Thursday, June 28, 2007

Don't let the bedbugs bite

It's amazing what difference a day can make. Today, I woke up and found that several people had been bitten by bedbugs. Couple with that the fact that I was told by a few other guests that they had been paying less than what I (and other online bookers) had been paying per night, and I'm beginning to think twice about my assessment of this hostel. Certainly, it's got great character, but the (seemingly) semi-regular outbreak of bedbugs and the high price seem to have tainted my original view.

The best thing to do when there's a bedbug infestation is to wash all clothing at high heat, which is a problem for two reasons. Firstly, there's only one set of washers and dryers. Secondly, I have a lot of shirts that would probably explode (exaggeration) under high heat due to their permanent press designs. I will end up washing my stuff, but one cannot exactly wash their entire luggage (including backpacks and such), so in the end I can only hope that my stuff has not been negatively affected by this recent development.

As it is quite clear, I'm not in an incredibly happy mood about either of these issues. My hope is that I can cancel at least part of my booking on the basis of one or both of these problems, and that Shelley, who is also booked in for this hostel for the weekend, can do the same.

Almost as a footnote, I did end up going in-line skating yesterday. Alas, the skates they gave me were too large, so it felt a bit weird. I didn't crash though, which was good. And damn, it was hot.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Heatwave

It's damn hot today. Perhaps not as hot as it was when I was in the desert, but hotter than the past couple of days, reaching above 30 degrees. It's meant to stay like that for the next couple of days. According to the weather report, the whole northeast is meant to be experiencing high heat and thunderstorms in the coming days.

Since I'm here in Montréal for two weeks, I've decided to take it easy today, mostly hanging out in the hostel, and possibly doing a bit of grocery shopping or something. The hostel is a pretty cool place. Possibly not the best accommodation I've ever seen, but it does have a lot going for it. First and foremost (and definitely the first thing you notice after you check in) is the character of the place. Your first impression is that of pure class. The place is literally a shed, and that's not a bad thing. The wooden structure, and within it the wooden bunk beds, immediately makes Le Sous-bois a hostel that stands out from the rest. The free Internet, laundry, breakfast, and coffee are only positive afterthoughts. Even the bathroom area sticks to the theme. You can't help but love the sinks, which are basically plant pots with drainage installed into them.

The only downfall the hostel may have is the apparent lack of privacy. The majority of beds are all in one huge common area, covered only by their own personal curtains. Even the 'private' rooms are little shacks (which are really quite cool) outside, in the shared patio. However, this just adds to the whole character aspect. If you don't mind a bit of a sacrifice in terms of your privacy, you'll soon find out that it is to create a relaxed, old-school vibe. I'd almost state that it's like the Big Brother house, but that would imply boisterousness and bad behaviour. Not so. In fact, the open-community-style atmosphere is anything but. It's generally quiet and friendly, and disturbances are fairly rare. In short, I quite like this place. Definitely not a bad place in which to spend a bit of down time.

Experiencing Old Town

I started off my first full day in Montréal doing not much at all. I woke up close to midday due to my lack of sleep the previous day. My first order of business was to figure out what exactly there was to do, particularly in my part of town. As I soon found out, Vieux-Montréal (Old Montréal) is a great place to see some old architecture (which I always enjoy seeing). I had a long walk around, mostly taking pictures (a few of which are here) and walking along the Old Port along the St. Lawrence River. Despite the sights, I got tired a bit too easily, and I soon retired back to the hostel for a bit of rest, and also a bit of reading. I wanted to finish reading Xenocide, book three of the Ender quartet, before I left the city, so that I could leave it behind at the hostel and decrease the weight of my somewhat cumbersome bag.

I perhaps succeeded a bit too quickly in that task. After taking some night shots (which I have not uploaded yet), I came back to the hostel and read another (very long) chapter of the book before heading to bed (bedtime ended up being about 1 in the morning). I finished the book this morning, after having breakfast and determining that it was far too hot to do any strenuous activities, especially in the middle of the day. A good book, I have to say, but it left me wanting more (i.e. I really want to buy the fourth book now). I'll try to hold off until Toronto so that my efforts to finish reading the book in Montréal would not prove to be counterproductive.

Incidentally, the weather is meant to cool down on Thursday, the day when the Jazz Festival begins. I'm hoping to get at least a bit of in-line skating done on the F1 circuit (Circuit Gilles Villeneuve) before heading over to check out the festival's... erm... festivities. I'm actually expecting to get a fair bit of in-line skating done while I'm here since, apart from the Jazz Festival, I don't think there's two week's worth of sights left for me to see, so enjoying the lifestyle seems to be the best plan.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Montréal

Well, I made it. I'm finally back in Canada. The train was stinky because of the restrooms, but I survived.

The East Village

I did end up buying that camera from J&R, a retail store near City Hall. I had a $10 discount coupon from my free map of the city, so the camera ended up being around $350 after tax, included a 2GB Sandisk Ultra II Memory Card, which I decided to get since it was on sale. It was likely a lot better than I would have gotten had I bought it from a camera salesman.

I immediately set out to waste the rest of the near-empty stock battery on a final stint of sightseeing in New York. My first stop was the West 4th Street Courts, colloquially known as "The Cage". This is one of New York City's most well-known locations for the clichéd street basketball games you see on TV and in the movies.

After watching the game for a short period, I headed over to the East Village. This is the real New York. Forget the busy tourist meccas of Times Square and Broadway, the East Village is one of the places to be to experience the true Manhattan lifestyle. The buildings are old and yet retain their character from years past as trees sprawl all along the sidewalks. A plethora of small cafes pack with people sitting outside, enjoying the sun instead of the city lights. People in general seem a lot more laid back in this part of town. It was a great vibe that I wish I had discovered earlier in my stay.

One of the main stops I aimed to find in the East Village was "Physical Graffiti Corner". This was the name given for a small section of St. Mark's Place where the cover for Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti was shot. It was also supposedly where Jagger was hanging out in the music video for a Rolling Stones song. I really would have loved to have stayed longer, but I didn't want to stay out taking photos for too long, as the battery was still new, and I needed to sleep early for my train anyway. Thus, I made my way back to the hostel, had a bit of dinner at the corner pub and enjoyed a beer for the last time in New York, then went to sleep.

To the 5 boroughs

I technically did visit all five boroughs of New York City. The first borough I saw was Queens, when I landed in La Guardia airport on Tuesday, followed shortly by Manhattan, where I spent most of my time. I was on Staten Island for a couple of minutes when I caught the free ferry there and back for the view of the Statue of Liberty. I went to Coney Island on Thursday, which is in Brooklyn. Today, as I left Manhattan, the Amtrak train I was taking to Montréal traveled north, passing through The Bronx, completing my makeshift tour of the five boroughs.

Naturally, the Amtrak train was delayed. I was quite confused as to where to go for the train, and was directed to the ticket office by the person baggage check-in desk, who also informed me that there would be no checked baggage for the train. After lining up for about 10 minutes at the ticket office, they informed me that I didn't need to be there, and that there was a separate area for people already ticketed. They looked at me like I was an idiot, so they obviously didn't know how it worked in other places where you need to first show your ticket to get a boarding pass before heading to the waiting area. But anyway, I went to the right area (finally), and got my ticket stamped with a stamp saying "Canada" and waited patiently for the train, which ended up arriving about 15 minutes late. I got on the train, chucked my luggage in the luggage area, and sat down, knowing that by the end of the day I will be in Canada.

Despite the difficult time I had dealing with rogue traders, I did love my short week in New York. Things I regrettably missed out on were Flushing Meadows (home of the US Tennis Open) Yankee Stadium, the 59th Street Bridge, the UN Building (which would have been cool since it is technically on international territory), the Empire State Building... oh, and I guess a few hundred more stuff. However, that just gives me more reason to come back to this great city, and when I do, I will claim my "I (Heart) NY" shirt because I do love the place (side note: the only reason I didn't buy that $3 t-shirt was because I was lacking space in my bulging backpack).

New York City overview

Days spent: 5
Population: 18.5 million
Ripoff merchants: Unlimited
Theme song/s: Simon and Garfunkel - The 59th Street Bridge Song

Mock postcard: New York City

Pictures from New York and Chicago

Le Sous-bois

The train trip wasn't anything of note, except for the stinky toilets. For some reason they wouldn't flush, and so the smell carried on into the cabin. I ended up spending most of my time couped up in the snack car where the smell didn't reach.

When the train finally arrived in Montréal, I was far too brain dead to attempt to speak my limited French to the people, so thankfully all reports were correct in saying that most people spoke English here. I caught a short cab ride to my hostel, Le Sous-bois, an odd little place (I'll try to elaborate on that in my next post), then grabbed something to eat.

I didn't realize that today was St-Jean-Baptiste Day, a national holiday for Quebecois. Consequently, all shops were closed, barring some food joints (not that I got here early enough to shop anyway). Apparently it's gonna be a big party tonight. I'm considering going out despite my near vegetative state.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

The runaround

Ok, I admit to it... I fell for a cheap sales tactic.

Tip for travelers: When a camera salesman tells you he can get in a certain camera if you come back in so and so, don't bother coming back. They won't have the camera you're looking for, and they'll just try to rip you off some other way.

My guess is that they won't bother going below certain prices for the camera I want because it's in such high demand. Needless to say, I'm still without camera at the moment. I've found a retail chain that is selling it for $300, and I'm on the verge of just buying that for the sole reason that retail chains are more respectable than these rogue traders.

In any case, that's not the only thing that's been happening lately.

Midnight in Chelsea

...and Liza'a shuttle bus hadn't arrived to pick her up to go to the airport yet. She had booked it on Wednesday afternoon as the hostel said to book it at least 24 hours in advance. It was meant to arrive between 11 and 11:15 at night, but we waited until midnight (since her flight wasn't until 7 anyway) before calling up the service. Apparently they canceled her pick up without notifying her, which was rather inconvenient. Lucky she decided to get there really early.

We ended up having to catch the subway to the AirTrain connection for JFK International. I escorted her as far as the connection, since I had a 7-day unlimited ride pass, and she needed help carrying her bags around. Otherwise, it was actually quite safe to travel alone in the subway late at night. There's always other people doing the same thing (especially to the airport), so there's really nothing to worry about.

The train took about a two and a half hour round trip, meaning I got back home at around 2:30 in the morning. I crashed in my bed as soon as I got home.

At the drive-in

Apart from being annoyed by camera salesmen, I also partook in viewing a film at an outdoor film festival, the Tribeca Film Festival Drive-In series. It wasn't actually a drive in, because that would just be silly in the middle of Manhattan, but there were Dodge cars lined up in the middle of the aisles for VIP guests (Dodge being one of the sponsors). It was a nice outdoor set-up right in front of the Rockefeller Center, and the sound was very clear. Unfortunately, the brightness was a bit low on the projection, but I guess the city lights didn't really help.

The movie itself, Netherbeast Incorporated, was mildly enjoyable. The idea behind the story was clever, but the movie itself wasn't very well executed. It probably could have done with about 30 minutes to an hour more to set up the premise a little better. Still, it was a good experience overall, and I didn't feel ripped off because it was completely free.

Back on course

After a (really long) detour into the United States, I'm finally ready to head back into Canada tomorrow morning. My train for Montréal leaves early, so the rest of today will most likely consist of packing and resting, with the option of camera buying.

As for photos, you can imagine there's not a lot of new ones. I haven't uploaded any yet, but I did PhotoShop a mock postcard of Grant Park in Chicago. It's nothing special, I just wanted to try out a new style. It can be found here. I used two photos of the same thing from slightly different angles, and used one of the photos for each box (not necessarily alternating). I saw the style used in a photography exhibit inside the New York Public Library, and just had to copy it.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Coney Island

Still no luck with the camera. I went back to that store that had the sale, but they were sold out of the TZ3. The guy there said that after the discount, it would work out to be around $200, which is a really good price. He said to come and see him again on Saturday and he'd see if he can get one in from elsewhere. I'm hoping he'll be able to.

Since I didn't end up buying anything (and thus had nothing to carry around), we headed straight to Coney Island. Coney Island is home of the Cyclone, an old 1927 roller coaster that has the honour of being the most copied roller coaster in the world. It was quite a ride, with the drops being at steep angles, making the otherwise tame looking coaster a blast to ride on. It was definitely worth the $6 admission to go on an old rickety roller coaster that had some punch.

Another thing that had to be done at Coney Island was to get a hot dog from the original Nathan's Famous. I hadn't tried Nathan's Famous before, as I'm not really a fan of hot dogs, and being a big company, I was doubtful of its quality. After the first bite, all that was behind me. The hot dog (with the optional sauteed onions) tasted great, and their crinkle cut chips weren't too shabby either.

Overall it was a very satisfying (albeit short) day at Coney Island, an area with an old school oceanside amusement park feel to it. Definitely worth the visit if you're in the area and you have a bit of spare time.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Random Toys"R"Us queue... of doom!

When we walked past the Toys"R"Us in Times Square this morning, there were people queuing up outside the store, waiting for it to open. There was no new toy or game device that was coming out today, so I found this phenomenon particularly odd. Apparently this happens every day. I guess it's just another one of those crazy things that Times Square brings out in people. It's kinda like those lights that dazed me last night - I think the effect carried onto today, because I was getting very lost in terms of navigation, which is something I'm usually good at. Thankfully, Liza was there to set me straight. By the end of the day, the positions were reversed, and Liza started getting lost.

The day began with a storm, which in turn had began the night before. We got up early to try to get cheap tickets to a Broadway show and were greeted by light precipitation, and a excessively long line for the ticket office at Times Square, which had not yet opened (this happened at around about the time we saw that pointless queue for Toys"R"Us). We decided that we got there too late, and waiting in line would waste our time, so instead we went to hunt for a reasonably priced digital camera to replace my now defunct Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-T3.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 was what I had set out to find. It had appealed to me for two reasons - Panasonic's image stabilization system, since I have shaky hands, and the 10x optical zoom, which is pretty amazing for a compact digital camera. The first shop we went to didn't have any, and the second one didn't let us test out the camera (which I wanted to do to see if it was any good). Before searching for any more stores, we decided we'd check out the Statue of Liberty.

We didn't actually go to the statue. Instead of paying to go there, we were cheap and just caught the free ferry to Staten Island, which gave a pretty clear and close (enough) view of the copper lady also known as Liberty Enlightening the World. It was still cloudy when we caught the ferry, but the statue could still be seen clearly. We didn't spend any time on Staten Island, immediately making our way back to the return ferry once we got off the first one.

Our next stop was Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center buildings. I won't lie... my eyes were welling up with tears as I walked along the edges of the site. I barely contained them, and probably would have cried if I had read any of the memorials. It was a pretty long time ago but I still remember that night (in Australia) when it happened, and I was in utter disbelief of what was going on in that emergency news telecast.

After leaving Ground Zero, we headed to City Hall for some views of the Brooklyn Bridge, then headed back uptown to Grand Central Terminal, which was pretty cool, and had a statue of Jay Garrick, the original Flash. Ok, so it wasn't the Flash, it was the Roman God, Mercury... but to be fair, the original Flash's look was based on Mercury. Speaking of comics, we also ventured into Midtown Comics, where I finally found a copy of the black and white edition of Wolverine #32. I had some sushi at Grand Central Terminal before we headed back to the hotel/hostel for a rest break.

When we recommenced our search for the camera, we finally found a shop which let us play around with the camera in question. Unfortunately, the price they were asking for was still quite high, so we moved on. We found a shop that we had missed at Times Square, but that was no better. In fact, it was much worse. The TZ3 retails at around $350... this shop was asking for $500! It was obvious that the shop was there to sucker the tourists into buying gear that was clearly overpriced to the well-educated. Once I said that the price they had the camera at was $150 above retail price, they put it away, probably knowing that they won't be able to trick somebody who knows at least a small bit about cameras.

At this point, we were about to head back to the hostel via subway, but for some reason Liza's metro day pass wasn't scanning properly, and there was no station agent around, so we decided to walk a few blocks, maybe check out another camera store (if we found one) and then catch the closest subway station to that. As luck would have it, there was another store that we had missed (due to construction blocking our view earlier in the day). In fact, it was a store that Liza's mum had recommended. The store was just about to close, but the man in the store told us to come back tomorrow as they were having a sale. Normally I would feel dubious about claims such as that, but the store did have cheap prices in the display window, so I'll give them a chance.

The plan was to head home, eat something, then head back out to watch some baseball at a pub, but Liza's been too mesmerized by her new DS Lite and several games, so it's looking like we'll be staying in for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

New York City

The Big Apple is a lot like every other typical city, and yet unlike any other city in the world. You get all the things you expect in cities - bad traffic, crowds, and city lights - but in a much grander scale. The roads seem to run on the chaos principle, the amount of people wandering the streets is incredible, and the lights daze you more than any other city, with huge neon signs. I'm sure other cities in the world would have these things too, but perhaps not all these things at once at such an extreme. It's what makes New York unique.

We got into town at about 10:30 after catching an airport shuttle from La Guardia airport. On that shuttle ride we got to experience first-hand the chaotic nature of the roads. It was like the crazy traffic around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris - seemingly no road rules, and yet amazingly no accidents. When we got to our hotel (which is really a hostel), we waited a while before being able to check in due to the phones ringing off the hook with people trying to find a place to stay... apparently it was a good thing that we booked in advance.

After sorting out our things inside our room, we headed out in search of some of the many sights of New York City. The first stop was Strawberry Fields at Central Park, where there stood a small memorial to John Lennon, near the place street crossing where he was shot. The subway going to and from Central Park was quite packed, emphasizing the crowdedness of the whole city. Apparently the city holds about 18 million people - almost as much as the population of Australia!

Rockefeller Center was next, where we had a quick stopover at Nintendo World (had to be done) before heading up to the top for some views of the city. It was nice, and a lot more worth it than the Sears Tower disappointment in Chicago. Alas, my camera was getting to the point of no return in terms of operation. When we were done there, we checked out some shops, then crashed back at the hotel for a quick nap before heading out at night.

Times Square was an awesome sight. You've seen it on TV and in the movies, but it's something you really have to experience for yourself. You notice the lights even at daytime, but when it's night time, and you stand in the middle of that square, you know you're in New York. The lights dazed me momentarily, and I was in another state of mind (I would say 'New York state of mind' but that would just be too cheesy, so I won't).

We ate at a nice Forrest Gump-themed restaurant then had a look around various shops at this famous (insert any colour here) light district - something that many of the people that night had done. You just don't stop being amazed by the sheer volume of bodies walking around at all times of the day. One particular place we took note of was the ticket office where they sold cheap tickets to Broadway shows, which is on the cards for tomorrow night.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Chicago

Sitting at the airport McDonald's right now, waiting for our flight to start boarding, which is about an hour away. The AA desk here didn't seem nearly as complicated as the United one in San Francisco. Today, we're headed to New York City.

Please form ten lines in any direction you please

We got to the airport in the morning and split up to our individual flights - mine being United, and Liza's being American Airlines. Liza seemed to get through really quickly, while United seemed to have a confusion set of mazes to get through to get your bag checked in. Apparently my ticket was a paper ticket (despite it having an e-ticket number on the actual ticket), so I needed to go see an agent, of which there was about 3 servicing 10 lines. When I got to the front of the queue, I waited about 10 minutes only to be told that my ticket was a paper ticket I needed to be in another queue. Thankfully, the agent took care of it anyway. I couldn't have been the only one feeling that the system was a bit disorganized, because even the people who had tickets were getting a bit annoyed.

Having gotten through the first set of obstacles set by United, I checked my bag and proceeded through the security check. When I got to my gate, I found another set of fun and exciting challenges, United style. It wasn't so much a challenge for me as it was a challenge that they seemed to set for themselves, as they still had to assign seats to confirmed passengers. Why this couldn't have been done prior to boarding, I do not know. The flight was actually overbooked, and they were offering confirmed passengers a later flight plus a return ticket on any United flight anywhere in the United States just to free up room. I considered the offer, but without conferring with Liza and the people we were staying with in Chicago, I decided to just sit there and wait for them to call my name out and give me a boarding pass.

The flight itself was fine. I watched a movie and caught a bit of a nap before landing at O'Hare airport, reputed as the world's busiest airport. It wasn't really made to seem that way when I arrived, since the airport was really well laid out, and seemed to operate quite efficiently. In any case, I got to my baggage carousel and met with my aunt Jean and uncle Ernie. We then went to the AA terminal to meet up with Liza before heading back to their place in a northern suburb of Chicago.

The not-too-windy-but-quite-hot city

Our first day in the windy city was a mixture of expensive disappointment and cheap thrills. The Holography Museum was our first stop. The museum was pretty interesting, but the five dollar cover was a bit steep for such a small display. The Sears Tower was our next stop. I'll have to warn future travelers that this tall office building would only be worth the $12.95 to get to the observation deck if the weather is very clear (and I mean unlimited visibility), and if you plan to stay until night time, when I imagine you would be able to get some really nice night shots of the city. We got up to the deck after a short introductory movie to find haze as far as the eye can see. It was perhaps one the biggest ripoffs of the entire trip so far, but I guess we only have ourselves to blame for not considering the conditions (not that it looked too bad from down below).

We got out of the building soon after entering and looked for some excitement. We found it in Millennium Park. After a quick look of Buckingham Fountain, we headed to the north end of the long stretch of parks to find the highlight of the day - a giant reflective kidney bean. Oh, sure, it doesn't sound all that interesting, but trust me, it was damn good, especially after the huge disappointment of the Sears Tower. The shape of the artwork (a giant kidney bean, which gave its nickname) and the reflective surface made it a fun house of mirrors in one big structure. It was really cool. This proved to be our last stop of the day, and we soon headed back home.

Our second (and last) day in Chicago was a lot better than the first. We went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which was free, the conservatory, which was free, checked out the shopping district, which was free (except for the Levi's jeans I bought, which were half off - a lot cheaper than I was expecting to pay for a substitute for my ragged old jeans), checked out a skate shop, which was free, and got to see a crazy man, which was free. The story with the crazy guy was that we were sitting on the train, heading back to the house, and there was this random dude in the train car just laughing his ass off at nothing, speaking to random people and himself, and making absolutely no sense at all. A big dude walked into the car at one of the stations, and the crazy guy just started talking to him, as if he knew him. It was pretty entertaining. The only bad thing that came out of the day was that we missed the night's episode of Hell's Kitchen due to the show being shown an hour earlier in Central Time regions. We went to sleep relatively early to catch our early flight (6am) to New York City.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Farewell to the city by the bay

I always love it when I go to San Francisco. It's a great city, and the fact that I have lots of relatives here often makes it relatively cheap to visit. Tomorrow we leave for Chicago and further adventures.

The amazing expanding backpack

It's not a pleasant surprise when you are packing your backpack and all of a sudden its a lot fatter than you remember it being. I know I bought shirts, new shoes, and some books during my stay here, but I didn't expect it to make my backpack so heavy. I suspect that I may have to jettison a book or two and some unnecessary accessories before long.

It was a good thing that we returned our scooters today, as they would have added way more weight and space than our bags could have handled. The main reason we returned them was that while I was scootering around one day, some screw-on pieces fell off. I don't think it was too dangerous riding without those pieces, but the fact that it happened gave us a good reason to get our money back for them. Liza had also bought a skateboard yesterday, and had some problems trying to figure out how to fit it in her somewhat heavy bag. I suggested using it as a wheel-frame for her duffel bag, killing two birds with one stone.

After an hour or two of packing, it is finally safe to go to sleep and look forward to tomorrow's trip.

San Francisco Bay Area overview

Dates of residence: May 04, 2007 - Jun 16, 2007
Weather: Windy and foggy
Episodes of 'Lost' viewed: 32
Theme song/s: Arcade Fire - Cold Wind

Images from the west

Photos from San Francisco can be found here, and the photos from the road trip can be found here.

My camera's started to stuff up in the middle of the trip, so I haven't really taken a whole lot of photos, and the amount of photos in the coming months will probably be the same or less. However, Liza has a digital SLR and took loads of photos, so I'll try to poach them off her before she heads back to the UK and post them up.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Road trip USA: Conclusion

And we're back.

Last legs
(Bears gone wild)

Viva Las Vegas. I've been to Sin City before, but while I was underage. That's not to say that I even gambled this time, but it was still fun to go around the casinos. I actually wanted to play some poker, but the buy-ins seemed too high. That, or I just wasn't looking hard enough. There were also poker games where you played against the house, which were blatant ripoffs that should be well avoided.

The World Series of Poker was going on at the time, but I didn't bother going because the two-block walk to the Rio in the excruciatingly humid Nevada desert heat was just too much, especially since it wasn't the main event yet. Instead, we spent most of our time indoors, checking out casinos and shops, staying where the air was artificially cooled. We had a great lunch at the Harley Davidson restaurant, where Harleys both new and old were displayed on platforms mechanically dragged around through the ceiling of the shop and around the walls. It was quite cool.

I had a cheap prime rib for dinner at Circus Circus, where we were staying, and Liza managed to earn a cool $1.95 afterwards from the slot machines after careful strategies involving one dollar notes. She had $3.60 at one point but got too greedy. After Liza's gamblathon, we were both pretty tired from the day's travels (mainly the walking), so we finally called it a day and crashed in our hotel room.

The next day started later than planned, and the entire day turned out to be a mission. Still tired from the day before, we checked out of Circus Circus at around 8:30 and began to make our way for Sequoia National Park. The journey was marred by various stops (mainly for gas or food), and it took just over 7 hours to reach the national park. The roadwork within the park didn't make moving any quicker, so we slowly made our way to the first major attraction, the General Sherman Tree, the largest living tree in the world (in terms of trunk volume).

We had a side-quest of trying to spot either a bear or a cougar within the park, and had no such luck for the first couple of hours. At about 6 hunger had struck us hard, and we were forced to stop at the first place that served food, Wuksachi Lodge. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise for two reasons. First of all, the food was magnificent. I had the Trout Paccata, and it was worth every penny (though it literally cost me all that I had left in my wallet). Second, because of the delay in travel, we managed to be in the right place at the right time when Liza spotted bears above a stretch of straight road.

I quickly pulled over, slowly reversed a little, and there they were... bears... in what seemed to be some sort of mating ritual (so to speak). It was quite funny. The first time we ever see a bear in the wild and they're going at it right in the open. We couldn't stop laughing about it until we reached King's Canyon National Park (Sequoia National Park's twin park) where Liza promptly told the clerks at the Grant Grove Lodge about the bears. The clerks also found it highly amusing.

Now knowing that bears were around, we were kind of half-scared that a bear would come and destroy our car in search for food if we were to camp in the campgrounds or something like that. We also didn't have exact change for the campground self-registration, so we decided to move on towards Yosemite and hopefully pull over at a highway rest stop to catch some sleep. Unfortunately the highway wasn't a very big one, and didn't have any places to rest like a huge interstate would have, so we ended up at a motel in Fresno, which was en route to Yosemite. We figured that although we were paying a bit more than what we would have for camping, we would still have the benefit of being much closer to Yosemite the next day.

Today was the final day of the trip. It was actually supposed to be the second-last day, but we decided to drive back a day earlier to save on a night's accommodation. This also gave us more time to get our stuff out of the car and give it a bit of a clean before handing it back to the rental company. The day started off like most others on this road trip - with a drive to the next location. The final stop before heading back happened to be Yosemite National Park on a particularly warm day.

I guess it's not really unseasonal for it to be hot during the summer, but I class any day over 30 degrees Celsius to be uncomfortable. Today it peaked at 36, and I sure felt it, especially with my last clean shirt being black in colour. Still, I persevered and enjoyed the sights the park had to give me. It was a beautiful forest in a valley overlooked by massive granite monoliths, the most outstanding of which were El Capitan, the largest granite monolith in the world, and the Half Dome, which is a huge piece of rock that looks much like its name suggests.

Bridalveil Falls and Yosemite Falls were also nice, but the lack of water took away from their attractiveness. It was a similar story for Mirror Lake. It would have been nice to make the short trek over to the small lake, but we figured that it wouldn't really have too much water due to the drought that the area had been having this year, and the heat didn't really encourage a 2-mile round trip. We only spent a few hours looking around, and decided to try to make it back to the bay area by sundown.

The last hour or so of the drive provided much excitement. The on-board computer signaled that we had low fuel coming into the city, and we were trying to guesstimate how much we would need to put into the tank to make it back to the house, then back to the rental car company tomorrow. It felt really close in the end because the computer had changed its mileage range prediction from a number to simply saying "low", which could have meant anything from 40 miles or below. We did happen to make it back to the house, but refilled a dollar's worth of gas at the nearby station just to make sure it didn't run out on the way to the airport.

It feels good to be back in familiar territory. Being on the road for a long time was fun, but it sure had its limitations. Many a time did we run out of battery for iPods and thus ran out of music for the long drives. Many a time did we go without showers or flushing toilets for hours, even days. Many a time did we run into random logs on the road. Ok, maybe that was only once, but yeah. It was definitely an enriching experience, and has added a lot to my general knowledge base, not to mention some great memories. The one highlight for me that really stands out was seeing Bryce Canyon for the first time. When I saw the Grand Canyon as we drove into the park, my reaction was, "wow, that's cool." For Bryce Canyon I almost had to do a double-take. It was just so incredible. The stampede at Space Mountain and the bear sighting were also great.

Road trip USA overview

Days on the road: 12
National parks visited: 6
Car breakdowns: 1
Theme song/s: U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name, Steppenwolf - Born to Be Wild

Well, I guess that's it for now. We're headed to the east coast on Saturday (by plane this time), with Chicago being our first stop. Updates shall come as often as my laziness and net connection decides.

Oh, and a big congratulations to the Anaheim Ducks for being the first western conference team to win the Stanley Cup. They played well throughout the entire season, including the playoffs, and beat a very good opponent in the Ottawa Senators (whom I was backing by default since they were the last Canadian team left) and thoroughly deserved to win this year.

Road trip USA: Part 3

Ok, it seems that I posted parts 1 and 2 three times, which is a bit odd. I think I pressed back instead of editing or something. Oh well, it's fixed now. The trip's almost done, but before the stunning conclusion in part 4, you'll need to read...

Desert detour
(Where the streets have no name)

Driving to Joshua Tree National Park took us away from the coast and into the desert regions of the California, erm, desert. We drove through the Coachella Valley, where I had spent a few days about a month ago, to arrive at the national park's southern entrance. Unfortunately, the ranger station had already closed. We got in without paying the parks fee, but we also had no idea what to do at the park apart from what our Lonely Planet guides told us. We soldiered on, however, and stopped at places that looked interesting, including a rather treacherous bit of road (due to road work) to a vista point that overlooked the Coachella Valley.

At that point, the sun was beginning to set, so we decided it was probably a good idea to head to our campsite and set up camp before it got too dark. When we got there, the campsite registration office had also been closed, leaving us rather confused on the procedure for pre-booked campsites. We headed over to the area where we were meant to camp and found it completely desolate. There were barely any facilities, which was to be expected, and there were also no other campers there. This made the landscape under the setting sun behind clouds look very alien, which was neat, but it also made things rather spooky. We were afraid we'd get eaten by coyotes or something. The registration office was closed when we left early in the morning, so we left Joshua Tree National Park as clueless as we were when we entered.

The next leg of the trip was the Grand Canyon, which we were hoping would have more people and give us more information upon entry. The drive to Arizona's most famous national park was quite uneventful with the exception of the car trouble that left us stranded for 4 hours. Almost right after we passed the California-Arizona border crossing the Colorado River, we hit an unavoidable (and quite random) piece of wood on the road, completely messing up a wheel, a tire, and our plans.

We called the insurance company that we took out the car insurance with and they said the earliest they could get a replacement car to us was four hours, since they would have to send it out from Las Vegas. Fortunately, a kind tow-truck driver named Carl saw us pulling over to the side of the road, and towed us to the nearest city, Lake Havasu City, where we would then sit and wait for our new car. We spent our four or so hours there buying more stuff for our trip (mainly really cheap air mattresses - floating swimming pool beds for $1.50) and rethinking the next few days of our trip.

By the time the new car arrived, we had decided to spend an extra night at the Grand Canyon so we would have more time to take in the sights, thus scrapping our venture to a couple of eastern Utah national parks.

The Grand Canyon itself was huge. To our relief, we saw that the campgrounds there were much more populated, meaning no more coyote scares. It immediately showed that this national park was much more popular and thus more organized than Joshua Tree. We didn't get to do much the first night, but we did visit a fair few viewpoints on the second day, and on the day we left.

The consensus we reached was that we would go on to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for the Friday night instead of going all the way to Moab to see Arches National Park, saving us a lot of time and gas money. We set up camp at around midday at Jacob's Lake, which was really just a tiny little pond in somebody's yard. In contrast to this anticlimax, the highly recommended cookies at the Jacob's Lake Inn were very good.

The North Rim of the canyon was better than the south rim for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the higher elevation meant cooler temperatures, allowing for lush vegetation in and around that region of the park. Secondly, since the northern part of the national park was less accessible from the south (about four or five hours drive from the South Rim), there were generally less visitors, which is always a good thing (except in the case of completely empty campgrounds).

We drove around, again seeing the view of the Grand Canyon from several points, then headed back to our campsite, where we had more cookies from the inn. Bryce Canyon was the next stop, this time being a very forgiving two and a half hour trip across the Arizona-Utah border.

Breathtaking is the perfect word to describe Bryce Canyon. The Grand Canyon may have been amazing in its scope, but Bryce Canyon's beauty was incomparable. The red rocks that got their colour from iron oxide blended with the white/gray sandstone in just the right way to make the rock formations in the Bryce Canyon Amphitheater truly a sight to behold. I wish I could have been here for longer to venture into the bottom of the canyon and see the rocks from there, or been here for the winter when, I would imagine, the cross-country skiing views would be unlike any other place on earth.

The last few nights of sleep had been in very cold conditions, I suppose due to the high altitude. Temperatures reached below freezing on some nights, and I found it hard to sleep with my nose and ears stinging from the cold. In stark contrast, it was very hot when we reached Zion National Park. We were pleased to learn that the overnight temperatures don't often reach under 60 degrees Fahrenheit (around 15 Celsius). The park itself was also different to the two previous ones in that it was situated within the canyon instead of above it like Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon were (well, you could go into the canyon in those parks, but they involved rather hefty multi-day hikes). Zion would be our final desert national park stop before heading to Las Vegas.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Road trip USA: Parts 1 & 2

Okay, I'm in the middle of that road trip right now, stealing wireless from some random campsite. I've been blogging every now and then about our adventures, and I'll be posting them in parts. This first one is called...

San Fran frenzy
(Scooter quest)

The road trip really began a few days before we got the car. Liza flew in on Memorial Day Monday, and after an early night, we commenced being tourists when we hit downtown San Francisco, doing a tour of the city's sights. We did the outer landmarks, including the Embarcadero, Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Liza also got persuaded into buying some lenses for her camera since they were being sold for a really low price at Fisherman's Wharf (in some cases more than half off of what she would have paid in England). Unfortunately, the weather was quite cloudy when we went, which is rather typical of San Francisco, so the photos that were taken weren't incredible. After a short photo shoot at the bridge, we decided to head home. We ended up taking a bus that ran for about an hour before it reached the train station, and by the time we got home, it was about 9 at night.

The next day was a bit of a mission to find some mini scooters. We hadn't originally planned to get them, but as we were walking to the bus stop in the morning, we saw a kid riding along on one, and agreed that it would save us a lot of walking, as well as provide a lot of entertainment. We reached the city a couple of hours before noon, and had a bit of a feed after checking out Union Square. The shopping mall where we ate (a Westfield, oddly enough) did not seem to have any of the scooters and, according to one of the clerks in the Volcom shop, there weren't any places nearby that sold them. Fortunately, she gave us an address of a shop that she thought might sell them, and it close to where we were headed, so we soon set off.

The next stop was Chinatown. Hiking was not something that we were very happy to do, as we were both tired from the previous day, but we braved the hills to reach our goal - the fortune cookie factory. It was just a little hole-in-the-wall in a small alley, and at first we couldn't really locate it, but a nice old man called us over and ushered us in, giving us a free hot sample to eat and urging us to buy a bag. I'm not really a big fortune cookie fan, but Liza loves them, so she bought a huge packet of them. The store that supposedly sold the scooters was nowhere to be found and, the two of us not wanting to climb any more hills, decided to finally head downhill towards downtown again.

We stopped off for a smoothie at Carl's Jr. then headed off back to the Golden Gate Bridge in the hopes of getting shots in better weather. However, that was not so easy. After looking for the proper bus stop for 10 minutes, we waited about another hour for a bus that never came. We decided that catching a different route would be the best idea, but that didn't quite work out as planned either. The next bus ended up getting delayed 10-20 minutes, and when we finally got to the bridge, we find out that the weather had not greatly improved over the past day. We took a few more photos both off and on the bridge, and finally headed home, a lot earlier than the day before, with no scooters in hand.

A ray of hope finally shone upon us when my aunt informed me that the nearby Target possibly stocked the elusive devices. Like little children on Christmas morning, the two of us got impossibly excited, topped only by our childish giggling when we finally bought the things that we had struggled to find all day. At last, success!

We didn't do much at all the following day. A bit of scootering around was about the extent of the excitement for that day, which mostly involved watching some TV and getting food.

We finally picked up the car on the first of June, the Friday, and we promptly loaded it up with food and water supplies as well as some of our bags. Liza got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road pretty quickly, and we once again watched TV for the rest of the day. That was, of course, until I went to watch Arcade Fire at Berkeley.

It was a rather stressful drive over to the UC Berkeley Greek Theatre. I was driving alone as Liza didn't really know who Arcade Fire were, and couldn't afford buying a ticket to the show anyway. It was all well and good until the start of the Oakland Bay Bridge, which had the most horrible merge ever imaginable. Combine that with a car with really bad blind spots, and it was a recipe for a bad drive. Still, I did make it to the gig fine, after about an hour of driving and 10 minutes of looking for somewhere to park. It was a really great set at a nice outdoor venue. I got home just past midnight to fall asleep for about four hours.

Part 2

Bad weather
(A cruise down the California coast)

The road trip proper began at around 6am on Saturday morning. Liza took the first shift of the driving, which ended up being a marathon 10-hour shift (stops included) as she didn't really feel like switching around. The trip itself wasn't too remarkable. We only did a few stops at some scenic points or points of interest, and stops for food and fuel. Fuel was quite ridiculously priced on the road, even more so than in San Francisco. We filled only as much as we needed at expensive stops, and as much as we could at the cheaper ones.

At the end of the scenic stretch of beaches in the south part of highway 1, we finally reached Santa Monica, quite earlier than we had actually expected. Despite Liza being stressed out by the city driving, and thus getting me to find parking once we reached the city, we still had enough time to check out the beach at Santa Monica. I went for a bit of a swim, which was quite pleasant. We went to bed kind of early to try to get up early for the next day of tourism.

The agenda for Tuesday was going to Hollywood in the morning, and then back to the beach in the afternoon, and to some extend that did go to plan. We made it to Hollywood at about 9:30 after a good hour of public transport. The main attractions were Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the walk of fame, and the Hollywood sign, which was barely visible through the LA smog. I gotta say that while the charm of Santa Monica has changed my view of LA, I still think that most areas are quite unlivable.

When we got back to Santa Monica in the afternoon, it was still rather cloudy, so instead of going back to have a swim at the beach, we instead decided to check out the Santa Monica pier, home of a carnival type atmosphere, and have a scooter around Venice Beach. It was an experience that was both relaxing and tiring at the same time. Due to this, we soon went to bed after having an early dinner.

Disneyland was the next stop. The cloud soon subsided once we reached the park and the heat wasn't very welcoming. We tried to stay in the shade as much as possible, sometimes even going on a long indoor queue for a ride just to avoid the sun. The theme of the day was breakdown. For some odd reason, 3 of the rides that we wanted to go on were at one point temporarily out of order. Space Mountain was the most notable because of the fact that we were walking around for about 3 hours doing random stuff while we waited for it to be reopened, which was a bit annoying, because Space Mountain is probably the best ride Disneyland has to offer. Rumour has it that somebody had gotten stuck on it. When it did manage to reopen, there was a stampede after somebody shouted "Space Mountain is open!" and the queue was cascading within minutes of operations commencing. We were lucky to have a 'FastPass' that got us to the front of the queue right away, which was handy.

We soon left as the sun started to go down, and went back to our hotel room across the street. It was very conveniently located, but rather expensive. After short tourist moments at Laguna Beach, which was plagued once again by the bad weather (it had actually started to rain when we got there) and San Diego the day after, we were headed into the desert, where the bulk of our journey would take place.