Things to Buy (#4)

I need to buy a warm winter coat that is also incredibly stylish to get me through the English winter which will probably be the only cold winter I have ever experienced. I need to buy many pairs of gorgeous high heels including wedges and some boots. I intend to be stylish. I need to buy many many scarves including a giant wooly scarf that reaches to my toes and some dainty scarves that do little to stop the chill but look fabulous. I need to buy a small compact handbag for when I'm out and about and also a ginormous tote for when I go shopping.

Almost there!

There are a few milestones almost reached:

Me and Kirby have almost saved $1000 in our money jar

It's almost time for the 2 year countdown to begin on our big America trip

Vic is moving to Cambodia soon, and we'll be following her there for a visit

Vic is also almost home from her trip to England and I'll almost have all the Cath Kidston goodies she bought me

It's almost the end of the Sony Make.Believe competition and I find out if I've won a trip to Berlin and Tokyo


Almost, almost, almost... I just have to keep it in my head that I have to keep saving!

Places to Visit (#14)

© Jeff R. Clow

Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. I believe I've heard of this place before but I can say I've never seen a picture of it that is as amazing as this one! Sometimes I think I just want to go to places so I can witness pictures in real life, and have the possibility of taking something half as good. This picture is just phenomenal. 

Places to Visit (#13)

It seems that visiting bookstores and libraries is going to be part of my trip in many places along the way. This is El Ateneo in Buenos Aires, it used to be a theatre and now it's a bookstore. So I'd prefer to own this place as my own personal library, but I'd be pretty happy to visit it as a bookstore as well. Hopefully we'll be going through Buenos Aires. As long as our plans with our round the world tickets work out we'll definitely be stopping in here. 

Places to Visit (#12)

 

Yes the photo on the left may look like a gorgeous European forest and yes the photo on the right may look like a Bison which you would usually associate with roaming the North American wilderness... But here comes the ultimate combination ever (unless you include combining Bison with flying ala the Sky Bison) POLISH BISON! Okay so they are technically European Bison, but these ones are found in Poland in the Bialowieża Forest. It is a primeval forest, which I understand has nothing to do with dinosaurs, but sounds like it has something to do with dinosaurs: thus making it all the more awesome. 

We will be going here on our trip through Poland.

Things to Do (#5)

I'd love to go up in a hot air balloon. I've always wanted to do it, but I figured that the place that you go up in has to be pretty special for it to really be worth it. I wanted to do it in Burma, because I think it would be amazing floating above all of those shrines, but I never got the chance. I'd like to be able to tick this one off on my trip and so currently there are two places that I think it would be pretty cool. Hawaii and the Grand Canyon. As far as I'm aware everyone else is scared of heights, so it could be a bit of an effort to convince anyone to go with me, but it would be so amazing that I really hope at least one of them will. 

Asia

So I just booked a trip to travel with Kirby to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in February. It deviates from the whole America trip and uses up funds that could be used towards that. But I'm so excited about it. My sister has just got a job with Australian Immigration in Cambodia and will be moving there for a year, so it is a trip to visit her but also a chance to show Kirby the place where I really remember growing up.

It will be a short trip as the amazingly cheap flights had only a very short window, but in just over two weeks we'll be able to see Bangkok, Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh, Hanoi and Sapa. I'm so excited about revisitng Sapa and Cambodia as they are two places I missed on my last Asian trip in 2007. I always love Bangkok and Hanoi so I can't wait to go back there and see how things have changed again. I'm really hoping the best for Bangkok and that Thailand sorts out its problems soon. I'm a little sad about probably not being able to fit in any of Ho Chi Minh City, but it's such a short trip that it just isn't likely to be possible.

Now all that's needed is to pay my dad back for the flights and sort out accommodation.

Things to Do (#4)

I quite badly want to go cycling in Holland on a gorgeous old bike and ride through some tulips. I don't actually see me having much luck here, as I'm unlikely to do it by myself and Kirby isn't much of a bike rider due to her funny knees. The imagery of it is just so gorgeous. 

Favourite Places (#3)

I spent the first part of last year traveling around the South Island of New Zealand with my mum, dad and sister in a beat up car they called Westinghouse with a navigator they called Polly. We got to see some pretty amazing natural sites like Fox Glacier and Milford Sound, but as much as nature interests and amazes me I am still drawn to urban spaces. Dunedin was one of my favourite places during the trip. After our family tour of the Cadbury factory I got to leave my family and explore the place by myself, it's a gorgeous place with numerous alley ways and side streets and great steep roads that lead you to places where you can stare out over the city. I also came across some really interesting street art that was both beautiful and disturbing at the same time. I would love to go back to Dunedin one day and spend some more time roaming the streets and perhaps experiencing it a bit more than I was able to the last time. 

Places to Visit (#11)

The Georgia Aquarium is apparently the largest aquarium in the world. It has Whale Sharks and Beluga whales as some of it's most famous attractions as well as thousands of other sea creatures. They even have opportunities where you can spend a night camping at the aquarium or dive or snorkel with the whale sharks. Aquariums walk the fine line between amazing me and scaring the hell out of me, but I still think I'd like to go. 

Places to Visit (#10)

When I went to America back in the day I remember going to either a Pepsi or Coke building that had free tastings where there were fountains and drink stations everywhere and you could sample as many as you liked and drink as much as you liked. In my memories it was like the Willy Wonka factory of soft drinks. From what I can tell the World of Coca Cola in Las Vegas, which was probably what I visited, has closed down but the main one in Atlanta is still very much in business. I can't seem to work out whether they actually have a spectacular drink fountain like I remember in Vegas, but I hope we can manage to stop though there.

Places to Visit (#9)

Basically this place looks like heaven. It called Peanut Butter & Co is in New York and has a selection and has a selection of fairly normal sandwich choices (P&J, Fluffernutter, honey with banana and Peanut butter.. and bacon), but then it has amazing things like Spicy Peanut Butter and chilled grilled chicken, with a little bit of pineapple jam. Or Cinnamon-Raisin Peanut Butter and vanilla cream cheese, stuffed with crisp apple slices. If you're jaw is not already on the ground with a puddle of drool perhaps you need to wash it all down with a Fluffernutter Shake! Apart from Bison, I think that my favourite thing about America is their obsession with putting peanut butter in almost anything. Drooooool. Check out their menu!

P.S. Thank you Rhiannon for suggesting this to me!!!

Places to Shop (#4)

This is the Apple store in New York, and it looks amazing! We don't have an Apple store in Adelaide, Next Byte is the next big thing. While all the products are obviously the same it's not the same thing at all. I don't think I've actually ever been into an Apple store before in my life. So we will definitely be paying a visit to the one in New York. Although this is places to shop not places to visit and New York probably wouldn't be the first place I'd be likely to shop. We'd probably stop in the the closest Apple store when we first touch down so that we can pick up a nice iPod Classic (as long as they are still around) and perhaps a nice shiny new iPad for me. 

Places to Shop (#3)

Urban Outfitters is another one of those stores that either possibly doesn't ship to Australia or has incredible shipping fees. I think I once tried to order from the UK site and it claimed it would cost me £75 to ship a £15 t-shirt. Saying that I like a lot of their stuff and when you're actually buying it in America is seems very reasonably priced. There isn't really an equivalent sort of store in Adelaide from what I can tell. They are once again all throughout America so I don't really care which one we go to.

iPad

As previously stated I would like an iPad. Part of me wants one because they are incredibly gorgeous and sexy, but there are also practical reasons why I want them.

- Frankie Magazine has an online subscription. I could subscribe to this and view it on my iPad when overseas because I wont want to be searching for the magazines over there and carting them around with me.
- Lonely Planet offers PDF Guidebook Chapters. This would be great for places like South America where we are visiting a couple of countries but not spending that much time there. I could download the chapter on El Salvador for $7 or buy the guidebook for $50. Plus it eliminates the need to carry around loads of unneeded guidebooks.
- Superfuture has PDF travel guides that you can download. It would be much handier having these downloaded onto an iPad rather than carrying around pieces of paper that would get damaged and lost.
- I could store movies on it (At least I'm fairly sure I could). This would be handy for plane rides or the long car trips if I needed to zone out from everyone else.

I'm sure there will actually be other reasons, but it really does seem like a great device to me. Sure I can do all of these things on either my iPhone or my Macbook Pro (Yes I was purposely pointing out my Mac obsession there), but the iPad is that perfect portable size inbetween. They haven't even been released in Australia yet, but if I were to get one it would probably be one of those things that is best waiting until America anyway.

Places to Shop (#2)

I don't have a particular Cath Kidston store to visit, but I definitely need to spend a lot of time inside at least one of them. I so far haven't actually ordered myself anything off of the site, postage is preposterous and anything that you can buy in Australia is marked up so highly that there is no way I would buy any of her stuff locally. This is why I find myself in a predicament because I am absolutely in love with everything Cath Kidston creates whether it be clothes, home wares, bedding, accessories or bags. I think that purchases from here will deffinately send me towards excess baggage when I do leave the UK (At least it will be very pretty baggage though!).

Places to Shop (#1)

In America I plan on spending squillions of dollars at the American Apparel store in LA. I say LA because that's where it originated and while they are all over the country everything is going to be exactly the same everywhere so I may as well go where it all started. We now have American Apparel here in Adelaide, but despite the exchange rate everything is double what it would cost in the US. I'm not one for their super short shorts or their midriff tops, but I love their stockings and their plain tees and skirts. I'm looking forward to buying American Apparel in a country where it actually is affordable clothing.  

Things to Buy (#3)

Okay, so this isn't exactly a thing to buy... because this baby is all mine! At least it will be for my birthday at the end of this year. It's called the DSC-HX5V, and I got it today after a Sony product night where I got it at the discounted price of $379 as opposed to the SRP of $629.

It was a tough decision because I was previously looking at buying a Panasonic, mainly due to their Leica lens and the fact that Canon just hadn't managed to woo me with any of their point and shoot high zoom cameras (Don't worry, I'm still looking at you Mr. Canon DSLR). I hadn't even considered a Sony. It has a Sony G series lens which are generally used in the DSLR lenses, Full HD Video, GPS functions so that during the trip I wont get mixed up over where certain photos were taken, Intelligent Sweep Panorama, and a 10x Optical Zoom. Some good features and ones that are almost identical to the Panasonic. I can't wait to get my hands on it, although I don't think I'll be using it too much for my trip because I don't want it to meet the same fate as some of my other cameras.

Places to Stay (#1)

I have always been amazed by ice hotels, or by ice structures in general. When I was in New Zealand last year we went to an ice bar in Queenstown, even though you were only in there for about an hour it was just an amazing feeling being in a room entirely made from ice, drinking from ice glasses while you were rugged up in warm coats. There are a few ice hotels around the place, a lot of them in Scandinavia, one of them is in Canada. The Ice Hotel Quebec has a couple of different options but the standard option really isn't that expensive and it would be a great experience. Whether we stay here depends on what everyone else wants to do, but if the others would like to I'm sure it would be fantastic for one night. 

Favourite Places (#3)

I visited Belle Ile En Mer when I was about 14, on a school trip to France. It was during the holiday period when I was staying with my host family. All of the other kids were staying with people that were friends with each other, but I was staying with someone in a different grade who lived so far away from everyone else. I was feeling pretty down and home sick, and then my host family took me to this island. I can't really remember it exactly but I remember that it was beautiful. It was on the ferry over to the island that I finally managed to get into Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and I think it was something to do with the beauty of the island that helped turn it into one of my favourite books. When we were there I had one of the best meals of my life, it left my host family baffled, because I had told them I didn't like fish for some reason and I ordered fish without quite knowing what it was. I'd love to go back here one day, the name is truly descriptive of the place.

Places to Visit (#8)

I don't like Elvis. Not particularly. I like Suspicious Minds, but that is about it. What I do love is how much other people love Elvis. This is why I want to go to Memphis and I want to hunt out as many 'Elvis spots' as I can. I'd probably feel similarly towards Michael Jackson, if he had also died before I was born. Instead I just don't like Michael Jackson and I also have no intention of visiting any sites related to Michael Jackson. Elvis managed to live, sing, die and be imortalised all before I was born and so because I didn't have to witness it first hand I'm quite happy to relive the mania on a road trip round America. 

Places to Visit (#7)

Theme Parks Issue

1. Disney World - Orlando, Florida

2. Universal Studios (Harry Potter World!) - Orlando, Florida

3. Disney Land - Anaheim, California

4. Universal Studios - Los Angeles, California

5. Six Flags Magic Mountain - Los Angeles, California

6. Kings Island - Mason, Ohio

7. Cedar Point Amusement Park - Cedar Point, Ohio

8. Nickelodeon Universe - Mall of America, Minneapolis 

So, apparently everyone else coming on this trip hates rides. This really isn't a good thing, because although I like rides I am terrible on rides. Mostly the only reason I go on rides is because I get talked into it. I definitely wont be going on any rides if I am the only one out of our group of for to go on one, so hopefully the others will at least give it a go because I think visiting theme parks has got to be one of the main things about visiting America. 

I'm still not sure whether it is worth us going to both the LA and Orlando Universal studios. Is there anything LA has that Orlando doesn't? I've already been to the LA one, when I was younger, and from what I remember it was pretty good but it would possibly be a waste of money if there was nothing different between them. 

Favourite Places (#2)

So I've been to Chiang Mai twice, and both times it was amazing but a completely different experience. The first time I believe I was about 8 and I went there with my family. I remember we were staying in this small guest house that had fish in a fountain downstairs that I would feed. We were there for about a day and then we went on a trek which in my mind was about a week long but was probably no more that 2 or 3 days. We got to stay in a local village, meet lots of people, trek up hills and through rice fields, ride elephants and rafts. It was pretty amazing even if I didn't really appreciate it at the time, because I was 8 and my idea of a good holiday was somewhere with a nice hotel room with good tv channels. I'm also pretty sure that I fell in the river when we were rafting on the trip, I have a tendency to fall in bodies of water. 

The second time I visit Chiang Mai was about 8 years later at the start of 2007. I didn't do any trekking, but I drank margaritas at a mexican restaurant, visited the rooftop bar and pretended I was older than 17, watched a thai film at the movies, got snot wiped on my by this baby elephant, taught my friend what a 'beer bong' was and also won a skulling competition with a Chang beer long neck. I was on my trip after finishing school, when most people take months off to visit Europe I spent my summer before uni visiting my parents in Fiji and then meeting up with old friends through Thailand and Vietnam. I didn't do any of the same sorts of things that I did the first time I was in Chiang Mai but I had an equally fantastic time. We also went on a road trip up further north nearer the Burmese border where we visited the Opium Museum which is one of the best museums I've been to in Asia (granted I haven't been to that many). 

I would love to go back through Chiang Mai again and hopefully have an experience that would be an amalgamation of both of my previous trips. 

*EDIT* That lovely girl in the photo is not me by the way. It is my friend Allie who's birthday it is today, so it seemed quite apt to write about Chiang Mai on this occasion. 

Things to Do (#3)

One thing I want to do in New York is eat Frozen Yoghurt on the steps of the Met. For 5 minutes I can pretend that I AM Blair Waldorf and that my boyfriend IS Chuck Bass. 

Things to Do (#2)

I am not leaving American until I have seen a Bison. Whether it be while we are trekking (okay probably not trekking) through Yellowstone National Park or at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco where they have a Bison paddock. They are such fantastic looking creatures, perhaps their only downfall is that they are not Sky Bison and cannot fly. Other than that I'm fairly sure they are the coolest creatures in the world!

Favourite Places (#1)

Okay, so this isn't somewhere I'll be going on my trip because I wont be going to Vietnam. But this is one of my favourite places that I've ever been to. It's called Sa Pa, and it's to the north of Hanoi. I've been there about 3 or 4 times and it is a truly magical place. At least twice (my memory is a bit shaky) I stayed in a place called the Victoria hotel which is this gorgeous hotel on the top of a big hill and you'd wake up in the morning and it was always cold and you'd walk from the hotel rooms to the breakfast dining area through this mist that was everywhere. It was so unlike the rest of Vietnam in so many ways not only by the climate and the setting but also by the people there. From what I can remember the two main ethnic groups were the H'mong and the Dao and they have amazing traditional outfits and were always so incredibly friendly, we had girls who would just give us friendship bracelets that they were selling for free. 

It's hard to recall everything exactly because it's slowly getting on to 10 years since I've been there. I wish I went there back in 2007, but it's not the sort of place I would do on my own. I'd love to go back there one day and I hope that it is still the same. I know I'd be a bit upset if my favourite part of Vietnam had changed as much as the rest of the country. 

Places to Visit (#6)

This place is called Alnwick Poison Gardens, in the UK. It contains all sorts of poisonous and narcotic plants, I love things like this!

Places to Visit (#5)

I watched a documentary once and it was about Hemingway's house in Cuba, basically it was about how people wanted to help restore it and stop it from getting damaged by the humid climate but the US didn't want to do anything that could help Cuba's tourist industry. I really like Heminway and ever since watching it I wanted to go there and see his house, unfortunately getting to Cuba isn't the easiest thing in the world, and even though we'll be right round the corner of it when we're in Florida you can't actually visit it from America. That was why I was very happy to find out that there is also a house of Heminway's in Key West that also serves as a Hemingway museum that we will defiantly have to visit when we're down that way!

Apparently it is also filled with about 60 descendants of Heminway's 6 toed cat. 

Atlas Obscura

So I discovered this website, Atlas Obscura, today. Expect many more posts because this site is full of awesome places all around the world!

ALSO today I went to kikki.K and picked up my travel organiser and yesterday my Lonely Planet USA arrived, so now I'm all set to start planning and (hopefully) stop spending!

Places to Visit (#4)

Countries I would love to visit in Europe:

England
Ireland
Scotland
Wales
Portugal
Spain
France
Italy
Belgium
Germany
Netherlands
Poland
Greece
Belarus
Ukraine
Switzerland
Austria
Russia
Denmark
Sweden
Norway
Finland
Iceland
Luxembourg


So not too many then...

Things to Buy (#2)

1. kikki.K Bon Voyage Travel Organiser $39.95, 2. Canon EOS 50D $1599, 3. Panasonic Lumix TZ-10 $699, 4.  Apple 160GB iPod Classic $329, 5. Knock Knock Airplane Bingo $8, 6. Apple 64GB iPad $?, 7. White Nintendo DSi $199

101 Things to Do Before You Die

I bought this book a couple of years ago, I would have been about 15 or 16 at the time. My brother in law bought a copy for my sister and I was really intrigued by it. Because of this book I got past my fear of sharks and went Scuba Diving in Fiji and I made sure I convinced my dad to take us to Taveuni to stand on the international date line where we stayed in a gorgeous eco-lodge. So on our trip this book will be prompting me to visit some of the fastest and biggest roller coasters or go see the Northern Lights or maybe even make me sky dive or bungee jump or go on a hot air balloon ride.