Friday, March 11, 2011

Australia is booked!!

I am going to Australia (officially!). Nikki and I booked our flights this afternoon for May 3 - 24. We are flying into Melbourne after a layover in Los Angeles. Our plans so far are to visit Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. We are going to plan some of our transportation, and a lot of our adevntures in advance too so that we aren't frantic once we get there. SO excited!

Only 53 days to go until we go!

Friday, March 4, 2011

Galveston & Houston, Texas

We left New Orleans on Wednesday afternoon, heading to Texas. We didn't have anything booked, so this time we were just winging it. We got to Houston area later in the evening, about 8pm and began our search for a hotel. The GPS took us to the Pasadena Inn, just outside of Texas, which defintiely was not a nice looking place so we stole their wireless internet and booked a hotel online in Galveston, which looked really pretty and was right across from the Gulf of Mexico.

We stopped at the tourist information center, which was closed so we just looked at the map of Texas to find a city that was on the coast.
We got a beautiful hotel in Galveston, it was a Hilton and from our balcony you could see the pool, hot tub, and the beach (you can see in the background where the palm trees are... that's the gulf and the beach). Unfortunately because we were so close to the gulf, even though the temperature in Aleksys jeep said it was 21 degrees, it felt really cold and I had to wear my coat a lot of the time. We had planned on having a beach day, but it was too col for that. Even the pool was sooo cold!
The night that we got to Galveston, we asked the hotel receptionist what bar/pub place they recommended, and they recommended a pretty sweet pub with $3 pints. It was pretty strange going from New Orleans where it was a huge party, to Galveston where it seemed everyone is in bed by 10pm, yet they were advertising Mardi Gras in Galveston. We played a couple games of pool and had a beer and some pizza then headed back to the hotel.

We were on a mission, since we were in Texas, to find a road house serving some delicious BBQ. We succeeded in finding this place with super cheap beer and MEAT!! Lots of MEAT!!

Beans are the vegetable of the state of Texas apparently, and all of this MEAT and beers cost $47 for 4 people! What a bargain! I might add that the meat was all tender and delicious, especially the pulled brisket.

We headed into Houston to do some shopping when in Texas, and found a pretty ritzy mall with stores that not only I couldn't afford, but wouldn't even feel comfortable walking into. The regular stores were on the lower floors, but we came in by the Chanel, which isn't usually my shopping spot (I'm actually quite sure I've never seen a Chanel store before). I did find a "normal" store though and bought a new ring and some new sandals for the great price of $20.

On the last day leaving Texas, we arranged for some horse back riding around the Houston area. It was $35 a person for an hour. I started by riding this horse in the picture, but he was 33 years old and I got bored quickly because I had no idea how to make him go faster, so I switched to Chelsea's horse who didn't need to be kicked to go. I almost fell of my horse (I was actually convinced at that time I was going down), but I made it through! I left with some sore legs and a popped blister from the saddle but still managed to have an awesome time. I think next time I ride a horse, I'll need some direction! I want to take some lessons in the London area.

After riding some Texan horses, we thought we would complete out Texan experience with shooting some guns. This place was also just outside of Houston, and was the best place by far to go! I was very hesitant to shoot a gun at first but once I got the guts to do it, I shot 3 more times! I didn't load the gun (Aleksy did that for me) but I still feel quite satisfied that i shot 2 different guns, 4 bullets total). Everyone else shot the other 196 bullets!

After finishing our bullets, we got some pictures outside the shooting range.

After shooting guns, we decided to head back to London town. From where we were, only 1516 miles to go (yes that MILES! sooo far!). On the way home we stopped in Baton Rouge for a night, where we found a hotel with gross bed bugs and had to get a refund and re-locate. We found a nice Days Inn without bed bugs in a different part of the city. Then we continued along our drive and our last night we spent in Kentucky at the Best Western. We definitely ate a lot of Subway and gas station food on the road! And we got home Sunday afternoon!

Road trips: highly recommended. I think if I were to do another one, it would be to California! 

New Orleans, Louisiana

After our Saturday night in Memphis, we headed to New Orleans, where we had the Maison Dupuis booked for 2 nights (which we extended for another night because New Orleans was kick ass!!).

 Chels & I first arriving at our hotel. An awesome hotel, which was super close to Bourbon St. where the party's at, but far enough away that we didn't have to hear the party at all times of the night.
 Purchasing our first drinks in New Orleans, some gigantic Hurricanes in souvenir cups. In New Orleans, it seems that every drink you purchase is placed in a souvenir cup, which made them more expensive. But we learned as the trip progressed that we could go back to the hotel, fill up with our own beverages then head back out.
 We definitely had a fair share of oysters when we were in New Orleans! So yummy and reasonably priced!

The night life was very exciting on the Sunday night that we arrived. So many people out partying, and people from the local community entertaining for tips. We did see some Mardi Gras style boobs a couple of the nights, including some girls riding the mechanical bull topless. I'm going to keep my blog rated PG and not post these pictures! Even though we were 2 weeks before Mardi Gras, it was still in full effect!

The next day, we decided to take a drive through downtown New Orleans and some of the neighborhoods that were significantly impacted by Hurricane Katrina. There are still, 6 years later a SIGNIFICANT number of homes that are in need of being re-built many of which residents are still living in. These houses have visible water damage, vegetation growing through the structure, and many are abandoned. The US government seriously needs to economically support this city better than it has.

This was an abandoned school that we drove past that hasn't changed their sign since Katrina, reading about registration for September 2005.

When in Louisiana, we made a day trip outside of New Orleans for a Swamp Tour, which was awesome. We went out on a boat with a tour guide who was very informative of all the wildlife, and vegetation in the swamp. We saw a couple alligators, which was not so scary because apparently at this time they have just come out of hibernation and are not in feeding season (which is in the summer). We also saw a lot of turtles and snakes.

We took an evening tour of the other side of New Orleans via street car. Contrary to our day trip where we viewed many abandoned buildings, houses, and schools, on this street car ride we saw extremely large houses  and properties. This clearly demonstrated the gap between the rich and poor in New Orleans.

Loving the fact that we can drink and walk down the street! Chels & I waiting for the street car.

On our last day in New Orleans before leaving for Texas, we went through the shops and French Market. There were a few things that we brought home including hot sauce and creole seasoning. From New Orleans, we started our adventure to the coastal part of Texas, hoping for some pretty beaches!

Nashville/Memphis, Tennessee

NASHVILLE

We didn't get to enjoy the full experience of Nashville because we arrived at 6:30am after driving through the night (running off coffee and energy drinks) and left in the early afternoon. But we went to a hotel in the morning and asked what they recommended and found a couple parks, one in which the Greek Parthenon was restructured in the center of the park, and the Loveless cafe.

 
This was a tourist info center, which would have been convenient if it was open so we could have taken a tour, but we settled for the picture in front of the sign instead.

The strip of building along the water were pretty sweet, including this one (the Coyote Ugly!) I'll bet this part of Nashville would have been a lot more lively if it were not so early in the morning.

We probably should have been a little more careful leaving our luggage in sight, but maybe people just thought it was a dead body because nothing was stolen!

 We went to the museum inside the Parthenon too. It was neat to see the reenactment of how the Greek's built the Parthenon, but we were a bit rushed to go through because we needed to get to our next destinations (Graceland, and the National Civil Right Museum) before they closed. We only spent about an hour inside, the final stop in side was a massive statue of the Greek God Athena. The admission was only $6 per person.

 When we asked for advice of places to see when in Nashville, this cafe was highly recommended by the lady at the hotel. She said she brings all her guests here when they visit. So we checked it out and learned quickly that this was definitely the place everyone goes on Saturday mornings (it was about noon when we got there). There was an hour and a half wait time to get in so we ended up stopping at one of the shops that was in the courtyard and got some jams, and biscuit mix and pulled pork to go.

MEMPHIS

Arriving in Memphis, we went to the tourist information center first to see where we could find Graceland and the National Civil Rights Museum. The most exciting part: once we reached Memphis it was warm enough for sandals!!! yay!! I love warm weather.



I was quite excited to be able to see Graceland, the home of Elvis, but it turned out to be not so exciting and more of a money grab than anything. To park alone, we paid $10 then we headed in to find that to actually tour Elvis's home it would cost an additional $35 per person (and that was the very basic package). We ended up looking at Elvis's home from a distance, touring through the shops, reading a bit of Elvis's history then leaving.


Next, we headed to the National Civil Rights Museum, the hotel where Martin Luther King was shot. This was absolutely one of the highlights of this trip, a really eye-opening experience to the beginning stages of the Civil Rights movement (we only had enough time to tour the actual hotel, which focused on the history, but if we had more time we could have also toured the building across the street: the building where the gunshot was fired from, which focuses more on the recent movements). There were parts where I felt ashamed and embarrassed of my white heritage, like articles from newspapers where people were being burned to death or hung based on discrimination, and signs that did not allow for people of color to use restrooms, or enter stores. I really value the progress that has been made from these days, although there is so much more progress to be made. A part that I really liked about this museum tour was a bus that was set up that took us through the story of Rosa Parks and her stand against moving to the back of the bus based on her skin colour. We had a really good tour guide that took us through some of the history and we saw the room in which Martin Luther King stayed in the night before he was killed.

This was the actual room that Martin Luther King stayed in the night before he was shot. When in the museum you cannot actually go inside the room, but you can view it from the glass window from the hotel room next door. In front of this room, on the balcony is where he was when the bullet hit him.

They closed the hotel completely in the 1980s to make it a museum, and there was one lady who was living in a room, who refused to leave and they had to force to remove her. She was a housekeeper at the hotel when it was in operation. She still stands on the opposite side of the street of the hotel protesting the museum. We went over to her after going through the museum to see what she was protesting and found that she believes that in such a low income area that these rooms should be made into housing for people in the community, and it should not be a tourist attraction.

After we left the museum, we went to find a hotel. We learned that Memphis actually extends past the bridge to Arkansas, and we stayed in West Memphis Arkansas for the night at the Economy Lodge for a very reasonable price.




Road Trip Posting!

I got back from our 10 day adventure through the States last Sunday. We tallied up the entire amount of time we spent driving as well as the number of kilometres and we drove over 5000 kilometres and for over 60 hours! That is a lot of time spent in the Jeep... Our first stop was in Tennessee, where we checked out Nashville and Memphis, then we headed to New Orleans where we spent 3 nights. Next, we headed over to Texas for 2 nights then headed home on Friday for a 3 day drive. In an effort to elaborate on each experience fully, I am going to individually post the different places where we went.

Our first night of driving (through the night)