Land of la

Apologies for the lateness of this post ! We’re all now back in Melbourne & have been getting over jet-lag, getting back to the reality of work, & in general, enjoying the rest of the holidays.

Our last stop — Los Angeles, California: land of shiny cars, congested highways, cheap shopping, & the rich and famous.

Disneyland = AWESOME !!! Highlight was Space Mountain which was this super fast roller coaster where you couldn’t see anything inside because it was decorated to be like space. Lowlight, getting totally drenched on the Splash Mountain ride >.< I guess I *should* have seen it coming sitting right in the front seat of the first carriage and all ! Thanks Liz for accompanying me on the ride due to MR being a bit of a pansy ;-P I’m sorry you got all wet too but wasn’t it an experience ?! X-D

This was taken in It’s a small small world. There’s nothing creepier than hollow-eyed figurines singing all happy @_@

Also, everything in LA looks somewhat familiar like the pier in Santa Monica where various scenes from some movies were shot here. It was to rain that day and the next, which with their invariable weather, was exciting. “Thundershowers” I think they called it !

Wearing clothes from Forever XXI (21 for those who don’t read roman numerals) ! I hate to admit it, but it’s a pretty awesome store. There’s a number of sections so whatever ‘style’ you’re into, you’re bound to find something for you ! Everything’s pretty affordable too.

Emma and her dad in front of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company in Forest Gump ! I really want to thank Russell & Liz for the stay. Really appreciated it !

– The end. Thank you everyone for reading ! –

(luckily, as I only had a couple of coins left on me >.< !)

… 2 months, exactly !

As Mookxi and I prepare to leave LA (and Emma prepares to eat more Red Robin, Pinkberry and stuff at the Cheesecake Factory), I thought it might now be appropriate to blog about New York !

(Accounts of LA are forthcoming and shall appear upon our arrival at home, due to supreme laziness.)

Anyway.

Immediately evident was that the subway system is nowhere near as efficient or user-friendly as London. So much guesswork was involved, although I am quite proud to say that I did not once catch the wrong train (although there was one incident in which Mel, despite my protests, led me astray).

Loved the grid layout of New York — that was so helpful when navigating, although the blocks are deceptively large and actually take a while to cover on foot.

Food was good. Cheesecake at Juniors, with the added bonus of the company of David James, was a favourite.

My first day with Andrew and friends, at the Natural History Museum and West Side Story, was another highlight. So was Andrew’s particular sleepy moment during a very interesting Whoopi Goldberg lecture. LOLLLL. MAD Andrew !!

Guggenhiem and MOMA — Best galleries ever, with the possible exception of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Brooklyn — Would love to tell you all about it, but I’ve only seen a stupid creepy warehouse, thanks to dodgy addresses ! Slightly creepy to drive up to what you anticipate to be a good shop, only to find an deserted, lonely street lined with closed warehouses.

Empire State Building — Went at night, so we had a brilliant view … but it was utterly freezing and completely windy. Nearly fell off the top !

Greenwich Village — Mel and I went there one day early for breakfast. Excellent food and even more excellent bookshops, complete with furry white and black cats wandering around.

… and we didn’t feel at all guilty about stuffing our faces (bagels, Maccas, cheesecake etc) because we were in the land of excessive portions !

Apologies for the harried manner of this post ! See you all in Melbourne in approximately a day !

Blogging for the sake of blogging

Howdy from sunny Los Angeles.

Caitland’s making me blog because she feels like crap. She’s been quesy for the past few days, poor baby (she hates it when I call her that).

Okay, she’s telling me that we need to talk about London, Scotland and Ireland, which is frankly going to be difficult considering how out of practice I am with all this blogging hoo-hah.

So.. London.
Transport system: Awesome. At least they have one unlike LA where everyone drives around in their look-at-me-i’m-a-big-SUV cars. That’s why they have smog. It was easy to navigate and very prompt (excluding the day Cait & I decided to go to Abbey Road only to find that the Jubilee line had been closed for repairs — damn them). Although, the constant reminder of ‘MIND THE GAP’ was slightly patronising. However, we didn’t mind too much because there were A LOT of cafes (*wink wink*) that we loved in Melbourne IN Europe !

Scotland
HOTTIE CENTRAL ! Especially in this cafe called The Tea House or something like that. This one particular cafe and his friend IN this cafe taught us a valuable lesson: spunk is not to be used in Scotland for ‘good looking person’ (Cait thinks, & I agree that it never has been an acceptable term) due to the fact tha when someone goes “WHAT A SPUNK” to them it makes them giggle. This is a G-rated blog so we’ll leave the rest to your imagination !

We also managed to do a day tour of Lochness, highlands and Glencoe and our tour guide, Pete, was HI-LAIR-RI-US ! Even when we weren’t laughing at his jokes, we were laughing at his accent. And also at the annoying Amrikans who sat next to me and wouldn’t stop talking about inappropriate things for the whole duration of the tour. As an end note, MR & Cait are officially in love with Scottish accents. Mookxi can already pull a Scottish accent and it would be too narcissistic to fall in love with oneself.

Nearly forgot to blog about Hogmanay which is a giant New Years street party (the biggest) which involved 12500+ people including Emma drinking rum & coke, Cait lending her hat (PINK & black stripes [ew]) to a totally random (but apparently charming) stranger, and Mookxi getting hit on right , left, and centre cause’ she’s a “very good-looking WOMAN” (not my words, some random Irish dude’s OKAYY ?!!). Auld lang syne was a bit lacklustre and the fireworks weren’t as good as when we had first arrived to see the bonfire but still an experience nonetheless.

Ireland
Got stranded at the port. We were told that we might have to stay the whole night (Cait disputes this recollection — but then what doesn’t she dispute ?! ;-P) but luckily we didn’t. Yay ! So there really wasn’t as much to do in Dublin as we had expected. Even their accents weren’t they ‘wow’. Their beer. Crap. Caitland tried it and can authoritively say that it is quite repulsive. On a plus side, it was good for its internet cafes. But on a down side, everything was hideously expensive and some guy in an Italian restaurant thought we were Amrikan (the highest insult there is). In an effort to repute this I said ONCE “cheers mate” but he kept saying it again and again and again like a broken record (player).

PS. Caitland liked St. Patrick’s cathedral and wants to own the long room @ Trinity College ! (Good for her)

Okay, so that was an effort and a half to type. Just came back from Disneyland so all funned out. Seriously, I got no more fun left in me. Just this hollow, black shell. JUST KIDDING.

Take care, & see you soon (waaay too soon for some ;-F)
Us.

Finally, finally blogging again!

Sorry, we suck.

It’s hard to believe that a whole month has passed without us even blogging about it.

Internet is hard to come by in foreign countries, irrespective of the fact that we were desperately trying to see everything in the free days we had.

So, a quick update in the remaining 17 minutes of internet time I have left in this dodgy net cafe:

Paris: Nice people. Bought a mug.

Lauterbrunnen: Lovely landscapes though it was a very very quiet town. Mookxi and I signed up for skydiving but that was eventually cancelled, due to bad weather. Indeed, it snowed heavily the next day.

Florence: In fact, it snowed so heavily that we were stranded for six hours in a bus on the way to Florence. Florence was amazingly pretty – am going to work for the rest of my life so I can go back.

Rome: Busiest day ever. So many photos! The Vatican was excellent and I’m unbelievably glad I’ve now seen the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s … the remnants of my Catholic past has yet to be completely jettisoned!

Venice: Got ripped off at a cafe. But we had red wine and cheese on the banks of the water (in front of a hospital, weirdly) which was excellent.

Salzburg: Christmas markets with mulled wine and bratwursts! And devil people smacking us with whips, their main target being Phillip (who also rubbed a horse’s arse).

Austria: Vapianos! Excellent pizza/pasta place … although we later discovered, to our disappoint, is actually a chain store.

Budapest: FAVOURITE CITY EVER.

Poland: WORST CITY EVER. Some of us got kicked out of toliets, out of bookstores and out of castles. (Emma loved Krakow.)

Prague: BEST CITY EVER. Amazing sights with amazing food. Nice people. Museum of Communism with propaganda postcards! Ironically, the museum decried the use of bias and propaganda in promoting communism yet the museum itself displayed a distinct and unbalanced inclination towards the capitalist system.

Berlin: OH MY GOD. The Berlin Wall. Checkpoint Charlie. My life is complete! Cold War history is the best thing ever! Except for the destruction it caused, of course.

Amsterdam: DRUGGIES. But lovely people who kept asking if I was lost.

London: Love it, love it, love it.

Will update with actual information soon because currently I only have 4 minutes left!

Won Won Won (the money, not the person)

We’ve been having very interesting food lately.

Crazy Pepper –> Crazy indeed. Last night we choose a full looking restaurant, ignorant of its revealing self-explantory name. Despite selecting the lowest level of the spice chart (there acutally was a spice chart featuring faces in various stages of melting from the sheer spiciness) we still died from the overwhelming intensity. Or rather, Emma and I immediately died. I think Mookxi held on a little longer.

They had the most excellent strawberry milkshake-like drinks though.

For lunch today, we ate at a Korean place in Lotte. Very nice — chicken in ginseng.

And since it’s me blogging, I doubt anyone is surprised to see that I have been much preoccupied with the food!

In other news, we also went to a twelve level department store and several markets today and bought a lot of crap … stuff. (To my sister Brea, I have numerous excellent earrings for you!)

There is literally a Face Shop, Tony Moly, Etude House and Skin Food on every single corner. And all are very very very warm inside. Seoul has amazing heating.

Later we met up with Mookxi’s friend Won, who was exceedingly lovely and generous.

Tomorrow we fly out! Very much looking forward to the 17 hour flight into London!

(Check out Mookxi’s poloroids below.)

Love all,

Caity

Caitland, being an idiot in Namu Guesthouse. Was so great to just sit there instead of constantly walking around !

Caitland forgot to bring a beanie so bought one in Hongdae. Apparently it’s the equivalent of Richmond or Prahran — young peoples area.

Love the Kongrish. X-D It never gets old.

Rotiboy is seriously the bomb. Was about to say ‘bong’, but no.. no bongs ! ;-P

Finally made it to Seoul !

It seems I can never get a break when it comes to arriving to the actual destination (referring to France & getting TOTALLY lost despite ability to speak French). But this time, it wasn’t our fault.

After hours of a typical 9 hour air plane ride, a stop in Hong Kong and a couple of inedible meals later, we finally made it to Incheon airport. We were all in semi-high spirits, and deliberating what to do tonight but sitting here in Namu Guesthouse, we’re all kind of feeling crap. There’s no better way to put it without fulling cussing out since our taxi driver got us lost for 2 and a half hours in a stuffy taxi ! >.<

Now all I can think about is how badly I’d like help from a Korean friend. Meanwhile Caitland is on facebook worrying about how many texts she wasted on her dad and Emma is on her shiny Asus EEE. She looks and feels sick. :-/

Tomorrow we plan on seeing one of the palaces and the changing of the guards ceremony, Seoul Tower and a bit of late night shopping in the Myeong-dong area ! Cross fingers that it all goes swimmingly. We’re in terrible shape right now and need proper sleep and a hot (edible) meal. >.<

Updated itinerary !

Got out tickets a bit ago. I can’t believe this is about to happen. It doesn’t feel real at all. I mean, we had been planning this since highschool (Eleni reminded me how unrealistic we used to be thinking that saving three grand would be enough X-D !) and had actually started properly doing solid research for it about a year ago or more.

Anyway, video post  just because. Hope you’re all enjoying your holidays or acing your exams folks ! ^.~

Pre-trip period

Organising and planning is exhausting. Especially on top of life. Blog will be active soon. See you in a bit !