I must have like PMS or something. I feel like since I left Orlando I’ve just been really moody and sensitive. I mean, fair enough that when I was dropped off at the Orlando Airport that I cried – best case scenario is that Jess gets to take a mini vacation in the next month and I see her again – we have hypothetical plans for said meet up but it isn’t set in stone and it’s dependant on a few other things. Or perhaps one day I’ll come back to the US. But the reality is that I might never see her or any of the people who I meet again. That’s the reality, I’m not trying to be negative, I’m being realistic. I might go home, get settled into ‘real life’ and it just might not happen. It’s not like farewelling a family member or a friend who lives a short flight away. I think it warrants being sad about. But then when I arrived in Washington DC, I was once again feeling really, really emotional. I got on the bus that was to take me from Dulles Airport into the city and it was packed and people were being really rude and ignorant and had all their stuff in the aisle and I had to like, LIFT my suitcase above their stuff in the space of the tiny bus aisle and I felt like saying ‘MOVE YOUR FUCKING SHIT, I’M TRYING TO FIND A SPACE TO STAND IN HERE.’ I literally was teary – yes I know, not really a big deal, I had to stand, not the first time I’ve done it and won’t be the last. It’s not like I’d typically get upset over this sort of thing! And then I was dropped off at the metro station and had to get the metro north a few stops and it’s the kind where you load money onto your ticket and you use it when you get on and when you get off and it takes off the requisite amount and it didn’t work and I just wanted to find my freaking hostel and get inside because I was hot and tired and hungry and pissy. And the lady from the metro station asked ‘where did you come from?’ meaning what station – to work out how much money I should have on there – and in my moment of teariness I just could NOT remember what the name of the station had been and I said tearfully ‘Australia! I don’t know!’
Finally, I got out of the damn station and found the hostel, it was a few blocks away. I had to wait a while to get checked in because there was a bit of a back up but that was okay – I was sitting inside on a couch. Check in was fine, was taken to my bunk – bottom bunk, yay! – and I was able to get my laptop hooked up with the wireless to use Google Maps to find the nearest grocery store. The hostel was in a visually really cute sort of historic area, lots of old buildings, that style where you go up some steps to get in the front door and then there’s a lower level which is at street level, you know? I gather it is also in the Hispanic/Latin area; the nearest grocery store turned out to be, like an international foods place (read: kinda weird food). The whole hostel was really hot – it had these mini cooling units set out sporadically where if you’re like RIGHT in front of it then you’re cool but anywhere else and it hardly hits you. The dorm room was insanely hot and I was on the opposite side of the room from the tiny cooler. Thank Goodness I was super tired otherwise I never would’ve gotten to sleep.
I should prelude my round up of the things that I saw/visited in DC by highlighting to Americans/British people studying in America reading that my knowledge of American History and politics is pretty minimal. I know that Obama is the head honcho, I know that George was the first head honcho, my knowledge of Watergate is from seeing the movie Dick, I mostly recognised things in DC from the movie Forrest Gump. You recognise things but you don’t quite understand the extent of their importance in history.
I started out my morning by getting the metro to Smithsonian station, where I wandered along The Mall where all of the Smithsonian Museums are. I took some photos at the Smithsonian Castle, then headed to the Air & Space Museum which is evidently the world’s most visited museum. I figure hey, if it’s free... why not? I don’t know. I’m not really into museum style learning. You could spend a whole day in one of these museums if you were actually going to walk through every bit and read every little piece of information and take it all in. I did the speedy tour – I took some photos of cool looking things, found the section on planets to see what they had to say about Pluto (so sad. I’m still upset. Pluto is a real planet, dammit!) and that was pretty much it. I walked back in the other direction along the Mall to the American History museum and spent a little more time there but still didn’t look at everything in detail. It was soooo crowded – there were zillions of like, school age groups and just walking through was giving me Wizarding World flashbacks. I had lunch in the cafeteria and paid a ridiculous price for a cheeseburger (it was nice eating beef. I’ve been eating chicken chicken and more chicken) and a cookie and diet coke.
My next stop was the White House. Embarrassingly I saw the Treasury Building first and I thought that was it and I was like, um, where’s all the security and stuff? Then got closer and could see the sign lol. I kept going and THEN I found the White House. My ‘that’s it?’ reaction occurred from the south side where you’re really, really far away. I set out to check out the north view – stopping at a Starbucks on the way (I shall claim it to be the Starbucks that Obama would go to) to not only get a cold drink but to just escape from the heat for a little while. The northern view is more impressive, I must say. After bidding Obama farewell, I spent the afternoon literally wandering around in the Penn Quarter, checking out things like the Ford Theater, various government buildings, the Old Post Office (where, seriously, to get into a crappy little food court I had to have my bag go through an X-Ray scanner. I’ve never been bag checked so many times in one day before.) By this point I was EXHAUSTED and I had a lot still planned for the day – the main thing being that at 6pm I was going on a walking tour. So I decided to go to the park near the Washington Monument across the road from where the tour was leaving and chill. I sat on a bench doing nothing but people watching and listening to music for 30 minutes, then I laid down on the grass and I think I actually cat napped. My feet were grateful for this more than an hour of downtime.
The walking tour was akin to those that I did in Europe; you don’t pay anything upfront, you’re ‘morally’ meant to tip but I suppose how much you tip is really up to you. In Europe people paid between 5 – 20 in whatever currency it was. Anyway, for me, I really wanted to do this tour because if I went and looked at a lot of these historical monuments on my own it would be like ‘oh okay, so it’s a big stone thingy high in the sky. Awesome. Snap. Next.’ The walking tour goes for about two hours but in that time you only over just over a mile – you stop, the guy talks about places, you’re walking fairly slowly – it’s family friendly, it’s advertised as being fine for kids. Through the course of the walking tour not only did the guide, Christopher, talk about the actual monuments that we visited but when we could see things like the White House from afar he talked about it, also the Capitol and Smithsonian and just generally about DC and its history. We physically went to the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial... I know I’m leaving something out. The sky had been darkening throughout the tour and just as we arrived at the final stop at the Lincoln memorial it started to pour with massive thundering going on as well. Everyone who had been in the vicinity of the monument being a tourist clambered up the stairs and sheltered in the undercover area at the top where the noise was deafening between all the talking, shouting, tour guides trying to control their groups and the rain and thunder. I bid farewell to Christopher giving him $5 (probably a really minimal tip but I saw a guy with a family of 4 give him $10 so I felt better) because there’d been a break in the storm. The walk to the closest metro wasn’t short – surprising that they’d actually plan this tour to end in a random place away from public transport – but it took me through the cute area of George Washington University and then I had the pleasure of boarding the metro at a station called Foggy Bottom.
By the time I got back to my hostel it was after 9pm and I was starving and proof of how starving I was is evident in that my two minute noodles were DELICIOUS and I really don’t particularly like two minute noodles – I don’t even know why I’d bought them the afternoon before, really. The next morning I set out to the metro station taking a different route to try and find this other grocery store I’d Googled – wayyy better than the other random one. Seriously, I don’t know if Australia is expensive or if the US is just cheap. My biggest weakness in any grocery store is the bakery department. In the US, they have like a whole section with donuts and pastries going at like 60c each. RIDICULOUS. In Australia, they’d be like $2 to get a single one. Anyway so yes, weakness + really cheap = me buying food that I really don’t need but that I just want and it’s like ‘shit, for 60c, why not?!’ Breakfast in hand, I headed for the Capitol area, where I went to the Library of Congress (one of the most ornate buildings I’ve ever been in; I think the only more spectacular building was the Palace in Bucharest) and to take some photos from the outside of the United States Supreme Court and the Capitol.
I got back on the metro to spend the rest of my day in another state, to be technical – in Virginia, just over the river. I started out at the Arlington Cemetery, which I hadn’t really heard of but Jess had recommended and then I saw it in my guidebook and so I figured why not. The grounds are really huge and to be honest I was having a lazy day – my feet were already sore, my knees were sore, my thighs were sore – so I paid $7 to go on the little train thing that takes you around the massive grounds and stops at the main locations and narrates other ones along the way. I wasn’t going to be caring enough to go and walk around and look at every person of notes grave site so this thing was pretty much perfect, taking me to the two main things that I wanted to see – being the burial place of JFK and his family; and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. JFK’s was quite spectacular with like, a flame thingy and the eeriness was particularly poignant – people are chatting and talking and then they go past the sign that says to be respectful and quiet and they actually pay attention to it.
The Tomb of the Unknowns is visited mostly for the Changing of the Guard which occurs every half hour – hour depending on the time of day/season. The Tomb is guarded 24/7 in all weather and the whole situation is very dramatic and taken very seriously, guarded by real trained military in a proper ritual ceremony. From a few places around the cemetery there were pretty views of DC, I guess it’s a bit more elevated, but unfortunately it was kinda hazy so my photos didn’t really turn out well :(
After leaving Arlington Cemetary I headed to the Pentagon – I should say, I TRIED to. I got out at Pentagon Station and was met by signs telling me that photography is not allowed, with security guards everywhere. You can’t go in unless you’ve prebooked a tour. There is like a Pentagon Memorial there from 911 but there was all this security going on and I couldn’t get through the way you had to go to get to it so I don’t know what the hell was going on but I didn’t care enough to try and make it happen and instead made my way straight back down to the metro to go to the next station, Pentagon City – which essentially is a mall. I had my first Panda Express experience and yes I had the orange chicken which was fantastic. The mall itself was just a mall, really. I had Starbucks before I left making it a rather expensive trip to attempt to look at the Pentagon.
A part of me thinks I should’ve done a bit more research and then perhaps my time in DC would’ve held more meaning, in a wider historical context. I still really enjoyed it – I know enough and I’m generally cultured enough to understand the importance of the things I was seeing and the walking tour was a highlight, I guess because I really was provided with the sort of information that I like to hear – just like how in Europe all of my New Europe walking tours were city highlights for me. Walking through the streets near the White House and the Capitol I felt very... insignificant. These men and women hold such wider power. For all I know, the guy who ordered at Starbucks before me is some highly important person in the Obama administration and he’s responsible for some policy which will affect not only the United States but the wider globe. I enjoy the concept of making it all more real – when I was in London and they pointed out where Charles and the family live when they’re around, it was a case of taking the unreal and turning it into something more tangible, which I greatly appreciate.
I wish I’d had the chance to go out in DC but there really didn’t seem to be much of a party culture at all; even at the hostel people were sitting around drinking beer but not really going out. A couple of British girls I’d been chatting with, they went out on my last night and they said that everyone was looking at them like ‘why are you dressed up, where are you going?’ as though going out is an abnormal thing to do. It would’ve been cool to go to a bar near the White House and have a cocktail and think that I’m drinking with Obama’s buddies.
Next stop after Washington was Philadelphia – I’m finishing this entry on the bus leaving Philly. So hopefully I can catch up in the hours ahead. :)
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Where dreams come true: Orlando, Florida
Florida is one of the states of the United States which I think non-Americans have a little more knowledge of – even if it is very limited. Spring break, CSI: Miami, Theme Park Central, the beach, old people retiring in Florida. It all doesn’t really seem to mesh logically at all; and yet this is the outside perception. Two of my closest online friends have been living in Florida, when I originally booked my trip the hope was to meet both but life intervened and didn’t want both meetings to happen. That’s life – I bitched and moaned and then all I could do was move on – complaining wasn’t going to solve anything or make anyone feel better. So by the time that it came to booking specifics, I knew that Orlando, Florida was an essential destination. My friendship with Jess sprung up kind of randomly, really. We’d both been around on Fan Forum, specifically at f251, for a while and exchanged occasional PM’s and what not, and then suddenly the PMing was all the time and it became AIMing and then next thing I knew, I was booking this trip to the US to include a stop in Orlando and in fact Orlando was pretty much a ‘it must happen regardless of the prices of flights’ sort of thing.
Jess has been this endless source of support for the longest time, in ‘the fandom’, in my normal life, in the lead up to my trip in a trip planning capacity. And I was nervous but excited to meet her (and so I started singing a song about being nervous but excited – people just stared at me! There was zero choreography, ZERO!) because for me it’s an even bigger deal meeting the people who I’m close to online. Worst case scenario is taking someone who you adore online, meeting them in real life and not clicking and then it’s all just muddled and not good. With Jess – at least from my perspective – the worries were entirely paranoid and ridiculous. From the moment meeting her outside the Orlando International Airport to the moment of departure I felt nothing but really happy to be in her presence. I landed around 7pm and so by the time that we went to grab dinner (my first experience at Chilli’s) and went back to her place that was pretty much night 1 completed.
We had two very specific days planned out – one being Islands of Adventure at Universal on Friday for the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; the other being Magic Kingdom which we decided would be best to attend on Sunday, to space out the theme parks. I’d talked about wanting to go to a Floridian beach and we tossed around other ideas but by the time we got going on Thursday (this being June 17) I decided that I’d rather just stick to her local area for a look see – we had a HUGE day planned for Friday, wanting to arrive at the park REALLY early. We went to First Watch for breakfast (yum!) and then I was taken on a tour of UCF (The University of Central Florida) where I was really fascinated by Greek Row and looking at all the sorority/fraternity houses. After the UCF tour we then went and did a little shopping – I’m officially an Old Navy addict, just so you know, especially their sale items. The standard Orlando thunderstorm of the afternoon hit and so we went back to chill at Jess’s for a while, and went back out for dinner later on at an Italian restaurant. We’d had plans to start our movie marathon but it just didn’t happen – we both got online and this is what happens when you get two moderators who are obsessed with a blue eyed man who is in Maui... we got distracted lol. We’d also planned to try to be asleep REALLY early but also, that didn’t happen – we’re both late night people, so even with plans to wake up at 4am, we were awake after midnight.
Yes, you read right, plans to be awake that early. When I was trip planning, I was looking into the Orlando theme parks and I realised that the Harry park was opening when I’d be in the country and when it came to booking my itinerary, it actually worked out pretty nicely. Harry Potter fans are hardcore, we knew that being there early was critical. And so, a brief nap later and we were stumbling out of bed, forcing ourselves to get going. We were aiming to arrive at Islands by 5:30am. We were pretty much on schedule – so was everyone else in the universe. I’m no stranger to the sitting around all day for a fangirl type experience thing, but never before have I seen so many people awake and going at 5:30 in the morning – and we were probably, like, a thousand people back from the front or something like that. It started out just being this MASS of people waiting outside at City Walk. There was no logic, no queueing, no barriers. Basically I was prepared for stampede when they opened things up. The park wasn’t due to open til 10, the ribbon cutting ceremony was at 9am and part of why we had wanted to arrive so early was in the hope that the first however many people would get to attend the ribbon cutting. It wasn’t completely light when they started letting people through to have their tickets checked and what not, and then it was this stampede of people toward the Wizarding World, taking the longest route possible throughout the park. We then wound up stationed in another queue for a few hours. Masses of people on the path sitting around uncomfortably trying to work out what was going on. Between different people around us going to talk to staff members, we deduced that we were in ‘group 3.’ There was a group who was in for the Today Show taping/the ceremony – to this day I’m not quite sure if these were only like VIP guests or if there were general people who were hardcore and arrived at 1am there. They’d get let in, then group 2 (who were somehow queued up from a different direction) and then our mob. I realised only at this point that being the dumbass I was, when I’d taken my memory card out of my camera the night before to check something on my computer, I hadn’t put it back in. Thank freaking God that Jess brought her camera, she’d briefly contemplated not bothering and just relying on mine. We were both on Twitter following things – learning that evidently the queue behind us was snaking throughout the whole park. We were being told that we’d get in around 11am, 11:30am but we were let in a lot earlier than that. We could hear the ceremony going on, with cheers and screaming and stuff. Group 2 started to be let in (we could see them) creating a mosh pit because of course we all stood up and surged forward in anticipation; someone starting to lead a ‘let us in’ chant. Amusingly I heard a guy behind me read a Tweet I’d made out loud haha – I’d been using a #wwohp tag. And then finally, they let us in.
I don’t think I can explain the surreal feeling of first entering The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You literally feel like you’ve been transported into the series. It is just so... it’s so intricate! Every nook and cranny of the architectural design. We were walking through Hogsmeade in awe heading toward Hogwarts castle – which also happens to be the flagship ride. We got into the queue; it was healthy but not insane – outside people were talking about how they’d heard the queue for Hogwarts was going to be up to 5 hours. The majority of the queue you’re being ‘entertained’ by the walk – you’re walking through Hogwarts castle, literally, there’s stuff going on around you on all the walls and everything. The ride itself is seriously the best ride I’d ever been on anywhere. I... a part of me wants to be super specific but another part just wants everyone to go experience it and to plan your lives around going at some point.
The gift shop that you walk out into after the ride was insanely packed with people fawning over merchandise (Filch’s Emporium) and we fought out way out to head toward The Dragon Challenge which is evidently just a remake of an old rollercoaster – the exact some coaster just with different decorations – but for me it was new. I was annoyed – it was Goblet of Fire based, there were signs and stuff with like Go Krum, Go Fleur, Go Harry and NOTHING for Cedric – HELLO?!?! I mean, Rob Pattinson bias aside, Cedric is SUCH an important part of Goblet of Fire! The rollercoaster itself was really awesome though. The final rollercoaster was like a kiddie coaster, the Hippogriff something or other and you get to go outside of Hagrid’s hut on the way to the coaster. It was fun and cute.
By now, the queues in Hogsmeade to get into stores were absolutely freaking ridiculous. You had to queue for like, at least 25 people, just to get to the drink stall. We got to go into the Weasley twins joke shop and also the lolly shop, both were SO PACKED and half of it was just people loitering around hiding from the heat. This is Orlando on a hot day in an area where there’s little shade and obtaining a cold beverage requires an hour wait in a queue. We decided that we had no choice but to brave the line for The Three Broomsticks for lunch – it’s the only cafe/food place in the Wizarding World and once you left the area, there was no getting back in. At this point, Jess literally went light headed – it was like such a sudden turn from just being like ‘shit it’s hot’ to ‘omg I feel faint.’ We were waiting in a hot sun, no way of getting cold water, no staff members out looking around to check on guests. I was freaking out a little – I knew that we just needed to get indoors and sit down and the only way to do that was to brave the queue. I held our place while Jess sat to the side on the ground in the shade. We did ask one girl whose job was literally to stand on the back door of one of the shops in Hogsmeade and stand there; we were enquiring if she knows anything about the wait time and she knew nothing about it and I pointed out that my friend was light headed and frankly she didn’t seem to care. I should’ve written down her name to make a comment on her.
We made it into the building and she lightened up a bit once the air conditioning hit in but then the queue kept going inside the building for a bit and it got hot and stuffy again and when we were just a few people from the front of the line and THEN they started to hand out cups of cold water (not to the people outside suffocating in the heat) and she’d had no more than a sip of water and she like, had to drop to her knees, that was how light headed she was. With Jess on her knees and me in panic mode, I said to the hostess who was about to send us through ‘MY FRIEND NEEDS A TABLE NOW.’ Luckily someone of importance was walking by at the time and finally we had their attention. Once at this point, the regular procedure is to line up to order your food, then line up to receive your food, then line up to get a table. THE WHOLE DAY WAS JUST LINING UP. Jess was taken to go sit down at a table and I looked after the food process, I went back to check on her after I’d ordered and she was like, practically passed out on the table. She was sooooo white. I’ve never seen anyone that white in my entire life. In line with her special diet I got her the chicken salad, I got fish and chips. The serve was massive and I gave her a bit of my fish because her chicken was gross – and on top of being gross she found a bone in it. Seriously, The Three Broomsticks wanted to kill her, the heat exhaustion didn’t work out so they tried to choke her to death. They were clearly trying to get people out of the restaurant as quickly as they could but we remained planted still for over an hour. The colour returned to Jess’s face with some food, water and air conditioning. The guy who’d helped us came back to check that she was okay; he offered that he could get first aid if necessary but didn’t really push the matter.
On a separate tone I ordered butter beer and it was delicious.
I was wary to be like, going on rides or whatever but Jess really did seem a lot better and she insisted that she was okay. At this point, there were lines of like, two hours each, to get into Ollivanders and the Owl Post. Ollivanders (the wand shop) was an experience I really wanted to have. You get let in in groups of about 25 and then one person from the group gets selected to have their like ‘wand selecting’ experience – to have a wand chosen for them. Realistically they were going to be like, picking kids and people in costumes, so I knew I wasn’t going to get to actually have the experience. I was wary of waiting for either one – as much as I REALLY wanted to, I hadn’t seen the rest of Islands of Adventure and plus the queues were out in the sun and Jess said she was feeling better but I didn’t think that standing for two hours in the sun again would be the way to go about recovery. We went on the Hogwarts ride again – the wait time was about 45 minutes at the time, the longest I’d seen it at all day was 120 minutes – and it was just as awesome the second time, if not better. We looked in the gift shop again (this was a process. It takes five minutes to walk directly across the shop because you have to fight through people) and Jess debated about which shirt she wanted to buy as a souvenir and lamented the lack of Ron specific merch – I agreed that it was a bit ridiculous, in fact on the whole I was not impressed with the merchandising.
Bidding farewell to the Wizarding World was hard. We didn’t know at that point what the line was like outside, we’d only really heard bits and although we hoped to go back in at night there were no guarantees and so we had to prepare for the fact that leaving was probably leaving for the last time.
I really enjoyed all of Islands of Adventure, I didn’t get to do everything but we hit all of the main rides – Spiderman, a couple of water rides (the things that Jess does for me ;)) and so forth. I don’t know what to say? It was fun? Lol. It’s a theme park. Lots of waiting around. Oh, I can comment that as I walked out of the Wizarding World with my Pumpkin Juice (I prefer Butter Beer, as an fyi) I was having people around me asking allll about the park, wanting to know details. I imagine most of them had arrived at human hours, been told ‘it’ll be a 23908328 hour wait’ and decided to just enjoy the regular park. Even late in the afternoon though, there was still a giant queue snaking throughout the park to get into the WWoHP.
We decided to head out to City Walk for dinner – City Walk is like, this strip of restaurants and bars that line a massive area between the parking lot and the Islands of Adventure. We tossed up a couple of options and I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted to go to NBA City because that’s where Troy Bolton would pick.
Excellent choice.
As we were being seated, we found out that Dan Radcliffe, Tom Felton and some other Harry Potter cast members had been at that very restaurant just hours earlier, watching a soccer game on the TV.
Just. Hours. Earlier. Dan. In. Same. Restaurant.
THUD.
OH MY GOD.
We were being served by a err... friendly... man named Shawn. Who took it upon himself to put his number into my phone and flirt incessantly and blatantly and lewdly. As a result of this we got free drinks so hey, no complaints there! Anyway because he was distracted he didn’t seem to care much when Jess was enquiring about the presence of the Harry Potter gang and if I’ve learnt one thing about Jess it is that she has no shame and she like, flagged down another waitress to ask if she knew anything about it. She wound up going to get the guy who’d served them – and he talked to us for ages about it, up until when our food arrived and he said he’d come back to talk to us again after we’d finished eating, which we did. This lucky guy, he’s the biggest HP fan and he got called into work and then found out that he was going to get to serve them – it was like it was ment to be or something. He was a lovely guy and so I really felt like it was kharma coming around. He told some cute stories – my favourite was that Dan tried to order a drink and he had to say no ‘I know you’re not 21 buddy’ and Dan had forgotten that you have to be 21 in the US. He’d found out that they were going to see The Blue Man group and giving them details of where they all go to drink after work and the cast was all, yeah we might come by. So Jess and I were contemplating what level of stalking effort we could possibly go to. We were talking about hanging around the back door of the Blue Man Group but Michael (the guy who’d served them) said that it’s actually fenced off.
Anyway we wound up going back into IoA briefly – by the time we finished up dinner (which was longer than originally planned with all the chatting/flirting going on) it was nearly park closing time but we did manage to walk back through to the Wizarding World again. We tried to enter in through the place we’d entered through the first time and we were told that the park was closed. And then we went in through the other way and there was no security or anything. So we were able to have a look around at night (very pretty) and attempted to get into one of the queues we’d skipped out on earlier but they had them cut off so no one else could join the queue at the end. Anyway so a few more photos later and we bid farewell to the Wizarding World – this time for good.
We did go and check out Cigarz, the bar where Michael had told us he’d tried to convince the cast to come along to and we went in and it was this TINY bar. Even if they had contemplated going, I can imagine that they would’ve had some sort of security with them go and suss it out and realise that it was not the environment for them to be in – no way to have a secluded private table or to attempt to have any sort of anonymity at all. We’d looked into Blue Man and figured that it would end at a particular time and logically if they were going to come, they’d probably come straight over.
Michael had Jess’s number and he’d said he would text if they turned up or whatever and we never heard from him so we can only assume that, as suspected, that didn’t happen. We went for a drive then and found the hotel that they’re staying at – Jess seemed up for going in but I was like, seriously? We’ve been up for like sixteen hours, they’ve been up early, EVEN IF we managed to get into this fancy hotel it’s not like they’re going to be wandering around in the lobby or in the hotel bar – it’s more likely that they’re in bed, or if they’re up then they’d be hanging out in one of their rooms or something. There’s a line between nothing ventured nothing gained, and complete insanity.
I didn’t even check my e-mail before going to bed which speaks highly of just how exhausted I was; because I constantly check my e-mail. We decided to not set an alarm and to just allow our bodies to wake up when they desired – which was about twelve hours later, at midday.
Saturday’s agenda was to chill, relax, and to go to the Florida Mall. What was the statistic I read? One of the world’s largest single story malls? Yes. To add to the things that I’d already bought on Thursday, I bought a cute top from Forever 21 and I couldn’t resist MnM World. Pretzel MnM’s – best thing ever, so I’ve learnt. Of course it started raining right before we left and Jess was wearing slippery shoes so she had to like, cling to me as we went back out to the car haha. We stopped to grab food from Pita Pit and headed back home where we watched HSM2 and HSM3 :)
On Sunday, I visited a place where dreams come true, the happiest place on Earth – the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld. Now I went to Disneyland Paris back in 2008 but Magic Kingdom – totally kicks its butt! Jess has been to these theme parks a lot and Magic Kingdom she’s been to very recently a few times so she’s very familiar with the best way to navigate around, the most efficient things to do. I was and still am highly astounded by this whole fast pass thing – we don’t have such a thing – and it really does save you a lot of time. For those who aren’t familiar, the more popular rides have a Fast Pass ticket booth thing. It has advertised that you can return, say, in 1.5 hours time between 12:30 – 1:30 with your fast pass. Fast Pass ticket holders then have about a ten minute wait. So, for example, we would get a fast pass for one popular ride, go on another popular ride and stand in the 1 hour line, and then it would be perfect time to go back to the other ride and have only that short wait. Perfect. By I guess maybe 1pm, we’d done what Jess labelled as the ‘best’ rides in the park – like the main roller coasters, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Spiderman. I didn’t go on every single ride but I pretty much got to visit the majority of the park. Jess put up with me insisting that there HAD to be HSM merchandise SOMEWHERE (only crappy kiddy sunglasses) and going into all the shops on a hunt. Yes, I know, it’s all over at Hollywood Studios where the mini HSM2 stage show thingy is on. Blah blah. She also subjected herself to rides that she is scared of/thinks are ‘gay’ (I won’t specify more because people would be MORTIFIED, I certainly was) all for me.
In comparison to our MASSIVE day at Universal, Magic Kingdom was over with early, we left an hour or two before the park closed. I honestly felt rather theme parked out. Instead we were able to grab dinner from a non-theme parkesque eatery (Jimmy Johns which was yummmmy) and continue our Zac Efron movie fest – Hairspray and Me and Orson Welles. I’m ashamed to say that I was drifting off during MaOW; I LOVE the film and I love him in it but I was just utterly exhausted.
I cried at the airport on Monday when I was dropped off.
My final words for Orlando is that Jess is an amazing, sweet, sassy, wonderful woman who is so brave and so strong and anyone who thinks they can get away with talking shit about her anywhere in my vicinity will be on my hate list. Seriously. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of meeting her and I consider that to be the primary means of being able to judge a persons character. No we don’t agree on everything – life would be boring if we did – but that doesn’t prevent us from getting along regardless. Sometimes two mature adults can agree to disagree without needing to resort to pettiness.
I’ll step down off my soap box now.
Hogwarts was absofulutely incredible; Magic Kingdom really is the happiest place on Earth; Orlando is awesome and Jess is the bomb.
Jess has been this endless source of support for the longest time, in ‘the fandom’, in my normal life, in the lead up to my trip in a trip planning capacity. And I was nervous but excited to meet her (and so I started singing a song about being nervous but excited – people just stared at me! There was zero choreography, ZERO!) because for me it’s an even bigger deal meeting the people who I’m close to online. Worst case scenario is taking someone who you adore online, meeting them in real life and not clicking and then it’s all just muddled and not good. With Jess – at least from my perspective – the worries were entirely paranoid and ridiculous. From the moment meeting her outside the Orlando International Airport to the moment of departure I felt nothing but really happy to be in her presence. I landed around 7pm and so by the time that we went to grab dinner (my first experience at Chilli’s) and went back to her place that was pretty much night 1 completed.
We had two very specific days planned out – one being Islands of Adventure at Universal on Friday for the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; the other being Magic Kingdom which we decided would be best to attend on Sunday, to space out the theme parks. I’d talked about wanting to go to a Floridian beach and we tossed around other ideas but by the time we got going on Thursday (this being June 17) I decided that I’d rather just stick to her local area for a look see – we had a HUGE day planned for Friday, wanting to arrive at the park REALLY early. We went to First Watch for breakfast (yum!) and then I was taken on a tour of UCF (The University of Central Florida) where I was really fascinated by Greek Row and looking at all the sorority/fraternity houses. After the UCF tour we then went and did a little shopping – I’m officially an Old Navy addict, just so you know, especially their sale items. The standard Orlando thunderstorm of the afternoon hit and so we went back to chill at Jess’s for a while, and went back out for dinner later on at an Italian restaurant. We’d had plans to start our movie marathon but it just didn’t happen – we both got online and this is what happens when you get two moderators who are obsessed with a blue eyed man who is in Maui... we got distracted lol. We’d also planned to try to be asleep REALLY early but also, that didn’t happen – we’re both late night people, so even with plans to wake up at 4am, we were awake after midnight.
Yes, you read right, plans to be awake that early. When I was trip planning, I was looking into the Orlando theme parks and I realised that the Harry park was opening when I’d be in the country and when it came to booking my itinerary, it actually worked out pretty nicely. Harry Potter fans are hardcore, we knew that being there early was critical. And so, a brief nap later and we were stumbling out of bed, forcing ourselves to get going. We were aiming to arrive at Islands by 5:30am. We were pretty much on schedule – so was everyone else in the universe. I’m no stranger to the sitting around all day for a fangirl type experience thing, but never before have I seen so many people awake and going at 5:30 in the morning – and we were probably, like, a thousand people back from the front or something like that. It started out just being this MASS of people waiting outside at City Walk. There was no logic, no queueing, no barriers. Basically I was prepared for stampede when they opened things up. The park wasn’t due to open til 10, the ribbon cutting ceremony was at 9am and part of why we had wanted to arrive so early was in the hope that the first however many people would get to attend the ribbon cutting. It wasn’t completely light when they started letting people through to have their tickets checked and what not, and then it was this stampede of people toward the Wizarding World, taking the longest route possible throughout the park. We then wound up stationed in another queue for a few hours. Masses of people on the path sitting around uncomfortably trying to work out what was going on. Between different people around us going to talk to staff members, we deduced that we were in ‘group 3.’ There was a group who was in for the Today Show taping/the ceremony – to this day I’m not quite sure if these were only like VIP guests or if there were general people who were hardcore and arrived at 1am there. They’d get let in, then group 2 (who were somehow queued up from a different direction) and then our mob. I realised only at this point that being the dumbass I was, when I’d taken my memory card out of my camera the night before to check something on my computer, I hadn’t put it back in. Thank freaking God that Jess brought her camera, she’d briefly contemplated not bothering and just relying on mine. We were both on Twitter following things – learning that evidently the queue behind us was snaking throughout the whole park. We were being told that we’d get in around 11am, 11:30am but we were let in a lot earlier than that. We could hear the ceremony going on, with cheers and screaming and stuff. Group 2 started to be let in (we could see them) creating a mosh pit because of course we all stood up and surged forward in anticipation; someone starting to lead a ‘let us in’ chant. Amusingly I heard a guy behind me read a Tweet I’d made out loud haha – I’d been using a #wwohp tag. And then finally, they let us in.
I don’t think I can explain the surreal feeling of first entering The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You literally feel like you’ve been transported into the series. It is just so... it’s so intricate! Every nook and cranny of the architectural design. We were walking through Hogsmeade in awe heading toward Hogwarts castle – which also happens to be the flagship ride. We got into the queue; it was healthy but not insane – outside people were talking about how they’d heard the queue for Hogwarts was going to be up to 5 hours. The majority of the queue you’re being ‘entertained’ by the walk – you’re walking through Hogwarts castle, literally, there’s stuff going on around you on all the walls and everything. The ride itself is seriously the best ride I’d ever been on anywhere. I... a part of me wants to be super specific but another part just wants everyone to go experience it and to plan your lives around going at some point.
The gift shop that you walk out into after the ride was insanely packed with people fawning over merchandise (Filch’s Emporium) and we fought out way out to head toward The Dragon Challenge which is evidently just a remake of an old rollercoaster – the exact some coaster just with different decorations – but for me it was new. I was annoyed – it was Goblet of Fire based, there were signs and stuff with like Go Krum, Go Fleur, Go Harry and NOTHING for Cedric – HELLO?!?! I mean, Rob Pattinson bias aside, Cedric is SUCH an important part of Goblet of Fire! The rollercoaster itself was really awesome though. The final rollercoaster was like a kiddie coaster, the Hippogriff something or other and you get to go outside of Hagrid’s hut on the way to the coaster. It was fun and cute.
By now, the queues in Hogsmeade to get into stores were absolutely freaking ridiculous. You had to queue for like, at least 25 people, just to get to the drink stall. We got to go into the Weasley twins joke shop and also the lolly shop, both were SO PACKED and half of it was just people loitering around hiding from the heat. This is Orlando on a hot day in an area where there’s little shade and obtaining a cold beverage requires an hour wait in a queue. We decided that we had no choice but to brave the line for The Three Broomsticks for lunch – it’s the only cafe/food place in the Wizarding World and once you left the area, there was no getting back in. At this point, Jess literally went light headed – it was like such a sudden turn from just being like ‘shit it’s hot’ to ‘omg I feel faint.’ We were waiting in a hot sun, no way of getting cold water, no staff members out looking around to check on guests. I was freaking out a little – I knew that we just needed to get indoors and sit down and the only way to do that was to brave the queue. I held our place while Jess sat to the side on the ground in the shade. We did ask one girl whose job was literally to stand on the back door of one of the shops in Hogsmeade and stand there; we were enquiring if she knows anything about the wait time and she knew nothing about it and I pointed out that my friend was light headed and frankly she didn’t seem to care. I should’ve written down her name to make a comment on her.
We made it into the building and she lightened up a bit once the air conditioning hit in but then the queue kept going inside the building for a bit and it got hot and stuffy again and when we were just a few people from the front of the line and THEN they started to hand out cups of cold water (not to the people outside suffocating in the heat) and she’d had no more than a sip of water and she like, had to drop to her knees, that was how light headed she was. With Jess on her knees and me in panic mode, I said to the hostess who was about to send us through ‘MY FRIEND NEEDS A TABLE NOW.’ Luckily someone of importance was walking by at the time and finally we had their attention. Once at this point, the regular procedure is to line up to order your food, then line up to receive your food, then line up to get a table. THE WHOLE DAY WAS JUST LINING UP. Jess was taken to go sit down at a table and I looked after the food process, I went back to check on her after I’d ordered and she was like, practically passed out on the table. She was sooooo white. I’ve never seen anyone that white in my entire life. In line with her special diet I got her the chicken salad, I got fish and chips. The serve was massive and I gave her a bit of my fish because her chicken was gross – and on top of being gross she found a bone in it. Seriously, The Three Broomsticks wanted to kill her, the heat exhaustion didn’t work out so they tried to choke her to death. They were clearly trying to get people out of the restaurant as quickly as they could but we remained planted still for over an hour. The colour returned to Jess’s face with some food, water and air conditioning. The guy who’d helped us came back to check that she was okay; he offered that he could get first aid if necessary but didn’t really push the matter.
On a separate tone I ordered butter beer and it was delicious.
I was wary to be like, going on rides or whatever but Jess really did seem a lot better and she insisted that she was okay. At this point, there were lines of like, two hours each, to get into Ollivanders and the Owl Post. Ollivanders (the wand shop) was an experience I really wanted to have. You get let in in groups of about 25 and then one person from the group gets selected to have their like ‘wand selecting’ experience – to have a wand chosen for them. Realistically they were going to be like, picking kids and people in costumes, so I knew I wasn’t going to get to actually have the experience. I was wary of waiting for either one – as much as I REALLY wanted to, I hadn’t seen the rest of Islands of Adventure and plus the queues were out in the sun and Jess said she was feeling better but I didn’t think that standing for two hours in the sun again would be the way to go about recovery. We went on the Hogwarts ride again – the wait time was about 45 minutes at the time, the longest I’d seen it at all day was 120 minutes – and it was just as awesome the second time, if not better. We looked in the gift shop again (this was a process. It takes five minutes to walk directly across the shop because you have to fight through people) and Jess debated about which shirt she wanted to buy as a souvenir and lamented the lack of Ron specific merch – I agreed that it was a bit ridiculous, in fact on the whole I was not impressed with the merchandising.
Bidding farewell to the Wizarding World was hard. We didn’t know at that point what the line was like outside, we’d only really heard bits and although we hoped to go back in at night there were no guarantees and so we had to prepare for the fact that leaving was probably leaving for the last time.
I really enjoyed all of Islands of Adventure, I didn’t get to do everything but we hit all of the main rides – Spiderman, a couple of water rides (the things that Jess does for me ;)) and so forth. I don’t know what to say? It was fun? Lol. It’s a theme park. Lots of waiting around. Oh, I can comment that as I walked out of the Wizarding World with my Pumpkin Juice (I prefer Butter Beer, as an fyi) I was having people around me asking allll about the park, wanting to know details. I imagine most of them had arrived at human hours, been told ‘it’ll be a 23908328 hour wait’ and decided to just enjoy the regular park. Even late in the afternoon though, there was still a giant queue snaking throughout the park to get into the WWoHP.
We decided to head out to City Walk for dinner – City Walk is like, this strip of restaurants and bars that line a massive area between the parking lot and the Islands of Adventure. We tossed up a couple of options and I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted to go to NBA City because that’s where Troy Bolton would pick.
Excellent choice.
As we were being seated, we found out that Dan Radcliffe, Tom Felton and some other Harry Potter cast members had been at that very restaurant just hours earlier, watching a soccer game on the TV.
Just. Hours. Earlier. Dan. In. Same. Restaurant.
THUD.
OH MY GOD.
We were being served by a err... friendly... man named Shawn. Who took it upon himself to put his number into my phone and flirt incessantly and blatantly and lewdly. As a result of this we got free drinks so hey, no complaints there! Anyway because he was distracted he didn’t seem to care much when Jess was enquiring about the presence of the Harry Potter gang and if I’ve learnt one thing about Jess it is that she has no shame and she like, flagged down another waitress to ask if she knew anything about it. She wound up going to get the guy who’d served them – and he talked to us for ages about it, up until when our food arrived and he said he’d come back to talk to us again after we’d finished eating, which we did. This lucky guy, he’s the biggest HP fan and he got called into work and then found out that he was going to get to serve them – it was like it was ment to be or something. He was a lovely guy and so I really felt like it was kharma coming around. He told some cute stories – my favourite was that Dan tried to order a drink and he had to say no ‘I know you’re not 21 buddy’ and Dan had forgotten that you have to be 21 in the US. He’d found out that they were going to see The Blue Man group and giving them details of where they all go to drink after work and the cast was all, yeah we might come by. So Jess and I were contemplating what level of stalking effort we could possibly go to. We were talking about hanging around the back door of the Blue Man Group but Michael (the guy who’d served them) said that it’s actually fenced off.
Anyway we wound up going back into IoA briefly – by the time we finished up dinner (which was longer than originally planned with all the chatting/flirting going on) it was nearly park closing time but we did manage to walk back through to the Wizarding World again. We tried to enter in through the place we’d entered through the first time and we were told that the park was closed. And then we went in through the other way and there was no security or anything. So we were able to have a look around at night (very pretty) and attempted to get into one of the queues we’d skipped out on earlier but they had them cut off so no one else could join the queue at the end. Anyway so a few more photos later and we bid farewell to the Wizarding World – this time for good.
We did go and check out Cigarz, the bar where Michael had told us he’d tried to convince the cast to come along to and we went in and it was this TINY bar. Even if they had contemplated going, I can imagine that they would’ve had some sort of security with them go and suss it out and realise that it was not the environment for them to be in – no way to have a secluded private table or to attempt to have any sort of anonymity at all. We’d looked into Blue Man and figured that it would end at a particular time and logically if they were going to come, they’d probably come straight over.
Michael had Jess’s number and he’d said he would text if they turned up or whatever and we never heard from him so we can only assume that, as suspected, that didn’t happen. We went for a drive then and found the hotel that they’re staying at – Jess seemed up for going in but I was like, seriously? We’ve been up for like sixteen hours, they’ve been up early, EVEN IF we managed to get into this fancy hotel it’s not like they’re going to be wandering around in the lobby or in the hotel bar – it’s more likely that they’re in bed, or if they’re up then they’d be hanging out in one of their rooms or something. There’s a line between nothing ventured nothing gained, and complete insanity.
I didn’t even check my e-mail before going to bed which speaks highly of just how exhausted I was; because I constantly check my e-mail. We decided to not set an alarm and to just allow our bodies to wake up when they desired – which was about twelve hours later, at midday.
Saturday’s agenda was to chill, relax, and to go to the Florida Mall. What was the statistic I read? One of the world’s largest single story malls? Yes. To add to the things that I’d already bought on Thursday, I bought a cute top from Forever 21 and I couldn’t resist MnM World. Pretzel MnM’s – best thing ever, so I’ve learnt. Of course it started raining right before we left and Jess was wearing slippery shoes so she had to like, cling to me as we went back out to the car haha. We stopped to grab food from Pita Pit and headed back home where we watched HSM2 and HSM3 :)
On Sunday, I visited a place where dreams come true, the happiest place on Earth – the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld. Now I went to Disneyland Paris back in 2008 but Magic Kingdom – totally kicks its butt! Jess has been to these theme parks a lot and Magic Kingdom she’s been to very recently a few times so she’s very familiar with the best way to navigate around, the most efficient things to do. I was and still am highly astounded by this whole fast pass thing – we don’t have such a thing – and it really does save you a lot of time. For those who aren’t familiar, the more popular rides have a Fast Pass ticket booth thing. It has advertised that you can return, say, in 1.5 hours time between 12:30 – 1:30 with your fast pass. Fast Pass ticket holders then have about a ten minute wait. So, for example, we would get a fast pass for one popular ride, go on another popular ride and stand in the 1 hour line, and then it would be perfect time to go back to the other ride and have only that short wait. Perfect. By I guess maybe 1pm, we’d done what Jess labelled as the ‘best’ rides in the park – like the main roller coasters, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Spiderman. I didn’t go on every single ride but I pretty much got to visit the majority of the park. Jess put up with me insisting that there HAD to be HSM merchandise SOMEWHERE (only crappy kiddy sunglasses) and going into all the shops on a hunt. Yes, I know, it’s all over at Hollywood Studios where the mini HSM2 stage show thingy is on. Blah blah. She also subjected herself to rides that she is scared of/thinks are ‘gay’ (I won’t specify more because people would be MORTIFIED, I certainly was) all for me.
In comparison to our MASSIVE day at Universal, Magic Kingdom was over with early, we left an hour or two before the park closed. I honestly felt rather theme parked out. Instead we were able to grab dinner from a non-theme parkesque eatery (Jimmy Johns which was yummmmy) and continue our Zac Efron movie fest – Hairspray and Me and Orson Welles. I’m ashamed to say that I was drifting off during MaOW; I LOVE the film and I love him in it but I was just utterly exhausted.
I cried at the airport on Monday when I was dropped off.
My final words for Orlando is that Jess is an amazing, sweet, sassy, wonderful woman who is so brave and so strong and anyone who thinks they can get away with talking shit about her anywhere in my vicinity will be on my hate list. Seriously. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of meeting her and I consider that to be the primary means of being able to judge a persons character. No we don’t agree on everything – life would be boring if we did – but that doesn’t prevent us from getting along regardless. Sometimes two mature adults can agree to disagree without needing to resort to pettiness.
I’ll step down off my soap box now.
Hogwarts was absofulutely incredible; Magic Kingdom really is the happiest place on Earth; Orlando is awesome and Jess is the bomb.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Austin, Texas: where the beer is in the healthy living section.
I headed to Texas honestly with little expectation. In my time travelling I’ve learned to throw most stereotypes out the window and I knew that this would particularly be the case in Austin, being one of the least ‘extreme’ Texas cities. When I decided to go to Austin rather than Houston or Dallas I’d contemplated this fact; whether I’d be missing out on seeing something critical. But I knew I wanted to visit Austin for a number of reasons (Melanie, whom I know from my online life, lives there; University of Texas; the funky music culture) and decided that I’d just have to forgoe the stereotype. I arrived at the airport and immediately smiled at the giant guitars decorating the middle of the baggage carousel. After getting my bag, getting a map from the information counter and getting direction to the bus stop; I was on my way into Austin city. I’d made arrangement to stay at an off-campus college housing place which was actually recommended by my guide book because there isn’t really a youth hostel in Austin city. It was SO HOT and the walk from the bus stop to Laurel House was reasonable but longer than is enjoyable while even pulling a suitcase along behind you. I had arranged to call Chelsea from the house when I was on my way from the bus stop; I called and she didn’t answer. I found the building, from the outside it just looked like an apartment building, and she still hadn’t answered her phone. I’d left a couple of messages and called maybe five times. I was waiting outside the building and then waiting inside the elevator lobby. I asked a guy as he was going in if he knew if Chelsea was around; he was new and said he didn’t know Chelsea. Guy #2 who came in was more useful – he said that he’d find her for me and send her down. Thank you, guy.
It was a pretty sweet set up. They charge $20 a night for a hosteller; if you want to take advantage of it you could in theory get three meals a day – there’s cereal and bread and spreads and fruit left out so you could do breakfast and lunch out of it; and they provide dinner. There’s a gym, tv lounge, computer room. I had my own room which was far bigger than the Albuquerque shoebox I stayed in; my own bathroom. I was out and about and so I only took advantage of breakfast but even then it was brilliant value and an interesting insight into what college life could potentially be like. It was a few blocks from the University of Texas; and in the neighbourhood there were dozens of other off campus housing apartment buildings and what not. UT is the biggest public university in the US; and as I learnt on my UT tour the next day, it isn’t compulsory to live on campus in freshman year like it is at lots of other colleges and in fact there isn’t enough housing for everyone on campus. So that’s why there’s so much off campus living.
I’d been in contact with Melanie via text message – we met through fanfiction.net, have both been around on ZA Angels and since have been on Facebook – and she and Troy (Yes. Married to a guy named Troy. Jealous much? :)) and bubba Cole were going to come pick me up and take me to dinner. They took me to this place called Rudy’s. It was... an experience, in the best of ways. You go in and queue up to order your food at the counter. It gets put into like, a basket thing, you go sit down and you use your fancy wax paper as a plate. It was very... simple? Like, meat, bread, potatoes. Texan. It had such a fantastic vibe, funky signs and decorations (i.e. above the kitchen entry for staff: “you don’t want to cook, get out of the kitchen”) and I got to sample my first brisket – I still don’t really know what the difference between brisket and roast beef is (mental note: google it). After dinner Melanie & Troy took me to Amy’s to get ice cream – it was like Cold Rock/Cold Stone but cuter and the Mexican Vanilla was yummmmy. (I had it with cookie dough). On the drive back to Laurel House Troy took a scenic route, pointing out some of the main things along Congress Avenue and going past the UT football stadium and such.
On Monday morning I was awake and leaving the hostel just after 9am. I had to go pay my fees at the Housing Office a couple of blocks away (I was so surprised that when I booked via e-mail they didn’t ask for my credit card or a deposit or something given I was arriving on a Sunday when the office was shut; I could so easily have just left on Monday without having paid, and I really don’t know what communication Chelsea has with the office, she never asked me if I’d gone and paid or even instructed me about how to get to the office to pay or anything) and to my annoyance I arrived and they didn’t open til 10am. Anyway so I wandered in the neighbourhood and found a little convenience store and had a look at some of the other college co-op houses. My fees were paid without hassle; next stop – University of Texas for a campus tour due to begin at 11am. As I waited for the tour to begin I was sitting near a family with what seemed to be the parents, a six year old daughter, a daughter just finished high school starting at UT in the fall, and a son who is in the midst of transferring to UT from somewhere else. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation – they were right next to me – and I was very amused by a few things I heard. The mother was admonishing the little girl with a warning to basically shut up and behave because the tour wasn’t about her, it was about the daughter who is starting at UT. And then they proceeded to have a conversation that went like this –
Mother – “when you grow up, you’re gonna be an Aggie like mommy.” (note: Aggie is Texas A&M {Agricultural and Mining} which I actually know a bit about because I met some girls who went there while I was in Europe. It’s in Hicksville, a place called ‘College Town’ and it literally is that – a town that is the college and the students and that’s pretty much it.)
Little Girl – “Nooo I’m gonna go to UT like Kirra!” (the older sister)
Mother – “As long as you don’t go to Oklahoma, that’s okay. You’re not allowed to go to Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a bad word. You can’t go to school there, you can’t vacation there, you can’t marry anyone from there.”
The mother was then commenting on how she’d been careful when picking her wardrobe that day to not pick colours that were those of any direct rivals of UT. This whole college rival thing is still highly fascinating for me, ridiculously fascinating. The more I hear about it, the more that my mind is bewildered by it. College life is one of those areas where I think that Australia is the most culturally removed from the United States. The students that go to UT, they live and breathe UT and school spirit and supporting the sports teams.
The tour began – one of the tour guides was total eye candy which helped immensely – and it was catered for potential students. It was interesting because the guides had to find that balance between talking about fun and social culture and clubs and activities; but then to appease the parents they aren’t talking about bars or drinking or parties, they’re throwing in references to the library and study areas, there’s a whole part where they take you to the gym and they’re talking about healthy lifestyle. I tended to try to walk near the guides as you’re walking from place to place because people ask them questions – like about housing and things like that. The tour went for just over an hour, after which point I headed over to look at the Student Union building with like the food outlets. Apparently the highest grossing Wendy’s in the United States with a transaction every seventeen seconds during peak periods is the one on the UT campus – and the second highest grossing Wendy’s in the United States is the OTHER Wendy’s on the UT campus. I then went over to The Drag, which is like, the strip of shops and food outlets on the street across from UT, so I could go into the Co-Op store. At the tour they’d been all ‘if you want to get textbooks, stationery, anything school related, this is where you go.’ You go inside and there’s this MASSIVE store with UT merchandise, any sort of merch you could imagine you can buy it here, for mainly football but also basketball, volleyball and plenty of other sports. Not just standard shirts and keychains and stickers but automotive and wall decorations and mousepads and ugh, just like everything. And then down the back there’s a sign and a staircase ‘textbooks here’. I feel sorry for girls who wind up at UT having to wear this horrible orange colour all the time. It isn’t even a bright sunny orange, it’s like a mustard orange. Every other person on campus was wearing a UT coloured shirt. This is over summer, where they’ve just lost the big football game, it’s not like school spirit is presently at its height, it is the opposite – this is the quiet period, and it’s all GO LONGHORNS.
From there I headed to walk down Congress Avenue to look at the Capitol Building. In Texas they live by the motto that bigger is better and better is bigger and the Capitol is one of those examples of that very fact – it’s bigger than it’s Washington DC counterpart. I was like, starving at this point (I’d had a tiny bowl of cereal for breakfast) and I stopped at Quiznos – my first Quiznos experience – and omg it was soooo yummy! It’s like Subway but fancier and more sort of, predesignated combinations. The cookie was super yummy too :) I kept wandering and in a reflection of its eclectic mix of residents, Austin feels really eclectic as you’re walking, you go from government area to a few streets later being surrounded by funky bars and the music scene of the Sixth Ave entertainment district. I was snapping photos of all sorts of stuff (a sign saying ‘what time is it? Shot time!’) and wandering for a good few hours, looking in some of the music stores.
I went back to my accommodation for a little while, I’d been sweltering in the heat and I wound up napping briefly while I recharged my camera which was almost dead battery. I then headed back out, I had a specific plan for later but in the mean time I got on the bus sort of without much intent other than to find something I could get for dinner. I was watching out the windows for something that tickled my fancy. On gets onto the bus this homeless man wearing a bright pink beaded necklace, like fake pearl looking, the kind that a six year old girl would have for costume dress up jewellery. Of course he sat next to me. He was mumbling about food stamps and the US government and Chase bank and I was sort of not sure if he was expecting me to reply or if he was just mumbling because he could. Then he started singing. Glancing out the window I could see a bunch of shops coming up and as the bus pulled up a bunch of people were lining up to get off so I figured there must be something there so I excused myself and he let me out. Turned out I’d found a major budget grocery store called HEB so I was able to obtain budget dinner – a cheap premade sandwich, a donut, a banana and a drink. They were in the midst of moving things around in the store, and I was highly, highly amused by a sign which read “The Beer is now located in the Healthy Living section.” At the checkout, the girl was fascinated by my accent, like I’d said ‘I’m good thanks how are you today?’ or whatever and she said ‘oh my God, talk again!’ and I told her I was from Australia and she literally squealed and jumped up and down and said I’d made her night. I got outside and I saw coke vending machine – well it wasn’t coke, it was HEB cola – for a quarter! 25 cents for a can of soft drink! Insanity.
I headed back on the bus heading for the Congress Ave bridge. There is this bat colony that lives beneath the bridge and it’s this major tourist attraction that people wait every night at sunset for these bats to wake up and see them fly off together. The night before as Troy had driven me back to the house, he and Melanie had pointed it out to me and it is referenced in my guidebook. I got there pretty early, sunset was just starting. I wasn’t the first there though, there were bunch of people already on the bridge and also in this grassy park beneath the bridge. I eventually wound up chatting to this young couple who wound up standing beside me – I never got their names but the girl, omg, she looked SO MUCH like Sami who I went to high school with. (I suppose in theory Sami might read this, if she gets the link from my Facebook, in which case – Sami, I met your twin!) We chatted a bit and the night went on and the sun went down and it got dark and the bridge was packed and we could hear these bats making noises and a few of them were flitting about but it got completely dark, nothing had really happened and a people were starting to leave. There had been tour cruise boats waiting in the river but they were starting to leave. One of the people who’d been standing near us had commented that they’d come out waiting the night before and waited until 9:15pm and nothing had happened. So it was kinda disappointing.
Tuesday morning I slept in a little later; I started out the day by heading out to the West End area with the specific intent of going to the Whole Foods store, it’s meant to be like the Whole Foods flagship store. Whole Foods is a grocery store that sells what it sounds like – it’s kind of like if you take that organic/health food one aisle that Woolworths has and the WHOLE STORE is that sort of thing with heaps of brands and options and a massive deli and fresh food and things. It’s not cheap, but the variety was insane! Oh, and the self serve machines were pretty much exactly like the Woolworths ones; I mean they’re all about the same (I’ve used quite a few in my time) but these were the most similar that I’ve seen, they must use the same software package just with a different voice and slightly different graphics. I got the bus back to Congress Avenue and then another bus down south on Congress which was where I’d been with the homeless jewellery singing man the day before but bypassed this area of sort of funky shops. I wandered through the ‘Warehouse district’ of downtown and then got the bus back up to near UT where I was staying and walked along The Drag and then through UT over to look at the precious beloved UT football stadium from the outside.
For my last night in Austin; Melanie, Troy and Cole came again to take me to dinner; this time we went to Chuy’s which is like a Tex Mex (Texas Mexican) restaurant. It was really eclectically decorated, I saw some stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling, there were bowling pins, and then the room that we actually wound up in for dinner had a whole ceiling of like, motorcycle wheels. It was a Tuesday night and it was packed, we had about a half hour wait time – they told us as we were seated that it had taken a little longer for us because we had to wait for a table that was appropriate for a high chair to open up. American restaurants really want you to fill up, like seriously. They provided corn chip type things and dips like in the way that Lone Star Steakhouse provides peanuts. I couldn’t decide what to eat and so eventually I decided to get a combination plate. For an extra dollar than the average meal I was going to get to sample just about everything major – a taco, some enchiladas, rice, refried beans, some other little doodahs that I’d never heard of and cannot remember the name was. I made a solid effort, I got through the majority of it but I felt physically stuffed, incapable of consuming anything more.
I regretfully have to say that I did not manage to make it to a movie theatre while I was in Austin, Texas. I very genuinely had intended to and it just didn’t happen. The reason I wanted to make it there is because of Holden and her damn obsession with pickles at the movies. However, I did see giant solo pickles for sale both in New Mexico and Texas which for me was enough. Holden, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry that I couldn’t go to the movies for you and hopefully you get the chance to eat a pickle at the movies when you come out here in August :)
Austin was a pleasant experience; good cheap food, amazement learning about college life and culture, lots to look at. I didn’t ‘DO’ much per se but I felt constantly stimulated as I looked around at things around me. The accents around you vary from the extreme southern Texan sort of accent to what to me is the classic American accent (I’m not good with differentiating many American accents, it’s pretty much either a southern accent or normal to me lol) to hearing foreign accents – I guess being summer, perhaps there are a few students who come over to do summer semester exchanges abroad? There were business suits but not in a New York City rushed madness sort of way. It feels like more of a city than Albuquerque but not in a crazy madness kind of way.
Anyway so I’m about to land in Orlando now... if the flight had been on time then we would’ve been at the ‘time to turn off your electronics’ stage now but it was delayed for 40 minutes which was frustrating mainly because I was already supremely early to the airport so being delayed just made it worse. You’ll hear from me next after Orlando, I imagine, where I’ll hopefully have all sorts of stories about fun with Jess!
It was a pretty sweet set up. They charge $20 a night for a hosteller; if you want to take advantage of it you could in theory get three meals a day – there’s cereal and bread and spreads and fruit left out so you could do breakfast and lunch out of it; and they provide dinner. There’s a gym, tv lounge, computer room. I had my own room which was far bigger than the Albuquerque shoebox I stayed in; my own bathroom. I was out and about and so I only took advantage of breakfast but even then it was brilliant value and an interesting insight into what college life could potentially be like. It was a few blocks from the University of Texas; and in the neighbourhood there were dozens of other off campus housing apartment buildings and what not. UT is the biggest public university in the US; and as I learnt on my UT tour the next day, it isn’t compulsory to live on campus in freshman year like it is at lots of other colleges and in fact there isn’t enough housing for everyone on campus. So that’s why there’s so much off campus living.
I’d been in contact with Melanie via text message – we met through fanfiction.net, have both been around on ZA Angels and since have been on Facebook – and she and Troy (Yes. Married to a guy named Troy. Jealous much? :)) and bubba Cole were going to come pick me up and take me to dinner. They took me to this place called Rudy’s. It was... an experience, in the best of ways. You go in and queue up to order your food at the counter. It gets put into like, a basket thing, you go sit down and you use your fancy wax paper as a plate. It was very... simple? Like, meat, bread, potatoes. Texan. It had such a fantastic vibe, funky signs and decorations (i.e. above the kitchen entry for staff: “you don’t want to cook, get out of the kitchen”) and I got to sample my first brisket – I still don’t really know what the difference between brisket and roast beef is (mental note: google it). After dinner Melanie & Troy took me to Amy’s to get ice cream – it was like Cold Rock/Cold Stone but cuter and the Mexican Vanilla was yummmmy. (I had it with cookie dough). On the drive back to Laurel House Troy took a scenic route, pointing out some of the main things along Congress Avenue and going past the UT football stadium and such.
On Monday morning I was awake and leaving the hostel just after 9am. I had to go pay my fees at the Housing Office a couple of blocks away (I was so surprised that when I booked via e-mail they didn’t ask for my credit card or a deposit or something given I was arriving on a Sunday when the office was shut; I could so easily have just left on Monday without having paid, and I really don’t know what communication Chelsea has with the office, she never asked me if I’d gone and paid or even instructed me about how to get to the office to pay or anything) and to my annoyance I arrived and they didn’t open til 10am. Anyway so I wandered in the neighbourhood and found a little convenience store and had a look at some of the other college co-op houses. My fees were paid without hassle; next stop – University of Texas for a campus tour due to begin at 11am. As I waited for the tour to begin I was sitting near a family with what seemed to be the parents, a six year old daughter, a daughter just finished high school starting at UT in the fall, and a son who is in the midst of transferring to UT from somewhere else. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation – they were right next to me – and I was very amused by a few things I heard. The mother was admonishing the little girl with a warning to basically shut up and behave because the tour wasn’t about her, it was about the daughter who is starting at UT. And then they proceeded to have a conversation that went like this –
Mother – “when you grow up, you’re gonna be an Aggie like mommy.” (note: Aggie is Texas A&M {Agricultural and Mining} which I actually know a bit about because I met some girls who went there while I was in Europe. It’s in Hicksville, a place called ‘College Town’ and it literally is that – a town that is the college and the students and that’s pretty much it.)
Little Girl – “Nooo I’m gonna go to UT like Kirra!” (the older sister)
Mother – “As long as you don’t go to Oklahoma, that’s okay. You’re not allowed to go to Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a bad word. You can’t go to school there, you can’t vacation there, you can’t marry anyone from there.”
The mother was then commenting on how she’d been careful when picking her wardrobe that day to not pick colours that were those of any direct rivals of UT. This whole college rival thing is still highly fascinating for me, ridiculously fascinating. The more I hear about it, the more that my mind is bewildered by it. College life is one of those areas where I think that Australia is the most culturally removed from the United States. The students that go to UT, they live and breathe UT and school spirit and supporting the sports teams.
The tour began – one of the tour guides was total eye candy which helped immensely – and it was catered for potential students. It was interesting because the guides had to find that balance between talking about fun and social culture and clubs and activities; but then to appease the parents they aren’t talking about bars or drinking or parties, they’re throwing in references to the library and study areas, there’s a whole part where they take you to the gym and they’re talking about healthy lifestyle. I tended to try to walk near the guides as you’re walking from place to place because people ask them questions – like about housing and things like that. The tour went for just over an hour, after which point I headed over to look at the Student Union building with like the food outlets. Apparently the highest grossing Wendy’s in the United States with a transaction every seventeen seconds during peak periods is the one on the UT campus – and the second highest grossing Wendy’s in the United States is the OTHER Wendy’s on the UT campus. I then went over to The Drag, which is like, the strip of shops and food outlets on the street across from UT, so I could go into the Co-Op store. At the tour they’d been all ‘if you want to get textbooks, stationery, anything school related, this is where you go.’ You go inside and there’s this MASSIVE store with UT merchandise, any sort of merch you could imagine you can buy it here, for mainly football but also basketball, volleyball and plenty of other sports. Not just standard shirts and keychains and stickers but automotive and wall decorations and mousepads and ugh, just like everything. And then down the back there’s a sign and a staircase ‘textbooks here’. I feel sorry for girls who wind up at UT having to wear this horrible orange colour all the time. It isn’t even a bright sunny orange, it’s like a mustard orange. Every other person on campus was wearing a UT coloured shirt. This is over summer, where they’ve just lost the big football game, it’s not like school spirit is presently at its height, it is the opposite – this is the quiet period, and it’s all GO LONGHORNS.
From there I headed to walk down Congress Avenue to look at the Capitol Building. In Texas they live by the motto that bigger is better and better is bigger and the Capitol is one of those examples of that very fact – it’s bigger than it’s Washington DC counterpart. I was like, starving at this point (I’d had a tiny bowl of cereal for breakfast) and I stopped at Quiznos – my first Quiznos experience – and omg it was soooo yummy! It’s like Subway but fancier and more sort of, predesignated combinations. The cookie was super yummy too :) I kept wandering and in a reflection of its eclectic mix of residents, Austin feels really eclectic as you’re walking, you go from government area to a few streets later being surrounded by funky bars and the music scene of the Sixth Ave entertainment district. I was snapping photos of all sorts of stuff (a sign saying ‘what time is it? Shot time!’) and wandering for a good few hours, looking in some of the music stores.
I went back to my accommodation for a little while, I’d been sweltering in the heat and I wound up napping briefly while I recharged my camera which was almost dead battery. I then headed back out, I had a specific plan for later but in the mean time I got on the bus sort of without much intent other than to find something I could get for dinner. I was watching out the windows for something that tickled my fancy. On gets onto the bus this homeless man wearing a bright pink beaded necklace, like fake pearl looking, the kind that a six year old girl would have for costume dress up jewellery. Of course he sat next to me. He was mumbling about food stamps and the US government and Chase bank and I was sort of not sure if he was expecting me to reply or if he was just mumbling because he could. Then he started singing. Glancing out the window I could see a bunch of shops coming up and as the bus pulled up a bunch of people were lining up to get off so I figured there must be something there so I excused myself and he let me out. Turned out I’d found a major budget grocery store called HEB so I was able to obtain budget dinner – a cheap premade sandwich, a donut, a banana and a drink. They were in the midst of moving things around in the store, and I was highly, highly amused by a sign which read “The Beer is now located in the Healthy Living section.” At the checkout, the girl was fascinated by my accent, like I’d said ‘I’m good thanks how are you today?’ or whatever and she said ‘oh my God, talk again!’ and I told her I was from Australia and she literally squealed and jumped up and down and said I’d made her night. I got outside and I saw coke vending machine – well it wasn’t coke, it was HEB cola – for a quarter! 25 cents for a can of soft drink! Insanity.
I headed back on the bus heading for the Congress Ave bridge. There is this bat colony that lives beneath the bridge and it’s this major tourist attraction that people wait every night at sunset for these bats to wake up and see them fly off together. The night before as Troy had driven me back to the house, he and Melanie had pointed it out to me and it is referenced in my guidebook. I got there pretty early, sunset was just starting. I wasn’t the first there though, there were bunch of people already on the bridge and also in this grassy park beneath the bridge. I eventually wound up chatting to this young couple who wound up standing beside me – I never got their names but the girl, omg, she looked SO MUCH like Sami who I went to high school with. (I suppose in theory Sami might read this, if she gets the link from my Facebook, in which case – Sami, I met your twin!) We chatted a bit and the night went on and the sun went down and it got dark and the bridge was packed and we could hear these bats making noises and a few of them were flitting about but it got completely dark, nothing had really happened and a people were starting to leave. There had been tour cruise boats waiting in the river but they were starting to leave. One of the people who’d been standing near us had commented that they’d come out waiting the night before and waited until 9:15pm and nothing had happened. So it was kinda disappointing.
Tuesday morning I slept in a little later; I started out the day by heading out to the West End area with the specific intent of going to the Whole Foods store, it’s meant to be like the Whole Foods flagship store. Whole Foods is a grocery store that sells what it sounds like – it’s kind of like if you take that organic/health food one aisle that Woolworths has and the WHOLE STORE is that sort of thing with heaps of brands and options and a massive deli and fresh food and things. It’s not cheap, but the variety was insane! Oh, and the self serve machines were pretty much exactly like the Woolworths ones; I mean they’re all about the same (I’ve used quite a few in my time) but these were the most similar that I’ve seen, they must use the same software package just with a different voice and slightly different graphics. I got the bus back to Congress Avenue and then another bus down south on Congress which was where I’d been with the homeless jewellery singing man the day before but bypassed this area of sort of funky shops. I wandered through the ‘Warehouse district’ of downtown and then got the bus back up to near UT where I was staying and walked along The Drag and then through UT over to look at the precious beloved UT football stadium from the outside.
For my last night in Austin; Melanie, Troy and Cole came again to take me to dinner; this time we went to Chuy’s which is like a Tex Mex (Texas Mexican) restaurant. It was really eclectically decorated, I saw some stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling, there were bowling pins, and then the room that we actually wound up in for dinner had a whole ceiling of like, motorcycle wheels. It was a Tuesday night and it was packed, we had about a half hour wait time – they told us as we were seated that it had taken a little longer for us because we had to wait for a table that was appropriate for a high chair to open up. American restaurants really want you to fill up, like seriously. They provided corn chip type things and dips like in the way that Lone Star Steakhouse provides peanuts. I couldn’t decide what to eat and so eventually I decided to get a combination plate. For an extra dollar than the average meal I was going to get to sample just about everything major – a taco, some enchiladas, rice, refried beans, some other little doodahs that I’d never heard of and cannot remember the name was. I made a solid effort, I got through the majority of it but I felt physically stuffed, incapable of consuming anything more.
I regretfully have to say that I did not manage to make it to a movie theatre while I was in Austin, Texas. I very genuinely had intended to and it just didn’t happen. The reason I wanted to make it there is because of Holden and her damn obsession with pickles at the movies. However, I did see giant solo pickles for sale both in New Mexico and Texas which for me was enough. Holden, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry that I couldn’t go to the movies for you and hopefully you get the chance to eat a pickle at the movies when you come out here in August :)
Austin was a pleasant experience; good cheap food, amazement learning about college life and culture, lots to look at. I didn’t ‘DO’ much per se but I felt constantly stimulated as I looked around at things around me. The accents around you vary from the extreme southern Texan sort of accent to what to me is the classic American accent (I’m not good with differentiating many American accents, it’s pretty much either a southern accent or normal to me lol) to hearing foreign accents – I guess being summer, perhaps there are a few students who come over to do summer semester exchanges abroad? There were business suits but not in a New York City rushed madness sort of way. It feels like more of a city than Albuquerque but not in a crazy madness kind of way.
Anyway so I’m about to land in Orlando now... if the flight had been on time then we would’ve been at the ‘time to turn off your electronics’ stage now but it was delayed for 40 minutes which was frustrating mainly because I was already supremely early to the airport so being delayed just made it worse. You’ll hear from me next after Orlando, I imagine, where I’ll hopefully have all sorts of stories about fun with Jess!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
The home of Troy Bolton a.k.a. Albuquerque
I hate when the person in front of you puts their seat back. I rarely put my seat back, even on long haul flights. I’m looking out at... the mountains... erm, they might be the Sandia Mountains? I don’t really know. They’re more rocky than grassy. Maybe some southwest geography buff can tell me what mountain range I’d be flying over on the way from Albuquerque – Austin via El Paso. Yes, I get to technically say that I’ve been to El Paso. It fascinates me these flights in the US that go to a bunch of different cities. This particular flight is for El Paso, Austin, Houston, New Orleans and Baltimore. I’m not sure how long they stop at each city. The lady at check in said that I don’t get off the plane; but on some of my other flights people did have to get off the plane during the stop. Meh.
It was kind of bittersweet leaving Albuquerque. Real life people certainly wouldn’t appreciate the extent of emotional sentiment to the city, wow, High School Musical is set there, whoopee. So I think I’m going to write this blog entry and then write an extended version for my LiveJournal which I’ll leave unlocked so that anyone who is heavily ingrained into HSM like me to the point of caring about the intricacies of Albuquerque can read it.
Albuquerque is in New Mexico – for the benefit people who can’t be bothered to look on a map, it’s in the south just above Mexico; with Texas to the right and it’s a couple of states inland from California. I arrived safe and sound on my flight from Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon; I decided to book a return shuttle to my hostel because on Sunday (when I was flying to Austin) there was no bus running from town to the airport and so I was going to have to get a cab/book a shuttle anyway so I figured I might as well just do it return for a few extra dollars. First impression at the airport – HEAT. I knew it would be hot but it was like, steaaaming hot. The shuttle went via a couple of places on the way to my hostel so I got a bit of a driving tour of town – and the shuttle driver was pointing things out along the way. He was super nice, we chatted when I was the last one in the car and he was asking about my trip and itinerary and what not. I arrived at the hostel and was able to check in straight away even though I was early. I was checked in by an older lady named Sandy, a local. Most hostels are run by travellers on work visas – i.e. in Las Vegas the two main guys I dealt with were British and German; the Vancouver hostel was run by Australians. Somehow I’d wound up booked into a private room, for $5 a night more (so $25 a night) I’d get my own little private space. I didn’t argue. I was paying less than I paid in Vancouver for my own space? Sure, why not. The hostel was rather quaint; it was like someone had turned their two storey home into a hostel. There were only two dorms (a male and a female) and maybe 8 private rooms; of which I think perhaps four were being lived in by people who work at the hostel. It was basic – some people would be freaked out by the basicness. Things like powdered milk, rooms without AC or fans, teeny tiny bathrooms where you have to like, contort yourself against the wall to get the door shut behind you and your knees are touching the door as you sit on the toilet. This stuff doesn’t bother me.
My first afternoon I settled in and then set out to walk to the transport centre (about 10 blocks away, but small blocks, Albuquerquean blocks aren’t like NYC or LA blocks) so I could get my three day bus pass. I had to walk through the main street of town, Central Ave which is where my hostel was located – part of which is the home of the original Route 66. Downtown Albuquerque is pretty bland, really. As far as the ‘main street’ of town goes, it wasn’t like in Vancouver or all the other cities of the world where it is pedestrian only with lots of fashion stores. There were a few bars and clubs, diners, theatres. Anyway so bus pass in hand I wanted to start my touristing straight away, I’d lost a day so every moment was critical. I had a list of things to do and see which were a mix of fandom related and tourist related. However I went back to the hostel so I could do some much needed laundry (conveniently there was a HUGE Laundromat across the street) which in itself was quite interesting, an excellent introduction to the culture of Albuquerque, this diverse mishmash of Indian, Mexican and American – and among the American everyone from Cali girls who look like they got lost on their way from LA to NYC to the extreme stereotype of a southerner. This lady and her daughter came in and had what looked like enough laundry for about 20 people. They had about six washers going and still had baskets and baskets of stuff to put in.
After doing my laundry I checked the bus schedules online and was off on my way. I started out getting the bus out to old town which is meant to be like, all cute and quaint but I was a bit meh about it. I don’t know. Maybe an Australian who hadn’t been to Europe would’ve found it better, I thought it was overrated. An excuse for a bunch of Indian jewellery shops to set up and sell overpriced things to tourists (I bought one postcard for myself.) I should note at this time, I’m not sure if the politically correct term is Native American or Indian. I’m going to stick with Indian because that is what it is labelled as – like there were lots of shops labelled as selling Indian artefacts/jewellery/merchandise – but I don’t mean to offend anyone if the term is more appropriately Native American. (POST SCRIPT AS I’M ABOUT TO POST – I’ve been told that Native American is the more appropriate term. Apologies. But I seriously cannot be bothered to edit.)
(For the record I’m now writing in El Paso as people board the plane.)
Anyway yes so my wander around old town took less than an hour, including time spent picking out a postcard, and then I found my way to the place where I was to get a bus to the Cottonwood Mall which is like, supposedly the biggest mall in Albuquerque. It took a while to get there, even on an express bus, and it took me on a bit of a tour of a different part of the city in the suburbs which is part of the reason why I like getting buses out to random places – just to see something other than the main city area. The mall itself was just a mall. Nothing too special. It was a nice mall, it had really funky decoration on the ceiling in the food court, but in terms of its shops and whatever else, it was just a mall. I wandered, looked around, grabbed some dinner, and then probably around 8pm headed back to the bus stop so I could make my way back toward the hostel. I was sitting waiting for AGES for the bus; I hadn’t actually looked up the timetable but evidently on this route the bus doesn’t come very often. Finally I was back on the bus and on my way back to the hostel where I had an early night. There’s a sign on the back of my room door which warns that Albuquerque is about a mile above sea level and between the climate and altitude it is common to experience headache/nausea/fatigue as side affects. I don’t know if my fatigue was a result of a lack of sleep at Audrey’s the night before or New Mexico but either way, a quiet night catching up on my online stuff and then heading to sleep early was more than welcome.
Friday arrived, I got myself up and going by about 10am – breakfast was pretty basic, but it gave me fuel to get going for the day. My agenda for the morning was to head to the north east area along Menaul for fangirl purposes where I did the mundane things of hanging around the Coronado Center, wandering the nearby streets and going to a Smith’s grocery store. At Coronado I bought a pair of shorts from Sears – indication of the weather because I hate shorts but it was just too hot to be wearing my jeans and it was so hot that wearing a skirt was creating a chafing issue (yeah, that’s probably too much information but whatever). Lunch consisted of a fabulous combination of a treat from Hotdog On A Stick (it was like a dagwood dog that you seem to get at like, fairs/fetes at home) and my first version of what Americans call lemonade – it really was like a homemade lemonade, stronger than Lift or Solo, more bitter and lemony. At home if I went to a restaurant and asked for lemonade, I’d get given Sprite or an equivalent. I then got back on one of the buses that had gotten me there to head toward the Tramway Street just so I could be a bit closer to the mountains to take some pictures of the view. I went back to the hostel for a little while to chillax for a little while, and then headed out east along Central Ave on the bus, having a look around before walking through the student area of the University of New Mexico. Like all great student areas it has that off beat, discount eclectic vibe with music stores, funky fashion outlets, cheap eats. I had been planning to go to the Route 66 Diner as recommended by my guidebook but took a few photos and then saw the massive queue inside just to get a table. Instead I got the bus back to downtown Central Ave and went to one of the diners there – Lindy’s Cafe or something it was called. I had what was called a Chicken Buffalo burger and it was covered in this ridiculously hot marinade, my mouth was on fire. Good thing my drink came with refills (which were just automatically done, the waitress came and collected my glass to take to refill a couple of times).
(Now in the air to Austin)
I was up and about even earlier on Saturday morning, such a bizarre trend for me. But I had a pretty packed day planned. I was on the 8:50 bus heading out to look at Tingley Beach and the Rio Grande River, west on the Route 66/Central Ave. I like going to look at rivers... I don’t know why, but I just adore shots taken by them, I’m always drawn to bits of blue that I see on maps.
There was no blue. It was more like a brown trickle. Yeah, I know, desert, I should’ve anticipated this. Tingley Beach is advertised as like a place to hang out – oh yum, let’s lie on the mud and swim in the murky brown water. No thanks. The Botanical Gardens/Aquarium weren’t far away so I walked there, figuring I could wander through the garden but they were charging an entry fee and I only had a tiny amount of free time so I took some photos in the ticketing area/parking lot and then headed back to the bus stop to make my way back to the downtown area – to find out about the Rail Runner to go to Santa Fe for a few hours. It was due to depart at 11:30 and I was there at like 10:15 and as I was peering at the timetable, a guy with a giant backpack is also there looking at it. He asks me for the time, I’m hardly surprised to hear an Australian accent from his mouth given the backpack. I tell him, he asks where I’m from, we chat and wind up going for a walk downtown to 7-11 and then sit down for a while talking. His name was Vince, he’s a research scientist on a working visa in the US and currently in the post work travel period of his trip. God this guy has done some amazing stuff and met some incredible people through his journey.
We headed back to the train station and onto the train when it arrived, with an hour and a half journey ahead of us to Santa Fe. He was meeting someone there that he knew from home, an ex-professor he’d worked for, I think he said. I was armed with snacks, continuing my trend of tasting American things for the first time. Three Musketeers Bar – average but yummy. Cheddar flavoured Chex Mix – LEGENDARY. The train ride was fine, we chatted for a while, I took photos of some scenery, we were asked during a specific 20 minute period to not take photos as we were travelling through Native land and it is out of respect, Vince napped for the last half hour. We bid our farewells at the train station in Santa Fe as he met his friend and I headed for the courtesy shuttle that takes you to the Plaza Area.
There were tourists everywhere, but with reason. Santa Fe is adorable! Wayyy cuter than Albuquerque. Way way cuter. Yeah it’s still touristy with ‘New Mexican Cuisine’ and Indian jewellery and both Mexicans and Indians lining the pathway selling overpriced trinkets. But in an appealing way. I took a zillion photos from every angle of all the buildings and again headed to the river to be met by a modest trickle of water. I bought a Fajita from a stall in the sort of like, town square, which was super hot but very delicious. I only really had like two and a half hours in Santa Fe but in terms of the main town, that was all I needed. Sure if I’d gone into the museums or whatever you’d need more time but just to wander around all the streets looking at buildings and monuments and statues it was plenty of time, as it was I got back to the train station with heaps of time to spare.
When I got back to Albuquerque I walked back to the hostel, wandering through downtown taking a different route than I had on previous walks. I came across this like, section of 3rd Street with some Hoops thingy going on – they’d blocked off the street and a massive parking lot and set up all these basketball courts and boys from probably like, 6 – 18 years were training and playing. I don’t really understand why or what it was all about. I also saw them starting to block off part of Central Avenue but I had no idea why. I got back to the hostel and researched it – evidently Saturday night was Summerfest Albuquerque. I’d had no idea, nor had I seen it advertised anywhere. So I went back out to get dinner – my first time experiencing Wendy’s (boring. A glorified Kentucky Fried Chicken/Burger King with a nicer seating area) and then heading back to downtown again to check out this Summerfest thing. At the bus stop I wound up chatting to these two older ladies, they were also tourists, they’d rented an RV and were travelling around for two months. We talked about travelling and the culture in Albuquerque and they were really curious about staying in hostels and lots of the things that I was doing.
Summerfest Albuquerque was... it was something to do, I guess. Haha. They’d basically blocked off all of Central Avenue for about six blocks and a couple of the streets off it. At one end there was a bad country/rock cover band playing; at the other was this guy advertising his new salsa studio and giving a ‘first free lesson’ to all the people who were willing to get up and salsa in the street. In between these two ends was a rock climbing wall, jumping castles, some food stands, a random clown act, some buskers and a heap of security. I bought some homemade ice cream, listened to the terrible band for a little while, and then made my way back to the hostel. I had an 8am shuttle this morning and the problem with having a private room was that I’d taken the opportunity to pull like, everything out of my suitcase and scatter it about everywhere.
People in New Mexico were really really friendly. Some of them were friendly in a dirty gross old men on the bus hitting on me way; others just friendly out of the goodness of their hearts. My accent is a talking point – I guess in the places I’ve been to so far, tourists are common and not as exciting. But in Albuquerque it was a thing of fascination. The check in lady at the airport was asking all about my trip; the security guy wasn’t in this gruff rush to get through everyone, people say hello as they walk past. I was waiting for a bus and this random guy walked past and told me it would arrive in ten minutes – I hadn’t asked, he wasn’t even getting the bus, he was just volunteering the information. New Mexico socio-economically has fairly low standards – reflected in the fact that flashy sports cars were few and far between and instead Troy Bolton’s truck would fit in perfectly. Even the homeless people who would ask for money seemed more polite about it, approaching and apologising for interrupting you but could I spare a dollar. The ticket conductors on the trains were friendly, the flight attendants are more relaxed.
Sometimes I think that the vibe and culture of a city is largely influenced by the extent to which business and government is prominent. Sure, Albuquerque is the biggest city in New Mexico but downtown is fairly segregated with business in one section, everyone else in another section. And business people aren’t using public transportation in Albuquerque; it’s not like in New York City where it is commonplace to get around on the subway or buses. So the life I was living and the people I was crossing paths with led to the impression of a much more relaxed lifestyle; people aren’t go go go go and so they weren’t feeling the need to rush and ignore the tourist on the side of the road.
Anyway. That’s the truncated Albuquerque for the general person to read. I’m finally posting this in Orlando; after I’ve been to Austin, so the Austin, Texas update shouldn’t be too far away! :)
It was kind of bittersweet leaving Albuquerque. Real life people certainly wouldn’t appreciate the extent of emotional sentiment to the city, wow, High School Musical is set there, whoopee. So I think I’m going to write this blog entry and then write an extended version for my LiveJournal which I’ll leave unlocked so that anyone who is heavily ingrained into HSM like me to the point of caring about the intricacies of Albuquerque can read it.
Albuquerque is in New Mexico – for the benefit people who can’t be bothered to look on a map, it’s in the south just above Mexico; with Texas to the right and it’s a couple of states inland from California. I arrived safe and sound on my flight from Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon; I decided to book a return shuttle to my hostel because on Sunday (when I was flying to Austin) there was no bus running from town to the airport and so I was going to have to get a cab/book a shuttle anyway so I figured I might as well just do it return for a few extra dollars. First impression at the airport – HEAT. I knew it would be hot but it was like, steaaaming hot. The shuttle went via a couple of places on the way to my hostel so I got a bit of a driving tour of town – and the shuttle driver was pointing things out along the way. He was super nice, we chatted when I was the last one in the car and he was asking about my trip and itinerary and what not. I arrived at the hostel and was able to check in straight away even though I was early. I was checked in by an older lady named Sandy, a local. Most hostels are run by travellers on work visas – i.e. in Las Vegas the two main guys I dealt with were British and German; the Vancouver hostel was run by Australians. Somehow I’d wound up booked into a private room, for $5 a night more (so $25 a night) I’d get my own little private space. I didn’t argue. I was paying less than I paid in Vancouver for my own space? Sure, why not. The hostel was rather quaint; it was like someone had turned their two storey home into a hostel. There were only two dorms (a male and a female) and maybe 8 private rooms; of which I think perhaps four were being lived in by people who work at the hostel. It was basic – some people would be freaked out by the basicness. Things like powdered milk, rooms without AC or fans, teeny tiny bathrooms where you have to like, contort yourself against the wall to get the door shut behind you and your knees are touching the door as you sit on the toilet. This stuff doesn’t bother me.
My first afternoon I settled in and then set out to walk to the transport centre (about 10 blocks away, but small blocks, Albuquerquean blocks aren’t like NYC or LA blocks) so I could get my three day bus pass. I had to walk through the main street of town, Central Ave which is where my hostel was located – part of which is the home of the original Route 66. Downtown Albuquerque is pretty bland, really. As far as the ‘main street’ of town goes, it wasn’t like in Vancouver or all the other cities of the world where it is pedestrian only with lots of fashion stores. There were a few bars and clubs, diners, theatres. Anyway so bus pass in hand I wanted to start my touristing straight away, I’d lost a day so every moment was critical. I had a list of things to do and see which were a mix of fandom related and tourist related. However I went back to the hostel so I could do some much needed laundry (conveniently there was a HUGE Laundromat across the street) which in itself was quite interesting, an excellent introduction to the culture of Albuquerque, this diverse mishmash of Indian, Mexican and American – and among the American everyone from Cali girls who look like they got lost on their way from LA to NYC to the extreme stereotype of a southerner. This lady and her daughter came in and had what looked like enough laundry for about 20 people. They had about six washers going and still had baskets and baskets of stuff to put in.
After doing my laundry I checked the bus schedules online and was off on my way. I started out getting the bus out to old town which is meant to be like, all cute and quaint but I was a bit meh about it. I don’t know. Maybe an Australian who hadn’t been to Europe would’ve found it better, I thought it was overrated. An excuse for a bunch of Indian jewellery shops to set up and sell overpriced things to tourists (I bought one postcard for myself.) I should note at this time, I’m not sure if the politically correct term is Native American or Indian. I’m going to stick with Indian because that is what it is labelled as – like there were lots of shops labelled as selling Indian artefacts/jewellery/merchandise – but I don’t mean to offend anyone if the term is more appropriately Native American. (POST SCRIPT AS I’M ABOUT TO POST – I’ve been told that Native American is the more appropriate term. Apologies. But I seriously cannot be bothered to edit.)
(For the record I’m now writing in El Paso as people board the plane.)
Anyway yes so my wander around old town took less than an hour, including time spent picking out a postcard, and then I found my way to the place where I was to get a bus to the Cottonwood Mall which is like, supposedly the biggest mall in Albuquerque. It took a while to get there, even on an express bus, and it took me on a bit of a tour of a different part of the city in the suburbs which is part of the reason why I like getting buses out to random places – just to see something other than the main city area. The mall itself was just a mall. Nothing too special. It was a nice mall, it had really funky decoration on the ceiling in the food court, but in terms of its shops and whatever else, it was just a mall. I wandered, looked around, grabbed some dinner, and then probably around 8pm headed back to the bus stop so I could make my way back toward the hostel. I was sitting waiting for AGES for the bus; I hadn’t actually looked up the timetable but evidently on this route the bus doesn’t come very often. Finally I was back on the bus and on my way back to the hostel where I had an early night. There’s a sign on the back of my room door which warns that Albuquerque is about a mile above sea level and between the climate and altitude it is common to experience headache/nausea/fatigue as side affects. I don’t know if my fatigue was a result of a lack of sleep at Audrey’s the night before or New Mexico but either way, a quiet night catching up on my online stuff and then heading to sleep early was more than welcome.
Friday arrived, I got myself up and going by about 10am – breakfast was pretty basic, but it gave me fuel to get going for the day. My agenda for the morning was to head to the north east area along Menaul for fangirl purposes where I did the mundane things of hanging around the Coronado Center, wandering the nearby streets and going to a Smith’s grocery store. At Coronado I bought a pair of shorts from Sears – indication of the weather because I hate shorts but it was just too hot to be wearing my jeans and it was so hot that wearing a skirt was creating a chafing issue (yeah, that’s probably too much information but whatever). Lunch consisted of a fabulous combination of a treat from Hotdog On A Stick (it was like a dagwood dog that you seem to get at like, fairs/fetes at home) and my first version of what Americans call lemonade – it really was like a homemade lemonade, stronger than Lift or Solo, more bitter and lemony. At home if I went to a restaurant and asked for lemonade, I’d get given Sprite or an equivalent. I then got back on one of the buses that had gotten me there to head toward the Tramway Street just so I could be a bit closer to the mountains to take some pictures of the view. I went back to the hostel for a little while to chillax for a little while, and then headed out east along Central Ave on the bus, having a look around before walking through the student area of the University of New Mexico. Like all great student areas it has that off beat, discount eclectic vibe with music stores, funky fashion outlets, cheap eats. I had been planning to go to the Route 66 Diner as recommended by my guidebook but took a few photos and then saw the massive queue inside just to get a table. Instead I got the bus back to downtown Central Ave and went to one of the diners there – Lindy’s Cafe or something it was called. I had what was called a Chicken Buffalo burger and it was covered in this ridiculously hot marinade, my mouth was on fire. Good thing my drink came with refills (which were just automatically done, the waitress came and collected my glass to take to refill a couple of times).
(Now in the air to Austin)
I was up and about even earlier on Saturday morning, such a bizarre trend for me. But I had a pretty packed day planned. I was on the 8:50 bus heading out to look at Tingley Beach and the Rio Grande River, west on the Route 66/Central Ave. I like going to look at rivers... I don’t know why, but I just adore shots taken by them, I’m always drawn to bits of blue that I see on maps.
There was no blue. It was more like a brown trickle. Yeah, I know, desert, I should’ve anticipated this. Tingley Beach is advertised as like a place to hang out – oh yum, let’s lie on the mud and swim in the murky brown water. No thanks. The Botanical Gardens/Aquarium weren’t far away so I walked there, figuring I could wander through the garden but they were charging an entry fee and I only had a tiny amount of free time so I took some photos in the ticketing area/parking lot and then headed back to the bus stop to make my way back to the downtown area – to find out about the Rail Runner to go to Santa Fe for a few hours. It was due to depart at 11:30 and I was there at like 10:15 and as I was peering at the timetable, a guy with a giant backpack is also there looking at it. He asks me for the time, I’m hardly surprised to hear an Australian accent from his mouth given the backpack. I tell him, he asks where I’m from, we chat and wind up going for a walk downtown to 7-11 and then sit down for a while talking. His name was Vince, he’s a research scientist on a working visa in the US and currently in the post work travel period of his trip. God this guy has done some amazing stuff and met some incredible people through his journey.
We headed back to the train station and onto the train when it arrived, with an hour and a half journey ahead of us to Santa Fe. He was meeting someone there that he knew from home, an ex-professor he’d worked for, I think he said. I was armed with snacks, continuing my trend of tasting American things for the first time. Three Musketeers Bar – average but yummy. Cheddar flavoured Chex Mix – LEGENDARY. The train ride was fine, we chatted for a while, I took photos of some scenery, we were asked during a specific 20 minute period to not take photos as we were travelling through Native land and it is out of respect, Vince napped for the last half hour. We bid our farewells at the train station in Santa Fe as he met his friend and I headed for the courtesy shuttle that takes you to the Plaza Area.
There were tourists everywhere, but with reason. Santa Fe is adorable! Wayyy cuter than Albuquerque. Way way cuter. Yeah it’s still touristy with ‘New Mexican Cuisine’ and Indian jewellery and both Mexicans and Indians lining the pathway selling overpriced trinkets. But in an appealing way. I took a zillion photos from every angle of all the buildings and again headed to the river to be met by a modest trickle of water. I bought a Fajita from a stall in the sort of like, town square, which was super hot but very delicious. I only really had like two and a half hours in Santa Fe but in terms of the main town, that was all I needed. Sure if I’d gone into the museums or whatever you’d need more time but just to wander around all the streets looking at buildings and monuments and statues it was plenty of time, as it was I got back to the train station with heaps of time to spare.
When I got back to Albuquerque I walked back to the hostel, wandering through downtown taking a different route than I had on previous walks. I came across this like, section of 3rd Street with some Hoops thingy going on – they’d blocked off the street and a massive parking lot and set up all these basketball courts and boys from probably like, 6 – 18 years were training and playing. I don’t really understand why or what it was all about. I also saw them starting to block off part of Central Avenue but I had no idea why. I got back to the hostel and researched it – evidently Saturday night was Summerfest Albuquerque. I’d had no idea, nor had I seen it advertised anywhere. So I went back out to get dinner – my first time experiencing Wendy’s (boring. A glorified Kentucky Fried Chicken/Burger King with a nicer seating area) and then heading back to downtown again to check out this Summerfest thing. At the bus stop I wound up chatting to these two older ladies, they were also tourists, they’d rented an RV and were travelling around for two months. We talked about travelling and the culture in Albuquerque and they were really curious about staying in hostels and lots of the things that I was doing.
Summerfest Albuquerque was... it was something to do, I guess. Haha. They’d basically blocked off all of Central Avenue for about six blocks and a couple of the streets off it. At one end there was a bad country/rock cover band playing; at the other was this guy advertising his new salsa studio and giving a ‘first free lesson’ to all the people who were willing to get up and salsa in the street. In between these two ends was a rock climbing wall, jumping castles, some food stands, a random clown act, some buskers and a heap of security. I bought some homemade ice cream, listened to the terrible band for a little while, and then made my way back to the hostel. I had an 8am shuttle this morning and the problem with having a private room was that I’d taken the opportunity to pull like, everything out of my suitcase and scatter it about everywhere.
People in New Mexico were really really friendly. Some of them were friendly in a dirty gross old men on the bus hitting on me way; others just friendly out of the goodness of their hearts. My accent is a talking point – I guess in the places I’ve been to so far, tourists are common and not as exciting. But in Albuquerque it was a thing of fascination. The check in lady at the airport was asking all about my trip; the security guy wasn’t in this gruff rush to get through everyone, people say hello as they walk past. I was waiting for a bus and this random guy walked past and told me it would arrive in ten minutes – I hadn’t asked, he wasn’t even getting the bus, he was just volunteering the information. New Mexico socio-economically has fairly low standards – reflected in the fact that flashy sports cars were few and far between and instead Troy Bolton’s truck would fit in perfectly. Even the homeless people who would ask for money seemed more polite about it, approaching and apologising for interrupting you but could I spare a dollar. The ticket conductors on the trains were friendly, the flight attendants are more relaxed.
Sometimes I think that the vibe and culture of a city is largely influenced by the extent to which business and government is prominent. Sure, Albuquerque is the biggest city in New Mexico but downtown is fairly segregated with business in one section, everyone else in another section. And business people aren’t using public transportation in Albuquerque; it’s not like in New York City where it is commonplace to get around on the subway or buses. So the life I was living and the people I was crossing paths with led to the impression of a much more relaxed lifestyle; people aren’t go go go go and so they weren’t feeling the need to rush and ignore the tourist on the side of the road.
Anyway. That’s the truncated Albuquerque for the general person to read. I’m finally posting this in Orlando; after I’ve been to Austin, so the Austin, Texas update shouldn’t be too far away! :)
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Fangirl Hysterics also known as Los Angeles 2.0
Here we are, yet another entry. I’m almost two weeks into my trip; which means I’m almost one quarter done. When I went travelling in Europe there wasn’t a definite end point for a long time. I kept it open, thinking I might stick around longer, I might try to work, I might travel for longer in South East Asia on the way home. It was only when I had less than two weeks left that I made the official decision to return home after Singapore and changed my flight. This trip has an end point – although I won’t lie, I’ve looked into the option of extending a little.
I’m writing on the flight from Los Angeles to Albuquerque on Thursday June 10th. I was meant to do this flight yesterday but things came up... I should go back. This really is the kind of entry that should be written chronologically.
So, really, the first things to tell are from the flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles – where I wrote my last entry. What I didn’t mention was that I very nearly didn’t get let back into the United States. For some reason that kind of confuses me; in Vancouver we did all of the security that you would normally do once you arrive at a country. Normally you get an exit stamp; and then you fly, arrive at a country, go through security, collect your bag, go through customs. But I guess Canada and the US have things set up differently to prevent the need to go through all the hoopla in the US. And so in Vancouver I checked in and everything and went through carry on luggage security and then there was a big sign saying ‘welcome to the United States’ and I had to go through the entry procedure. Now, I’ve done this a couple of times now, entering the US; and I’ve also done the same thing in a few other countries when I had flights. They ask why you’re there, you tell them, they smile and stamp your passport and it is fine. Of course I had the hard ass security guy – he wanted to see my flight itinerary home. Shit. I have it booked. I KNEW I had the print out – I’d thrown out my itineraries from like, my flight to Vegas and my flight into Canada but I’d kept my Air New Zealand one. But I simply could not find the damn thing. I’ve got this big ass folder with all of my flight and hostel information; as well as some other things I printed out (cough fanfic cough) and I’m going through and freaking out. I tried to make a joke and said something about how I was gonna be one of those people on Border Security but he didn’t even crack a smile. He was all ‘you have all of this stuff but you don’t have your flight home? Are you sure you’ve booked a flight back?’ which offended me. I attempted to explain that I haven’t booked the very last week of my trip yet and that the print outs only go up until June 15 or so and he said ‘So you haven’t booked your flight home????’ and I insisted that I had and he’d misunderstood – I just hadn’t booked my accommodation or internal transport for the last week. I insist that he can look it up online and he says he isn’t able to – yeah right, he has this big ass computer in front of him. I’m sure had I been like, hauled into a questioning room then they would’ve been able to look it up but seriously? He can see that I’m moving cities every like, three to four days, does he really think that I’m going to be looking for work or something in that time? Finally he let out this disgruntled sigh, stamped my passport, shoved it back at me and told me to go.
I was in tears – literally – I appreciate why the US has such strict security but I don’t appreciate the way that he went about enforcing it while there’s a massive queue of people staring on wondering what the hell the hold up is at one of the counters. Anyway. I got myself together and luckily I had a really awesome flight back again on WestJet. The head flight attendant was a French man named Michele and he was freaking hilarious. WestJet make all of their announcements twice – once in English and then in French. On the way to Vancouver they’d used an audio recording but Michele did the announcement and he’d conclude every French announcement with ‘ooh la la!’ which had everyone laughing. He also spliced jokes into it all, i.e. “If you don’t enjoy the service today, there are six emergency exits on board the plane...”
After all the hassle with Vancouver security, it was nice to arrive in Los Angeles in a domestic terminal and not have to go through any of it. I was able to retrieve my bag and wait for Audrey in peace, people watching (which I enjoy) and catching up on my text messages – I hadn’t had reception in Canada.
Sunday night was MTV Movie Awards night. I had tried to get seat filler tickets to attend – basically award shows let members of the public attend for free, and when the talent get up to go to the bathroom or accept an award or present or whatever, they shove you around and you move around and sit in different seats – so that when the camera pans to the audience, there aren’t empty gaps. I hadn’t gotten tickets and so instead I had the opportunity to enjoy the hooplah live. We had a few drinks – I got a bit tipsy – and because LA actually gets the telecast delayed (so weird, when it is filmed in LA but that’s timezones for you) and Audrey is an admin on a Zac Efron/Vanessa Hudgens fansite, she had to be Tweeting during the red carpet arrivals/the show from the Twitter account of the site. So we were both on laptops in the living room with the Twitter account open and Oh No They Didn’t on LJ and Cady’s site and all the image sites and other forums and basically refreshing and Tweeting and spazzing about the hotness that was Zachary at the awards. I was texting with Jess (who lives on the East Coast and so gets it live) and Audrey was texting/calling Kerry who is also on the East coast and we were getting all of the info pretty much as it happened. We ordered Chinese food for when we’d actually get to watch the awards – meh. I wasn’t paying much attention to be honest, only when it was Zac/Vanessa/Twilight oriented did I perk up and pay attention to what was going on.
Audrey was back at work on Monday and so I was left to my own devices. I hung around her place for a while and did some writing and then decided to go out for a walk – which evidently is so NOT Los Angeles. No one walks. Seriously. I didn’t go that far but I barely passed anyone on the street. I wound up walking to the Beverly Center where I’ve been before, in 2008. I’d found out via text message that there was an event I might be able to attend on Tuesday night so I was looking at buying an outfit. And then, in this flurry of chaotic activity, things changed. I’d just gotten a text from Jess (for anyone real life reading, she’s one of my US friends who is familiar with my Zac Efron obsession and who I’m staying with for five nights from next week) telling me to check my Twitter because she’s seen a Tweet about a Charlie St. Cloud screening – again, for real life people – Charlie St. Cloud is Zac Efron’s up and coming film which is slated for U.S. release of July 30 – two days after I leave – and is yet to have an Australian release announced. I know that for regular people this is like, okay whatever, but when you follow an actor really closely and talk to people overseas who also follow him, a delayed release is like, tragic. Anyway, I was in the midst of checking my Twitter on my ghetto crappy phone I’ve bought when I get a text from Audrey. She asks when I’m leaving on Wednesday. I can’t remember the flight time off the top of my head but I know it is morning. She’s like, okay so, good news maybe? I’ve gotten an invite to a CSC screening on Wednesday night.
I was scheduled to leave Wednesday morning.
FML.
This led to me calling Jess for the first time – I didn’t have time to think about it (yeah I’m staying with her next week but I was nervous about calling. So sue me for being a weirdo) and I was like omgomgomgomgomg. We talked for a while as I was wandering around the Beverly Center barely able to hear because of the loud music and chatter in the background, I agonised about changing my flight knowing that it wouldn’t be easily done – and whether it was even SANE. Luckily for me; I’d booked four nights in Albuquerque so it wasn’t like I’d be cutting my time to an impossible amount of time to see the sights. I knew I’d be able to change my accommodation booking and my airport shuttle. Audrey came back to meet me at the Beverly Center after work, we shopped for a little bit and then headed to pick up her boyfriend to go out for dinner. We went to this really funky diner type place... um... Fred something? It was a number. Like Fred 57 or something. I was ‘healthy’ and had a chicken Caesar salad (not the best I’ve had but I did actually feel good for eating lettuce, I’ve been eating like, pizza half the time). I got back to Audrey’s and investigated changing my flight. SouthWest don’t charge a change fee; but because I’d gotten a sale fare and there were no more sale fares left, I was going to have to pay the difference between what I’d paid and what the ticket was available.
I’m really, really indecisive. It really wasn’t about the money – I can afford it. I’m getting holiday pay from work that I’ve sort of designated as my ‘extras’ money – tours, show tickets, things that are beyond the regular norm. But it was the principle – to pay that amount of money for a movie? Yes, I know, real life people would think I’m insane and plenty of fandom people would too. The girls on Twitter listened to be agonise and finally, I just did it. Kind of like the moment when I booked my flights to see Zac in Sydney for 17 Again; or when I actually booked my tickets for this trip in the first place. It was like, why the eff not? If I didn’t, I’d regret it. I’d be like, I could’ve gone to that. I could’ve already seen this movie and I said no.
Tuesday Audrey picked up breakfast when she had to go out for a work related thing in the morning – Dani massively amused. Seriously I don’t know of anyone at home who would find it commonplace to go to like a diner to ‘pick up’ breakfast. You might go out to get croissants or maybe like take away Mc Donalds breakfast; but this was like a feast of pancakes and sausages and bacon and muffins and pastries, like in a Chinese takeout fashion. We hung around during the day before Audrey had to go to work later in the afternoon. It turned out that the event for Tuesday night wasn’t really an event that I even would want to attend so I wound up with some unexpected free time and I texted Jill-Renay (again, for real life people, someone I know from my online activities ) and asked if she was free to meet up. She was and in awesome kindness she drove over to my side of town to meet me and then quickly decided to head back to her neck of the woods. I went to this funky yogurt place which being the hick Aussie I am I found massively enjoyable – you like, take a cup, get your yogurt from like a soft serve machine and add whatever you want to it with this massive selection of fruits and lollies and chocolates and all sorts of stuff. After yogurt I was taken on this driving tour of like, seriously, everywhere. I was looking around giddily – LA is just this maze seriously. Most of the time I just had no concept of where we were and I’m certain that I was sounding like an idiot with my stupid comments about things that are probably just very mundane and yet I found super amusing.
Wednesday Audrey had work again; I slept in and then FINALLY caught up on Grey’s Anatomy! After about 2395083 heart attacks I went out to get some food and was back just in time to get ready for the screening. We left really early. It’s a first come first served and it says to arrive at 6:45 but Audrey has been to other screenings and experienced the ‘we’re not going to get in, there are so many people here’ and this simply was NOT an option given that I changed my flights for this and everything. So we trekked out to the random location of Woodland Hills to this really ghetto mall – it makes some of our crappy shopping centres at home look really exciting – and we were the first ones to arrive and so we decided to go for a wander. One of the online girls, Melissa, was also going to the screening and we’d talked about meeting up and saying hi but stupid me, because we’d left our phones/my camera in the car(because you’re not allowed them in the cinema) I forgot to text her to tell her like, what I was wearing or something. We’d been sitting in view of the queue that was forming but then they moved it to a different location and we weren’t going to be able to see how big it was getting so we moved to go join them. We didn’t have to wait that long before they went along checking invitations and giving out stamps on the hand and wristbands; and then they let everyone into the cinema earlier than I’d anticipated so we didn’t have to sit in the floor in the middle of the mall and wait, we got to actually wait in the cinema.
I still don’t really believe that I saw it. Like, it feels kind of surreal, I had little time to build up and get excited about it and it’s almost like it truly didn’t happen. I was actually feeling kinda nauseous in the film which I was upset about, but that didn’t detract from its awesomeness. Not disappointing in the slightest. We had to fill out a survey afterwards and we spazzed in the car on the way back to her place and then both proceeded to get on the phone – Audrey to Kerry, me to Jess – to spazzzz about it some more.
And that brings me to now – Audrey, for future notice, when checking in luggage more time needs to be allowed. I was classified as a ‘late’ check in (it’s on my bag) and I’m petrified that it isn’t going to make it to Albuquerque on the flight – because when it is classed as such, it means they won’t pay to have it couriered to your accommodation. I literally had no spare time, I went straight through security, straight to the gate, and I had time to put my things away (I was still carrying like, my baggie of liquids and jacket and netbook in my hands from when I’d grabbed them from the tubs at the X-ray) and buy a new water bottle (normally I finish drinking the one with me so I can take it through and then fill up at a water fountain but I had no time for that so I’d had to throw it out) and get on the plane.
I’m channelling good vibes for my luggage to be on board – there’s another flight in about two hours (I know because I was looking at the flights to change just the other night) so I guess worst case scenario is that I’m going to hang around the airport and wait for my suitcase.
So yes. That’s the tale of Los Angeles 2.0. It was pretty much one big fangirl experience for the entire time, with not much else done other than fandom related things, but that’s more than okay with me!
From here I have three nights in Albuquerque, three in Austin and then I’m off to Orlando for five nights where I’ll be back in the comfort of someone’s home who can look after me. It’s a different feeling to Europe where I was literally on my own for the whole trip; it’s sort of like a balance between ‘travelling’ and ‘vacationing’ (which are two distinct things in my mind) which I’m finding enjoyable thus far.
Until next time...
Xxx
POST SCRIPT: My bag arrived safely, in fact the advantage to being the last on the plane is that it was the first off :)
I’m writing on the flight from Los Angeles to Albuquerque on Thursday June 10th. I was meant to do this flight yesterday but things came up... I should go back. This really is the kind of entry that should be written chronologically.
So, really, the first things to tell are from the flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles – where I wrote my last entry. What I didn’t mention was that I very nearly didn’t get let back into the United States. For some reason that kind of confuses me; in Vancouver we did all of the security that you would normally do once you arrive at a country. Normally you get an exit stamp; and then you fly, arrive at a country, go through security, collect your bag, go through customs. But I guess Canada and the US have things set up differently to prevent the need to go through all the hoopla in the US. And so in Vancouver I checked in and everything and went through carry on luggage security and then there was a big sign saying ‘welcome to the United States’ and I had to go through the entry procedure. Now, I’ve done this a couple of times now, entering the US; and I’ve also done the same thing in a few other countries when I had flights. They ask why you’re there, you tell them, they smile and stamp your passport and it is fine. Of course I had the hard ass security guy – he wanted to see my flight itinerary home. Shit. I have it booked. I KNEW I had the print out – I’d thrown out my itineraries from like, my flight to Vegas and my flight into Canada but I’d kept my Air New Zealand one. But I simply could not find the damn thing. I’ve got this big ass folder with all of my flight and hostel information; as well as some other things I printed out (cough fanfic cough) and I’m going through and freaking out. I tried to make a joke and said something about how I was gonna be one of those people on Border Security but he didn’t even crack a smile. He was all ‘you have all of this stuff but you don’t have your flight home? Are you sure you’ve booked a flight back?’ which offended me. I attempted to explain that I haven’t booked the very last week of my trip yet and that the print outs only go up until June 15 or so and he said ‘So you haven’t booked your flight home????’ and I insisted that I had and he’d misunderstood – I just hadn’t booked my accommodation or internal transport for the last week. I insist that he can look it up online and he says he isn’t able to – yeah right, he has this big ass computer in front of him. I’m sure had I been like, hauled into a questioning room then they would’ve been able to look it up but seriously? He can see that I’m moving cities every like, three to four days, does he really think that I’m going to be looking for work or something in that time? Finally he let out this disgruntled sigh, stamped my passport, shoved it back at me and told me to go.
I was in tears – literally – I appreciate why the US has such strict security but I don’t appreciate the way that he went about enforcing it while there’s a massive queue of people staring on wondering what the hell the hold up is at one of the counters. Anyway. I got myself together and luckily I had a really awesome flight back again on WestJet. The head flight attendant was a French man named Michele and he was freaking hilarious. WestJet make all of their announcements twice – once in English and then in French. On the way to Vancouver they’d used an audio recording but Michele did the announcement and he’d conclude every French announcement with ‘ooh la la!’ which had everyone laughing. He also spliced jokes into it all, i.e. “If you don’t enjoy the service today, there are six emergency exits on board the plane...”
After all the hassle with Vancouver security, it was nice to arrive in Los Angeles in a domestic terminal and not have to go through any of it. I was able to retrieve my bag and wait for Audrey in peace, people watching (which I enjoy) and catching up on my text messages – I hadn’t had reception in Canada.
Sunday night was MTV Movie Awards night. I had tried to get seat filler tickets to attend – basically award shows let members of the public attend for free, and when the talent get up to go to the bathroom or accept an award or present or whatever, they shove you around and you move around and sit in different seats – so that when the camera pans to the audience, there aren’t empty gaps. I hadn’t gotten tickets and so instead I had the opportunity to enjoy the hooplah live. We had a few drinks – I got a bit tipsy – and because LA actually gets the telecast delayed (so weird, when it is filmed in LA but that’s timezones for you) and Audrey is an admin on a Zac Efron/Vanessa Hudgens fansite, she had to be Tweeting during the red carpet arrivals/the show from the Twitter account of the site. So we were both on laptops in the living room with the Twitter account open and Oh No They Didn’t on LJ and Cady’s site and all the image sites and other forums and basically refreshing and Tweeting and spazzing about the hotness that was Zachary at the awards. I was texting with Jess (who lives on the East Coast and so gets it live) and Audrey was texting/calling Kerry who is also on the East coast and we were getting all of the info pretty much as it happened. We ordered Chinese food for when we’d actually get to watch the awards – meh. I wasn’t paying much attention to be honest, only when it was Zac/Vanessa/Twilight oriented did I perk up and pay attention to what was going on.
Audrey was back at work on Monday and so I was left to my own devices. I hung around her place for a while and did some writing and then decided to go out for a walk – which evidently is so NOT Los Angeles. No one walks. Seriously. I didn’t go that far but I barely passed anyone on the street. I wound up walking to the Beverly Center where I’ve been before, in 2008. I’d found out via text message that there was an event I might be able to attend on Tuesday night so I was looking at buying an outfit. And then, in this flurry of chaotic activity, things changed. I’d just gotten a text from Jess (for anyone real life reading, she’s one of my US friends who is familiar with my Zac Efron obsession and who I’m staying with for five nights from next week) telling me to check my Twitter because she’s seen a Tweet about a Charlie St. Cloud screening – again, for real life people – Charlie St. Cloud is Zac Efron’s up and coming film which is slated for U.S. release of July 30 – two days after I leave – and is yet to have an Australian release announced. I know that for regular people this is like, okay whatever, but when you follow an actor really closely and talk to people overseas who also follow him, a delayed release is like, tragic. Anyway, I was in the midst of checking my Twitter on my ghetto crappy phone I’ve bought when I get a text from Audrey. She asks when I’m leaving on Wednesday. I can’t remember the flight time off the top of my head but I know it is morning. She’s like, okay so, good news maybe? I’ve gotten an invite to a CSC screening on Wednesday night.
I was scheduled to leave Wednesday morning.
FML.
This led to me calling Jess for the first time – I didn’t have time to think about it (yeah I’m staying with her next week but I was nervous about calling. So sue me for being a weirdo) and I was like omgomgomgomgomg. We talked for a while as I was wandering around the Beverly Center barely able to hear because of the loud music and chatter in the background, I agonised about changing my flight knowing that it wouldn’t be easily done – and whether it was even SANE. Luckily for me; I’d booked four nights in Albuquerque so it wasn’t like I’d be cutting my time to an impossible amount of time to see the sights. I knew I’d be able to change my accommodation booking and my airport shuttle. Audrey came back to meet me at the Beverly Center after work, we shopped for a little bit and then headed to pick up her boyfriend to go out for dinner. We went to this really funky diner type place... um... Fred something? It was a number. Like Fred 57 or something. I was ‘healthy’ and had a chicken Caesar salad (not the best I’ve had but I did actually feel good for eating lettuce, I’ve been eating like, pizza half the time). I got back to Audrey’s and investigated changing my flight. SouthWest don’t charge a change fee; but because I’d gotten a sale fare and there were no more sale fares left, I was going to have to pay the difference between what I’d paid and what the ticket was available.
I’m really, really indecisive. It really wasn’t about the money – I can afford it. I’m getting holiday pay from work that I’ve sort of designated as my ‘extras’ money – tours, show tickets, things that are beyond the regular norm. But it was the principle – to pay that amount of money for a movie? Yes, I know, real life people would think I’m insane and plenty of fandom people would too. The girls on Twitter listened to be agonise and finally, I just did it. Kind of like the moment when I booked my flights to see Zac in Sydney for 17 Again; or when I actually booked my tickets for this trip in the first place. It was like, why the eff not? If I didn’t, I’d regret it. I’d be like, I could’ve gone to that. I could’ve already seen this movie and I said no.
Tuesday Audrey picked up breakfast when she had to go out for a work related thing in the morning – Dani massively amused. Seriously I don’t know of anyone at home who would find it commonplace to go to like a diner to ‘pick up’ breakfast. You might go out to get croissants or maybe like take away Mc Donalds breakfast; but this was like a feast of pancakes and sausages and bacon and muffins and pastries, like in a Chinese takeout fashion. We hung around during the day before Audrey had to go to work later in the afternoon. It turned out that the event for Tuesday night wasn’t really an event that I even would want to attend so I wound up with some unexpected free time and I texted Jill-Renay (again, for real life people, someone I know from my online activities ) and asked if she was free to meet up. She was and in awesome kindness she drove over to my side of town to meet me and then quickly decided to head back to her neck of the woods. I went to this funky yogurt place which being the hick Aussie I am I found massively enjoyable – you like, take a cup, get your yogurt from like a soft serve machine and add whatever you want to it with this massive selection of fruits and lollies and chocolates and all sorts of stuff. After yogurt I was taken on this driving tour of like, seriously, everywhere. I was looking around giddily – LA is just this maze seriously. Most of the time I just had no concept of where we were and I’m certain that I was sounding like an idiot with my stupid comments about things that are probably just very mundane and yet I found super amusing.
Wednesday Audrey had work again; I slept in and then FINALLY caught up on Grey’s Anatomy! After about 2395083 heart attacks I went out to get some food and was back just in time to get ready for the screening. We left really early. It’s a first come first served and it says to arrive at 6:45 but Audrey has been to other screenings and experienced the ‘we’re not going to get in, there are so many people here’ and this simply was NOT an option given that I changed my flights for this and everything. So we trekked out to the random location of Woodland Hills to this really ghetto mall – it makes some of our crappy shopping centres at home look really exciting – and we were the first ones to arrive and so we decided to go for a wander. One of the online girls, Melissa, was also going to the screening and we’d talked about meeting up and saying hi but stupid me, because we’d left our phones/my camera in the car(because you’re not allowed them in the cinema) I forgot to text her to tell her like, what I was wearing or something. We’d been sitting in view of the queue that was forming but then they moved it to a different location and we weren’t going to be able to see how big it was getting so we moved to go join them. We didn’t have to wait that long before they went along checking invitations and giving out stamps on the hand and wristbands; and then they let everyone into the cinema earlier than I’d anticipated so we didn’t have to sit in the floor in the middle of the mall and wait, we got to actually wait in the cinema.
I still don’t really believe that I saw it. Like, it feels kind of surreal, I had little time to build up and get excited about it and it’s almost like it truly didn’t happen. I was actually feeling kinda nauseous in the film which I was upset about, but that didn’t detract from its awesomeness. Not disappointing in the slightest. We had to fill out a survey afterwards and we spazzed in the car on the way back to her place and then both proceeded to get on the phone – Audrey to Kerry, me to Jess – to spazzzz about it some more.
And that brings me to now – Audrey, for future notice, when checking in luggage more time needs to be allowed. I was classified as a ‘late’ check in (it’s on my bag) and I’m petrified that it isn’t going to make it to Albuquerque on the flight – because when it is classed as such, it means they won’t pay to have it couriered to your accommodation. I literally had no spare time, I went straight through security, straight to the gate, and I had time to put my things away (I was still carrying like, my baggie of liquids and jacket and netbook in my hands from when I’d grabbed them from the tubs at the X-ray) and buy a new water bottle (normally I finish drinking the one with me so I can take it through and then fill up at a water fountain but I had no time for that so I’d had to throw it out) and get on the plane.
I’m channelling good vibes for my luggage to be on board – there’s another flight in about two hours (I know because I was looking at the flights to change just the other night) so I guess worst case scenario is that I’m going to hang around the airport and wait for my suitcase.
So yes. That’s the tale of Los Angeles 2.0. It was pretty much one big fangirl experience for the entire time, with not much else done other than fandom related things, but that’s more than okay with me!
From here I have three nights in Albuquerque, three in Austin and then I’m off to Orlando for five nights where I’ll be back in the comfort of someone’s home who can look after me. It’s a different feeling to Europe where I was literally on my own for the whole trip; it’s sort of like a balance between ‘travelling’ and ‘vacationing’ (which are two distinct things in my mind) which I’m finding enjoyable thus far.
Until next time...
Xxx
POST SCRIPT: My bag arrived safely, in fact the advantage to being the last on the plane is that it was the first off :)
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Canada, eh?
WestJet are yet another really great airline. I’m gathering that complimentary softdrink and a snack is the norm even on budget North American Airlines. The flight to Vancouver was without drama, I enjoyed my diet coke and cookie and the roomy seat – so much leg room on these WestJet planes, at least the two I’ve been on (I write this on June 6 as I’m flying back to LA, my legs stretched out in front of me). I arrived in Vancouver and found my hostel without drama, it was a simple ride on the new Canada line on the Skytrain which was built last year, and then about three blocks walk. It was chilly but not freezing. Check-in at the hostel was simple; I lugged my suitcase up the flight of stairs (no elevator... one of the few scenarios where I wish I had a backpack) and then I opened my dorm room door.
My mum is going to read this and roll her eyes at what I’m about to say.
The room was a pigsty.
I’m not the neatest person. A bit of mess doesn’t bother me. But in a shared dorm environment, there is a line. There were only two beds occupied by people; and yet there was no room ANYWHERE on the floor for my suitcase. There were piles of clothes, empty glasses and beer cans (note: food and drink is not allowed in the rooms especially not alcohol as the liquor license of this hostel doesn’t allow it; they have a bar downstairs which means you can’t have your own alcohol). It reminded me of that episode of Friends where Ross has the messy girlfriend. I’m not phased by friends whose bedrooms are messy but there is a distinct difference between a shared dorm environment and ones own private space. Ironically there’s a notice on the wall from hostel management giving a warning about the state of the room and telling them that they need to get it sorted or they’ll be evicted. I gingerly pushed some things aside so I could put down my suitcase and went about my business – getting dinner, working out the wireless internet, and then I went to go do some laundry. I was bringing my clothes back from the dryer when the next incident occurred.
So, I opened the door; the door had been locked, the lights were off. But I looked up and in the bunk directly in front of me I spotted someone in the bottom bed. No big deal. She says “oh, I was just taking a nap.” I don’t think anything of this, I say I’ll just be a minute and kneel down to put my clothes back into my suitcase. I then hear giggling from the bed, giggling that sounds significantly like a different voice. I look up, and Girl #1 is standing there naked trying to find some clothes while Girl #2 is giggling in the bed. Girl #1 is apologising for the mess without really sounding like she cared, I remarked that it looked like a bomb went off and she laughed awkwardly while Girl #2 was still giggling. I proceed to shove my clothes down in no sort of logical pattern and stammer an apology and leave.
Clearly I’ve interrupted something.
I avoided the bedroom for hours after that, remaining in the common room on my netbook, and only went back in a few hours later. There was a girl in the bed, but it wasn’t the girl I’d spoken with, I’m assuming it was the giggler. We chat – it turns out she’s nice. They’ve cleaned up a bit which is also good. I find out that she’s actually not booked into the hostel, she’s just ‘staying’ with the other girl and the second bed is being taken up by someone else. I gather that these girls are actually dating, the other one came back in and they exchanged a ‘I’ll see you later, love you *kiss*’ type conversation. Anyway so I’m feeling more settled now – I’d been feeling incredibly awkward about the scenario a few hours earlier and envisaging three days of me avoiding the room as much as possible.
The next morning I set out to start exploring Vancouver. The weather started out pretty gross – damp and showering – but I’m informed by the Australian guy I chatted with over breakfast that Vancouver is like Melbourne; four seasons in one day. Actually on the whole Vancouver reminds me lot of Melbourne in many ways. It’s a city with city life but it isn’t entirely hustle and bustle. It has a funkier vibe, fairly multi cultural, lots of Lebanese/kebab/falafel type places, a bar and music scene. My hostel is in the city centre with bars and clubs, pizza places with super cheap pizza/pop deals, a Starbucks a block away. Vancouver is fairly walkable, if I wasn’t trying to fit so much into two days I probably would’ve just walked everywhere but for the sake of saving time I got myself a daily transport ticket. I pretty much just checked out some of the districts of the city; the area around my hostel, the Yaletown area, West End, Gastown, the Waterfront. You can feel a distinct vibe in each of the areas, like in most cities you have a more upper end area, a student area, the business district, the city centre where there’s a pedestrian only shopping strip.
When I got back to the hostel later on, the messy lesbians had checked out. I had a nap – I don’t know if its just travelling, my screwed up body clock or the tail end of my flu – or perhaps a combination of the above – but I was just really really exhausted. I woke up when a girl came into the room, apologising for waking me up. Her name was Sharon, from South Korea. She was really lovely and enthusiastic and we had a lot in common. We decided to go together to go find something to eat, wandering in the area until we settled upon one of the Lebanese type places. We were chatting with the guy in the shop – who gave Sharon some of his juice for free to drink – and it turned out that he was fluent in Arabic and she’s studying Arabic and so they were talking about it and writing some. We went back to the hostel and hung out for a bit, having a drink in the bar and then hanging out in the common room where I was chatting with another Aussie who’d just arrived – Mark, from Melbourne, who had come to Canada with a work visa. Sharon checked out early the next morning, just there for a night before she was heading for a tour of the Rocky Mountains.
On Saturday I headed out to a big mall where I bought a hoodie for $10 and was super enthralled by this place called the Great Canadian Superstore or something like that. I guess you could compare it to a Walmart without clothes; but it’s bigger than anywhere I go in Australia. Take Woolworths, make it twice as big and combine it to the biggest Big W/Crazy Clarks you’ve ever seen and you’re somewhere near it. I was grossed out to the extreme by the seafood department with the fish swimming around in tanks for you to choose from. I then took my banana, croissant and drink that I’d bought to Central Park where I was entertained by a pair of furry animals... I guess they were squirrels? One of them was black though. Hrm. Anyway they were super cute and I stood still for ages to get a photo of one of them and they then followed me up the path. They were coming REALLY close to me, like, if I’d stood still I really believe it was going to like, run up my leg or something.
I then got the train again headed for Sunset Beach, having to walk a little to get to the beach. Beach is a loose term. Um, bunch of dirty sand? So far the Australian is not being impressed by North American beaches, haha. I was walking down to the Aquabus ferry dock to take some photos and this random guy gave me a rose that he’d ‘found.’ It wasn’t in a flirtatious way, he was with his girlfriend. I took the scenic route walking to a different train station and then went to the Waterfront station so I could take the Seabus (a ferry) to North Vancouver. I got there and unfortunately it became evident that there was no logical bus route to the Deep Cove area where I’d really wanted to visit. I took some photos at the pier area, grabbed lunch and headed back to the city for a wander in the city centre area where I got lost in the biggest H&M I’ve ever seen.
I spent a while at night repacking my suitcase because I had to leave the hostel around 5:30 the next morning to make my flight and I hate being that noisy girl in the morning waking everyone up by crashing around. However the girl in the bunk below me had checked out and no one else wound up checking into the room so I had the dorm room to myself – I watched a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and felt no shame in chilling by myself on a Saturday night.
Vancouver is the kind of city where I could see myself living. As a budget tourist I felt like I’d pretty much seen everything I was going to see, when I wasn’t going to pay money to go into museums or the Aquarium or whatever. Vancouver is tourist friendly without being overrun by tourists, which I really like. I think they did a lot of work making it tourist friendly for the Olympics; there are fairly new looking signs in most of the areas by the train station with information about the area and sights within walking distance. There are signs around directing you to the nearest public bathrooms. I enjoyed my few days just wandering and immersing myself in the vibe, it was enough to make me think that should I ever get a work visa for Canada that I’d really like to return to British Columbia and spend more time in the area. I really enjoyed the Canadian culture and most of the locals I interacted with seemed really lovely. Culturally I think Canada is more alike to Australia than the US, it’s a bit more laid back and not quite as ostentatious. Having said that, I can’t judge the US on the basis of the three cities that I’ve been to in my lifetime (LA, NYC and Las Vegas) given they are three of the ‘louder’ cities.
I am going to try to insert ‘eh?’ into my everyday vocabulary. Canada is awesome, eh?
My mum is going to read this and roll her eyes at what I’m about to say.
The room was a pigsty.
I’m not the neatest person. A bit of mess doesn’t bother me. But in a shared dorm environment, there is a line. There were only two beds occupied by people; and yet there was no room ANYWHERE on the floor for my suitcase. There were piles of clothes, empty glasses and beer cans (note: food and drink is not allowed in the rooms especially not alcohol as the liquor license of this hostel doesn’t allow it; they have a bar downstairs which means you can’t have your own alcohol). It reminded me of that episode of Friends where Ross has the messy girlfriend. I’m not phased by friends whose bedrooms are messy but there is a distinct difference between a shared dorm environment and ones own private space. Ironically there’s a notice on the wall from hostel management giving a warning about the state of the room and telling them that they need to get it sorted or they’ll be evicted. I gingerly pushed some things aside so I could put down my suitcase and went about my business – getting dinner, working out the wireless internet, and then I went to go do some laundry. I was bringing my clothes back from the dryer when the next incident occurred.
So, I opened the door; the door had been locked, the lights were off. But I looked up and in the bunk directly in front of me I spotted someone in the bottom bed. No big deal. She says “oh, I was just taking a nap.” I don’t think anything of this, I say I’ll just be a minute and kneel down to put my clothes back into my suitcase. I then hear giggling from the bed, giggling that sounds significantly like a different voice. I look up, and Girl #1 is standing there naked trying to find some clothes while Girl #2 is giggling in the bed. Girl #1 is apologising for the mess without really sounding like she cared, I remarked that it looked like a bomb went off and she laughed awkwardly while Girl #2 was still giggling. I proceed to shove my clothes down in no sort of logical pattern and stammer an apology and leave.
Clearly I’ve interrupted something.
I avoided the bedroom for hours after that, remaining in the common room on my netbook, and only went back in a few hours later. There was a girl in the bed, but it wasn’t the girl I’d spoken with, I’m assuming it was the giggler. We chat – it turns out she’s nice. They’ve cleaned up a bit which is also good. I find out that she’s actually not booked into the hostel, she’s just ‘staying’ with the other girl and the second bed is being taken up by someone else. I gather that these girls are actually dating, the other one came back in and they exchanged a ‘I’ll see you later, love you *kiss*’ type conversation. Anyway so I’m feeling more settled now – I’d been feeling incredibly awkward about the scenario a few hours earlier and envisaging three days of me avoiding the room as much as possible.
The next morning I set out to start exploring Vancouver. The weather started out pretty gross – damp and showering – but I’m informed by the Australian guy I chatted with over breakfast that Vancouver is like Melbourne; four seasons in one day. Actually on the whole Vancouver reminds me lot of Melbourne in many ways. It’s a city with city life but it isn’t entirely hustle and bustle. It has a funkier vibe, fairly multi cultural, lots of Lebanese/kebab/falafel type places, a bar and music scene. My hostel is in the city centre with bars and clubs, pizza places with super cheap pizza/pop deals, a Starbucks a block away. Vancouver is fairly walkable, if I wasn’t trying to fit so much into two days I probably would’ve just walked everywhere but for the sake of saving time I got myself a daily transport ticket. I pretty much just checked out some of the districts of the city; the area around my hostel, the Yaletown area, West End, Gastown, the Waterfront. You can feel a distinct vibe in each of the areas, like in most cities you have a more upper end area, a student area, the business district, the city centre where there’s a pedestrian only shopping strip.
When I got back to the hostel later on, the messy lesbians had checked out. I had a nap – I don’t know if its just travelling, my screwed up body clock or the tail end of my flu – or perhaps a combination of the above – but I was just really really exhausted. I woke up when a girl came into the room, apologising for waking me up. Her name was Sharon, from South Korea. She was really lovely and enthusiastic and we had a lot in common. We decided to go together to go find something to eat, wandering in the area until we settled upon one of the Lebanese type places. We were chatting with the guy in the shop – who gave Sharon some of his juice for free to drink – and it turned out that he was fluent in Arabic and she’s studying Arabic and so they were talking about it and writing some. We went back to the hostel and hung out for a bit, having a drink in the bar and then hanging out in the common room where I was chatting with another Aussie who’d just arrived – Mark, from Melbourne, who had come to Canada with a work visa. Sharon checked out early the next morning, just there for a night before she was heading for a tour of the Rocky Mountains.
On Saturday I headed out to a big mall where I bought a hoodie for $10 and was super enthralled by this place called the Great Canadian Superstore or something like that. I guess you could compare it to a Walmart without clothes; but it’s bigger than anywhere I go in Australia. Take Woolworths, make it twice as big and combine it to the biggest Big W/Crazy Clarks you’ve ever seen and you’re somewhere near it. I was grossed out to the extreme by the seafood department with the fish swimming around in tanks for you to choose from. I then took my banana, croissant and drink that I’d bought to Central Park where I was entertained by a pair of furry animals... I guess they were squirrels? One of them was black though. Hrm. Anyway they were super cute and I stood still for ages to get a photo of one of them and they then followed me up the path. They were coming REALLY close to me, like, if I’d stood still I really believe it was going to like, run up my leg or something.
I then got the train again headed for Sunset Beach, having to walk a little to get to the beach. Beach is a loose term. Um, bunch of dirty sand? So far the Australian is not being impressed by North American beaches, haha. I was walking down to the Aquabus ferry dock to take some photos and this random guy gave me a rose that he’d ‘found.’ It wasn’t in a flirtatious way, he was with his girlfriend. I took the scenic route walking to a different train station and then went to the Waterfront station so I could take the Seabus (a ferry) to North Vancouver. I got there and unfortunately it became evident that there was no logical bus route to the Deep Cove area where I’d really wanted to visit. I took some photos at the pier area, grabbed lunch and headed back to the city for a wander in the city centre area where I got lost in the biggest H&M I’ve ever seen.
I spent a while at night repacking my suitcase because I had to leave the hostel around 5:30 the next morning to make my flight and I hate being that noisy girl in the morning waking everyone up by crashing around. However the girl in the bunk below me had checked out and no one else wound up checking into the room so I had the dorm room to myself – I watched a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and felt no shame in chilling by myself on a Saturday night.
Vancouver is the kind of city where I could see myself living. As a budget tourist I felt like I’d pretty much seen everything I was going to see, when I wasn’t going to pay money to go into museums or the Aquarium or whatever. Vancouver is tourist friendly without being overrun by tourists, which I really like. I think they did a lot of work making it tourist friendly for the Olympics; there are fairly new looking signs in most of the areas by the train station with information about the area and sights within walking distance. There are signs around directing you to the nearest public bathrooms. I enjoyed my few days just wandering and immersing myself in the vibe, it was enough to make me think that should I ever get a work visa for Canada that I’d really like to return to British Columbia and spend more time in the area. I really enjoyed the Canadian culture and most of the locals I interacted with seemed really lovely. Culturally I think Canada is more alike to Australia than the US, it’s a bit more laid back and not quite as ostentatious. Having said that, I can’t judge the US on the basis of the three cities that I’ve been to in my lifetime (LA, NYC and Las Vegas) given they are three of the ‘louder’ cities.
I am going to try to insert ‘eh?’ into my everyday vocabulary. Canada is awesome, eh?
Friday, June 4, 2010
Vivaaaa Las Vegas!
I write this entry at the Las Vegas McCarren Airport awaiting my flight to Vancouver. I’ve segregated myself from the main area of the airport which is filled with slot machines. Genius. Bored people waiting for flights, why not gamble away the little money that you have left?
Firstly, just to comment, SouthWest is the bomb. It was like a half hour flight from LA to Vegas and not only do they not charge me to have check in luggage but they give me soft drink and pretzels? Awesomeness. Another general comment is that my Vegas experience was tainted with a flu/cold of some description. I suspect I picked it up on the plane from Australia. I was okay in LA but my throat was sore and the day of my flight to Las Vegas I was sniffling and sneezing and picked up some medicine straight away when I got to Vegas which has made me drowsy pretty much the entire time.
I come from a gambling culture. In Australia, gambling is a very prevalent part of society. Pokies (a.k.a. slot machines) are in most pubs and taverns, and my mum is a frequent user of them. I turned eighteen and it was this big Even I, coming from gambling focused society, was not prepared to step off my plane and see slot machines in the departure lounge. And in the baggage terminal.
I’d booked at a youth hostel for Las Vegas; the comments on hostelworld.com had indicated to me that it wasn’t right among the action, something that was confirmed when I was trying to obtain a shuttle from the airport and was being told ‘we don’t go there.’ Finally I was told that they go to Stratosphere which is about six blocks away and fortunately for me, my driver was nice enough to take me closer. I arrived early at the hostel but they were able to check me in – sometimes this is a good sign, sometimes it’s a bad sign. Either way I was grateful because it meant I could settle in and then go exploring without having to leave my suitcase to come back later to check in.
Nevada is hot.
Really hot.
Yes, I realise that it is a desert and I should’ve anticipated it but seriously, it is HOT. I come from a warm climate but it’s more of a humid heat, Nevada is a dry heat, and you’re not cowering inside in the air con like I would be at home when it’s hot, you’re out being a tourist. I don’t like shorts but I think I’m going to have to buy some if any of my other stops are going to be this hot. Anyway so I had Monday afternoon and evening to explore. On the shuttle ride from the airport going via the other hotels I’d seen a few of them but Las Vegas by night is far more spectacular than by day, and at this point it was day light so I was impressed but not blown way. During the day it is architecturally pretty – pirate ships, fairytale castles, circuses and all. I had a $1.99 hotdog, played some slots, immersed myself in tourist culture, taking photographs of all the surrealness that I was surrounded by.
I got the bus back to the hostel to chill out for a couple of hours, waiting until sunset to head out for the night. I took the bus further away from the strip downtown to the Fremont Street Experience area. Fremont Street is where Vegas essentially began, all the old school casinos are up there. They don’t have the architectural majesty of the strip but boy the electricity bill for that end of town must be insane. Elvis, Michael Jackson and some bikini babes were hanging about taking photos with tourists, there was a band playing. I don’t know if this is every night at Fremont Street or if the Memorial Day celebrations were amplifying the atmosphere. I got the express bus back down to the far end of the strip, so I could then get on the slow bus that would go right to near my hostel via a night tour of the city.
Tuesday was my Grand Canyon tour. It was a looooong day. I was picked up from my hostel at 6am. The pick up driver got a bunch of people and then we met our main bus for the day and other passengers at the ‘town square.’ (I use ‘’ around this because it would indicate that the town square was in the middle of town. It wasn’t. And I don’t even really know what it was, a parking lot and some shops? We loaded onto the main bus; it was full and I wound up with a guy named Dave who was on the tour with his wife and two sons and one of the sons wife. They’d wound up split up on the bus since it was full and they’d gotten on last. He was friendly; not forcing me to talk when I just wanted to nap but not acting like I wasn’t there. We made small talk. The tour guide was a Hawaiian lady named Louwanna who needed to slow down because I couldn’t understand half of what she was saying because her accent was quite thick. She had a memorised spiel as she drove, and then put on The Lake House onto these tiny screens that were scattered about the bus. I slept. The drive was long and it was made even longer because they stopped a bunch of times for ten minute breaks, including at a crappy spot of the Hoover Dam. We’d stop at rest stops with conveniently placed souvenirs and overpriced items for sale. On the way we had breakfast and lunch provided, pretty good value really. It was 12:50 when we arrived at the Grand Canyon; we were given our instructions (three options of tiny walk/medium walk/long walk and where to meet in three hours) and the advice of ‘keep the Grand Canyon on your RIGHT and you can’t get lost.’)
Stacks of tour buses were there, and people who’d driven there themselves. It was nice weather, warm, blue sky and white fluffy clouds. It was utterly surreal. I’m not really into scenery... I mean I can take a photo and be all ‘aww that’s pretty’ but I’m not into nature, I don’t know a lot about exactly how the Canyon formed. But I was astounded. I think coming from Vegas amplified the experience. Vegas is the ultimate of the manmade, unnatural and tacky even. Bright lights, fancy buildings, being entertained by machines and shows and glitz, high class shopping, men littering the streets wearing shirts that say ‘Girls Girls Girls’ and handing out cards with half naked ladies and a phone number to call to order a girl to your hotel (the number if you’re interested is 6969696). A good nap later and I was taken out of that world and into a world of something so pure and natural and beautiful just for simply existing as a part of the earth and nature. It was one of those sceneries where you’re taking photographs by the zillion in the hope that one more shot and maybe you can somehow capture the beauty, but it is simply impossible. There is no way to take what I was looking at and bottle it up into an image. The dozens of people simultaneously being wowed by nature. There was something very lovely about people at their best in this type of environment; offering to take photographs for each other. Several times I had people offer to take photos of me and not when I was in the midst of taking an arm shot, they’d just offer out of their good will.
I opted for the ‘long’ walk which really wasn’t all that long. I dawdled the first bit, and then took my time with the latter part, and I still had plenty of free time to use the bathroom, look in the gift shop, buy a drink and then sit and wait for the bus. The drive back was a little shorter because they only stopped the once. They showed The Blind Side and we began to suspect that the driver/guide was a Sandra Bullock fan. But then they showed Escape to Witch Mountain. I napped through both, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open, a theme which continued as I got back to my hostel, went on the internet briefly and then couldn’t even stay awake long enough to watch Glee.
Wednesday I had a game plan of the main hotels that I hadn’t had the chance to look at or look at in detail, a few touristy things, and then have a few drinks and a gamble before going back to the hostel to see if I could scrounge up a companion for the night. My favourite part of Las Vegas is the Venetian Hotel, closely followed by a tie between the hotels across the road from each other being Excalibur and New York, New York. The Venetian has this stunning detail on the outside with bridges and ‘canals’ and it truly did take me back to Venice. New York New York actually recreates the NYC skyline and the statue of liberty. Excalibur is a mediaeval themed fairytale castle. Seriously, only in Vegas in the one day can you visit Venice, Paris, New York, a castle, Egypt, a pirate ship, a circus, and go to some of the most prestigious and beautiful hotels ever. All while having $2 machine dacquiris, gambling your money and being enticed to acquire prostitutes. I saw the lions on display at MGM grand, went to see the circus acts at Circus Circus, walked through the Mile of Shops.
I went back to the hostel for a break and seriously, it was like fate or something. I’d remarked on Twitter that I needed someone to hang out with and then this girl walks into the common room, comes up, introduces herself to me, and within a minute we’ve organised to go out looking around. Neither of us were up for major partying but willing to have a few drinks so it was pretty perfect. Her name was Elma, she’s from South Africa, she’s been working in Florida (somewhere near Miami) for six months and then travelled around for about three weeks by herself before she was heading home – Vegas was her last stop. I’d only really seen Vegas by night from inside the bus on the Monday night; seeing it from outside of the bus was truly breathtaking and spectacular. We walked the entire strip from Circus Circus to Luxor, taking in the magic of the entire way. We caught a bit of the pirate show at Treasure Island; saw some volcano thingy, went into Margaritaville where we had an expensive cocktail, chatted with a guy on stilts and some fellow tourists who were playing this ‘game’ which involved swinging a ring on fishing wire and trying to hook it onto a hook on the wall. We caught two water shows at the Bellagio (absolutely spectacularly breathtaking) took many many photos and generally oohed and ahhed our way through the city.
Since we got onto the bus back at the far end of the strip we managed to score awesome seats at the front of the top deck of the bus so we had a final nighttour back in the direction of the hostel.
I’m now on the plane to Vancouver – maybe halfway through this entry I wrote on the plane, I had to – and it almost feels like Vegas wasn’t real. Surely no city can actually entail of all that Vegas did? And yet it did, I know it was there, I saw those sights and experienced the world of Vegas. It’s like Amsterdam and Times Square combined, crossed with some indefinable quality – Viva Las Vegas, perhaps?
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