cash on the movie.

We then went on the Haunted Mansion ride - which had been re-worked (now includes Nightmare before Xmas characters) and re-mixed for Xmas. There was some bizzare plot (something about a cross-dressing trannie named "Sandy Claus") and nothing made much sense. To be honest - I think I preferred the old cheesy Haunted House sin movie characters I haven't seen before. I was a bit surprised Disney didn't try and cash-in on the "success" of their "Haunted Mansion" movie with Eddy Murphy. I would have loved to see an animatronic version of Eddy - swearing at the kiddies on the ride doing break dancing to Axel F music from Beverly Hills Cop.... or something.

Ant and I then headed back over to Tomorrowland - where we had Fast Pass tickets to some Toy Story shooting ride. Although when we rocked up - the ride was broken. Yay. We went instead on the Autopia ride (which had been rejigged with "Cars" characters - again another movie I haven't seen). The queue was quite long (this is one of Disneyland's more popular rides) but it is sort of funny driving little gas guzzling cars around a fixed track. Although Disney needs to convert these babies into electric cars to make them somewhat more green (think I was overdosing with exhaust fumes around the pit area.

We then headed on (I know this sounds lame) the monorail. But this was again another ride which had been reworked since the last time I had been here (15 years ago). It was the Monorail version 4.0 or something and it went through the new California Adventure land and Downtown Disney. It was also a lot faster and sexier than the previous slow cluggy monorail. The track was different than before (I seem to recall the monorail used to cut through space mountain - but it doesn't do this anymore).

After the monorail - I thought we might as well try our hand with queuing up for Space Mountain (the "scary" ride... cough) but as soon as we got there - the ride was broken (getting flash backs of being there 15 years ago and queuing up for 3 hours at Space Mtn only for the ride to break down... yay!).

However that Toy Story shooter ride was open so we went on that one. You basically sit in a little "haunted mansion" style wheely thing which you can control and you both have laser guns and shoot aliens or something (not of the mexican variety) - maybe some of the Walt racisim is rubbing off on me). There is a score depending on how many aliens you kill - I was blasting my guts off and put Ant's score to shame. But as we left the ride - my score was pretty shameful according to the high scores painted on the exit door.

It was about 9ish pm and we both decided to call it quits (I was still wet from Splash Mountain). I think we had a pretty good day - I can always go to Disneyland and enjoy myself (part cheese, part childhood memories) and I think we did a pretty good recovery given that it would have been pretty dire to go to Knotts Berry given the masses and its clientelle.

We headed back to the KBF resort - where there were the reminents of the white trash leaving the park. We collected our bags from the front desk and went to our modestly furnished room on the sexy bottom floor. KBF Resort was kids central - and Ant and I did look a little out of place. Gays normally do at themeparks - but we do visit them (take a look at "Gay Day" at Disneyland - where the park is overrun by drugged out queens mixed up with the normal families... it would be a blast). Till next time...

2008-12-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 5

After a quick stroll down Rodeo Drive - which was decked out in xmas festy cheer - we found another bus into town - but instead of going back to Downtown - we went back to West Hollywood and found a Tex-Mex Gay Bar to have dinner. The 2 for 1 margaritas went down like a treat and so did the over-sized tex-mex burgers with oversized quantities of chips (or french fries).

After dinner - we browsed through a couple of shops. Ant bought the "really classy" Dantes Cove complete series box set on DVD. If there was a gay equivalent of the Razzies - I'm sure Dantes cove would pick up a Life-time achievement award for the worst ever gay TV series or something.

We headed back to Downtown to our hotel - and took a few pictures of me posing in the hotel lobby in front of the elevators and water features. Did I mention that the hotel had little plaques saying that "In the Line of Fire was shot at these elevators" or "Forget Paris was shot at these elevators". I think the hotel is a quasi-tourist attraction or something. Well I've heard of In the Line of Fire and True Lies - but I've definitely forgotten "Forget Paris" with Billy Crystal.

We had to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning because we were leaving LA and heading for "The OC" to Knott's Berry Farm (you know - the snoopy themed theme park near Disneyland). Not only were we heading there - but we were staying at the Knott's Berry Farm Resort... yeh.

We caught the 8-something bus out to the O.C (90 minute bus ride) and it was absolutely chockers. Ant and I were taking up two seats each (one for us and one for our oversized backpacks). Ant was being way to kind when he offered his bag seat up to some weird bald guy who didn't seem to want to move when there were vacant seats nearby - despite Ant nursing his 20kg bag.

When we arrived at Knott's Berry Farm (which felt a whole lot like Orlando with wall to wall sizzlers, IHOPs (aka International House of Pancakes) and fast food joints along the freeway) - we were a little disorientated because although we knew where the theme park was - we didn't know where the resort was. Although we did pick up that it was quite busy around the themepark - a little overly busy if you know what I mean.

When we arrived at the front gates at KBF - it looked somewhat like a war zone. The military were there (with a tank no less) and too - a horde of redneck crazys - all armed with cheap looking presents... WTF?! On closer inspection - there seemed to be some "Toys for Tots" promotion whereby if you bring a gift - then you get free admission to the park (I've confirmed this at - http://www.family-vacation-getaways-at-los-angeles-theme-parks.com/Knotts-Berry-Farm-Christmas-2006.html). I don't know if this is some ploy by KBF to get people into the park because of the GFC - but it seemed to be working. I don't want to sound like a bitch or anything but most of the people here didn't appear to be able to afford the $50 entrance fee for KBF.

Ant and I located a map - and worked out where the resort was (around the side of the park) and headed out there. To call the Toys for Tots queue - "massive" would be an understatement. It had felt like half-3/4 miles long and wrapped around the front bit of the park to the front of the Resort. And it was really hard work carrying the backpack and going against the flow of the queue in order to get to the resort.

Once we got to the somewhat runned down resort and the inappropriately named "Amber Waves" restaurant (see the movie Boogie Nights for more details) - we attempted to check in - only to be foiled and not be allowed to get our room until the afternoon. We dumped our bags at the bellboy and made a bit of a "on-the-spot" decision to not go to KBF (just because of the masses of people wouldn't make it very fun to queue heaps for rides) - so we decided to catch the metro bus to its final stop - Disneyland and do that instead. I guess I was a little disappointed in not going to KBF (haven't been there before) - and it looked like it had its more than fair share of vomit inducing roller coasters and rides which I heart.

It was almost 11:30am by the time we had reached Disneyland - and it decidedly felt a lot quieter than KBF. I hadn't been to the California version of Disneyland for some time now (California Adventure and Downtown Disney didn't exist). We just went for the Disneyland only tickets (instead of the two themepark hopper tickets which were 50% more expensive and I hadn't heard the best of things about the newish California Adventure).

We started things at Disneyland a bit easy by going on Mark Twain Riverboat - which did a lap of the Frontier Land (the most racist of all Disneyland lands) river doh-dad where we got to see an animatronic Native American tribe welcoming the new european settlers with welcome arms (of not the gun variety). The Disney version of "frontier America' was a little glossy and seemed to avoid any facts or things that might upset the kiddies. To top off the racist Frontier Land - I had Ant took my picture in front of the Indian war chief (who looked like an extra out of the village people). Well until next time...

2008-12-28T06:39:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 4

After the kewl LA Downtown Markets - we attempted to find a bus which would take us out past UCLA to the Getty Center (american spelling - f##k yeah!) - remember - we are big public transport freaks in LA. We were a bit lost in following the bus system maps so we thought we might take our chances at the tourist info centre (which was sort of near our True Lies Hotel).

There was this old grannie (who seemed to have a thick bronx accent) who was quite helpful - but we pretty much had to interrogate for 5 minutes her to get a complete covenanted LA Metro Bus Map (felt like Raiders of the Lost LA Bus Map). We followed her directions to the bus stop (which was pretty close to our hotel) and 10 minutes later - our bus to UCLA rocked up.

All the LA buses have these small LCD screens which play non stop "news, entertainment and sport" - but really - it keeps replaying the same "Paris Hilton got burgled" story which no one really gives a s@@t about and the "Snuggler" infomercial ad (a very unattractive and quite flammable blanket that you can wear - but only in the privacy in your own home otherwise you might get eggs thrown at you). And most of the stuff on TV was fairly latino orientated. Ant said to me that in the near future - Spanish speaking people in California will outnumber English speaking people... or something.

After a fairly long bus ride (in which I'm 95% confident I saw the D&D Advertising Building from Melrose Place along Santa Monica Blvd) - we got off near Bel Air. All the shops felt neeyce and different in a sort of Manuka sort of way. We had to reconnect to another bus which took us directly past the Getty Center (US spelling f##k yearrrh! Gonna save the muthaf##King day nowwwh!).

According to my Mum's guide - the Getty Centre is one of the top 10 tourist attractions in LA. It is built on top of a mountain/cliff and has fairly distinctive architecture. I was getting these 60s/70s Blofeld/James Bond Villains vibes from this place (I could imagine Blofeld stroking his fluffy white cat while his goons attempt to dispatch Sean Connery). To make things even more Blofeld/Dr Evil esque - you ride this automated electric train from the carpark to the Centre... (Very Austin Powers 1).

When we got there - we made a quick pit-stop at the "cheappy" cafeteria where we picked up some decent Chilli Beef Soups for not much $$$. The Getty Building is fairly spectacular (in a sort of Cameron Offices on top of a cliff way) and we took plenty of Kodak Moment shots of the place. Inside the Getty Center is a eclectic museum of art works - most of them older-school renaissance to impressionist work. The Impressionist Room was worth the admission (did I mention that the Getty Centre was free?) - Ant was wondering how much all of the artwork would cost in that one room alone. We had spent a good 3 hours at the Getty Center and by the time we had finished - it was getting darkish (around 4pm).

We headed back into town - and took a stroll around the Bel Air bus stop. As I previously mentioned - the shops here were quite neeyce and different - but you could actually live here and do shopping/groceries (unlike Beverly Hills where you can't buy a pint of milk from the Channel shop), We had a bit of a browse around "Best Buys" - the sort of Dick Smith Powerhouse equiv in the States (actually - we think that Dick Smith ripped off the idea of the store from Best Buys - just like Big W tries to rip off Wal-Mart). I bought a couple of DVDs (Drawn Together) and a few PSP games to keep me entertained.

We headed back on the bus to Downtown - but decided to get off at Beverly Hills to have a bit of a wander through it and Rodeo Drive (like any good tourist should). Rodeo Drive sort of feels like a reech beech "Main Street USA" equivalent street - although I'm not talking about middle America Main Street USA - but the Disneyland variety where everything feels a little fake. We headed into a department store - which was very quiet (hello GFC) apart from the cocktail bar on the top floor. They say that alcohol and gambling get more popular in a recession and I guess this was adding fire to that theory. We made our way past a gaggle of store attendants (who were definitely more busy into each other than helping any customer) to make use of the facilities before we rushed out of the store. Ant did his patented "push rich women out of the way" move and we were on a way. To be continued....

2008-12-25T21:00:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 Part 3

After our meal at a Vietnamese Pho Soup restaurant near the Beverly Center (incorrect American spelling) - we caught some public transport back to some random Metro train stop (where we bought some ice creams - ooh mah) and then caught a train back to Downtown (which is so dead at night) and crashed for the night. Although it was probably about 9pm at night - it had felt like 3am due to the timelag.

The next morning - we woke up and did a bit of US television. Highlights include all of the daft infomercials including a Time Life "I Can Only Imagine" Platinum CD collection ("uplifting" jesus soft-cock-rock CDs for only $9.99 plus postage - my fav song - "God is In Control" (que sound of whip cracking)) and mindless non-stop CNN dribble.

After spending 16 hours on the plane being spoon fed copious amounts of grog and food (of the non-weight watcher variety) - we decided to head down to the gyme on the fourth floor of the hotel for a bit of a workout session. The gyme in the hotel was pretty amazing - brand new equipment with all of the cardio having small screen LCD TVs where you could watch Time Life Eternal Collection ads and mindless non-stop CNN dribble while you worked out.

We did a quickish breakfast (at the latino time of near midday) at Macy's Plaza in Downtown. Downtown felt rather deadish and so did the shops (even though this was the last Saturday before Xmas). We had some sugary muffins and stuff from a so-called bakery (no American bakeries serve bread only sugary cakes) and I had a somewhat half decent Cafe Latte at a Gloria Jeans look-a-like "The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf" - although it was better than Gloria and less hard-core Christian-y.

We wandered down a few blocks in the vague general direction of the Downtown markets where we hit the "Jewelry District" on Broadway. It started to feel a lot less like sterile LA Downtown and more like... Mexico! I know I'm sounding like Ja'ime but Ant and I were the only white people in a 10 mile radius around here.... not that it was a problem or anything. We wandered along a toy district - heaps of stores run by Mexicans with cheap trashy toys - and I was getting the distinct de-ja-vous of being in Peru of all places. The building architecture was fairly interesting - a lot of run-down art deco buildings. Some places had a old school Manhattan vibe but in a more spread out LA sort of way.

We hit the markets and it was well worth the walk. It was chock full of people (more so than any other place in the States thus far including the Beverly Centre) - and there was heaps of interesting foods and stuff. There was definitely an emphasis on dinky-dye Mexican food. We couldn't help but think that this is a bit of a pre-cursor to Mexico. There were hardly any tourists - but I would definitely recommend this for a bit of a different LA experience. Until next time...

2008-12-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 08/09 Part 2

Our flight to LAX on Qantas Business was quite sweeet. The service didn't feel like the normal Qantas "consult with the union manual" economy service - rather it was really good (they serve you immediately after pressing the call button) and we both enjoyed it. The movies were a little dire on the flight - Tropic Thunder was the most ridiculously bad movie I've seen in a while... really bad. The best bet is to just watch the trailer for the "chucking a Vietnamese child off a bridge" scene because sitting through the rest of the film is just torture. We both managed to get a bit of sleep on the flight (3 hours - new world record). Maybe this was due to the copious amounts of champagne and red wine we had??

Upon arrival at LAX - we had to queue for a bit in the "alien" queue. All of the flight crew were jumping the alien queue - and that sort of pissed both Ant and I off a bit. We thought it was a good idea to "hide our Cuban visas" from the American authorities - just incase they thought we were "I heart Che" commie pinko bastards or something.

Last time in LA - we caught the "Super" (rip-off) "Shuttle" which was about US$30 each for a short bus trip to West Hollywood. Ant did a bit of research before we left and discovered the Fly-Away Shuttle which was about US$4 - which dropped us off at Union Square (only a couple of metro train stops away from our hotel). When we boarded the shuttle - we tried to pay the bus driver our $4 - but she said - "just pay at Union Square"... as you do...

The bus trip to Union Square was fairly easy and I'm sure we passed over the top of South Central via a highway... At Union Square - I did a good samaritan thing and paid for the bus ticket (no one really bothered to check whether we were going to pay or not).

Union Square (we had been here before on our last trip) is a nice old-mission style train station - complete with the requisite vagrants that usually come with train stations. We were thinking that we had to hike to our hotel (the Westin Bonaventure - aka True Lies/In the Line of Fire hotel) - but there was a metro stop just nearby the Westin - so we took that option.

The LA train metro network (if you have watched Speed - you would be somewhat familiar with the metro - except I didn't see Sandra Bullock handcuffed to a pole and Keanu and that bad guy duking it out with bombs and stuff) is a fairly efficient train system - not too disimilar in style to the "nuclear fall out" train subway network that is Washington DC metro. I think it is a bit of a misnomer about LA that the public transport is really bad. Ant and I reckon that it is pretty good - with both trains and buses covering a large area and running fairly constantly (never usually have to wait more than 15 minutes). I know I'm going to sound a bit like Ja'ime from Summer Heights High but public transport in the states is usually populated by low-socio economic people or something. How random..

We had a short stroll to our 4 star Westin Bonaventure hotel in the financial district of downtown LA. I mentioned True Lies and In the Line of Fire - because there were a couple of scenes from both movies which were shot at the hotel (True Lies shot the "Arnie riding a horse through a hotel lobby and lift" movie here and In the Line of Fire shot the money shot scene where the president is being shot whilst riding the elevator by John Malkovich or something...). The Westin Bonaventure looks more like a giant space ship / office building with huge circular pillar things with those outdoor/indoor glass elevators on each pillar than a hotel. Speaking of shooting stuff - there was a camera crew shooting a scene on a nearby bridge with the makeup trucks parked out the front of the hotel whilst Ant and I were walking from the train station. Good old Hollywood.

When we entered into the hotel lobby - we had thought we had entered into some strange time-space continuum warp which we had entered into the Melbourne Crown Casino water fall lobby thing - with tacky water fountains/water features everywhere (including ones that spurted water over a walkway to a lift). There was also this really tacky Christmas mock-up model of the hotel all decked out xmas style with snow and stuff (not the typical hollywood "snow" but the perisherblue variety instead).

Amazing - we checked in at about 7am and both decided to crash in the hotel room for a couple of hours to catch up on some sleep. Our room was a little small and dated but it was comfortable and we had a view of some lifts (which kept Ant happy because he loves not only True Lies but In the Line of Fire as well).

I woke up at about 11 am and felt really dehydrated (maybe it was something to do with all of the grog on the plane) - so I wandered out in an attempt to find some shops. Downtown LA was a bit like the CBD in Sydney (only if the Sydney CBD had been built in the late 80s/early 90s) - no real life (or shops) so finding a drink was a pretty hard task. I found this strange indoor/outdoor mall which had a Macys and a truly horrific/depressing food court which made me feel like I was in Peru or something. I found this "California Pizza" food chain thing and ordered the free-world's most expensive Pepsi Light (US$3 which is about 20 Aussie pesos).

After Sleeping Beauty (aka Ant) woke up from his self-induced coma - we headed out to the streets of LA and caught a train to Hollywood and Vine. The musical "Wicked" was playing at a theatre just outside the metro stop but the tickets were super expensive ($USD90 which was about 50% more expensive than the Aussie tickets) so we decided to give it a miss.

Hollywood hadn't really changed much from the last time we had been there - there are still the crazy people, the prostitutes and the scared and confused tourists... That's pretty much the only people on Hollywood Blvd (ie: no locals). We were sort of feeling a little hungry and both decided to stop at a place called Baja Fresh - which was some Mexican chain where I and the front counter guy had problems communicating with each other. It wasn't as bad as my experience at a Subway at Key West in Florida - where I attempted to order a "Meatball Sub" and the woman kept thinking I was asking for a "Maple Sub"... but it was close. Americans heart food options and combinations/permutations and every meal comes with about 1000s different sauces, sides or dressings which makes it a bit of a daunting experience for an Aussie. The guy at the front counter sort of mumbled in a thick hispanic accent "white beans, brown beans or black beans". I got him to repeat what he had said - I still didn't understand him - then I just sort of mumbled - "the last one please." Our meal was pretty huge (another thing about american food portions) - it had come with two soft tacos, salad, rice and beans and the free-world's largest coke (probably about 2 ltrs big).

After our Baja Fresh experience - we decided to wander in the general vague direction of West Hollywood - LA's gay district. We wandered along Sunset Blvd for a bit (we were the only pedestrians in sight). There were the standard big "f##k off" billboards along the Sunset Strip and various yuppies/bums/crazy people as well. We decided to visit a Mc Donalds in a little strip mall - where we almost got run over by three HUVs in the carpark (it was obvious that no one had every walked to this Mc Donalds before). We were planning on going to Knotts Berry Farm (eg: the snoopy themepark) and had read on its website (when we were back in Australia) that you could pick up a coupon at "participating "So Cal" Mc Donalds" for a US$17 off an adult ticket at Knotts Berry. We collected the aforementioned coupons (we also collected 2000 calories with a Mc Donalds Sundae) and kept walking down Sunset (ironically it was sunset @ Sunset).

Everyone here at America has big cars. My mid-sized Nissan Pulsar would be considered to be a "micro" car here in the states. come to think about it - a Holden Commodore would be considered to be a medium car in the states. Maybe everyone drives around in big cars to haul their big oompa-lompa a##es around everywhere because of their up-sized food portions...?

We headed down to Santa Monica Blvd (after about 1.5 hrs walking) and stumbled across the "gay district" of LA - which is pretty small all things considered (eg: population, california is rather progressive). Ant thinks that the gays here in LA are fairly closeted as most are in Hollywood and are next to their big break or something. We checked out the gay bookshop (where there is a better selection at the Sydney Bookshop on Oxford St than here) - I bought a Razzie's Guide to Bad Cinema (which described the sex scene my fav all time movie - Showgirls -as "Flipper" meets "Striper" which is fairly accurate) and Ant bought a couple of double-entendre T-shirts.

We strolled up and down the somewhat small gay strip and decided to head in the direction to the Beverly Centre (the somewhat famous LA mall where "Scenes from the Mall" was shot). As we were waiting for the bus - a box full of catalogues had fallen off the back of the mail truck into the middle of a 6 lane road - complete with crazy SUV drivers. A panicked woman shouted at Ant - "you must pick up the mail". Ant looked at her and said "are you crazy bitch?" - well they probably weren't his exact words but neither of us were willing to risk our lives (and our ability to claim travel insurance) by attempting to rescue some crappy catalogues for Walmart or something.

A short bus ride later - we reached the Beverly Centre - where it felt incredibly dead quiet - sort of like a zombie/post-apocalyptic mall movie.... apart from the (I kid you not) "Hunky Santa and the Candy Cane Girls" show. For about USD$50 - you could get your picture taken with "Hunky Santa" a skantly clad santa with a six pack (but with a need for a paper bag to hide his shameful face). Occasionally - Hunky Santa and his posse - the Candy Cane Girls put on a show. Correction - Hunky Santa just posed a bit and the Candy Cane girls put on these Xmas inappropriate contortionist shows with ribbons and things. Anyway - the mall was pretty much dead (maybe something to do with the GFC aka Global Financial Crisis) apart from the Apple Store which was dead busy.

Ant and I were a bit underwhelmed with the shopping at the Beverly Center (or should that be "Centre") and so was the food court - so we headed to a small Vietnamese Pho soup place next to the centre for dinner.... Until next time

2008-12-18T14:14:00.000-08:00

Gringo Tour 2008/09 - Part 1

Blogger - how retro - unless you host a music blog (I heart Discodust and Hyperbole and Ohhcrapp or something)... Anyhows - I'm writing to you from the Brisvegas International Airport - hanging around for a while waiting for our flight to LAX.

Ant and I are off again (haven't been anywhere together since our Eastern European tour last year - and yes - NZ doesn't count as an international holiday). We are spending almost 5 weeks touring the west coast of the states, mexico and (don't tell the american immigration peeps) Cuba (I heart Fidel)... Although this time the flights are all bling bling business to and from the states... Doing our bit for global warming.

We had to get up at the crack of dawn (well it was before the crack of dawn) to catch our 6am flight from Canberra to Brisvegas. Because we had recently upgraded our flights from economy to business - they automatically upgrade the connecting domestic flight - so we both had a bit of a taste of the Business class Qantas club domestic lounge (new at Canberra). So all the plebs now sit out in the old lounge while all of the sexy people get trashed and throw mobile phones at Qantas staff at the Business lounge. It was neeyce, different and unusual (not unusually you from Britney which I had in my head all day long).

The flight to Brisvegas was OK - you get toast in Business... Wow...

Interconnecting at Brisvegas airport is a bit of pain - you need to catch the Sky Train (aka intersuburban Brisvegas train) which claimed you were reducing your carbon footprint - yet the train had the aircon cranked up global warming style.

Brisvegas International airport was a bit of a mess - lots of random people and stuff every - it was like so random...! Ant grabbed a Brisvegas International Airport guide - which was entitled "The Time of Your Life". It might be the "Time of Your Life" if you lived in Brisvegas and were getting out.

Because we are reech beech tourists in Business class this time round (screw the GFC) - we got so called "express" tickets through immigration and security. Although it wasn't so express when about 2 flight loads of Arabic flight hostesses decided to bypass the express queue and security and made us all wait around for a while. Ant got an extra pat-down by an unsexy security guard - thrown in for good measure. I also had problems at Immigration - Border Security style. I forgot to write down my passport number on my departure card - and the customs lady said "we are having issues processing Nicholas' passport - please wait around the back".

We wait around where we were told to - and we start to debate why they were having trouble "prcessing my passport". Ant thought that the magnetic strip on the passport had failed and I thought to myself - how am I going to get a new one...?

An immigration man came round 5 minutes later and said that the customs girl didn't think I looked like my picture.... but he let us go... Maybe they were thinking that I was into identity theft like Sandra Bullock caught in the Net... or something.

So here I am - barely getting through Brisvegas Customs - coming to you live from Brisvegas Interational Qantas Club (which is fairly underwhealming) - having to hang around for another 5 hours before our flight to LAX...

Until next time...

2008-03-28T16:38:00.001-07:00

Sheep Luv Tour 2008 - Day One Continued...again

Ant reminded me to mention the fact that Auckland Airport was fairly retro (80s style), had oppressive air conditioning and had a lack of "customers" - hence it was really quick getting thru customs and immigrations.

Ant had booked a Corolla from Hertz (they Hertz harder) for a few days so we could make our own way from Auckland (near the top of the Nth Island) to Wellington (south of the Nth Island). Of interest - a couple of weeks ago - we had hired a new Corolla (as the advertising goes - the "Hottest Corolla Ever!") - but if it was the hottest corolla ever - it wasn't saying much about any of the Corollas that have proceeded it. It drove like a tank (probably would flip like a 4WD) and felt cheap and nasty - more so than my "Hottest Pulsar Ever".

Fortunately - we had a earlier model of the "Hottest Corolla Ever" and it handled better than the "Hottest Corolla Ever" - so "Hotness" doesn't really equate with "Quality" - although Ant wasn't such a big fan of the fact that the car had done 40000 Kms - quite a bit for a hire car. Damn u hertz!

We made our way from the airport and I was playing "navigator" with the fold out paper Auckland St map - trying to channel my orienteering skills from year 5 at school (or lack of orienteering skills). I was also playing "radio nazi" - trying to pick thru all of Auckland's 58 urban music channels. Damn u bad NZ R&B music!

It was about a 25 min or so drive to the Hotel which was sort of on the outskirts of the CBD. We had booked a couple of nights at the Quest on Nelson - one of those fully furnished apartments. It was pretty big - a one bedroom unit with a lounge room (complete with windows facing onto the next door apartments) and a laundry/bathroom (complete with windows facing onto the next door apartments)... u like 2 watch don't u...!

Feeling a little peckish - we head into town to get some lunch. Ant hsa this knack of picking the way through the seediest areas of places. We walked next to one of those Homeless Missions - complete with funky junkies - obviously a highlight of Auckland.

The main street (ironically called Queen Street - which is the same main street in Brisbane... which has a lot of similarities with Auckland) was a bit of a bomb-site. Basically the whole main street was being ripped up and re-sealed. This was a bit of an ongoing theme in NZ. Something striking down the main street was the overabundance of Australian shops in NZ. JB's, Katmandu, Westpac, Billabong, Supre... Although Queen St strangely had a "Wendy's" fast food chain - something that Australia does not have (not that we want it anyway)... There was also the big Sky Tower (which wasn't built last time I had visited Auckland) - which is affiliated with Sky City (aka cheesy casino at Sydney) - and I'm guessing it is Australian owned or something.

Ant having been a visitor twice before to the shores of NZ) headed in the vague general direction of where he thought Auckland's eat street was - but instead we found Auckland's "Irish Pub" street. Because our stomachs had the better of us - we settled for one of the Irish Pubs for lunch. I had a lasagne and Ant had a hamburger and we both had a pint of some NZ beer (so beginneth the NZ drinking...). Everything was genuine 1997 prices - 12 NZ pesos for the lasagne (which you need to divide by 1.15 to equate it to Australian pesos - which i needed a calculator). The food was good and so to the beer.

We wandered back to Queen Street and Ant had to go to the Britomart. No - it isn't a Tesco owned supermarket - rather Auckland's new/flash train station. Yes - Ant is a trainspotter and he had to complete his "Trainspotting" experience (after seeing the junkies near the mission) by going to a train station. Ant got a bit of a thrill after the Britomart. Because I was feeling somewhat tipsy after the pint of beer - I helped myself to a cornetto (so beginneth the NZ bad eating). It was genuine 2003 prices.

I finally convinced Ant to leave the Britomart and do something else - so we headed to Auckland Harbour (which was pretty much a stone throw away from the Britomart). The harbour was pretty - but it ain't no Sydney Harbour...~! We walked along a wharf to get a better perspective of both the harbour and the city. We both sort of noticed that it feels a little more economically depressed than Australia. The wharf was full of empty shops and for lease signs. Even the Hilton felt a little ghetto 80s-style.

We wandered around the nearby (what I dub Auckland's) Cockel Bay - a Darling Harbour-esque swag of ritzy restaurants - at genuine 2004 Darling Harbour prices...! Neeocye!

Feeling a bit lethargic (damn qantas for getting me up at 4:30am!) - we both head back to the hotel where I crash for an hour or two. Ant, being the avid tourist that he is, decides to hit streets for a bit more of a mosey around the place.

NZ TV was a little on the bizzaro side. They seem to import a lot of Aussie shows - they were about 2 weeks behind Australia with "So You Can Think You Can Dance Australia" (damn I hate u Natalie Basingwaithe you talentless whore!) and about 8 months behind Australia with "Chasers War on Everything" (APEC episode)... Plus the reception at Quest on Nelson was a little bizzaro or non-functional at times.

To Be Continued (when I can be stuffed writing this..~!)

2008-03-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Sheep Luv Tour Day One Continued...

We got off the late flight into Sydney and ran/pushed over every man/woman/grannie in order to get to the immigration queue first... which we did.

Despite Qantas' best attempts to delay us from getting to the LAN Chile flight to NZ - we managed to have 20 mins or so spare before the flight in the International departure gates. Ant knew that we weren't entitled to the Qantas Club - even though we were both members. If you are flying on a LAN flight with Qantas Club - you technically can't use the lounges... So Ant was feeling a bit nervous about attempting to get into the lounge. Despite him being a nervous wreck - I thought it was still worth a shot - just as long as we play the "dumb ignorant" routine.

The Qantas Club looked like it had been renovated since my last trip to Italy (via South Africa and England). There were a couple of door b$$ches positioned at right at the front door. We both nervously handed over our boarding passes and Qantas Club cards. Thankfully - the dittzy woman served us not the astute guy - and she seemed to press a few keys on her keyboard and said "Everything is fine... Come on thru..!". It pays not to know the rules Ant!

We logged onto the computers for 10 or 15 mins where I blogged the first part of this blog. Ant was busy trying to check for accommodation at Taupo but was cut short because we had to board our flight.

The LAN queue was a bit of a rockshow. It had felt like they had called everyone too early from the lounge as we had to wait for about 10mins to board. The hostesses/hosties all seemed to have thick South American accents and a poor grasp of the English language. Although we were only on this flight till Auckland - we both got the sense that we were on our way to South America and we both experienced a lot of flashbacks. Flicking thru the magazine on board - we saw a lot of places that we had been to in both Chile and Argentina (including the "Galleria" mall in Buenos Aires where we both had ice creams on the first day (can't forget something like that..!).

The flight was a little strange - with the attendants not understanding what a "Diet Coke" was (they had Coke Light - shipped all the way from Chile...), my TV screen didn't work for the whole flight (it froze on the "Who Wants to Be A Millionare?" game screen - embarssment). We were served (wait for this...) toasted cheese sandwiches (defintely a flash back to the bad cuisine that you can have at Chile). The lack of a functional TV screen probably forced me to get some much needed sleep on the flight.

Upon arrival at Auckland - everyone had to get off the plane. Most were just transiting through to Santiago - but there were a handful of people getting off at Auckland including us. Probably the only country in the world where Aussies can feel special - Australians and NZ's had their own queue thru immigration. Apparently - we can go over to NZ and work and live for how ever the fudge we want to and not get kicked out of the country... yeh! Immigration and customs were fairly painless - I sort of hoped to get on the NZ version of "Border Security" and create a big scene (..."Someone must of lodged those condoms of coke in me whilst I was sleeping!"...) but alas it wasn't going to happen.

2008-03-21T15:39:00.001-07:00

Ant n Nick's Sheep Luv Tour 2008 - Day One

Although this trip is only for a week and we are only going to Australia's seventh state (aka New Zealand) - because it is technically an "international trip" - so we might as well blog this on this site....

I have never had a strong desire to go to Sheep-Luv Land (aka NZ) - but Ant "thoughtfully" bought me some plane tickets last year for my birthday. (Does anyone remember the episode of the Simpsons where Homer buys Marge a bowling ball for her birthday and gets "Homer" engraved on the ball...?" (Anyway - I haven't bought Ant a birthday present yet for Feb so I should shut up now)...

Our flight from Canberra was a 6:45am flight - so that had meant we had to get up at the ungodly hour (on the ungodly day that is Easter Saturday) at 5am... Our taxi was 5 mins late - and Ant was about to call Canberra Cabs to complain - but the taxi appeared and we got in (despite the guy reaking of bad B.O and the meter was running before we set foot into the cab). The cab driver drove like "Crazy Taxi" - driving anywhere but the left hand lane at 40-50kms over the speed limit.

We checked in at the airport and made tracks to the Qantas Club - where we had breakfast and gorged ourselves stewpid.

We boarded our flight - and did a lot of sitting around on the tarmac... After about 1/2 an hour of this - the plane turned around and headed back to the terminal. Ant picked up on this fact before they announced that they were having "technical difficulties" and had to check something out. We sat around at the gate for another 15 minutes before saying that had to cancel the flight and we had to rebook onto another one.

Everyone poured off the flight (which was half-full thankfully). A stream of people made their way back to the Qantas Club (where I had noticed I had split youghurt onto my shirt earlier) and Ant did his magic with the Qantas Club lady to ensure that we were going to get onto the next flight to Sydney (because we were on a LAN Chille flight to Auckland on a separate ticket or something).

After about 10 minutes of waiting around in the Qantas Club (Ant had befriended some guy who was flying to Peru to do the Inca Trail... cancelled flights... Peru... sounds familiar??!) - the Qantas Door B%%ch announced that everyone had to go back down to the "arrival hall" and collect their bags and recheck onto the next flight... We then all marched outside and collected our bags (thank god we only had to wait 5 minutes instead of the usual 30 minutes at Canberra Airport) - and I raced over to the check in line (pushed a few grannies out of my way) - and we managed to get checked into the next Dash 8 flight to Sydney...

I managed to get "explosive trace searched" for the second time going thru security again... We walked back to the Qantas Club (our third time today) and plonked down in front of the Foxtel TV - feeling rather exhausted (sad given the lack of distance we have travelled thus far).

As soon as we sat down - we noticed it was the final call for our flight to Sydney. It was one of those new Dash-8 bug smashers - a little bit bigger than those regular bug smashers to sydney. The plane was chockers - and Ant and I had to sit separately. I was next to some dumb kiwi guy and Ant was seated next to some old grannie. The flight was fairly bumpy and I felt a little off...

2 b continued....

2008-02-09T13:32:00.000-08:00

Homeward Bound 5 - Assignment Miami Beach

I get into the Qantas Club and hoard a computer terminal for the entire 4 or so hours I am there for. After a pretty dismal effort to begin with - I blog and finish Italy. I really haven't been accessing any computers until the last couple of days in Venice - and having the free internet at the Evergreen Hotel - defintely helps heaps in terms of ability to keep this blog up-to-date.

The flight back to Australia was OK and I got a bit of sleep with my exit row seat with no seats in front of it (although it was near the toilet). There was this kinda freakish guy sitting next to me. He was a 6"7' junior volleyball player (with the AIS) - complete with a lack of people skills. For the first half hour of the flight - he was drawing pictures on his arm with a magic marker (defintely serial killer material).

I watched a really interesting doco on the "Most Hated Family in the States". It had Louis Theroux in it (the one time sidekick of Michael Moore - back in the "Awful Truth" show) and he was spending a couple of months with the family who are behind the "God Hates Fags"/"God Hates America"/"God Hates Sweeden" extreme right wing religious group. These guys believe that America is going to hell because of tolerance to gays and they picket funerals of dead soliders from Iraq. They have also picketed a local vaccum cleaner shop because they were selling sweedish vaccum cleaners (and there was a court case in Sweeden where two homophobes were jailed for discrimination against gays)... How about picketing Ikea instead? Anyhows - it was part hilarious and part distrubing... and is well recommended.

I also started watching "The Jammed" - a David and Margaret recommended feel good movie about the sex slave industry in Melbourne - but I had ran out of time (with what all my sleeping on the flight). I'll probably rent it when I get back home or something.

I had the whole diet-meals on the flight again - but I not only had steak for dinner - but also for breakfast... A little bit freakish (and I was a touch sad because I couldn't have my Chinese Breakfast!).

I arrived at Brisbane airport at around 9am the next day and had no hassles picking up my bags through customs. This was the first time in a long time that I wasn't quizzed by customs staff whilst waiting for my bags to arrive off the carousel.

I took the train over to the Domestic Terminal and headed through security where I was stopped by the staff who had an unholy obsession about my boot bag. They picked it up and said - "You can't bring roller skates onto a plane - go and check it in at the oversized baggage counter (somewhat ironical as this "oversized bag" could fit in a carry-on baggage locker!)". I was feeling tired and pissy and said back to them "I've been all over the world with this - and this is the first time I've had problems bringing this bag onto the flight". I explained to them it was just some ski boots and they fit in the overhead lockers. The big fat dumb security woman kept calling them rollerskates - but after I wasn't budging - she brought over her supervisor (who looked even more dykish than her). I think the supervisor probably thought the security lady was being a bit of a d##k - so she said - just scan it through again - and then they let me bring my bag through to the terminal. Don't you love patchy Australian airport security service. Where one airport will have problems with umbrellas - and the next one will have problems with "roller-skates"....

I hae a shower at the Qantas club and do a bit of blogging (get up to the second day of Hong Kong). I was feeling really really tired. The three weeks of poor sleep were finally catching up with me and I was fading rather fast. Unfortunately - I had to wait until about 3:30pm for my flight to Canberra (it was supposed to leave around 2:50pm but it was delayed - just like a number of other flights).

I was dozing on and off on the flight to Canberra. My snoring woke me up a couple of times (I occasionally let out a loud pig-like belch which will wake me). Unfortunately - I can't use my "SIDS" technique of lying on my stomach in order to stop me snoring on a flight.

My mum picked me up from the airport (Ant was flying back from Perth today for work and couldn't greet me at the airport). I had texted her saying that I was boarding the flight but she had thought I was coming from Sydney - so she waited about an hour for me to rock up.

On the most part - I've enjoyed my trip to Italy and Hong Kong. Selva (and Val Gardena in general) was really pretty, the price for the accommodation was right (parents paid for it) and although there was plenty of skiing to be had - a bit more of a challenge would have been a welcome change to things. The queues too were a bit on the feral side. Venice was well worth going to - and it was a bit of luck that Carnevale was on when we were there. I think we all got a little bored at Padova but Verona was worth it (even if for just the tacky Juliet balcony). Hongkers was a bit of a shopping detour for me - and I was a bit disappointed in not going to Macau - but hey - I'll probably be back there one day and I'll probably want to stay over at Macau for a change. It was a bit sad for Ant not to come with me - but it was his choice (didn't want to spend heaps of $$ going snowboarding in Europe).

So here endeth the Italy/Hong Kong blog - maybe one day I'll finish off the Japan/Eastern Europe/Singapore blog (hint I buy a PS3 at Singapore)...

2008-02-04T18:10:00.000-08:00

Last Day in Hongkers - Attack of the Zombie Sleeping Patterns...

I did it again. I woke up at 3am (after going to sleep at midnight the previous night)... I was feeling rather sh##ful and thought perhaps the best solution would be to read the travel guide to send me to sleep - but alas it didn't work.

I finally managed to get to sleep about 5ish and was woken up at 8:30 when someone knocked on my front door (I hadn't left the Do Not Disturb sign on the front door - there are first times for everything).

It took a little while to pack my stuff. I had bought an extra bag with me so I could bring back two checked bags into Australia with lots of shopping - so this morning was a little bit like a bag explosion. The TV in the hotel was pretty dodgy - there was only about 2 channels - both of which were playing the Super Bowl (Gridiron. Slowest. Game. Ever.) Perhaps they were trying to be conservative with their half-time entertainment choice - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers... Imagine if there was another wardrobe malfunction with Tom Petty... ewww gross.

I head downstairs to the "Worlds. Best. Breakfast" (cough!) - the Evergreen Hotel's breakfast but the room was absolutely chockers. The women attendants marked off my room card (saying that I had had breakfast) - and were going to plonk me on some stranger's table (no free tables). Given the quality of the food here - and the cheapness of food elsewhere - I decide to bail and head outside - find a noodle shop - and have a a Wonton Noodle Soup and tea - which put my faith back into Hong Kong food. I just find it funny though that they always seem to put singles at the most depressing tables (I was situtated behind the cashier facing some boxes). Out of sight - out of mind.

I get back to the hotel and finish my bag explosion packing and take full advantage of the relatively late midday checkout. Before checking out - I quickly check my bank account details on the free internet - wanting to find out whether or not I've paid for the hotel or not. I had used Hotelclub.net to book the room and their website was confusing as all hell as to whether I had paid or not. After about 15 minutes of manic searching - I found out that I have been charged for the room under some dodgy non-related name in my credit card statement...

So I check out - get my $100HK deposit back from them (oohh retro - deposits at hotels) - leave my bags there and head down to the Space Museum (I was getting desperate for activities!) only to find that I was too early for a Monday (they don't open until 1pm). So just to get my shopping out of my system - I go down to Ocean Terminal and buy a couple of DVDs.

Back to the Space Museum - I buy admission (for a cheap $10HK - less than $2AUD peoples) and just to do something really tacky - I buy a $35HK ($5AUD) ticket to their Planetarium show - Exploring the Black Hole. No - it wasn't a dodgy gay porno but a movie about the space black holes.

Since my session didn't start till 2pmish - I checked out the Space Museum first. Now space museums aren't normally my sort of thing. I remember Ant dragging me around the Smithsonian Space Museum in D.C - probably the bee's-knees of space museums - and me getting fairly bored. The HK museum was no different than the Smithsonian (in terms of me getting bored) - it was a fairly tired old museum with a lot of the hands on stuff either broken or non-functional. It was a little busier than the Art Gallery - but most people seemed to think it was all a bit lame. There was a "congo-line of suck hole" exhibit on the Chinese Space Program which was boring. I was a bit pishy because I was too tall to do the moonwalk (not the Michael Jackson variety - but the HK Space Museum "strapped into a harness and pretend to moon walk" variety) and the virtual hang glider simulator (not sure what hanggliding has to do with space exploration?).

I rocked up to the Planetarium theatre (everytime I say "Planetarium" - I do so without pronouncing the "t" - just like the South Park episode... "You liikkke the Plane-arium!" - I sat down in my designated rich beetch seat (I had forked out for the good seats - not the nosebleed section seats). All the chairs are in a reclined fashion - so you are looking at the ceiling. Becaue the show was in Cantonese - there are a pair of headphones where you can choose the appropriate language track (either English, Japanese or Mandarin (i think!)) - so it was a bit like attending a UN summit with everyone wearing headphones. The show itself was kinda impressive in a "IMAX" sort of way - a mix of computer graphics and movies were projected upon the roof of the Plane-arium and it was quite prrudy. Although the movie got rather bogged down in explaining the physics of black holes - especially when it started to flash up large and complicated equations (eg: r = GM over c-squared when G is the formula for general relatively and c is the circumfernce of the black hole... don't quote me on any of this stuff).

After my plane-arium experience - I wandered around HK's Galaxy of Stars Parade - think Hollywood Boulevard but with HK and Chinese stars as opposed to Hollywood ones. Despite having a couple of HK films in my video-ezy sized DVD collection - I hadn't heard of most of these people - although most of the crowds were surrounding the star-signs of the popular "Western" stars including Bruce Lee, Chow Yun Fat, Jet Li and Jacky Chan. It wasn't at all surprising to see no handprints for Bruce Lee.

I head over to the eastern side of Nathan Road and find another cheap - but classier noodle place and get a Canton-style soup for $18HK. Although this was the first place I've been to where they don't serve you chinese tea - it was pretty good.

I had a bit of HK$ left to spend and head back to the cool mall that I had been to the previous night in an attempt to buy a cool t-shirt with "bling shark teeth" that I had liked. When I got there - I tried it on - and it didn't pass the "I can see your nipples thru the t-shirt test" - so I passed on buying the shirt and just headed back to the hotel and collected my bags.

Although it was about 5ish - the MRT to Tsing Yi was nowhere near as busy as I thought it would be (as the train is heading outbounds - and I thought all the commuter traffic would be heading in the same direction).

Tsing Yi train station is a little bit like a multistory labyrinth - but as this was about the 6th time I've visited it - I'm starting to get used to it. I managed to get a couple of seats all to myself on the Airport Express - where they were flogging the recently opened HK Disney Land - where "Mickey is going all Chinese crazy with the Chinese New Year of the Rat".

I was a little worried that I'd have a repeat performance of my Heathrow/Venice airport experiences (eg: arrive way too early to check in) - but there were check-in's open and the nice lady at the Qantas Club line gave me an exit row + aisle (my dream seat).

After going thru security - I still had $300HK left (about $45ishAUD). I found that the price for Bombay Saphire was fairly cheap here ($18AUD as compared with $25AUD on Qantas Duty-Free) - so I grab a bottle and take it to the counter - where the woman demanded to see my boarding pass. I pull out both my boarding passes (one to Brisbane and one to Canberra) - she sees the Canberra one and goes "you are not allowed to transfer with duty free bottles". I didn't see what the big deal was and said back to her "but I'm only transferring within Australia - this is my last international flight!". But she wouldn't hear it - so I stormed off - and immediately picked up another bottle off the shelf and proceeded to another check in counter - this time only armed with my Brisbane boarding pass. The woman ask me - "Are you transferring?" - and I reply no and I then buy the bottle... I buy a CD that I didn't really want (French Electro House CD) but it was the only other thing I could think of that I might possibly want at the airport. Everything here is more expensive than back in town (the CD was $130HK - when you can pick them up in town for about $100HK) but the bottle of gin was cheap so I can't complain - plus I got rid of all my money.

2008-02-04T17:52:00.000-08:00

Day 2 in Hongkers

After going to sleep at midnight the previous night - I was wide awake by 3am. This wasn't a good situation at all - mainly due because I wanted to do a day trip to Macau today. I try and try to get back to sleep - but fail miserably. This is probably partly due to jet lag - and partly due to caffine..

I go down and have breakfast and am in a zombie like state. At least they have changed the CD from bad seagull music to just bad 80s music. I wanted to avoid getting botchalism and avoid all the half-warm chinese sausage and eggs.

I blog for a bit - writing a couple of days on Venice - then I head back to my room and drop dead - waking up at 2:30pm... There goes my day trip to Macau!

Feeling rather pissy with myself - and drag myself out of the hotel and grab a quick bite to eat at one of those asian bakeries. They still haven't really catched onto the whole "Inconvenient Truth" thing and still place every single item you buy into an individual plastic bag - then put everything into a plastic carry bag...

I head down Nathan Road to the Hong Kong Art Gallery (eg: one of the ugly pink tiled buildings at the north end of Kowloon). It was a complete bargain ($10HK entry - which was the same price as in my 2002 edition of LP) - and was well worth checking out. There were a few exhibitions on traditional Chinese art which were prrudy, a contemporary exhibit on Hong Kong artists (including a guy who paints frames from famous Chinese/Hong Kong movies including their cantonese and english subtitles), and an excellent decorative arts exhibit. Plus if you ain't a big art fan - you can take advantage of the excellent views of the harbour from the gallery.

Feeling like I want to vegetate (despite sleeping until 2:30pm) - and had a desire to go and see a trashy hollywood movie at a cinema. I check LP for the nearest cinema. I head there only to find out that they are only showing one film - and it is some Korean movie about an ET style alien... Great... I don't think Multiplexs exist in HK - where land and space is at a premium.

I go a little crazy and HMV and buy some DVDs and some bargain CDs (including some for about $5AUD) and head back to the hotel for a bit of a chill and blog.

Still wanting to go to the movies - I look up LP and there appears to be a cinema at nearby Canton Road. Although - when I get to the alledged location of the cinema - it wasn't there. Perhaps it closed down - or perhaps LP got it terribly wrong with their maps. Anyhow - in the cinema's place - I found a cool trendy department store (sort of like the youth ones in Tokyo) - everything was quite crampped but quite kewl. I resist buying more clothes for the minute and head back to the Happy Garden Noodles for dinner to give it another shot at reprisal. Unfortunately - it was still a pretty dish that I had ordered (curried beef with rice) - perhaps my days of great hong kong food are finally over...?

After dinner - I explore a few areas of Tsim Shu Chi which I haven't been before. It's sort of funny with all of those neon signs that are up 30 meters in the air - you never really see them from the street level - so I'm not sure on their effectiveness in advertising. Although I did see a sign for the Ballarat University...

I've also noticed that all of the non-legit DVD shops in Kowloon - appear to be selling legit copies now. The only place you can buy the dodgy stuff now are the night markets. Perhaps the Chinese crack down on piracy has made an impact?

2008-02-04T05:59:00.000-08:00

1st Day in Hongkers

After going to bed at midnight the previous night - I wake up at 6:30am - which wasn't all that much sleep - but probably enough to function OK today.

The TV in the hotel is pretty crappy - there are only 5 channels - 4 of which is an annoying "Pearl TV" channel - which seems to just have the world's crappiest programming. This morning - the excitement of "Bloomsberg TV News" and Microsoft buying out Yahoo.

I have breakfast included in the accommodation and I head down to the cafe fairly early for it. It was a pretty poor effort - a couple of edible cereals, a selection of cold-esque Chinese food and a non-functioning toaster. To make matters worse - they were playing this really terrible seagull music (eg: seagulls kept squawking in the background) and it was chinese pan pipe versions of such classics like the Gone with the Wind theme... I texted Ant saying my "urge to kill was rising".

After breakfast - I head down the famous Nathan Road stretch when it starts to rain. Not heavily - but enough to get your umbrella out. I head down to the bay - where there was a sort of a strange mix of fog and smog covering the Hong Kong Island. Near the whole "Art Museum / Cultural Centre complex" (just look for the ugly pink tiled 80s complex at the end of Kowloon - you can't miss it) were these big inflatable versions of those evil Beijing Olympic mascots. Although since our trip to China early in 07 - they seem to have multiplied from 5 to about 20. Perhaps someone was feeding it after midnight and they multiplied gremlins style.

I got harrassed by one of those pesky Indian talior guys - although this one was a little too strong with the pick up lines "You are a lucky man!".

I walk down past the Star Ferry Terminal where there were several Falun Dafa protests happening (I didn't realise that this stuff was allowed in HK after the reunification with China). Perhaps they wouldn't come across so "cult-like" if they hired a professional marketing firm to give their protests a bit of pizzazz and sex appeal.

It was only about 9ish - and I headed into the mecha Ocean Terminal complex - miles upon miles of shopping all in the one mammoth complex (makes the Canberra Centre expansions look like the Goulburn Marketplace). I was a little bit early though - as most shops open at 10 or 11am - so it was like walking through a ghost town. I thought about buying "Time Crisis 4" for the PS3 - but I thought I could have trouble bringing in a toy gun back into the country...

It was about 11ish - and I was feeling a bit peekish after the lucklustre breakfast so I headed down to my favourate noodle place in HK - the Happy Garden Noodle and Congee Kitchen on Canton Road (although the staFf aren't very happy and there is no garden in sight). I order a wonton noodle soup - but was a little disappointed. It was a bit smallish and wasn't the best tasting.

I head via the MRT to Sham Shui Po - which according to LP is the place to buy electronic stuff in Kowloon. I stumble across a computer complex called Golden Plaza Shopping Centre - which was a couple of levels of "dodgy computer fair"-esque sellers selling all sorts of PC crap and a few video games. I felt glad that I had made the effort getting out here because it sure as hell wasn't touristy and the prices were a lot cheaper than in the touristy Tsim Ma Tai district. I was a bit hesitant about trying to haggle the prices down - as most things had price tags on them. I popped my cherry and picked up a $20 PSP game - and then I attempted to buy 3 PS3 games from the one dealer whilst getting a discount. He seemed pretty offended that I was trying to haggle the price down - so I only bought one game off him (as I knew other places where the prices were lower). The games here (about $50-70AUD) are cheaper than Australia (where they retail in Oz for $110)but I think they are more expensive than in Singapore and Japan.

After spending too much money on games - I head back to the hotel and chill for a bit - before getting kicked out of the room as the lazy cleaner wanted to clean it at 3pm in the afternoon.

I make my way back to the Star Ferry terminal and catch a ferry to Hong Kong Island (for those not in the know - Kowloon is on the mainland - and Hong Kong is on an Island - duh!). The good old Star Ferry is probably the must do thing whilst in Hong Kong - and it still has those genuine 2002 prices (my copy of LP is that old) - HK$1.70 - which is about AUD 25 cents... My god - they must be genuine 1972 prices...

By the way - our dollar has gone from strength to strength - when I first came here - the Aussie $ bought about 4 HK $'s. Now it is about HK$7 per AUD$1. A reason why the Aussie dollar is performing well against the HK dollar - is that the HK dollar is pegged against the US$ - hence it is also going down the poop shoot.

Anyhows - it was really cold on the ferry crossing the harbour. China has been having those freakish snow storms which have been disrupting power supplies and transport. HK's weather (although much milder than Europes') - is pretty cold at the moment by their standards. 3 layer material today (and I brought my shorts along thinking it would be mild).

I headed over to HK Island on a bit of a mission to find the Macau ferry terminal. I was planning on doing a day trip there (because I've never been) and LP says it is only a 60km ferry trip there.

After about 20 minutes of walking around aimlessly - I finally found the TurboJet terminal (which was in the middle of a mall no less) - but I was a bit shocked when I read the timetable. It seemed to read that the trip would take about 6 hours - which would mean it couldn't be a daytrip. I reread LP and it assured me that it would only take 1 and a half hours or so (depending on what sort of ferry you catch). I go back to the Turbo Jet timetable - and I had just misread it (I had read the 0900 1300 to be the departure and arrival time - but the 1300 is another departure time..). Duh!

I head over to the shopping area of Central and stumble upon a cheap $10 shop - full of the most god awful things on the planet. I was almost thinking about buying Taeko a gnome there - but they only had them of the female variety.

Low and behold - I then stumble upon an H&M store - this time with male clothing... Yay... I have a bit of a browse - and notice that most of the sizes are either S or XS...!@ I finger my way thru the merch and find a cool bunch of T-shirts designed by musicians including Justice, Timbaland and the Sister Sisters. I was going to get a Justice shirt - but it was way too large for me (only large t in the shop probably). So I probably spend over an hour in the store and try on over a dozen things - I end up buying a t-shirt, a polo shirt, a jumper, another hoodie (can't have enuf) and a belt - so I didn't go too crazy and it was about $85AUD.

I make my way back to Kowloon - again via the Star Ferry - when I notice that they have finished the redevelopment of the terminal - which I thought made it a bit sterile looking. I much prefer the original derlict wharf - which had a bit of charm to it. Hopefully they won't do the same to the Kowloon wharf!

I head back to the hotel and blog. I'm making great progress after a relatively slow start and have finished the Selva / Skiing sections.

For dinner - I go to a nearby seafood restaurant with some crazy english name. The guy was a little strange in greeting me when I came in "You ARE welcome!" - so what - I'm not normally welcome?! I had a good view of their big screen TV - so it felt a bit like home and watching TV whilst eating dinner. There was some dodgy Chinese version of "X-Factor" - which had an 8 year old boy dancing around the stage dressed in a Matrix style rubber outfit (disturbing on so many levels) - and Chinese answer to Missy Elliot - a big fat Chinese girl rapping in baggy clothing. I order one of the most expensive dishes off the menu - a shrimp (aka prawns) dish with cashews. I was originally going to order the chilli version - but the guy warned me that it was really hot - so I went with this instead. Although the service was a little variable - the food was terrific and very flavoursome (probably due to the copius amounts of MSG).

2008-02-04T04:52:00.000-08:00

Getting the fudge out of Italy to Honkers

I wake up at 5am - somewhat better than my previous couple of days worth of effort - but still terrible by holiday standards.

I hate to admit it - but a couple of days ago when I was watching a Richard Quest show on CNN - he was OK... But now CNN have got him doing US Presidential campaign reporting - which just pished me off big time. Richard Quest - you are back in my Burn Book!@

My last day having an Italian breakfast at Hotel Delfino - and I finally learn my lesson and don't eat those bloody gross Italian crossiants! (you are going in my burn book too!).

I pack - and quickly head down to the "PAM" (eg: supermarket) which is situated just beneath my hotel. I grab a couple of bread roles and bananas (god I'm predictable) and get the "smiles completely optional" check out chick who make French people look like the stewardesses from Singapore Airlines. I can't wait to get away from this terrible service! Burn book!

I check out and leave my bags at reception (as I had a bit of time to kill before my flight to Hong Kong via London Gatwick via stewpid transfer bus to London Heathrow). I had a bit of a stroll around Mestre - which was kinda enjoyable - getting away from tourists - walking around local markets - seeing a bit more of what real Venice is like. I head back to La Barche (eg: the H&M mall which discriminates against male clothing) and have a bit of a browse in the overpriced (and then some) CD and DVD shop. I was getting a bit of a caffine headache - but I was too afraid to go into a cafe by myself and get a coffee. So I thought I might go to Brek (which was nearby). After getting there - I discover it was shut - not openning to 11:30am.

Getting a bit bored - I try and find an internet place (not the dodgy one that crashed on me a couple of days earlier) - but the only place I could find was a bit of a rip (20c per minute) so I go and collect my bags and head to the airport early.

I had no problems catching the bus (only had to wait a couple of minutes). Upon arrival at Marco Polo airport (aka Venice Airport) - I discover that there isn't a BA check-in counter open at the airport yet - so I couldn't check in. Marco Polo is full of "no-brand" check in counters - eg they pimp them out to airlines in no particular order. There was a big screen displaying what check in counters you should use - but my flight wasn't showing yet.

I waited around for about 1 hour and a half. I got chatting with a girl from Melbourne who had been studying art in her uni holiday in Vienna. She said I was the first person she'd met who was living in Canberra (the honour is all mine). When the check-in counter finally opened - it was a bit like a Pantera rock show mixed with Italian service. There were two check in staff present for about 1 minute (including one who was behind an "BA Bag Drop Off only" sign despite the fact that there were no automatic ticket machines to use - so there was literally no way you could just drop your bag off. The line started to get a bit messy (damn those Italian lack of queues) and I had to fend off people trying to push in. After about 10 minutes - the two staff materialised again and started to serve people. I give them my usual sob story - "could I get exit rows please" - and they give the usual response - "computer says no!". Burn book BA check in beetches! There was also this really annoying rich beetch Aussie family who had some out of control 8 year olds - one called "Harrison" (my god that is a bad name!). The mum kept going "Harrison! Harrison! Don't do that!". Jesus woman - stop feeding your kids M&Ms! Burn book for you stewpid Aussie family.

(If you haven't realised already - this is a burn book heavy day. And for those who haven't seen Mean Girls - I pity you).

I get thru airport security and attempt to get into the lounge. I gave Ant a text the previous day and asked him whether or not I could get into the lounge at Marco Polo Airport with my Qantas club card. He said it was doubtful (as it wasn't a BA lounge - which I could get into) - but I could give it a shot. It worked for us in Dubrovnik where we were let in even though we weren't supposed to be. I headed up to the lounge where I was greated by some Italian women chatting to each other instead of supposed to be serving people at the VIP lounge. When they finally broke away from their conversation and decided to serve me - she looked at my card and coldly said "we can't let you in with that card"... D'oh!

I head downstairs to the public (aka plebs) area and decide I'll try and spend the rest of my euros. The shops were pretty dire - but I saw a pizza deal for 7 euros where I could get rid of the rest of my coinage. I went up to the counter - where there was about four staff - all talking to one another. Although I'm 100% certain they knew I was there - they never tried to bother to serve me. I put up with this s##t for about 30 seconds before storming off... Burn book pizzaeria staff!

I instead buy a 2 euro gellato (which was the going rate everywhere else) which was neeecye and spent another 2.60 euros buying the most expensive pepsi light I've ever bought in my life (again with rudish service). When can I get the fudge out of this country! Burn book!

I make my way thru immigration (Marco Polo is a sort of part-domestic / part-international airport and I was hanging around the domestic bit) and get on the BA flight to Gatwick.

The annoying Aussie family made a bit of a vengeful return - when they were pissfarting around trying to get onto the plane. The mother then couldn't find her passport - I couldnt't keep the grin off my face. Unfortunately - 5 minutes later - she found the passport (it was on the seat in front of me). Her kids were absolute terrors - espeically Harrison. He had ADD - probably because he was named "Harrison". There was another one perpectually holding a sick bag and the others were egging him to spew all over the plane. Burn book...

After we took off - the flight was alright - I had a bit of sleep which was a promising sign. Also my bags were first of the carosel - things are finally looking milhouse today.

I made my way to the most expensive bus shuttle service in the world (the Gatwick-Heathrow "express") - at 17 pounds a pop (that's the discounted price!) it is pretty outrageous.

Things weren't looking so Milhouse for the first 20 minutes of the trip. The bus was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic... and the signs were saying 37km to Heathrow. I was thinking - damn I could miss my flight. Thankfully - it was just a bit of road maintenance - and the traffic flowed well after it and I made it to Heathrow in plenty of time.

Heathrow Airport (like Marco Polo) was also a bit like a Pantera Rock Show. There were masses of people everywhere and it was all very chaotic. I head over to a BA counter - where I'm greated by a door beetch who was checking to see if people had printed their boarding passes at the self-service machines. She scanned over my boarding pass (which I got at Venice) and said - you are too early to board (it was about 4 hours before my flight). I started to question her saying - "I had "checked in" 10 hours before my flight at Gatwick - why is this any different" - to which she replied "we don't open check in until 3 hours before boarding". I say to her that "I have a Qantas Club Membership and I can't use the club until I go thru security... what can I do in the meantime?". She replied "you can go and have a coffee at those restaurants over there...". I stormed off saying (these are my exact words) - "This is f####ng ridiculous!".

I move straight to another check in counter - this time without a door bitch. I try the "sweet and innocent" routine this time - and she says "you can't check in 3 hours before the flight but I'll give someone a call". She then proceeded to call someone. 2 minutes after the call - she then said - you need to wait until 3 hours before the flight before you check in (despite the person she called - not calling her back). I start firing up again - saying that I have club access and I've already checked in at Venice and that I shouldn't have to wait here with my bags.... but to no avail - they wouldn't check me in.

I storm off again - this time - noticing their competitors' check ins don't have the same stewpid restrictions. I'm feeling fairly pissy overall at BA - with their one bag policy, and their "you can't check in 3 hours before the departure time" policy. I text Ant saying what had happened and how pished off I am. When I get back to home - I think I might write a letter to Qantas saying that I wasn't very happy with my experience with BA. It's a very "computer says no" sort of attitude where they have these polices and they never exercise any flexibility. BURN BOOK!!!!

So - I had to hang around for about 45 minutes (this was about 6pm Venice time - and I had arrived at Venice Airport around 11am - so I was feeling really tired and hadn't really gone very far). When I do check in - I make sure I don't go to the counters operated by the previous staff members.

Getting through Heathrow security was yet another Pantera Rockshow (if you don't know why I keep referencing Pantera rock shows is because at a Pantera rock show once - a crazed fan shot dead the drummer - eg: something that is out of control).

When I finally make it to the BA lounge - it is totally packed. I was really keen on writing some of the blog (because I was so far behind) but apparently - Heathrow was struck by some bad storms that day and there were plenty of delayed and cancelled flights - hence the lounge was busier than usual. (And before you start saying - Nick - you are being unreasonable with your hatred of BA's 3 hour check-in policy - well - that is a permanent policy and had nothing to do with the bad weather at heathrow)... Grrr..

The flight to Hong Kong (which left around 10pm - so this was a really long day for me) was chockers. I had two girls sitting next to me (which I thought was a bit strange considering they like to sit you next to people of your own gender so there is no sexy harrassment). I get a bit of sleep during the flight - and do some shocking snoring performances which would have made Ant cringe. I also watch a couple of movies including Blood Diamond (which was trying to be both a political thriller and a run-of-the-mill action film - but sort of was just all mediorce), the Simpsons Movie (this time when I fell asleep in it - I paused it - unlike when I saw it at Hoyts - but again - it was fairly mediorce) and the Ice Storm (which was an oldie but a goodie).

When I had originally booked my flights - I thought I might try something different and order "Diet meals" - but when they changed my flights to europe (via South Africa) - they had lost the Diet Meal request. However - I still had the diet meals on my way to HK. It felt a bit weird getting served your meal first (like you were some sort of freak). The dinner was fairly god-awfully bland - but the breakfast was alright - although I'm not sure how low-fat it was (it had fatty bacon in it).

I arrived at Hong Kong Airport around 6pm HK time (we were delayed a bit getting out of Heathrow due to the traffic). Because I know getting around HK like the back of my hand (been here a couple of times before including once by myself) - I knew to buy the airport express to Tsing Yi (pronounced "Chingyi") instead of Kowloon or Hong Kong (cause it is way cheaper) - then catch the MRT the rest of the way. I had no problems - although I noticed that there was a Disneyland Resort on the MRT system now... Yay!

I was staying at the Evergreen Hotel at Jordan (on the mainland at Kowloon). I had stayed there before with Ant a couple of years ago - and had no problem following the instructions it had on its website to find it. I check in and get a non-smoking double room (unlike when Ant and I checked in last time and got a smoking twin room).... I have a shower (because I was reeking!) and head outside for some (shame) Yoshinoya for dinner. I ahve a wander around Kowloon and discover that the HMV (which we did a bit of shopping at last time in HK) had moved to a somewhat smaller shop. I have a bit of a browse but didn't buy anything - when I finally head back to the hotel and do some "Super Happy Fun Laundry Time!" and watch some stewpid movie with Kevin Bacon about an invisible man. The TV here is a bit funny - all of those crazy zany asian ads have english subtitles - so you can vaguely understand what they are all about.

2008-02-04T03:51:00.000-08:00

How art thou day trip to Verona

I wake up again at 4am (nightmare of this holiday) and unlike yesterday - I don't go back to bed. :-(

Because Verona is a bit further away than Padova by train - Tasha and I decided to meet at Mestre station at 8am so we could catch a 8ish train to Verona - therefore - I had breakfast at 7am. Despite this being the "openning time for breakfast" - half the room was packed out by the Japanese tourists. One was looking fairly outlandish - dressed in a traditional japanese kimino. Not sure if this was a Carnevale thing?

I head down to the station and buy some reserve tickets for myself (which were 3 euros extra). I then meet Tasha at McDonalds at the station - they were wanting breakfast but unfortunately for them - Italian McDonalds don't seem to do breakfast and they were shut. I have a quick cappucino whilst Tasha were pissfarting around having a super-slow breakfast - despite the need to leave for the train (and not having bought their tickets for them). I take action and grab some money from Sacha and buy them their train tickets. When I return - they still hadn't finished their breakfast - despite there being 5 minutes before the train leaves. I storm off to the platform without them - although they were lucky this time because the train was late.

We were in separate compartments on the train - I stayed in my overcrowed booked compartment - whilst Tasha had a compartment all to themselves. Damn me for booking my seat!

We arrive at Verona around 9ish and head in the general direction of the colosseum. Although generally - LP's maps are better than DKs (which are usually pitiful) - DK's map was way more detailed than the LP one. Therefore Sacha took the lead in guiding us our way to the colosseum.

Verona's colosseum is apparently the 3rd largest in Italy - and despite this - it was completely empty and devoid of tourists for the most part of our visit. It was fairly bargin prices to get in (compared to the Rome version) and we took lots of pictures and got a bit of a view of the city. Sacha was wanting to draw "Dicktation" in the middle of the colosseum and get Taeko to take a picture - but that was too much effort. (Admittedly - Jonah from Summer Heights High's tag is much better than mine from Year 7 - mine was "Crimewave" in the sort of shape of a wave).

We have a wander around town - which is a UNESCO world hertiage listed site - and more deservedly so than Valparassio (damn u Valparassio!!!). It was all very quaint and kodak friendly. Taeko almost has a seizure when she saw a shop which was using a garden gnome motif in its front window. (Remember people - Taeko has an unexplanable gnome fetish) The store was littered with gnomes to make the shop look nicer - but Taeko was asking whether they were for sale. She ends up buying one for 25 euros (almost $50 AUD peoples!!!) which was a plastic mushroom with some gnomes having a tea party on it.... 25 euros... My gawd... That could be a week's worth of pay at her japanese comic book shop. I ask her why doesn't she just go to bunnings in Australia and get one there - but she only likes the environmentally unfriendly plastic gnomes because they are "cuter". Although the shop was mostly selling girly stuff - there were a few interesting items for sale including a "Willy-warmer" (aka penis sock) and cock-rings and bras made out of candy. Yes - when I think of gnomes - I think of buying a cock-ring as well...

Anyhows - we head back out the shop and head in the general direction of the river. From there - you could see a big castle on the other side of the banks. Taeko started going crazy again (remember - she also has a castle fetish) and wanted to go visit it. Sacha and I pursuade her not to - because it you couldn't walk around it (according to our guide books).

We walk back to the city and stumble upon a free exhibit. I say to Tasha "let's go - because there probably is a free toilet inside!". (By the way I'm morally against paying to use public toilets). It actually was an interesting "muesum" - more like an archaeological dig of old ruins beneath the city's surface. It also included a photographic exhibit which included a couple of picture of Canberra (!). There was a free toilet (right at the end) - and I scared Taeko a couple of times by jumping in front of her around corners.

Also - Taeko and I had some sort of a running gag these holidays. At Selva - I would jab her with my fingers on her pressure points around her waist and she would get a shock - then state that was (in thick Japanese accent) "sexual harassment". I later call it "sexy harassment" and (in my Spinal Tap voice) - "what's wrong with being sexy?!". Taeko and I would constantly be trying to sexually harass each other. She said the rule was "it is not OK for you (being me) to touch me (being Taeko) - but it was OK for her to touch me"..... Que?

We then went to the famous (or is that infamous) "Romeo and Juliet" balcony. As LP puts it - it is "much ado about nothing". Romeo and Juliet is a fictional story set in Verona... yet tourists flock to the "supposed" balcony of Juliet where Romeo cried out to her. There was a museum dedicated to the story and for paying 4 euros (entry to the museum) - you could stand on the balcony in all its fictional glory. Tasha and I agreed that we all didn't want to do this - so Sacha paid for Taeko to go in. When she was on the balcony - we got her to pose in all sorts of lurid manners - I got her to do the "fellatio" pose and took a picture (work the camera baby - yeah (in Austin Power's accent))....

Next to the balcony is a brozned statue of Juliet. A lot of tourists rub her right breast for good luck - but I find it somewhat ironic that you rub the breast of a character who botched her own attempt at a fake suicide and died of the consequences... Anyhow - I got Sacha to take my picture while I did some "sexy harassment" shots with the statue.

This place had "tourist cash-in" written all over it. Right next door is a tacky with a capital "T" gift shop - filled will all sorts of "romantic" R&J junk. Come on peoples - the story was fictional and this place is a former bloody hotel!

Also of note - there is love-graffiti and chewing gum written all over the tunnel leading up to the balcony. Someone had written "Guns n F#####g Roses" - choice. Luv u 2 Axl!

We have lunch at a nearby touristic cafe and order some OK pizzas (allthough I thoughte the Brek pizzas were better). To outdo ourselves in the fatness department - we all have icecreams afterwards.

We make tracks to the Castelveecho (in order to satisfy Taeko's need to visit as many castles as possible). The castle itself was built because everyone hated the guy who owned it. He built it so no one from the city could kill him - but his brother ended up stabbing him in the back or something... The castle these days houses an art museum (mostly of the old-school jesus variety) - so we were all suffering from a bit of old-school jesus art overdose. You could also walk around the top of the castle - which had terrific views of the river and city. There was a nearby busker playing an accordian which made the place feel very parisian and a big bunch of japanese tourists (maybe they followed me from the Hotel Delfino) taking pictures from the public area of the castle. There was also a special exhibit about some Italian dude from the 50s who made lots of "fashionable" glass wares from the 50s - mod baby yeah.

After the castle - Taeko has the desire to go back to the Gnome shop and spend more hard earned $$ on plastic gnomes... (Que?!). So we trek for 20 minutes back to the shop only to discover that a full size gnome cost 30 euros ($50AUD) which was too much for Taeko.

We make our way back to the station - where I was teaching Taeko some riske songs including "I want your (dah dah dah dah) sex", and "U got the look, u got the hook, ur body's jammin, ur face is (something) slamin, lets get to ramming" and "bad arse stripper in a gucci thong, see-through dress by louis vuitton" - which kept us entertained for a bit (picture Taeko trying to say these lyrics with a thick Japanese accent). Also on the way to the station - we see a full grown man carrying a children's pink "Bratz" backpack. Sacha attempts to take pictures of it.

We buy some tight-wad 2hr train trip tickets back to Mestre on the regular train - which were only 6 euros and we really didn't have anything better to do. When we arrive at Mestre (around 6:30pm) - I show Sacha the bus stop to get to the airport (instead of him taking an expensive private transfer from his hotel). I also show Tasha my bling bling room - Taeko uses the bathroom.

We head back to Brek for dinner - where we were getting a bit sick of the bad service here in Italy. When you are at a counter - wanting to be served - half the time the staff will just chat amongst themselves and ignore you (depsite them knowing you are there) and serve you in a pretty rude manner. It was a bit like that at Brek tonight where the pizza lady was just fudging around not serving us - when she knew Sacha and I were waiting to be served... I think I was getting flashbacks to the service in Eastern Europe. When we were having dinner - we were all chatting about the service - Taeko mentioned that in Japan - the customer is "god" - which is what it should be everywhere.

After the meal - I say goodbye to Tasha - they are both flying to Japan tomorrow - where Taeko will spend another couple of weeks catching up with friends and Sacha will fly back home (to make paper). I head back to the hotel for some more Wheel of Fortune action (damn those pervy Italian camera men with no subtly).

2008-02-04T03:04:00.000-08:00

Day trip to Padua (aka Padova)...

I wake up again at 4am in the morning - but fortunately- I go back to sleep... I wake up a couple of hours later and watch some bad Italtian TV. The previous night I had catched a glimpse of the Italian version of Wheel of Fortune. The Adriana woman had breasts bigger than Dolly Parton and when she greated the host at the start of the show - the camera kept panning up and down her legs... Subtly - Italian TV style. This morning - there was an ad with an attractive lady and an ugly old guy in a car together - and I was thinking Anna Nicole Smith "golddigger" wannabe - but it was just an ad for wheel of fortune.

I wore my "Jesus Raves" T-shirt to breakfast which caused a few catholic eyes to pop out of their skulls.

I head to Mestre station - and grab another cold coffee from the cafe. I then meet up with Tasha at the ticket office and puy a 2 euro ticket to Padova (sorry - I'm used to the Italian way of saying Padua!). Taeko buys some breakfast at the cafe for Tasha - and she buys one of those infamous Italian Marmalade Crossiants - which she straight out refuses to eat. I explain to her that she can eat the top - the filling is only at the bottom of the crossiant - and she tries a bit.

The train to Padova only took about 1/2 an hour. Padova is a smallish uni town - but the reason why tourists visit it is for its famous "Cappella degli Scovegni" - a church with famous Giotto fresco paintings all inside it (hence that is why we are going - also we were getting a bit bored with Venice).

As soon as we get off the train at Padova station - we get harrassed by some guy who doesn't speak a word of English (he wasn't a dero or anything). Sacha said to him "do you speak english" - and he kept mouthing off at him so we did the polite thing and ignore him.

Because of the lack of food Tasha had for breakfast - we make a quick pitstop at a "typical" Italian cafe. The prices were dirt cheap and I tempt myself and get a Machiatto (my 5th coffee for today and it was only 10am - no wonder I can't get no sleep).

We head down to the Cappella degli Scovegni - which is a 5 or so minute walk away from the station. We read both Don't Know (Sacha stole my copy - which in turn - I stole from my parents) and LP and they both said you need to book the tickets 74 hours in advance. We see a sign at the entrance that confirms this - but we thought we might try our luck and just ask at the ticket office. Probably because it is off-season - we could get tickets straight away for it. LP and DK both mention something about all visitors being "decontaminated" for 15 minutes before entering the church. I thought this would involve them throwing holy water on us all and performing exocisms, hail marys and the like. But it was just that we had to sit in a room so we can get aclimatised to the church in order to preserve the frescos - because they are suffering from a bit of decay.

Anyway - to keep in the religous theme - I was wearing my Jesus Raves t-shirt - while Sacha was wearing his Jesus streaker t-shirt. Praise the lord!~

Once we were inside the small church - which incidently was built by some dude who was hated by all the townspeople and became a born again Christian and built this church in order to save him from going to the firey pits of hell. He got Giotto to decorate the walls with several murals depicting various religous stories including the birth and death of christ. There was also a gnarly picture of heaven and hell (hell had more orgies happening than heaven - yeh) with the guy who owned the church - knelling before christ or something. Although it ain't no Sistine Chapel - it was still pretty cool and worth the trip out to Podova.

Another motive to come to Podova was to find an H&M. I was pretty disappointed that H&M in Mestre was only for the ladies and kiddies (not sure if I could fit into a size XXXS!) - so I had checked on the H&M website on the net and it said there was an outlet in Podova - which had male clothing in it. Unfortunately - we wandered around town for a bit and couldn't find it. Taeko even went up to a department store droid and asked where the H&M store was. The droid looked a bit puzzled (she didn't speak much engrish) - and called over another assistant. She two looked puzzled - and called over another assistant - who spent about 2 minutes studying Taeko's map of Padova. The third assistant said - you need to catch a number 24 bus from here - and it will go for 40 minutes and there is an H&M there... Foiled yet again....!

We had lunch at the local Brek restaurant (yay Brek!). I had ordered some Penne - but the woman serving went mental a bit and we had a bit of a communication breakdown. She was trying to say "I couldn't hear you over the glass (between the counter)" - and I though she was asking me to pick up a take away dish nearby... I also spoil myself and get a Tiramsu - which was slightly frozen...

In order to find the location of H&M - I set off by myslef and try to track down an internet cafe. About 10 minutes later - I find one - only to be denied again - because the computers were all full.

Feeling a bit defeated - I head back to Brek and pick up Tasha where we check out Coin (that crappy-esque department store). The clothes were pretty tragic but we did get a bit of a kick roaming through the homewares department. I found a Donna Hay Cookbook translated into Italian... and took a picture of it (despite the "no photos" signs everywhere). I soon discover that Taeko is a serial merch-fingerer. Someone who likes to finger or touch all of the merchandise in a shop.

Because I had lost my sunnies a couple of days ago in Venice - I check out a nearby Sunglasses/Glasses shop - and end up buying a pair of Diesel Sunnies which are kewl. Everything was on sale - and they were only 80 euros (much cheaper than at home!).

We then wander thru the city's various plazas and take a few pictures. I stumble on a Zara (another major international clothes store like H&M) - and go a bit mental and buy 80 euros worth of clothes including a pair of black tight denmim jeans (not quite metallica tight but getting there), a fluoro t-shirt (I hope Ant won't divorce me), a fluoro hoodie (I really hope Ant won't divorce me - although he might not want to be seen in public with me) and another funky t-shirt which makes me look like out of a Justice video-clip.

After my shopping rampage - we decide to do something touristy and visit the Palce Zimmerman - which houses a couple of museums including a venetian decorative art museum. Although for Taeko and I - the main purpose of the visit was to try and locate a toilet (I was busting after all of that shopping excitement).

We head back to the station - buy a couple of tickets and I almost lead everyone onto the wrong train (damn those Eurocity class trains!). Our trip back to Mestre was even shorter - only 15 minutes. We all decide to go to the Mestre Brek restaurant (which is located in the LP map) - although upon arrival - we discover that it opens at 6:30pm and we got there at 6... We hang around out the front like people do at the Belconnen Mall until it opened. I discovered that Brek makes pizza (eg: they cook it fresh for you) and order a Maghretta pizza. Although it was basic (eg: tomato paste and cheese) - it was really yummy and cheap (at only 4 euros). I also had some vino on tap (as you do).

I say goodbye to Tasha for the day - who head back in a mad rush to catch a bus to their hotel located in b##f####-somewhere-near-mestre. I stumble upon a cheap internet cafe (2 euros for an hour) and do some blogging - until the internet carks it and I leave in a mad state - hoping that my last half an hour's worth of work hasn't been lost.