I’m baaaaaaack.
I hope you’ve all missed me tremendously and are breathing a collective sigh of relief.
It turns out that it takes one almost 2 weeks to get over a 2 week holiday so sorry about that. The good news is that Monkey and I are back into our groove and ready to keep on keeping on with life. Hooray! He didn’t even hate me momentarily on my return. He was just super happy to see me and has been an absolute delight ever since I returned. Someone suggested that maybe he thinks he needs to be good so I won’t go away again!! That breaks my heart a little so I hope not but at the same time I’m enjoying the good behavior.
I thought it might bore you all to tears if I gave you a blow by blow account of my holiday. It’s pretty much people you don’t know and had to be there jokes. So instead I thought I’d tell you my holiday story in pictures. Who doesn’t love pretty pictures I ask you! So here they are. Enjoy!
I arrived in at LA airport on the Tuesday morning at the same time as four of my friends. It was awesome having folks to meet up with. We immediately picked up our car and hit the road for San Francisco.
There’s a fair bit of nothing along that highway.
I look like I am awake in the middle of the night after flying all day because I was. What a hottie.
SAN FRANCISCO BABY
This is actually my second trip to San Francisco and it was just as awesome as I remembered it. We had two full days here before other peeps arrived (yes there were more peeps!) so we did what any self respecting Australian does in America and shopped. And we shopped some more. And we did a little sight seeing and shopped some more.
We saw cool stuff like this.
The famous tram and Chinatown in yet another city
I bought the world’s cutest apron. Check it.
One must try before one buys
We also went to a piano bar and got drunk and sang our hearts out. Best. Night. Ever.
Ladies and gentleman…THE PIANO MAN
Damn we rocked that joint. Staying up half the night really helped with the jet lag so YAY for fun times. They CAN be good for you.
Post night out we, of course, had hangovers. Some stayed in bed for the better part of the day but S and I decided food was in order so we went to this cutesy pants American Diner. I remember going to this place last time I was in town 14 years ago. It’s still there and still cute.
Finally others arrived, including my adorable brother who lives in Vancouver. I miss him. Can you tell?
Love this guy.
Then it was time to hit Napa and celebrate the birthdays. My friend K was turning 30 and my brother 29…on the same day! So it was quite the celebration.
Check out our villa.
NIce digs eh?
This is my beautiful friend K. Love her.
Happy 30th gorgeous lady
We started the day with Mimosas and ended it with cake.
Birthday love
We eventually made it to a vineyard and some of us even went rock climbing. I stuck to buying expensive bottles of wine (ok just one) for my 40th birthday. If you are a wine snob you probably like my choice.
Eventually the fun had to end which really sucked as it was the one time we were all in one place. It was so nice to be with some of “my people” again. The people who just get me and know me. We laugh at the same jokes and like to talk about the same crazy stuff. There is either no silence or comfortable silence and never anything awkward. It was truly awesome.
There was more fun to come though. At this point a few other split off and the rest of us (7 people – the cats) road tripped it to Vancouver. That’s 1500km people. It took 2 full days of driving. Have you ever tried to organize a toilet stop with 7 people? Takes FOREVER. My bros girlfriend called it herding cats and she was right on the money.
It was fun though. And we didn’t do too badly for 7 people in a confined space for 2 days in a row. We saw some awesome sights along the way like the gorgeous redwood forest and a beautiful sunset over the Pacific…where our sun rises.
True beauty right there
Once we hit Vancouver we saw so many beautiful things. One of my favorite things about this trip was that we traveled Fall which is very different to our equivalent season (Autumn) in Australia. The pictures speak for themselves.
View from Stanley Park (L) and Granville Island and its killer seagulls (R)
Red and orange trees. Love them.
This is by far my favorite photo of the whole trip…taken in Stanley Park. I’m going to get it put on a nice big canvas for my house. I think it will look amazing in my kitchen.
While there we also did our bit for eating the local cuisine.
Poutine and beer. Living like kings we are.
Did I mention I’m still trying to shift the 2kgs I put on while on holiday? Well I am. But let’s not talk about it.
Sadly we couldn’t stay there forever so I bid my brother and his lovely gf a tearful goodbye and we hit the road again.
Final photo. Boo.
This time our little traveling group was down to 3 as we lost 2 others to further trips in Canadia. So it was car to Seattle airport (as it’s cheaper to fly within the states) and a plane to Denver, Colorado where we visited our friend K again. We wanted to see where she hung out when she wasn’t hanging out with us.
I’ve never been to Colorado before so it was pretty cool to see the sights. It was also super beautiful with pretty red and orange trees EVERYWHERE and leaves all over the ground. Like this.
Pweeeeety
We spent some time kicking the leaves around.
And we also went to see an ice hockey game!
Hockey has a new fan!
We scored! It’s crazy!
We also met K’s absolutely gorgeous mom who traveled 7 hours from Los Alamos, NM to meet us. What a doll.
And then before we knew it, it was time to go home (for me and my friend S anyways). The day we were leaving I packed and then promptly burst into tears. I was so sad to be leaving the same continent as my brother and my wonderful friend and also rather overwhelmed that I was now so close to being able to see Monkey again. It is so unfair to have so many people I love so far away from me. But that is life and I love where we live so I can’t change it. Life simply has other plans for us. Thank god for skype is all I can say.
Here is our happy reunion pic.
I love this kid more than I can ever say.
And all is right with the world again.
