The Travel Companion

Have you been to the Lonely Planet website recently? They have a competition running to win $10,000 from Visa which is great and all, but we all know that only one person wins that and it’s unlikely to be you or me (So cynical Gemma!), enter the competition all the same I say but enter it for different reasons!

To enter you must create a Lonely Planet book of your own and submit a travel tip. Creating the book involves choosing your destinations, your budget and what kind of things you are interested in. The website then compiles this into a Lonely Planet book format and presents you with a PDF that can be saved onto your computer. I think that this is such a fun tool, of course it doesn’t give you as much information as an actual Lonely Planet book does but it does give you some suggestions and they are free and easier to carry around than a whole book! Anyone thinking of travelling soon should get on it as well because for every guide you create there is a $100 voucher that can be used at STA travel until the 31^st December 2012.

So enter for the sheer pleasure of creating a personal guide book for your upcoming trip and make sure to thank me if that voucher comes in handy. :P

As an aside note, how gorgeous is the background of the website? I would love to take a photo like that!

Travel Porn

Do you love travel porn? I don’t mean nude shots taken in exotic countries; I mean pictures of landscapes that can keep you clicking ‘next’ for hours, Articles on tiny towns in European destinations that make you forget the world around you. “Rolling hills? Mist in the valleys? Fire lit cottages? Oh yeah, don’t stop baby!”  

At work I will sometimes just get dragged into researching seven star hotels around the world, articles on the lonely planet website or photos on Condé Nast Traveller. The other day I was browsing through the Sydney Morning Herald Travel section and came across a photo documentary called 52 suburbs Rome. The photos are all wonderfully juxtopositioned with each other and gave me several smiles; you should go check them out! There is also another set called 52 suburbs Berlin on the site which is also pretty good.

Follow the link to have a look - http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/travel/52-suburbs-rome-20120627-212cc.html. And the best thing about travel porn? It is totally acceptable to look at it at work.

Iceland Inspiration

Just recently I mentioned to my dear Dad that I thought we would both enjoy a trip to see the Northern Lights together. He is a science-y nerd who’s computer desktop is a constantly changing kaleidoscope of nebula and milky way’s, I am his daughter whom he has imparted his interest in the skies on.

The Aurora Borealis in Iceland

I suggested that Canada has a lot of places to see the Aurora Borealis from (and then I could hit two birds with one stone, see Travel Inspiration) but Dad scoffed at that. His dream of seeing the Northern Lights could only be fulfilled in a Scandinavian country. Greenland, Norway, Finland and Iceland are all on my radar now and slowly I am leaning towards Iceland.

It is rugged and harsh, quiet and powerful and totally foreign. Most of the country is wilderness (it is the least densely populated country in Europe) with lots of opportunities for outdoor activities like hiking, horse riding, swimming in thermal pools and skiing. Its largest city has only 120,000 people and is described as hip, state-of-the-art and alive. Of course it has amazing ancient history from the Vikings, I used to love stories of the Viking gods when I was a kid going there would be a great reason to read them all again. Unfortunately because we want to see the lights and the best time to see them is winter, there would only be about four hours of sunlight per day, I’m not sure yet how I feel about that, but the lights would be what we would be going to see.

I’m still interested in other Scandinavian countries, many of them have a lot in common, and feeling out what exactly else we want to get from this trip (Dad is sending me emails with science tours that we could do). Help me out! Do you have any recommendations for viewing the Northern Lights or Scandinavian countries? Let me know!

America - Part 2

Rolling hills in California

Driving through the different states I noticed a definite change in scenery each day. Driving out of California was yellowed rolling farmland dotted with trees, often eucalypts. I thought it looked a lot like the drive from Sydney to Canberra. Once we got to Nevada this farmland had made a smooth transition into red desert with sharp hill/mountain things that change from red to orange, brown and purple depending on the sun.  In Arizona the desert merged into woodland as we drove towards the Grand Canyon and into the mountains, and then back again into desert as we descended on the other side. In Texas the land still looked very desert like, but it was flat sprawling ranches dotted with houses and cows. Oklahoma was a sweet relief after all the desert. I wasn’t expecting it to be so green but where we were around OK city was all rolling green hills and fields with pockets of small trees in the hollows, it was almost English!

Hills changing colour in Nervada



A variety of flags discovered in the old farmhouse

In Oklahoma we were visiting our friends John and Mitch and were staying at Mitch’s farm in Perry, north of OK city, for the 4^th July. We had a wild night on the third where we let off fireworks, climbed grain silos, played on hay bales and stayed up until 4am just talking and drinking American beer.  On the 4^th I assumed that when a big lunch was served to us that this was our Fourth of July feast, but I was wrong, dinner was even bigger with family, friends and neighbours filling the many tables that had been set up in the garage and outside in the late afternoon. The day’s temperature was in the high 30’s and dry as dust. In-between meals we young folk went to a field and set up targets and a skeet (clay pigeon) shooter to practice our rifle aim with. It was the first time Claire and I had used a gun and it took me a little bit to not feel strange about the fact that we were just shooting them for fun. After a while I got into it and fired a few rounds from a shot gun and a pistol, but I didn’t feel the need to keep doing it. It’s strange how different upbringings can show through in base instincts like that. Here it was legal and we were doing it for fun, but my base feeling was that you don’t play with guns.

Abandoned markets in OK city




Mitch showing me how to use a pistol

Because it was so dry fireworks were only supposed to be fired down at the big town lake where there was a display being put on by the town council so we went down to watch that and had a fun experience where we were sitting in the middle of a field with kids letting off fireworks all 360 degrees around us. It was kind of fun and kind of mildly scary having them burst 20meters away from you and straight over your head and somewhere else you can’t see but you can hear, all simultaneously.  Fun!




All dressed up for the 4th

In John’s home town of Tulsa we bought cowboy boots (also known as my new obsession) ate chicken wings and watched baseball from the grass of the stadium. Both Oklahoma City and Tulsa Surprised me with how big they are and how modern. Oklahoma city has a population of 580,000 people and I expected a tiny old fashioned city but what I actually found (and in Tulsa as well) was a thriving city with high rise buildings, refurbished downtown areas with walkways and new restaurants scattered around but which still had the feeling of a quiet and community centred city.



Back from America!

Howdy Y’all! :D

I’m back from my road trip across America and excited to tell you about it!

It was mostly a really relaxing trip, just coasting the roads and reconnecting with friends. We did of course mix some sightseeing in as well but it was nothing compared to past trips where every day was packed with sightseeing.

For starters, I think I mentioned that the reason for the trip was to see American friends that I had made with my girl Claire whilst we were in England together. This meant that we skipped some of the big attractions on our way to make it to their places on time but it also means that we got to see parts of America that without these locals, we would never have thought of to go!

In order to tell you about the trip I have divided it into the main cities/states that we visited. San Francisco, Oklahoma, Tennessee and New York.  Here begins the four part series that is my American adventure!

Claire and I started off in San Francisco for a few days with Maria and Li who took us to all the interesting areas in the city like the Castro which had rainbow flags everywhere and is constantly in gay pride mode. We went to Haight and Ashbury where the summer of love happened in 1967 and the area still has the feeling of a hippy commune. We cycled the bay area, including across the Golden Gate Bridge and took a ferry back to the city just in time to watch the fog drifting in, a San Fran classic. In San Francisco we were also fed to our limits on burgers, biscuits, scones and sandwiches. We were about to find out that we would never go hungry whilst in America.

Hearts scattered around the city, a tribute to the song 'I left my heart in San Francisco"

As we travelled across the country a lot of Americans said to us that San Francisco was their favourite city and “wasn’t it just so beautiful and different?” Like a breath of fresh air they said. It was certainly beautiful but I thought it was very similar to Sydney in terms of the feeling we got from the people and the neighbourhoods. I think a lot of Americans differentiate it on being such a Liberal city (gay marriage is legal, we even saw someone naked walking down the street?!) and whilst it is obviously not AS Liberal, Sydney is not a conservative city. The beauty of the streets and setting of the city is wonderfully individual but I don’t think that visiting Australians get a culture shock from San Francisco.  

Claire and I did something neither of us have never done before this trip. We hired a car as our transport across the USA. Flying would have been quicker and possibly even cheaper but we felt that a trip across the USA had to be done right, and what felt right was a road trip. We hired a Chrysler 200 black convertible for about $1200 AUS for two weeks which we thought was a very decent price.

Driving on the wrong side of the road was something I was very worried about; I can be quite a nervous driver if I am in unfamiliar places or situations, but my fears were unfounded and I had only one moment of ‘road fear’ where it was 1am, raining and we came across about 6 different traffic lights in Memphis that were blacked out. In the end I think the experience has really helped my confidence in driving and that I have come back with more confidence in myself in general!

We drove from San Francisco to Oklahoma in 4 days, roughly 3,000kms. We drove almost solidly for those 4 days, getting up at 6am and stopping at a motel when it was about 8pm. On the way we visited the Grand Canyon which was grand and really hard to take in just how big it is, we drove though Las Vegas at 8am and even that was impressive and happening enough for us. We visited Meteor Crater outside Winslow, Arizona and enjoyed the desert scenery and in Albuquerque we experienced alien interference in the traffic leaving the city when it took us an hour to move about 5 miles, spooky! 

We only stayed in one strange location on this leg of the trip, on the first night when it was getting dark, Claire researched some hotels whilst I drove and she booked us into one that was still half an hour away, but was cheap. It was called Whisky Pete’s and when we drove into the little town of Prim Valley what we saw was certainly not what we expected. The town consisted almost entirely of three huge casinos, the little valley they were it was lit up with huge neon figures and flashing signs and as we drove into Whisky Pete’s we realised that it was modelled on a Disney castle with turrets and balconies bedecked with fairy lights all over it. We were laughing walking into the place, at the decor and at the people huddled around the slot machines in this seedy feeling casino. Our room was very bare and only half the lights worked but we were only there to sleep so it was ok. When we got up again at 6am we walked out through the casino again an ogled at the people who had either been there all night or who had come to start again at the crack of dawn. It was a fun experience!