Fri 11 May 2012 at 12:26 am ♥ Filed under California, Travel
One of the perks of living in California is the abundance of scenic routes; having driven from San Francisco to San Diego via Highway 1 many years back, I can personally attest to the beautiful mountains, valleys, trees, and waterfronts that go on for miles. However, seeing as I’ve been living in cities ever since, I’ve become extremely averse to driving, and thus, opportunities to leave the city seem few and far between. So when my friend visited California two weeks ago, who were we to pass up a drive up to Napa?
For those who have no clue what/where Napa is, you should watch The Parent Trap (yes, the Lindsay Lohan redux) and jog your memory.
Sat 21 Apr 2012 at 12:35 am ♥ Filed under Edinburgh 2012, Travel
You’d think a one hour flight would be a relatively painless affair, but in our case, getting from London to Edinburgh turned out to be a bitch and a half. For starters, there was the long train ride to Gatwick airport at butt o’clock in the morning. Actually, it was earlier than any reasonable morning hour, so let’s make that the butt crack of dawn. Annoying, but fair enough, considering we wanted to have the entire day in Scotland. Then, in the middle of our inspecting our luggage and checking our tickets, EasyJet arbitrarily closed check-in earlier than the time listed on our ticket, which meant that only one of us was able to get on the flight. Several WTFs and moments of squabbling and extraneous transfer fees later, they put my friend on a later ticket, so I ended up with a few hours to spare in Edinburgh alone.
Unfortunately, that was not my only horrific experience with EasyJet during this trip (more to come later in Amsterdam), but honestly? At this point, it’s neither here nor there, so moving on! Anyway, I got to Edinburgh, took the bus to Princes Street (the main shopping street in the city), took another bus to the hostel, checked in, dropped off the suitcase, walked through the Meadows and back to Princes Street, and grabbed lunch because I was starving and sleep-deprived at this point.
Thu 05 Apr 2012 at 1:03 pm ♥ Filed under food, London 2012, Travel
When you visit a city for the second time, you don’t really feel as obligated to jam-pack as many attractions as humanly possible into your schedule. Also, if you’re anything like me, you normally don’t enjoy doing the same thing twice, so when you nix all the usual touristy places that you’ve hit up the first time around, you don’t feel like you have a lot to do on your second go-around.
Such was my dilemma the night before London, when I tried to rack up a to-do list of sorts. But aside from Stonehenge, the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Tate Modern, and London Fashion Week, nothing really jumped out at me. I mean, sure, I could go museum hopping (British Museum! V&A! Tate Britain! Oh my!), revisit places like Buckingham Palace, and/or do lots of walking around the city, as I’m usually wont to do, but for the sake of time constraints and the soles of my feet, I took it easy this time around. That’s what I love about London: the way the city generously expands and contracts to fit your schedule, whether you want to stuff your itinerary with every tourist destination known to man and Lonely Planet or throw caution to the wind and just amble around to your heart’s content. In short, this translates to a lack of touristy things in this post (if that’s what you’re interested in, I’ve got photos from my first trip here for your perusal!) — save for the photo below of this totally random clock and Stonehenge (more later on that!).
