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  • Vee LJapanVee L

    Amazing Osaka

    9 Desember 2016, Jepang ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    Note the use of the word "Amazing", that was intended. As in "Amazing Pass Osaka", the best purchase we've made yet!

    We arrived in Osaka just as the sun was setting, so no time for sight seeing! We made our way to our airbnb booking (shh... Airbnb is illegal in Japan, something that my lovely host wrote to me AFTER I had booked) following these lovely picture directions. He had a picture for every turn we needed to make to first guide us to a moped. Our room key was hidden inside a padlock, hidden inside the trunk of this moped. With our key, we made our way, again following the pictures, to our apartment. Now this booking was on point! For the same price as 2 beds in the cheapest hostel (at least of what we could see online), we had a small but functional studio in a brand new building. Putting the key in at the building entrance opened these automatic glass doors. The same key unlocked the two dead bolts on our apartment door. You came into a mini kitchen with a 2 burner stove top and a sink but no oven or microwave or fridge, a tiny toilet room, a door connecting to the main space which was basically our mattress on the ground and a coffee table, with a shower room. Doesn't sound like much written down, but everything was brand new, squeaky clean, towels were provided, we could make some tea at night, it was perfect. Our home for 3 nights was announcing to be good.

    The next morning is when we discovered the Amazing Pass. Jack read in TripAdvisor reviews about it, and we thought it would be worth it. It included all local subways unlimited for 2 days plus a list of different activities that you can chose to do for free. The pass was 3,000yen each, and after a quick calculation we each did roughly 4,800yen worth of activities on the first day alone, not counting any of the subways we took! Granted we did some activities we wouldn't have done had we not had this pass, but with it, why not! Like the zoo. Not a very interesting zoo, and I certainly didn't come to Japan to visit a zoo, but when Jack is around and needs constant entertainment, running around the zoo for an hour seems like a great idea!

    We did 2 observation towers, one during the day and one at night. We did a ferris wheel at night. We did 2 boat trips (oh yes, 2), one took us around Dotonbori to see all the advertisements and old bridges, and the other that took us to the Osaka Castle (also free with our pass). I'm sure that whoever creates these passes dread people like us, because we make it a goal of ours to make it as worth while as we can! Kind of like on flights when they ask what you want to drink and I always answer "a beer and a coke". The beer is where the money is, and the coke is just a bonus.

    The night time ferris wheel gave us an incredible view of the city lights. You had to wait a little longer to get into the complete glass bubble so you could see thru the floors, but that was important for Jack. I on the other hand, planned on not looking down at all. Everytime I did accidently or to try and push myself, I'd get a head rush and feel nauseous. Learnt that one quickly. The most terrifying was at top very top. We seemed to be turning so slow at that point, I felt like yelling at them to speed things up. You have no reference point, nothing to ground you at the top. Jack took a photo of me smiling and looking casual, that's after telling me to look at her, let go of the railing and "try not to look terrified". That being said, the views made it more then worth it. Osaka lights stretched as far as we could see in every direction. Getting to the ferris wheel was also interesting since the nearby aquarium had yet another elaborate light display. Another observation we did on our second night was just at sunset, from the "floating gardens" at the Umeda Sky building. They were just as breathtaking, only this time I was on solid ground. I could fully enjoy the views without gripping onto a railing. As long as I don't look down.

    We also did 2 museums, because why not, free. We hadn't done any museums yet, so I accepted to do them. Turns out they were very similar to each other, both having representations of what living in old day Japan was, mostly talking about Emperors and the Osaka castle. The Housing and Living museum was the same concept as the Children's Museum in Hull, with a life size walk through representation of an old village. You could rent kimonos there, and there were tons of young girls spending their time taking selfies or posed photos of each other in this "old town" with kimonos. I know stereotypes shouldn't be encouraged, but the one where Asians love to take pictures and selfies - dead on. And not just here, but everywhere in Japan. They even have signs saying "walking while looking at your phone is dangerous" or "No stopping for pictures at the exit" and so forth. The second museum, The Osaka Museum of History was a more grown up, read boring, version of, with old things behind glass and explanations next to it. Only plus side is there was hardly anything written in English, all Japanese explanations, so no excuse needed for me not reading the little blurbs.

    A goal of mine was to try and understand, or at least witness the gaming culture in Japan. So we went to an area called Den Den town where there is the highest concentration of gaming things... Not as exciting as I thought. We walked through an arcade where the first two floors were those crane games where you hope the claw drops and grabs something. People seemed very concentrated, and your prize was mostly something related to video games like action figures. It was here that I tried my hardest, twice, to win a mini stuffed bunny for my pregnant sisters. I failed. Both times. The female action figures were even more sexualized that I had imagined with tiny skirts and cleavage that makes one wonder how she can fight evil without spilling over. The more interesting floors however were where teenage boys played their arcade games, namely a ridiculously advanced version of guitar hero. I've never seen fingers move so quickly in my life. I kid you not - there was 10 buttons PER hand to coordinate with the instructions on the screen, which came with multiple "colors" to press at once. Guitar hero as I know it has 4 buttons and an up/down switch for the second hand. This thing was crazy, and the guys playing it even crazier. Makes you wonder - are these boys popular for it? Is it like a pick up line one says "I've mastered the 10 finger guitar hero, wanna see?". Still such a mystery to me.

    We topped the second night off wandering around Dotonburi, a very colorful, lively area with the famous "running man" sign. Great area with great energy where we seemed surrounded by tourists despite not being able to tell them apart from locals... Everyone taking pictures and selfies, all look Japanese. Local tourism here is huge and fantastic . So yes, the Amazing Osaka pass was amazing indeed!    Baca selengkapnya

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    Learning the Buddhist Ways

    5 Desember 2016, Jepang ⋅ 🌙 5 °C

    Dad - you would be so proud! I splurged! We spent a night in Koyasan, a sacred mountain on which you can stay the night in a temple, and wake up to pray with the monks. They feed you a traditional Buddhist dinner and breakfast, vegan of course. A few trains and a cable car later, here we start our walk! This was more a nature setting and Jack was looking forward to hiking, so we opted to walk from the cable car station rather then take the bus everyone was hoping on. Being out of shape and hating physical activity, I asked the attendant at the station if the road ahead was an incline or flat. He responds by waving his hand up and down like following a wave. Great.

    Turns out, mostly down hill! The man AND the map told us the walk would be an hour (which Jack denied and to which I refuted that the map has to be correct) we made it in 26 minutes (Another point for Jack, current standing is Jack:356 Me: 21). Apparently Asians walk slowly because this has been the case most of the time - we half the suggested walking times. And this is in no way to promote my physicality, because as most of you know, a single flight of stairs gets me winded! Anyway. These big red gates announced the beginning of this sacred town where the story goes something like a high placed Monk Kobi Dashi (ish) threw a pine cone for some reason, and found it years later in these mountains and thought it was a sign of God to build his temple here. I probably got some of it wrong. Lol.

    Arriving at Yochi-in, our temple accommodation for the night, we are welcomed by a beautiful old wooden carved gate with a "dry garden" inside. A dry garden is a rock garden where every rock and formation has a meaning. The lady of the house welcomed us, gave us a tour and showed us to our room. Here, I know, we are paying for the experience, not the room. Temples are rarely heated - the whole minimalist mind over body thing, so we had a little kerosene heater in our room which we turned on right away. It's probably about 8-10 degrees Celsius currently being in the mountains and all. We have folding futon mattresses on the ground, paper walls, and a cute little coffee table where we were served tea in our room, sitting on the ground of course. Sliding doors where our beds will be stored away and tatami mats everywhere. For those who are curious, this minimalist experience we wanted was 23,000yen for the night and 2 meals. Do the math.

    Being conveniently located across the street from the main temple "area", we ran over 20 minutes before the last admission time to peak into this beautiful old pagoda. It had these old paintings, more like murals on the walls, with an incredible prayer altar. The rest of the temples were obvious as beautiful, but as the sun was setting we couldn't appreciate all their carvings. Don't worry, we came back in the morning!

    Our dinner was served at 5.30pm,and I think I recognized maybe 1 out of 10 items. Mostly cold food, with hot miso soup and hot white rice. Most things were chewy or squishy, textures I don't do well with... But I finished my plate! Or I should say plates, everything was on separate little plates. You sit on a thin square pillow, onto of tatami mats, eat on trays that are 1 foot high off the floor... My kind of setting. You have to take your shoes off before entering the temple, and they give you slippers to wear. Only problem is, these slippers are made of shiny fake leather, and with socks they slip off our feet like crazy. So every second step Jack and I were looking for our sandal we managed to kick off! Going up the stairs was a challenge of its own...

    After dinner, we had 2 hours of free time before the lock the gates for the night. We were told the walk to the Mausoleum was an hour long one way, but we assumed that was on the same timing as our hike down, and decided to speed walk our way over. 17 minutes! To think, we almost didn't go because of timing. Granted, it was also to keep warm - its cold in the mountains! Within 45 minutes we were already at the end of the cemetery walk, and were looking at the outside of the mausoleum before heading back to our room. The cemetery is famous for having over 20 000 statues, illuminated by lanterns at night. What a beautiful sight. The lighting just made it that much more dramatic, just gorgeous. And we made it back in time to have our second public bath experience!

    In the temples are these public baths, traditionally all Japanese would bathe in these vs private baths and showers like we see today. You come into this little change room. Strip naked. Grab your soap and shampoo and head in. Through the doors, you have usually around 8 to 10 shower heads set at about 3 feet high, with bath spouts, all draining onto the floor and eventually water drains. You grab a little plastic bench, almost like a step stool. Grab a bucket. Sit in front of a spout, and start washing yourself! You use the bucket to spray piping hot water over yourself and the shower head for your hair. Once you are squeaky clean, you can enter the public bath, which is basically a hot tub. Women come with their friends, it's a social event, they have their skin exfoliants, their face scrubs, everything you could want to scrub yourself clean. After a chilly walk through the cemetery, this was the perfect way to warm up.

    We got up at 6am to make it for morning prayer. I felt a little confused by this... On one hand, I felt guilty that these monks had to entertain foreigners, they included us in the ceremony of pinching ashes into a fire and praying, they read one of their chants in English so we could join in, they stayed after prayer to answer our questions... But on the other hand, they are the ones advertising these rooms as stays, and charging ridiculous amounts of money for them... So really, who's winning or losing in this situation? It was an interesting morning, the chants and movements are incredibly ritualistic, more so than the Catholic churches I know. An issue I've had with religion is the idea of all of us doing things just because we're supposed to - stand up now, kneel now, repeat after me... And yet at least there's a sermon which is different and allows for free thought. But here - everything that was said or done during the ceremony was a ritual, all the voice synchronized. It was interesting. Jack asked at the end for a "dummies" explanation of what Buddhism is, and the answer was also interesting. It's the search for neutrality, the search for learning to have no emotions - no happiness or sadness. Just nothingness. Why? I guess I'd have to study it a lot further to really form an opinion...

    Breakfast was another array of unidentifiables, and I came out of it hungry! Those vegans don't know how to fill me up! With time on our side and daylight shining, we literally repeated our two visits from yesterday. The temple park in front of our stay and the cemetery / mausoleum, all incredibly calming and beautiful. Instead of yesterday's 1.5 hours to tour the cemetery, we took 4 hours! Relaxing morning.

    Off to Osaka we go for our last leg of this Japanese journey. Jack says this was one of her favorite parts, unsurprisingly, filled with nature.    Baca selengkapnya

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    Beef!

    4 Desember 2016, Jepang ⋅ ⛅ 13 °C

    BEEF! Enough said.

    I know I have a tendency to watch where I spend, and what I spend on, but stopping in Kobe was a treat for me. As much as you'd think I would have to convince Jack to come along, she did so without any objection, knowing how excited I was about it. Sounds silly to be this excited about beef, but for me it was more than just beef, but rather about what it meant - I have traveled a lot this year, I've been to many incredible places, and now I'm in Japan, I'm in the area that produces Kobe Beef, beef that I've heard of and wanted to try ever since I was in South East Asia but did not have the chance. I'm half way across the world and I'm going to enjoy a really good steak!

    Arriving in the afternoon, we took our time getting to our hotel because we happened to be near the sake breweries. Like, an entire quarter of them! We were hoping for a tour but apparently it's busy season so no tours were given (I also don't think there would have been any in English...) Instead we stopped by a sake brewery for a quick tasting and informational video. Sake wasn't too bad! Basically tasted like hard liquor without the throat burn.

    Our hotel was in this same area - just to set the mood, this area was purely industrial, basically breweries. As you walk through the sliding doors, there's a poster of different "interesting" outfits one could rent. It was basically all characters or Christmas outfits that left little to the imagination. There was a free pop machine, free popcorn machine, free candy, we scored! There's even this touchscreen reservation thing - we assumed it was to keep all anonymity when checking into this obvious love hotel. Love hotels are famous in Japan where people commonly rent rooms by the hour for obvious reasons... We had to pick up the "help" phone since non of the touchscreen check in options were written in English. A minute later down comes this lady running from upstairs, apologizes 10 times for keeping us waiting, confirms our reservation, then looks very confused as if to say "I wonder if they know what they're walking into", and gives us our room key. Our room was absolutely amazing! Huge TV, fluffy queen bed, huge tub and shower room (toilets are often in separate rooms here), even a massage chair! Thankfully the massage chair was made of leather, we assumed it had been disinfected, the lounging chair on the other hand was made of suede and we avoided sitting on that... Parents and grandparents stop here - but to top it all off, they even had one of those massive plug-in vibrators! It had a plastic bag over it, just like the drinking glasses, as if to say "I've been cleaned". Amazing.

    After spending an hour being amazed by our room, which was a free upgrade from the standard room I had actually paid for fyi, we made our way to Chinatown - a friend told me that's where you go for the beef! On our way we spotted these signs showing off some "illumination" route, and along the street are these white barriers with a huge crowd walking along, following the instructions of our famous "people traffic" controllers. Literally thousands of people walking in a line, following instructions... I've never seen such order. We joined of course, this many people going somewhere must mean good things! Along the way, Jack found the lack of illuminated buildings boring and was struggling with the idea of following a group blindly. She's more of an improviser, not a rule follower. So we bicker a bit, since I'm convinced following what I'm told is always the right way, and we found a middle ground. We followed the same route from outside the barricades, ha! Shows them! And our plan eventually failed of course, hitting a dead end where one must be in the barricades to continue. Only now, we could see the amazing point it was taking you to! This huge structure all covered in a ridiculous amount of Christmas lights. I had to get closer, but the japanese and their rules... The security guard, or people traffic controller, wouldn't let us through the barricades, even though this was an open point with people exiting, because we had to start from the begining. Yep, rule followers, you can't go in through this open space because you have to follow the line from the beginning... So we acted confused, said we were in the line up but had to exit momentarily, came up with different excuses, and finally I think he just gave up, let us through. Score 1 for the annoying white girls. Only the pictures can really describe what we saw - a ridiculous display of beautiful Christmas lights, and I love me some Christmas!

    Now back to Chinatown, beef! Finally! We start walking around, we end up repeating some streets over again, I couldn't make up my mind on where to go... There were cheap street options that I thought wouldn't allow me to fully enjoy the beef while standing, and probably not the most authentic. There were restaurants that charged up to 8,000yen depending on the size and quality you wanted... I didn't expect the cheapest option to 2,500yen for 80g, I assumed that would be a sliver of beef for a lot of money... All these options and thoughts started racing in my mind and I was getting overwhelmed. This brought me back to Nairobi when I ran to the hotel and burst into tears... I couldn't think clearly, I wanted to cry, I wanted scream, all because of silly beef. Jack, who knows me a little too well, and who is amazing at reading me, brought me back to earth. I really don't give her enough credit for how she treats me in my less logical moments. As much as she couldn't care less about beef, she calmed me down, found a place that looked busy - which meant known for good food, and got us a table. Turned out to be the best choice! Tepanyaki, I got to look at my steak before they cooked it, take photos because everything in Japan is made for more photo taking... It was perfect. Once seated and with a clear mind, I decided fuck it - let's go all out. We made it into a 4 course meal, had some wine, enjoyed ourselves! Jack made fun of me because of my amazement of being able to cut through the beef in our stew with my front teeth in one chomp. The "medium rare, on the rare side" steak was mind blowing. Again to think, me, in Japan, currently eating, having Kobe Beef, in Kobe, Japan. Crazy.    Baca selengkapnya

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    1

    Wait, how much?

    4 Desember 2016, Jepang ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    11,000yen each. That's 130$CAD. Per person. I had already researched this, but for some reason, hearing it in person, knowing we took out a total of only 50,000yen from the ATM with a 12$ service fee, this hurt my ears. Unfortunately there's no getting away from it if we want to get to Kyoto from Fuji Lakes. Thank you Visa, you made it feel ever so slightly better. It's like invisible money, you feel like you aren't spending a dime, it only hurts when you pay it at the end of the month. Every month, I feel like my computer screen and I get into a disagreement, I swear and it just stares back at me.

    Granted, these bullet trains are incredibly useful. We crossed the country in 2 hours. Hearing and feeling those trains wiz by you is ridiculous. I had arranged for a later check in at the hostel, they usually close at 7pm but I said we'd get there between 8 and 9pm. 8.38pm, and no later. We arrived at the address my Google map pointed too. There's no English letter on the building. We see its some sort of public bath facility. Let's try. We walk, take our shoes off (no shoes allowed indoors anywhere), and ask for the hostel Tohgetsu. He nods his head, signals to follow him, takes us to an unmarked door in the back of the bath's common area where a new space opened up onto the hostel itself. Apparently there was a side door we missed.

    In comes the strong smell of man body odour. Don't know why, assuming a combination of men staying here and the baths upstairs, but b.o. smell all around us. The location was on point, in an interesting area and around the corner from a subway station. The washroom were squeaky clean, shower is still better then mine at home... But the smell and the lack of linen on our beds was not so fun. We've gotten used to a certain level of luxury in our hostels so far, so this was off-putting. Two nights, easy peasy. The included breakfast was 2 toast with tea or coffee. Oh the luxury!

    Kyoto is known as the cultural/spiritual capital of Japan, it has over 1600 temples and shrines. Our travel book, which we bought the day before leaving and read part of on the plane, has an entire chapter on Kyoto. To sum the city up, we felt like we were just going from one temple or shrine to the next. The city itself wasn't that interesting. At least not to us. Being the weekend here, and local tourism being so big, there are now hoards of tourists doing the same stops we are. We bought a day pass for the bus which came in such good handy. FYI - buses here, you get on in the back door, sit, and exit at the end of your trip from the front door, paying on your way out. And there's a change machine right next to the driver to provide you with the exact change necessary. They really do think of everything. Our little map was easy to follow, we would hop on for a couple stops and back off at the next temple. The bus actually called out the stop in English with the names of the closest attractions. Clearly tourists come here. So far in Japan, the English has been extremely limited, but here the bus tells me when to get off to see certain temples. And don't think like we did - these aren't 5 minute stops along the way where you just look at the pretty temple and leave, the temple grounds are huge, there's multiple buildings to look at, and sometimes so many tourists we would have to follow a slow moving line across the grounds. We took on average an hour at every stop. Our original draft to visit 15 temples on an easy route to follow was quickly revisited and turned to 6. 6 massive, intricate, beautiful and most importantly unique temples. They all had a little something different. Some older, some wooden, some newly painted in bright colors, some with high pagodas, some with huge prayer halls... Lots of walking, lots of bus maneuvering, lots of pictures that will look exactly the pictures everyone else takes and yet its so pretty you can't help but to follow suit and snap.

    There's hired "people traffic cops" (at least that's what we call them) holding those airport control wands that light up red, telling everyone which way to walk and where it is safe so stop for a photo. The funniest thing I found is just how well everyone listened. It truly is a respectful, disciplined country. Jack had a little difficulty with it all. Her rebellious side was crying a little. I on the other hand was perfectly content following the line and doing as I was told. Easy peasy. At one temple, you had to pay to get in, and as soon as you hit the gate the line up started, and you followed it around the main temple, around the hall, to the pagoda, down this path in the forest that leads you to the second pagoda... All following this line of Asian tourists with selfie sticks. Good thing the temples are worth seeing. And the views were spectacular.

    A little "templed out", we decided to take the bus out to the "Philosopher's walk", hoping to get some of it done before the sun set. By the end of our 20 minute bus ride, it was pitch black outside. The sun here sets incredibly fast. Cute lighting along the path allowed us to keep going down this scenic little stone way following a little canal in back residential streets. We were looking for a break from the crowds and noise which is exactly what we got. No temples, no one around, not even shops or restaurants, just walking along a path with nice trees and water flowing next to us following the stones in the ground.

    We then went to the Gion district, famous for its nice restaurants and potential Geisha spotting, but what we thought would be busy interesting streets for people watching, was actually quite calm and empty so we moved on to Pontocho Alley. Now there's the liveliness we were prepared for! A lovely little area of busy alleyways filled with restaurants and bars mixing into a main boulevard of shops. Here we spotted a Geisha! Full kimono white face wooden flipflops classic Geisha, just in time for her to pop into a restaurant, assuming her guests were waiting for her. We did the entire alley of Pontocho, and then some, looking for a cool place for a drink. Considering my lack of cash, we were limited on where to go, keeping in mind "tableing fees" that we learnt about the night before (apparently our seat cost 500yen per person, no reason). I was looking for a certain atmosphere, something with a good vibe we could people watch from, and was having difficulty finding it. We finally stumbled upon a place I was really happy with, tried to enter and was told it was full. I could see an empty table but not many so ok, that's fine. We kept going and magically found another place we really liked, entered, and the lady asked if we spoke Japanese. We said no, confused, and she said "sorry, full". Oh... I get it... We're white. I read about this in our handy travel book, and apparently the cooler, more "elite" places, don't let foreigners in. Apparently we're dirty or something. All but giving up, I finally find a standing bar with no tableing fee (get it? 'cuz we're standing!) and pop in for a night cap. A stool at the bar freed up and we got Jack a seat since her ankle was dying (unhealed sprain from a YEAR ago), which left only me standing. Let's just say, after an entire day of walking around, enjoying a beer while still standing just isn't the same. At one point a seat I got to sit down too and the beer was Japanese so all in all, good.

    After 2 nights in our luxurious sweat smelling hostel, today we planned to head to Kobe. Since all I really needed to experience there was Kobe beef, we only needed to arrive for dinner time, which left plenty of time for more temples in Kyoto! So on Kyoto day 2, too change it up, we actually took a street car our of town to Arashiyama. A really cute little town with old wooden houses, nothing above 2 stories, a quaint bridge and where we ignored this UNESCO temple and instead went down the Bamboo walking trail. About a 20 minute walk from one end to the other along this really great bamboo lined walkway. And of course, by the time we were done, hoards of tourists were starting it. It's still the weekend. So we head back into Kyoto for one final temple, this one because I saw my friend Lorraine's photo of Kunkaku-ji the Golden Pavilion and had to see it. Turns out, her photo, like mine, blocked out the line of tourists I was following. You have to wait behind a crowd of Japanese tourists for a spot to open up which allows you to move to the front to take your photo. Still - the temple was absolutely breath taking. My favorite for far. Gold covered pavillon, quite literally. Gorgeous, with beautiful gardens surrounding it. You just have to ignore the others around you, and follow the "people traffic cops".    Baca selengkapnya

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    1

    Mount Fuji and all its glory

    2 Desember 2016, Jepang ⋅ 🌙 2 °C

    Who would have thought, spending the morning on a bike ride would be so pleasant.

    We took a 2 hour bus ride from Tokyo to Kawaguchiko, the most accessible of the 5 Fuji lakes, to take in a bit of nature with a great view. I booked a hostel called K's House, apparently famous in this region, knowing there were 2 different locations to book. One location, slightly more expensive, was right in the town center, within minutes of the lake. The other, less expensive, 20 minute walk from the lake, but that promised amazing Fuji views. I obviously booked the second. The walk over was a little lengthy, mostly because there really isn't much interesting things to look at in this town. Just a simple residential town. But sure enough, the views from their observatory deck were absolutely amazing. Clear blue skies all around. You had to walk up a ladder and crawl through a window to access the deck, but it was so well maintained with slippers waiting for us to put on once outside, that the window crawling just added an element to the experience.

    The hostel was Japanese chic as per Jack; lots of natural elements like the wooden roof, unglazed ceramic sinks, low minimalistic furniture with our sleeping quarters being a double bed you crawl into from the feet with 4 walls around us, a light at our head and our personal outlet. It was like a mini 4 foot tall room. The sinks, the showers, the kitchen, all of it better then what I've ever lived in or dreamed of having. Honestly a gorgeous hostel.

    The next morning, Jack and I put on every layer of clothing we had brought with us, I put on my new gloves (bought the night before), and we set out on a bicycle ride around Lake Kawaguchi. I only started complaining about the biking with about 20 minutes left on our return, my legs are not made for this kind of burning! For those who would like to laugh at my lack of stamina, it was a roughly 20km ride. I rarely admit biking is a good plan, but in this case, it allowed us to have certain views you can only see on postcards. We took a little 20 minute hike to a waterfall along the way, parking our bikes in front of some old little Japanese lady's garage who didn't speak English but seemed to point up the hill when we attempted to pronounce the name of the waterfall. The waterfall itself isn't a show stopper, but the nature around during the walk, the sounds of birds, the leafs changing colors (it's autumn here), all made this hike worth the furthering burn in my thighs.

    Jack says "you should talk about Mount Fuji, she was beautiful, the snow cap, the trails leading up to the top, how she's all alone...". What she said. It's very true how it's isolation from other mountains allowed us to see its full glory. You could see zigzag lines covered in snow making their way to the top for those crazies who chose to hike this thing (allowed only in July and August). A beauty.

    As beautiful and peaceful as this little stop was, there's always space for an anxious moment, which came when I tried to book our bus out of Kawaguchiko, to attempt to avoid them being full like we've just experienced in Tokyo. The website said next available to reserve was the day after tomorrow... " 'Bout what about tomorrow?!". So I thought about it all night, we're screwed there are no more busses. I asked Jack for us to make our first priority in the morning to stop at the station where I would hopefully beg my way into a ticket for that afternoon. Sure enough, I showed up, asked for two tickets, and was given seat 1a and 1b. Apparently I was the first to buy the ticket, online reservation just doesn't allow for booking within 24hours. My bad.    Baca selengkapnya

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    1

    Tokyo

    1 Desember 2016, Jepang ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    As we sit in this bus which left exactly on time, with assigned seats, a clean toilet on board, and seat belts, I've decided to write a little something about Tokyo.

    The stereotype of Japanese people being very disciplined and orderly - couldn't be more correct. There's directional arrows on the ground for walking traffic which people follow, there's areas to line up to get on the metro which people don't divert from (unlike the crowds that form at the Montreal metro stations), they even line up outside at bus stops to allow for whoever was there first to board first (unlike when I used to run up to the door the second the bus pulled in).

    Of all the countries I have recently visited, Japan has elicited the most positive remarks. Almost everybody says "I want to go there!". Jack has had similar responses and now we understand the westerners interest in visiting Japan - the culture is different enough to feel like you're a long way from home, the language and writing is enough to be slightly challenging, yet all the luxuries you could ever want while away from home are readily available. There's public (and free) washrooms everywhere outside and they're clean! In other countries, I've had to pay to use public washrooms in which I felt dirty squatting, with no toilet paper that you can't flush. We walked through a fancy building downtown yesterday to check out the architecture and used the washroom (public access). It had heated seats, 3 different bidet options, the water from the bidet was warm (Jack made me try it), it had the fake “flushing sound”; I didn't want to leave! And if you think it's just because we were in a fancy building, we also used the washroom in the metro station - no heated seats this time, but all the same bidet options with a speaker on the wall with a motion sensor to play the sounds of a waterfall when someone was sitting there. Shy pee-ers, fear no more! And yes I've just rambled on about washrooms, but they'll they you a lot about a country!

    The people are incredibly polite, bow constantly, and yet have a surprisingly limited English. As we walked up to the bus we are currently on, the bus driver wasn't standing at the door, he was next to the luggage area. He ran up, litteraly ran the few steps to the door and apologized by bowing about 3 times for not having been at the door to greet us. They are mostly soft spoken. The tickets for our bus were sold out until later in the afternoon, so we were given standby tickets for the next bus. There's a “standby standing area” which is right next to the ticket office, and we were told to wait there and they would call our number out if we get a seat. 5 minutes later, at the time we were told to listen for cancelations, a lady leans over the counter and starts almost whispering something in Japanese. I was standing no more then 3 feet away and could barely discern a syllable. After she repeated herself a few times, still barely a whisper, she asked to see my ticket, and decided to skip whoever she was calling, since apparently this person was supposed to have heard her by now, and gave us the tickets. I was so happy to be the white chick randomly standing in front of the cancelation area, it got her attention enough to score me a seat!

    We've managed to get a handle of the metro and subway lines, which I'm sure you've already assumed are incredibly organized and efficient. We grabbed a 24 hour pass, allowing us to actually go out the two evenings we spent here! We usually crash in the evening deciding to stay in, but this forced us to make the effort. We visited Shinjuku on our first evening and Shibuya the next. Think Time Square on steroids but for blocks! Lights and advertisements everywhere! Mostly only written in Japanese, so clearly us white chicks were not their target audiences. And since these two areas were the nightlife spots to be - plenty of sexualization of random things like the famous Robot Restaurant, Maiden cafes were the waitress are also “professional company” dressed in maid outfits, or the Bunny cafe (girls with little clothing and bunny ears). There were what seemed to be fetish clubs determined by the photo in the advertisement showing a man starring at feet from the other side of the glass… If I had the guts, and if I had done more research into knowing if it was something I was ok with supporting, I would have loved to explore the Japanese “sexual” culture better. It is fascinating to me how the sexualization of anything childish seems to be a widely accepted phenomenon.

    My mother kept telling me to “be zen” and find “zen places”, assuming she meant gardens and temples. Tokyo had plenty of temples, shrines and gardens to admire, but the amount of people at each of them made it just a little less zen. Still, I could really appreciate their attempt at balancing this urban area with more nature and culture. As usual in Asia, their temples and shrines are beautiful and ornamental; but in Tokyo, they are also incredibly clean and appear to all have been painted or repaired in the last month! Not a scratch anywhere, all the details in the carvings intact… With everything looking so new, it was a little bit hard to find the spirituality I usually enjoy feeling when presented with something that appears older, more usage, less presteen. Still, very beautiful.

    Jack says she's enjoying Japan but "needs a sprinkle of chaos in my day to day life" - She enjoys getting culture shock, disorganized bus systems, and feeling outside of her element when traveling. She says jumping onto a bus last minute to have it not leave for another 2 hours is part of traveling for her. Whereas here, because we didn't reserve our seats on a bus leaving at noon, we would not have to be able to leave until 2pm (next available, despite the fact that there's a bus leaving every 30 minutes). And once we did get our last minute seats, which were given away 10 minutes before the bus leave, the bus still left on time. If Jack and I had purchased these tickets ahead of time, there's no way we would have been there 10 minutes early, and they most probably would have given our tickets away. Also, all of our hotels were booked before leaving as per a friend's suggestion that Japan doesn't do well with last-minute reservations. Clearly, she's been challenged differently!

    Conclusion of Tokyo - large metropolitan city, clean, so clean, poeple everywhere, well kept beautiful temples and shrines, well kept parks, not too much of a shock to the system which makes it easily do-able, and on that note - know that I've been eating perfectly fine since we've arrived! Yay for me!

    Oh, and Jack adds that smokers beware! Here they have specific areas for smoking and everyone respects this. No smoking and walking allowed! And vending machines are everywhere, including small residential street, mainly selling drinks and coffee and so forth. That's all.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Pow! Pow!

    23 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌙 16 °C

    I woke up to the wonderful voice of the fortune teller mechanical "indian" saying something I couldn't make out ... We parked in front of a gas station that had the obligatory trading post attached to it. The man working the gas station last night was very nice, we asked him about the potential of showers, and after determining that our options were too far to reach tonight in the dark, he suggested we sleep here, parked closed to the door. I guess being two girls makes people uneasy about us sleeping in a car.

    Hitting the road again, we were excited to start the "longest remaining section of route 66" which hasn't been converted to a highway. Because of its length on a map, Jack believed we could only make it Kingman by sunset, where we were just told by the nice man was our next truck stop with showers. My shower will have to wait until tonight, apparently. Turns out, the Arizona desert doesn't have too many towns along it's route... I was at Kingman by noon, just in time for a mid-day shower. This shower, at the Flying J, was wonderful! Much like our last experience at the Flying J, we payed for one shower, 12$, no time limit, and we both headed in. The first time, the lady at the cash actually offered us to only take the one shower, and then radio'd the cleaner to bring us an extra towel, she was great. This time, the cleaner was in front of our little shower room, and offered us this second towel as he saw us heading in. I found myself wondering - is this what gendered privilege feels like? I highly doubt two men, walking into the Flying J, get offered two towels and one shower. Just some thoughts. In this line of thought, I'm amazed that I have yet to be mis-gendered ! I wore my baseball cap for the last 2 days, a hoodie, and lose jeans, and I'm still not being mis-gendered. I don't get it. I got so used to having both genders thrown at me that this girl only thing is throwing me off... The only people to have argued over my gender in front of me on this trip were tourists in St-Louis. What is different here vs back in Ottawa? Or everywhere else in the world where if I want to pass as a girl I puff my chest and speak in a higher voice...

    We passed desert, and more desert, lined with magnificent mountains with pointy peaks and shadows of even larger peaks. As non existent the towns were, it was beautiful. We passed some ghost towns, what I would consider looked more like a single abandoned gas station or a motel, was apparently once thriving towns along 66. This route has shown us what the true rural, decaying America looks like when off the main highways. Forgotten old towns, left with populations of the 3 or 4 people braving the dry isolation. Amongst these forgotten towns was the not-so-forgotten Seligman. Two men in this town apparently refused to see it die with the traffic almost entirely disappearing after the construction of the I-40. They fought to start and founded the Arizona Route 66 Association (first of its kind) and lobbied for their section of route 66 to be recognized as a historic byway. One of these men was Angel Delgadillo. He spent most of his older life fighting to promote his town from his barbershop / 66 museum. This town had at least 7 or 8 main street establishments fully embracing the route 66 idea of old 40s charm and nik-naks. I can't really describe this town, but check out the photos. Diners with yards full of completely random things like a phone booth with a scarecrow inside, and old cars with cutouts of Elvis in them, or mannequins hanging out on the roof tops of the bar... My kind of place. Loved it.

    Having made it to Kingman so early, we suddenly got really excited at the possibility of making it to Oatman for a gun show, which according to our guide book, is at 1.30pm. So we sped through Kingman, a relatively large town with plenty of neon signs, old motels and cool looking diners to make it for the gun show! Quick stop over to get Jack a milkshake that she's been craving for days now, best coffee milkshake ever out of a really cool 50s looking diner. The road ahead was twisting and turning around cliffs edges, in the incredible peaks from early. I quickly realized I could not make good timing on this, so we gave up the idea of the gun show and just enjoyed the ride. Stopped at a few view points to stare at incredible views. The landscape isn't like anything I've ever seen, dry sand ground with green scrubs and tiny cacti.

    Making it to Oatman past 1.30pm, I had all given up on my gun show... that is until I saw a sign saying it was 2.15pm. I kid you not - I looked at the sign, then looked at my phone for the time, and my phone said 2.16pm. The excitement I felt at that point in time was unmeasurable! This is the funniest town yet, a town that was a ghost town for a few years until they decided fuck it, let's do something that will attract the randoms of 66. So they transformed whatever was left of the main street buildings and created new ones, all in the theme of the wild west. Saloons, cowboys, wild donkeys roaming the streets (legit, wild donkeys). And of course - a gun show. Two grown men, who go out in the middle of the street, dressed like cowboys (I really think this is their everyday look, but who knows), one pretended to be a sheriff, the other an outlaw. Sheriff brings money to the bank as a trap for the outlaw. Outlaw steals the money. At this point the outlaw is killing time in the street because the sheriff isn't showing up, starts making jokes about the sheriff not doing his job, or getting lost along the way. Finally the sheriff shows back up, obviously confused that he had missed his cue to re-enter the scene. They have a stand off in the street, and POW POW! Sheriff shoots the outlaw. Blanks of course. So terrible, so hilarious. The final shot that was supposed to kill the outlaw was kind of weak, not loud, so the outlaw goes "that wasn't loud enough", shoots his gun into the air for a louder bang, then falls to the ground. Too good. Probably my favorite experience so far. The only downside were the amount of tourists in the town. So far, we've crossed a few route 66 tourists here and there, obviously crossing many at the Grand Canyon yesterday. Here, the streets were full of them. The next "town" with a suggested stop, Hackberry, had a gas station and general store along the main, and only that. Their gas station was overflowing with tourists - bikers on old harleys, tour buses, you name it, stopped at this old gas station taking photos of their old classic cars. Seeing as we've seen plenty just like this in the east end of the route, we skipped it. Where did they all come from?

    We managed to get so much road done today, not because we skipped anything, but because that's all there was, road. No towns, no stores, no funny museums, just road. The tourists that filled Oatman and Hackberry are no longer in sight. We crossed into California! Our last state... Bitter sweet moment. I'm happy and proud we made it this far. Jack and I haven't killed each other yet, although we've come close a couple times. When you decide to spend a month in a car, sleeping, spending most of your day in this car, 2 feet away from your partner, you are bound to have some not so pleasant moments. I must say, with the exception of a rougher 4 day stint, we found our grove and are having a blast! Our "disagreements" often stem from us getting lost, or commenting on each other's driving skills. Route 66 no longer actually exists as a road, therefore following written out directions or a map leads to many wrong turns and "I think this is it" moments. We've managed to avoid using the internet or electronics for the most part. One of us drives, the other directs, and we switch the next day. At the end of a day driving, I'm ready to take the passenger seat and direct, which has its own challenges and annoyances, which makes me ready to drive the day after! Even setting up the car, we found our system which works. I grab the garbage on my front seat, she gets the cooler and goodies box. She then helps me bring the plywood board forward, and goes to the trunk to set up the box there while I hang the drapes up. The system is the same every night, and we're getting incredibly efficient with it! The car is doing great and continues to feel like home. I haven't felt too rushed or pushed for time, and here we are, crossing our last state line before the end of Route 66.

    The road is entirely empty. It's just us and the mountains and the dry land. The "towns" suggested by our guide book quite literally only had one thing running, be it the closed-at-the-time museum in Goff or Ray's gas station in Amboy. The travel guide even suggested a stop in Essex, what he calls an establishment: It consisted of 5 abandoned mobile homes and a closed gas station. After all this road, we stopped our journey in Ludlow today, or just before it. Who knows, we stopped at the first gas station we saw that was open, but considering today, this might be the town! As far as I remember from my readings, it is legal to sleep in your car in the state of California, so it doesn't really matter where we sleep, but this gas station with our now friends the Truck Drivers, seems like the safest choice. Good night.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L
    1

    Little Detour, Big Reward

    22 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    Today is an interesting day. For the first time, we planned an actual detour away from the route 66. This means we will actually miss part of it. From Flagstaff to Williams, we will be taking a different route north... to the Grand Canyon of course! It's an hour away, so it seemed like a detour worth planning for.

    The day started off a little odd for us... We slept at a rest stop along the highway just before the exit leading to the Meteor Crater that Jack really wanted to check out. We put our alarm on bright and early, 7am, to give us time to cook our breakfast on the BBQ and arrive at opening time at 8am. Of course, we snoozed, so decided to drive over to the crater without breakfast, and while Jack visits, I plan to cook the breakfast. It's 18$ to get in, and as we've done for a few activities along the way, only the interested party goes in and shares with the other. So we drive up to the gate, and we're parked in front of the closed fence by 7.50am. Employees seem to be arriving but closing the gate behind them. Come 8.10am we ask if they're opening soon and we're told "Yes, at 8am". Confusion continues. We are then told it's currently 7.10am. Heh? We later find out that Arizona doesn't follow daylight's saving time. So we just gained an hour! Right there, in front of the gate, we took out the table, the BBQ, and made some fantastic coffee and toasts we ate with Nutella and yesterday's left over beans from diner. Breakfast on the go!

    Jack was in the crater museum for about an hour while I blogged, or attempted to. I get distracted easily, write run on sentences that I then take out, it takes me about 1.5-2 hours per blog. Ridiculous, I know. I'm typing this one sitting in an I-Hop, with my little portable keyboard and tablet. Thank God for that keyboard, love that thing.

    Jack's crater experience : "It was cool. Very, very cool. It almost looked like a volcano crater, or at least some that I've seen, but knowing that it was from a meteor some 50,000 yrs ago just gave it a different feel. It was well done with a viewing platform from the top and slightly lower, a museum and so forth. They even did moon and Mars training here! It was expensive, but The largest and most well-preserved meteor crater on earth. Or so they say."

    From the crater to Flagstaff were more abandoned, or small towns. One of which was an abandoned old trading post Two Guns and another called Twin Arrows. Both made for fantastic photos. Graffiti, broken walls, and a very vague illusion of what life once was here. These little towns, or settlements, actually have highway exits all to themselves. In Flagstaff, in order to allow for more time at the Grand Canyon, we decided to stick with the route 66 and just drive through the town, no stopping. And we did just that. Passed a few great old neon signs, a few motels and diner circa 1940's, and off we went to the Grand Canyon!

    30$ ! Then again, for the both of us... We quickly forgot that price once we stood at the edge of the canyon. There's a certain feeling standing at the edge of the grand canyon that can't be described into words. This absolutely incredible, massive landscape that we all line up to see or get a better view of, and man kind had nothing to do with it. We keep trying to have higher building, or nicer trimmed parks, or the most high-tech houses, but experiencing the Grand Canyon is taking a step back and admiring something that needed no intervention from us. Spectacular all on its own. With 250 billions years of formation, not much can beat it. Of course, the visitors center had an incredible amount of tourists, understandably so.

    We did the north rim drive, from east to west, starting at the desert view point. We stopped at every single view point along the way, both for the obvious views, and because the more we continued, the less tourists there were, so we got to experience it better. Jack and I got in a little disagreement about her hugging the edges a little too much... Our conclusion, she's crazy and I don't have to watch. At least that was my conclusion. So I had to walk away a few times. Her sense of adventure is something I love about her, but sometimes just a little fear from her would help me through my day. Haha. We did take about 3.5 hours driving and stopping along the rim, but even this seemed so incredibly short. We treating this stop like the others along our way, it's a taste, a sample, and we must move on.

    On our drive back to 66 Jack planned a stop for us at the Flintstones Bedrock City. Amazing. Granted we just came out of the Grand Canyon, but Bedrock! I got to catch up with my homeboys Fred and Bam-Bam, and Wilma... We had to pay to into ground of the Bedrock city, which was a camp ground turned mini amusement park! Instead, being our cheap selves, Jack gave me a boost to try and climb a tree a the fence. I got a great view! Slides and more statues of the gang. Had it not been close to sunset, Jack and I would have had ourselves a ball in here! But, sticking with our plan to try and always be in whatever town we plan to spend the night by sunset, we moved on.

    Glad we did! Williams was the cutest town we've seen yet! They call it the entry gate to the Grand Canyon, and with the amount of tourists roaming the streets, I would have to agree. Assuming tourism money is what's keeping this town as alive as it is, they did great. They had a mini Frontier town, they had plenty of old school neon signs worthy of route 66 mention, they had a couple old diner decked out in 1940s decor, and of course plenty of souvenir shops with the same trinkets over and over again. We had ourselves a nice diner and locally brewed beers before heading out in search of our usual gas station home for the night.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Simple Entry, Simple Day

    21 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    Some days, you just don't feel like writing paragraphs about. Some days can be summed up with experiences. That's today.

    We made it Arizona! Today was filled with desert driving, a ridiculous amount of "trading posts" (souvenir shops on reservations) and abandoned towns, gas stations or shops. The drive was beautiful.

    What we did for the better part of the day? We drove through, and walked through, the Petrified Forest National Park. This was my first glimpse of these beautiful, colorful rock formations with layers of color, in the "painted desert". We learned all about Petrified wood, which is basically wood from millions of years ago, having been moved by water ways and barrier, now uncovered have slowly transformed into rock. Gems inside beautiful rock logs, in the shapes of tree trunks. I never knew something like this existed, but very, very cool.

    We ended the night visiting Winslow, a cute little town that decided to create Standin' on a Corner, "a public park, commemorating the song "Take It Easy", written by Jackson Browne and the late Glenn Frey, and most famously recorded by the Eagles" (thank you Wikipedia).

    It must be added, that we've met great people along the way. Locals on 66 are generally incredibly friendly, but the tourists along the route are also incredible lyrics friendly. We've met an incredible amount of butch looking bikers who were friendly, and chatty, who offered to take pictures of us, who asked for pictures in return. Being in a country were the language is familiar, and communication is easy (compared to Ethiopia), working on my socializing skills has been a good challenge. I can't say I'm any more willing to approach strangers for a chat, but I'm trying!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Nature Calling

    20 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌧 15 °C

    Starting with a side note - I'm almost certain I heard a bear last night. There was distant grunting noises moving across what seemed like the road. It went by twice. Almost sounded like a man's snore, but it was moving... Clearly I didn't get out of our tent to find out, I'm not crazy. Second early note - I was convinced they would be showers, seeing as its a state owned camp site, but there was not. I'd love a shower right now.

    We started our hike down towards the Bandelier monument at 7am to beat all the tours (gates open at 9am, that's for the shuttle to bring you to the door from the closest town, before 9am you can explore on your own, but the visitors center is closed). The hike down took around an hour, walking through dry landscapes with little green shrubs. You can see all kinds of rock formations from far.

    The closer we got, the more high flat cliffs would appear with larger and larger crevices, almost cave like. In the park itself, there were plenty of signs indicating against climbing up the rock face, but of course Jack ignored them all and went crazy on how many holes she could manage to fit inside. We crossed a park ranger along the path who explained these caves, along with the settlement in front of it. Between 1380-1490 (something like that), a community had built 4 to 5 storey high brick buildings along the facade of the cliffs, living in both those constructions and inside the cliff itself. It front, on an open space, was a circular construction of over 200 rooms, 3 storeys high, also lived in. Obviously the current state of what was once a big development is now about 3 bricks high off the ground, the rest was imagination working hard.

    We took the little shuttle (now being 9am, and the visitors center being open) back to our campsite to prepare for the day. Because of our avoidance of the visitors center, there was no where along the way for us to pay our park fee of 20$ per vehicle. Gosh darn, we just couldn't give our money to anyone. So we left, having only spent 12$ for the campsite.

    Jack took the drive through the mountains really easy considering the check engine light. We didn't want to stress Ferby out too much. In the afternoon, after we were back on flat land, I gas'd up with the fancy stuff - 91 octane, treated the little guy to some good juice. And sure enough, within a couple hours, the engine light turned off! All on its own! I was so proud of my little Freby, no need for a garage after all, apparently I must have put bad gas in at one point...

    Back to the 66 we go, we aimed for Alberquerque coming down from the mountains. The colors, mostly reds, from the rocks and mountains along the way were absolutely gorgeous. Once in Alberquerque, both Jack and I weren't really into it... It's not a pretty town, There's a court and government district which had "ok" buildings, their historical downtown was pretty boring. This is the first town along our route where people aren't saying hello... It seems ridiculous, but all along the way people have been really friendly and saying hi as we pass. Here, we're ignored. So with no time to lose, we left. On the road again along route 66.

    From this point, we waved in and out of small towns and reservations, checked out a church inside a reservation along the way. There have been many reservations along the route in New Mexico, and I must say, they are some of the poorest looking communities I have ever seen in North America. And we were in Detroit! The houses look like they should be abandoned, some windows even boarded, front lawns full of whatever someone would consider their riches, and yet people are still coming in and out of them. The pueblos weren't paved, some of the only non paved roads we have driven. Taking pictures seemed wrong, recording someone's hardships for our own gain, but sometimes I just couldn't resist. You have to wonder, is it lack of funding? Lack of initiative from the community? Funds going in the wrong hands? Is the trauma of relocation and missionary schools keeping this community from thriving? Much like our Canadian North, how do you help such a large group out of poverty and hardship when you have maintained them at such a level for generations?

    We passed ghost towns, some towns seemed half lived in, half abandoned. All the large road side businesses closed up, with tiny communities behind them. Finally arriving in Grants just before sunset, Jack was determined to grab a Green Chili burger, New Mexico classic. By the end of it, her face was red from the spiciness. I'm just glad I didn't have any. People have described the green chili to us as "not spicy, there's just a kick to them". I wonder what the red chili burger tastes like... After driving through the town, exploring some neon lights, driving through a picture set up of more neon lights, we made the decision to drive to Gallup in the dark, to save some time. As much as the landscape is beautiful, flat planes with colorful mesas at the horizon, it is redundant. Our goal was to see the neon lights in Gallup of all the old motels and shops, but for some reason we both forgot that goal when we saw the Flying J off the highway just before entering Gallup and decided to set up for the night. Considering the probable bear fiasco of last night, I hadn't slept well, so the bed was calling my name! We set everything up, and made it a movie night. I downloaded some movies onto my tablet before leaving, which made this night perfect. Movie cuddles in our little cocoon, laughing at Guardians of the Galaxy.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Little Break from the Road

    19 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    I've been trying to catch up my blog for some time now, and decided to skip ahead to today, as to finally write in the moment. I'm currently sitting in the light of the moon in the mountains of the Bandeliere National Park, which we plan to visit tomorrow. To back track a little, Jack has been looking for an excuse to drive up to Santa Fe ever since Stu spoke highly of it in Chicago. As we arrived at the New Mexico visitors office yesterday, the lady told us the original Route 66 did the loop up to Santa Fe, which was later bypassed with the I-40 going straight to Albuquerque from Santa Rosa. This was Jack's excuse, given to her on a silver platter, route 66 did go to Santa Fe. In her defense, both Texas and now New Mexico have been very "drive" oriented, and by that I mean I think we stopped 4, maybe 5 times throughout Texas, and we haven't really stopped in New Mexico other then Tucumcari and Santa Rosa. So by the looks of it, we can afford the detour, time wise.

    Our two stops yesterday - Santa Rosa and Tucumcari. Tucumcari was the first actual town we saw in New Mexico, seeing as we passed about 3 ghost towns on our way in. These ghosts towns consisted of a few boarded buildings, a few foundations of what used to be buildings, and a house or two with people living in it. That's right, we passed a town of population ranging around 5 for the last 50 years. So, Tucumcari, demonstrated one heck of an effort in keeping the route 66 traditions alive. Tons of old signs along the main route, old motels including the famous Blue Swallow Motel.

    Much like my beloved SuperTAM was closed (cafe and superman museum in one), Jack's dinosaur museum was also closed. I thought she might cry, again much like I almost did. Small town dinosaur museum, how can you not want to stop by? Then Santa Rosa, large in area, small in population. We dropped by the Blue Whole, natural massive water pit that was 60ft wide and 80ft deep. Water was freezing so we went to their local lake (more like a pond) for a quick swim, it's brutally hot out during the day. And you know those curiosity showers at the beach side, usually used for sand removal? Well we showered in them. Like really showered. Shampoo and soap at the beach side. Why not?

    Seeing as, like the rest of New Mexico, there isn't much to see along the route to Santa Fe, it took us an hour and a half to get there from Santa Rosa. I was panicking because I didn't realise that for an entire hour of that drive, we wouldn't cross a single gas station along the highway. My gas light turned on by the time I saw that gas station, boy was I happy to see it!

    New Mexico, much like Texas, has been vast lands of nothing... Very dry soil of course, more green bushes then Texas, but still dry. We can see the beginning of mesas, giving beautiful texture to the land that was so, so flat in Texas.

    Santa Fe was very interesting. The old historic center was filled with white rich folks and fancy old vacationers. Expensive restaurants around the Plaza. Old churches to visit.

    Then you have the Rail Yard area of town. Not too far, along the rail road tracks, is a bunch of hipster, earthy folks with bars and cute shops. We happen to be there during the AHA Festival, which gave way to a band on stage and booths filled with art exhibits. I've suddenly entered the gay world! Who knew, the south had gays. Had our diner siting on a patio, enjoying the live band before walking around, and driving out to find a Days Inn to park our car and sleep for the night.

    We returned to the Plaza in the morning to see what it was like during the day, and not much different. This was after I brought my friend Ferby (the car) into the garage! The little sucker decided to turn on the engine light yesterday, and seeing as we are doing quite a bit of mileage, I wanted to have it checked out. The wonderful, wonderful man Roudy at the shop plugged his little computer in - Code P0326. Apparently, I asked too much of my motor. Seems as though I may have put low quality gas, or more likely - I didn't turn off the "eco drive" when going up hills. So he cleared it, and said not to worry if it happens again, just to eventually have it checked again, make sure it's the same code, and to turn off eco drive when going up hills.

    Apparently, us catching up on time meant we needed to delay ourselves again. So we decided to make a further detour to Banderliere National Monument. At this point, I know very little about it, other then there's really pretty mountains along the way, and an old community used to live in the rocks. So I took my "eco drive" off as recommended. Sure enough, while going uphill, the check engine light came back on. I assume it might be the added weight in the car... Who knows. I'll have to have it checked again. Roudy said I needed to buy a stranger a cup of coffee in his name as his payment, so I guess I'll have to buy two!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Good Museum Guides make my day

    14 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    Bourbon
    Water tower
    Circle Inn Malt Shop

    Cuba
    Wagon Wheel Motel
    Missouri Hick Bar-B-Q
    Shelley’s on Route 66 - Grabbed a quick coffee to go at this old school diner. They showed us that even coffees have abnormally large proportions in the states… Their pops here are like a litter big! Who drinks that much?
    Murals - We stopped in front of the old publishing office to take a look at our first mural of Cuba. As we admired the painting a lady came out of the building and handed us a guide to all the murals in town. Now keep in mind, the town consists of one main street, going down about 5 blocks, with very few places of interest coming off to the side of this main street. Non the less, this guide explained all the murals, corner by corner, all 12 of them! Pretty much one at every corner, both directions,
    Crawford County Historical Society Museum - We stumbled upon a tiny little museum during out mural walk, and like all things free, why not! A very passionate historian, also retired teacher, walked us through the museum. What we thought would be 5 minutes quickly turned into 1 hour. He chatted away about living in the 1800s, then early 1900s. A small little section on route 66 showed just how packed and busy town centers were back when route 66 was the only way to travel. Tunnels to cross the road safely were more common then you would think.

    Fanning
    Tallest rocking chair - What’s there not to like about a ridiculously large rocking chair? Why did they build it? Why not. You can't really climb it. So you can't really sit in it. There's a huge gift shop next to it that's actually closed down. It was attached to an Archery thing which I would have loved but that was also closed down. Maybe that's for the best with Jack's clumsiness, I’d rather keep both eyes.

    Somewhere on the highway - 4M Vine Yards - We stopped before noticing this was suggested by our guide book. It was advertised as a store to buy Concord grapes, and it turned into a small town experience! There was "antiques" for sell, which was pretty much the contents of a hoarder's garage with little trinkets of glass everywhere. There was a full wall of jellies, and to buy them you just address the 4 people sitting behind a wooden counter, chatting away. That's beyond the stuffed deer head above the counter of course.

    Rosati

    St James
    Vacuum cleaner museum - I'm in heaven ! I've been looking forward to this museum for ever! I wanted a small town eclectic and nonsensical museum, but I actually learned! All because the museum curator was passionate about his vacuums! I learned all about how the first "electric suction sweeper" would plug into your light bulbs outlet (wall plugs were invented 10 years after the vacuum). This first hoover weighed about 60lbs and cost 75$ back when a brand new Ford cost 300$. He explained how back then, you often only had the one light bulb with electricity, that's why they made sure the first electric sweepers had their own head lights! I got a video of the hand crank vacuums that came before the electric. I had a blast reading all the old advertisements, incredible what they got away with in the 30s and 40s (see my Facebook picture album on this exhibits for amazing examples). Tom, our amazing curator, seemed a little on the gay side... And I really had to resist asking what it was like in Missouri to spend all day talking about vacuums and being gay... lol. That being said, this wonderful man shared our views on feminisms, and pointed out all the best offenses. You know a museum is done well when you go in hoping to laugh, and you come out fascinated by vacuums !
    Mule Trading Post - The most eclectic gathering of souvenirs, random items and "antiques" that are pretty much whatever someone has in their garage out on a shelf.

    Rolla
    Totem Pole Trading Post - Another one of the same concept stores along 66, still mostly have the same stuff, "antiques" that fill shelves with dusty glass trinkets and route 66 memorabilia. Think same as Mule Trading Post, with the addition of fireworks in this one!
    A modeled Stonehenge at the School of Mines - It was a university's art piece of some kind... Jack wanted to stop because of her interest in the original Stonehenge, but quickly lost interest because "it doesn't have the spirituality".

    Devil's Elbow bridge - basically a really pretty bridge in nature. The best part, and probably one of my favorite and most uncomfortable moments yet, was the Elbow Inn Bar & BBQ pit. Grungy looking wooden bar in the middle of no where. You walk in, and you've suddenly entered a biker bar with what is clearly regulars drinking together at the bar. You don't know if you're going to get beat up or made fun of... Jack being Jack, walked right up to the regulars and said "hi yall" as I sat quietly at the first chair I saw away from the regulars. There's hundreds of bras hanging from the ceiling, stickers all over the walls, an impressive amount of RIP photos and info about what seemed to be all young bikers. It took all of 2 minutes within our arrival for who we found out was the owner of the place to ask to see Jack's beastises. Yep, 2 minutes and this tall, massive (in every direction), leather wearing dirty looking man asked Jack if he could have her bra or have her prove she doesn't have one. And my discomfort starts. This bar was an experience of it's own. The waitress later came around with our food (side note - absolutely amazing pulled pork sandwich that even the vegetarian devoured) and said "try not to worry about those idiots, they mean no harm". As we leave, one man points out I have yet to say a word, asked if I was scared, I responded "I just don't say much". Haha, terrified would have been my honest answer.
    Hooker's Cut - I enjoy the name. Basically, back in the building route 66 days, this was a super impressive place because of the amount of rock they had to cut through to build the route. I guess back then it was super impressive, today it was just pretty.

    St Robert's
    The only road side park in Missouri - Jack was driving, looked away for a second and missed it. I think it may have been 40 feet long along the road, with a single park bench. The other states have had plenty, so this was confusing.
    Old motels signs

    Uranus, MO - I have not clue if this is an actual town, or just what they called this shopping plaza, but it was a massive Plaza with burlesque, strippers, tattoos and a gun shop. The best part - across the street was a bulletin board saying "pornography pollutes body, soul, mind" by the Pulaski Christian Ministerial Alliance. Coincidence?

    Waynesville
    Frog's rock - painted rock on top of a hill along the highway, couldn't stop.
    Square around Pulaski County museum in the old Court House - shops, cute store fronts, most memorable thing was a little sign in a store window stating "Warning Protected by (insect picture of a gun), We don't call 911", ˋMERICA.

    Lebanon
    Munger Moss Hotel - Cool sign in the front with towns and their distances, midpoint cafe (at the midpoint, duh) is 645 miles away. My first Gemini giant, now 406 miles behind us.
    Starlight lanes bowling alley
    Laclede County Museum and Route 66 museum - For some reason, every tourist info center have suggested this museum to us, it's housed in the county library. It was the size of a volleyball court I would say. The whole thing. With about 5 displays, and not the most interesting ones either... We've seen such better museums, this just confused us. Completed of course by an extensive salt and pepper shaker collection which would put my mother's to shame.

    Phillipsburg
    Redmon's Travel Center - Didn't stop, advertised "The World's Largest Gift Store". I don't know how proud I would be of that... It seems like every town has a "world's largest" or "world's best". Who regulates these?

    Marshfield

    Stratford
    Storefronts on both sides - Our guide book actually says this place made the Guinness Book of World Record for being the only town "with 2 main streets and no back alleys". It was said that they created an entrance on the back side of their stores when route 66 was built behind, as to attract the business from their locals and traveller's along 66. I was expecting super cute, long strip of shops. I got 3 buildings with maybe 2 of them still open with doors fronts on both streets. Disappointed isn't the right word, mostly sad how they advertise this town with such great emphasis on their two sides stores, but non exist anymore... Much of route 66 has been a game of imaging what once was...

    Springfield
    Steak and shake with curb side service - I thought this meant they would deliver to our car, but I was wrong, My lazy self was very excited at this possibility but it turns out they're only referring to their order window you can walk up to. Pfft, walking.
    Gellioz Theatre - Pretty, old, but closed.
    Shrine Mosque - Very ornamental, we'll painted, worth dropping by to stair at...
    The Rest Haven Court
    Route 66 Rail Haven
    We ended the evening having melted cheese and local beer at a great little bar, sitting on amazingly comfy couches.

    To catch up a bit of time, since we've been feeling like progress in distance has been a little slow, we drove out to Carthage after dark (which we try to avoid since you can't see anything along the way) to spend the night at a truck stop. Luxury!

    Side note - It's been getting easier to find truck stops or Walmart in which we can legally spend the night in our car thanks to my wonderful app RV Parky. Jack couldn't care less about parking legally, but she let's me do my thing because she knows I sleep that much better when I'm not worried about getting caught or woken up in the middle of the night by a flashlight hitting the car window.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L
    2

    Sullivan, United States

    13 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ ☁️ 21 °C

    Back on the route, exiting St Louis around 3pm, we stopped at the route 66 famous Fresh Donuts shop and Ted Drewer's Custards. The latter serves frozen custard called "concretes" upside down to show its thickness. Is this where the Blizzard got his serving points? So so good. What I've loved the most about all these little shops along the route is they're locally owned, small shops that perfectly portray small town America.

    Eureka
    State 66 State Park visitors center - Got a great map ! Also did my dishes of our morning's cereal in their washroom sinks. Glamorous life on the road.

    Pacific
    Exposed mining tunnels

    Stanton
    Meramec Caverns - So many things to say. We were warned the Meramac caverns were very touristy, and not as "rock" oriented as the other caves in the area, but when on route 66, let's do it ! The tour starts off showing off its large disco dance floor complete with a disco ball coming down from the ceiling. Remember, we're in a cavern. So a disco ball coming down from the ceiling means a wire bolted into the cavern's rock top. It was put there because the cave was and is privately owned, and it was used as the social hall for dances and gatherings of the young. The cave is so big, cars would drive in and park inside the front portion of the cave. They tell the story of Jesse James who evaded the police by finding a different way out then the massive front entrance. The guide took about 5 minutes describing the details of a Lassy episode which was shot in the cave. In that 5 minute description, there was a 1 minute blurb about Lassy having to spend the night in the cave. There was a fake movie set still in place out on the rock formations. In the hour long tour, he spoke about the rocks and stalagmites for a total of maybe 15 minutes. And what cavern tour would be complete without a 5 minute movie clip playing against the stalagmites depicting different "American" (said with enthusiasm and an accent) things, with Céline Dion belting out the National anthem in the back ground?

    Sullivan
    We had food, trying to waste time for sleep time. We planned on sleeping in the walmart parking lot, but opted for the truck across the street instead. Picture my mighty accent, in line with 18 wheelers. So cute.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    St Louis

    12 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌙 19 °C

    Another night in the car, another morning of wipes and curbside tooth brushing. We slept in Girard so that we could visit Doc's Soda Fountain and Drugstore Museum in the morning. The Coca-Cola memorabilia that covered every wall and table, was mind-blowing. My mother would appreciate! And what better combination to a soda shop then an old pharmacy? Continuing the soda counter, it turned into an staged old style pharmacy, with powdered chemicals and old recipes. It was actually really cool to try and figure out what the ingredients were used for, how they mixed them all... Brings an appreciation for being able to access any medication that I want in a pretty plastic package prepared for me by a pharmacist. Moving on...

    Nilwood
    Turkey tracks in the pavement - This made my day. No, my week. You take a detour off the current route 66 to follow the old, winding 66. At the first turn, you are helped along with a themed turkey sign pointing you the right way. God forbid you would lose your way on 66 without seeing the turkey tracks ! In the original poured concrete of the route 66, there it was, well outlined by thick bright white lines, were about 3 feet long of turkey tracks. That's it. The advertisement though, impressive !

    Carlinville
    Million dollar Courthouse - Apparently this town has a very scandalous past, with a court house for which plans submitted suggested a total cost of 50,000$, with a final cost of 1.3million$. They later found out that one of the fancy, famous hotels in the town center (owned by the mayor, nonetheless) used some of the materials bought for the courthouse to build it's hotel. Why not?
    1869 County Jail - closed to visitors, which didn't stop us from attempting to shove our face against dirty windows to see nothing interesting.

    Staunton
    Henry's Ra66it Ranch and Route 66 Emporium - Absolutely amazing. No words can describe how perfectly hilarious this place was. Bunny things everywhere, bunnies in large cages outside, "Little Red" (the star bunny) hanging out on the counter inside. Rich, the man who now runs Henry's, told us the story of when one of his bunnies, Montana, told him she wanted to run for president. Naturally, he did t-shirts and buttons, and she was happy and doing all the photos required of her... but then her mood changed. She just wasn't interested anymore, so she pulled out of the presidential race. Poor Montana. I think Rich needs to interact with people more often, too many of his bunnies speak to him. I absolutely loved him.

    Livingston
    Pink Antique Mall and Dinner - Oh boy. Pink, large things, statue of a beach boy looked 25 feet tall, pink and blue diner, antique store that was so full of stuff it was falling of the shelves... just perfect ! And to top it all off, the Harley Davidson Giant, the 4th and last of the giants, not holding anything this time. The store had a section of antique relics of their slave trading days, with some real thought provoking items. Original signs of "colored people swimming pool", "colored people washroom", and what stayed with me the most was a set of metal hand cuffs with the inscription on one cuff "Negro women or child only" and the other cuff "Property of Georgetown County Plantation police". Yeah, yikes.

    Collinsville
    Largest Catsup Bottle water tower - Catsup = Cheap Ketchup. Why not?
    Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site - Jack was super into the history behind these mounds. There were explanation boards showing what they look like under ground. They unearthed all of these, showing full rooms and corridors under these mounds. And yet, for some reason, someone decided "now that we can see all the beauty and work behind these, let's cover it all up with dirt and grass again". So that is what we starred at for about an hour. Different shapes, different sizes, of grass mounds. I don't get it.
    Jack who edits this needs to add..."Well, first, these are the largest pre-Columbian settlement in the Americas. Which is crazy. We're talking 600-1400 C.E! Anyway, so these mounds represent funeral rites and their hierarchy and a bunch of things we still don't fully understand. It was incredible to think that people settled here, had a huge city, then everything just got erased with time. Except these mounds. Alright, back to Vee..."
    Vee: yawn.

    St-Louis
    Gateway Arch - Obviously super tall. What I didn't know is you could ride a trolley to the top! I didn't do it, but you could ! It's unfortunate that the park all around was under construction, so we really didn't get to hang out or enjoy the space. Arch and nothing else.
    St Louis Zoo - Absolutely amazing and free! My favorite word, free ! They had Kali, a polar bear, who kept just swimming in circles and coming up at different kids for photo ops, its was hilarious. The zookeeper says that because he grew up with humans (his mother was hunted when he was a baby), that he loves the attention. I felt like I was part of the group of mothers who were waiting for their kids, standing at the window. Jack sat down in front of the window and refused to leave for about 10 minutes. She made a friend. She still talks about it.
    River boat cruise in the Mississippi River - In all honesty, complete waist of time and money... 20$ for a boat to go up the Mississippi river, describe what we're seeing along the way. Well, describing is a lose term: He would name the building materials, tell us how long it took to build, and how expensive it was. That's about it. He kept describing things that were on the other side of the boat, so we assumed we would get more of the descriptions on our side of the boat at our return. But no. So we saw nothing of his described things...
    Forest Park - Considering the size of it, and wanting to stay good on our timing, we drove around it. Walking would take us all day. Beautiful, huge park. Not much to add. Oh, and free!
    I must add - The City Museum was closed. I was so, so sad. It's closed Mondays and Tuesday, which were the 2 days of our visit. This placed looked so cool, with slides and climbing things, and ball pits for adults... So so sad. Timing sucks.

    In case you haven't kept count, we still haven't showered. I've been dying for a shower but for some reason they're harder to find then I had hoped. Route 66 isn't following a major highway so I haven't had access to truck stop showers. The towns are so small there's no chance of hitting a gym or something. Having arrived in St Louis around 5pm, everything of interest was closed, so we needed to spend the night near St. Louis. We decided to do the 30 minute drive to the "Dr Edward A Babler Memorial Park" a state park which cost us 13$ for the night. We still slept in the car of course, too lazy to set up the tent when we're this comfortable in the car. But we did shower ! Probably what was a 20 minute shower. It felt so good ! So back to St Louis we go to continue our exploration tomorrow morning (and the next blog!)    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L
    1

    My Friend Abe

    11 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    Alright, please forgive me. I will be working from memory, which is quite poor, considering my lack of updates... My attempt at defending myself is I've been fighting a cold (I can't figure out who to blame, Jack who came back with the back-end of a cold, or my sister Gen for having the same symptoms as me) and so everytime we pull over for the night, all I can think of is sleeping... On/off Tylenol for what I assume is a low grade fever, I haven't really felt like pushing back sleep to type. But! Feeling good tonight! Let's do this.

    We woke up in our car, completely alone in the truck parking lot, in Dwight, IL. The luxury life of sleeping in a car kicks in - bring out the wet wipes, brush your teeth with bottled water, spitting in the grass... hope your deodorant lasts for the day. My beautiful locks pulled back into my "man-bun" considering unwashed overnight curls are a horrific site to see (refer to my morning selfie on facebook).

    Jumped right back onto Route 66 where first stop was an old Amber-Becker Texaco Gas station, complete with a cool make-pretend set up inside the station with an old car, memorabilia from the 40-50s, and even a button to press with a voice-over head about the town and the station's history. This was the first, and far from the last old style gas stations along the route. Just down the block was the perfect spot for breakfast - Old Route 66 Family Restaurant, with a dizzying amount of Route 66 memorabilia filling the dinning room. It seems like half the fun of going down 66 is seeing just how proud people are of being on it... or just how much they want to use the promotion of being an "original Route 66 diner".

    Probably more for my enjoyment then yours, I'll continue by listing off everything we did and saw, starting with the town name, simply because I want to remember it all ! You can skip through whatever you want, and I'll elaborate where I feel the inspiration to do so.

    Odell
    Standard Oil Filling Station - this station is the image used for Illinois' Route 66. It is the "gem" of the IL portion, a perfectly restored station, again with a magical talking button. The restoration, like many along the route, was done by volunteers.
    Historic Subway Tunnel - You have to try and imagine a time, where in 1910, route 66 was the only road to take, it was the only option. Apparently the traffic on the route was bumper to bumper through many small towns, like Odell. They had to build (or dig) a tunnel underneath the route for people to safely cross the street and get to church and school (the only 2 buildings in town!). In the 15-20 minutes Jack and I spent parked in this "town center", we saw 3 cars, one of which also stopped to admire the station (fellow 66 tourist). The interstates literally transformed these towns from having non stop, bumper to bumper traffic, to having one car pass every 2 minutes. Mind blown.

    Pontiac
    Bob Waldmire's Land yacht - why not? The man had a bus. He had a boat. He combined the two for a ridiculous looking road boat thing. I'd live in something like that in a heart beat. Everything a girl needs.
    Murals were painted throughout town. They even give a map outlining a route to see them all. Great, huge walldogs (I learned a new word!).
    Route 66 Association of Illinois and Hall of Fame Museum - This is what I wanted !!! This is what I envisioned from 66. This tiny, jam-packed "Hall of Fame" museum had everything from old stop lights, to a VW van from a route 66 travel guide writer, to photographs, to plaques for "Joy Henderson, Archie's Standard Service Station Owner and Operator, The best friend your car ever had", and more! Completed of course by a wonderful little old lady asking you to sign her guest book. With pleasure!
    Pontiac Automobile Museum - Why does Pontiac have a museum on Pontiacs? For obvious reasons! It was perfect.

    Towanda
    Old Route 66 Walkway

    Bloomington
    Court House Square - Bloomington was our first experience with what we soon discovered is a common town set-up for IL. In all small towns, route 66 goes into the town and into the town square. And in every town square, there was a beautiful, usually government or museum type building, with a surrounding square of older styled brick store fronts. This town has a ridiculously beautiful State Courts building: why a town like this needs such a ornamental, large building for what is now a museum on Abe Lincoln, no one knows. But this was beginning of the Abe Lincoln obsession. Illinois had, what I think, is unhealthy obsession with American flags and Abe Lincoln. The flags never diminished, but the Abe references eventually did.

    Funk's Grove
    Sugar Creek Nature Reserve - I thought this road trip was about sitting in my car, doing nothing, having things to look at through the window. But Jack being Jack, we went for a walk in this nature reserve. The sun has been bright and beaming pretty much since we've left, and this was no exception. That being said, it wasn't until we started walking that I realized how nice it was to get a good breath of fresh air, away from the road side. This was a welcomed break from the streets and car sounds and smells.

    McLean
    Dixie Plaza (original truck stop)
    Arcadia - You have to understand the mind set here - there's a town square. And in this town square, there are about 10 total establishments. By that I mean there were a total of 4 building, but large ones with multiple business fronts... I would say about 3 of them were actually inhabited, the others bordered shut. 1 of those 3 inhabited central establishments - an arcade of course! Full of old classic games like Pinball and Pac-Man. Had myself a blast ! Although I won't lie, I died in all of 2 minutes in pacman...

    Atlanta
    Smileyface Water tower - photo op !
    Palm's Grill Cafe - It closed 5 mins before we arrived, at 5.05pm. The beginning of what seems like an ongoing run of bad luck for business hours. When one is on a road trip, one has no control over the time at which one is in such area. Having business hours of 1pm to 5pm isn't ideal. This cafe was meant to be our food stop, we've been trying to avoid big chains in favor of diners, especially those with a cash machine from the 20's! Ah well, too bad.
    Bunyon Giant - Town of 1600 people, tiny little rural town. What does it need? The second Bunyon giant, holding a hot-dog of course ! The hands seemed like he was once holding the axe he is known for, but apparently someone looked at him and said "A lumberjack with an axe? No, no, a hotdog, a hotdog is what he needs".

    Lincoln
    Telephone booth on City Hall - That's exactly what it is. A telephone booth, four glass walls and accordion doors and all, on the roof top of old City Hall. Why not? That seems to be my favorite response on this route, why not?
    Logan County Court House - We didn't go in, but this was where Abe Lincoln worked as a lawyer. And the obsession continues. There's portraits on a bunch of the business fronts, wall murals, the whole shabang.

    Williamsville
    Fairland Dinner - Ice cream !!!

    Springfield
    Illinois State Fair Grounds - Why have state fair grounds so huge when it only runs once a year? Why not! Why include a 30ft tall Abe Lincoln statue? Why not?
    Lincoln's Tomb - This place looked like a museum, massive marble building size of a tomb. I expect nothing less for mine.
    Illinois State Capitol - To be honest, it was very fancy and ornamental, but it's building style is the same as every other town's state Capitol, big rectangular building with a dome high in the middle. White house, state capitols, all the same.
    Original Service Station 66
    Lauderbach Giant - holding a flag of course. Still not an axe. Nor a tire despite being in front of a tire shop. No, an American flag. 'MERICA!

    Auburn
    Original Route 66 brick paved road - the town got together to try to find a way to insert themselves in the list of places to see along the route 66... So they restored a portion of the road to it's original red bricks. Pretty cool feeling.

    Virden
    Memorial to union workers
    Burial site of K-9 police dog - So unlike the other towns where their center squares revolve around a building, this one revolved around a park. In this park was the memorial, but more importantly, the burial site of a police K-9, complete with a beautifully engraved portrait of this brave police officer. His name was Mike.

    Girard
    Whirl-A-Whip Ice cream

    We slept on the side streets of Girard's main square. Probably about 5 cars around this square. With our drapes, we're pretty good at not being noticed, and we did just that, stayed unnoticed. *evil laugh*

    Wow this was long, I'll make the next one shorter...    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L
    1

    How epic

    10 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ 🌙 17 °C

    I saw it! The giant astronaut holding a rocket! I saw it!

    After a quick breakfast in New Buffalo, we heading right out on the road to Chicago! It's still raining, so our plan to enjoy the beach for the morning quickly changed into getting some road done! Because of the time change, we got to Chicago by 10am! Granted, we spent an hour figuring out parking and trying to go further from downtown to pay less but realized 10 mins of driving gave us 2$ off of 30$ parking and we'd have to take the subway... So we drove back downtown, parked right underneath the Millennium Park itself! 35$, apparently we were lucky enough to be there during a special event pricing day!

    First stop - Tourism office of course. They led us to a free walking tour on which Stu gave us a private one hour tour of the downtown architecture. The buildings are absolutely amazing! The history, the lobbies, fantastic. You could tell Stu was really excited about it all, which was great! There were quite a few large art pieces, and Jack kept impressing Stu by guessing the artist 3 out of 4 times! She's smart like that. I guess she owes her art knowing to her parents, merci!

    The tour finished at the famous large kidney bean in Millennium park. We took the obligatory selfie reflected in the bean, then sat down and had a sad realization. We liked Chicago, but there's just too much to do and see, and we have a long road ahead. We decided we would finish walking around the park, and head out for route 66 right away! No time to waste! We'll be back Chicago. Sorry dad.

    Stu explained to us that Millennium park was a "millennium project", so they aimed to finish by 2000. Instead, they went way over budget and finished in 2004, but it's now the biggest tourist attraction in Chicago, so money well spent. It was beautifully kept with statues around every bend.

    Now onto the good stuff : Route 66! We had to circle around downtown Chicago twice, got lost, used the GPS, but we were determined to start at the starting sign! No cheating! The photo was taken while we were on foot, but I did get a video of us driving by the sign for the skeptics who might have thought we cheated!

    Illinois has fantastic signage for route 66! Stu (who has done the route) said the signs basically disappear after Illinois, so we have that to look forward to. I got all the must take photos along the way including my awesome Gemini Giant, the Polk-a-Dot diner, and plenty more wonderfully funny signs. Since we hit most of the must-sees around 5pm and later, we didn't get into any tiny quirky museums, but I'm definitely looking forward to that along the way! It felt like we stepped into a time machine. Everything we're passing looks like it's from the 40s or 50s, with every business along the way including 66 in their names.

    Side note for the gay-curious - Jack and I have been very well welcomed so far... I've rarely been miss gendered, we've been referred to as "ladies", as in "anything else ladies" or "how you doing ladies", with full acknowledgment of our being a couple... It's been great! I remember going to Montreal a year ago and getting comments left right and center. I hated it. But not one so far. I'm assuming that will change further south we go, but I'm enjoying it for now!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L
    1

    On our way to the starting point

    9 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

    And we're off ! Destination - New Buffalo, so not exactly Chicago, but it was suggested to us by the lovely lady at the Michigan Welcome Center to spend the night . We met her yesterday after having spent the night in the parking lot across the street. She even gave us free entrance passes to The Henry Ford museum.

    Yesterday was our second and last day in Detroit. Started our day with a 1$ breakfast burrito suggested to us the night before by the group of cyclists that parked their cars next to ours. Side note - they came back from the bike ride to find Jack and I sitting on our red lawn chairs behind the car in a parking lot, looking at the bridge lights. They must of thought it was hilarious. They then proceeded having a conversation about where the safest place for us to park for the night was, and apparently we nailed it !

    We started our day and parked at the casino in Greektown - free parking, as suggested by our new friend at the visitors center. We hoped on the People Mover (yep, it was called People Mover, a suspended metro), which was basically a really cheap (75c) way of making our way around the downtown core with a birds eye view. We got off at the GM Renaissance Center for a free tour of the building, mostly because we wanted to see the view from their restaurant on the 72nd floor without paying ridiculous food prices. It even came with a bunch of Detroit, the motor city, history commentary.

    We then followed this self guided walking tour we picked up, yet again, at the visitors center. It included suggestions for which buildings to check out downtown, their lobbies and history. Some of the buildings are absolutely breathtaking. The downtown core was beautiful and upscale and about 3 blocks wide. Anything outside that 3 block radius was hit or miss, including abandoned and boarded skyscrapers. We checked out the theatre district, which apparently is the second biggest in North America, after Broadway. That shocked me. The Fox theatre had all the old charm and embellishments you would expect of such a cherished piece of Detroit history.

    We spent the rest of the day checking out street art and noted abandoned properties. This included a really cool parking garage downtown, where each floor was covered by murals of different well known graffiti artists. I say well known because Jack could name some of them! Our drive around neighboring streets was eye opening. Churches, warehouses, plants, even the Grand Central Station, abandoned, and yet have so much to tell. The Packard Plant was notable for its sheer size and extent of graffiti work. Obviously there were 2 security cars circulating around it, so we didn't get to explore inside. It still spoke an incredible story.

    Knowing we wanted to do the Henry Ford museum and/or Ford Rouge Factory tour in the morning, we decided sleeping would be safest in Dearborn, the suburb closest to the museum. Thank you Comfort Inn parking lot, another perfect, safe location for our night's sleep. The drapes I fixed up are perfect! We get to park under some light to feel like the car is safe, and yet have relative darkness with the drapes up. Perfect.

    Getting to the museum, we chatted with the welcoming guy Kevin. We wanted to do the Factory tour, where they currently build the F150, but our free pass was for the Museum or the Greenfield village. He suggested we get the museum ticket, then walk over to the second ticket counter, show them our ticket, and ask for the Factory tour also. This would make our tickets half off (buy one, get one half off, but since we weren't buying it, we couldn't buy it all together). We decided instead to ask the supervisor if we could just trade the free entrance tickets for the Factory tour since it was cheaper. Instead, she gave us free Rouge Factory tour tickets, and let us keep our museum entrance tickets... That meant both were free ! We're geniuses at this! Later on, Kevin saw us again, and decided to get us free popcorn. Haha, I don't know why all these people like us, but they do, and I like it!

    The Factory tour was so so cool. It started with this video basically filled with propaganda on how amazing Henry Ford was. Followed by a video about producing the F150 itself - there were so many lights and lasers, and robotics on a model truck, it was ridiculous! I felt like I was supposed to cheer in the end. Haha. Watching the factory line, and how every worker has a very specific job, and how they improve ergonomics with floating swivel chairs and the car itself that raises up or lowers depending on which station was doing what, was fantastic. So so cool. The Henry Ford Museum was just overwhelmingly huge. Henry Ford was apparently a collector and there was stuff everywhere, furniture, cars, memorabilia, historical pieces. More notable was the Lincoln red chair in which he was assassinated, the black limousine in which Kennedy was shot, and the Rosa Park bus. Pretty cool, even cooler because it was free!

    So now on the road we go, to New Buffalo, where we were suggested the casino parking lot for our overnight stay, mostly because of the access to washrooms 24/7, sounds good to us !    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Ambassador Bridge

    7 September 2016, Amerika Serikat ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

    What a confusing day... Detroit has shown me two extremes of glamorous upscale downtown and the boarded, abandoned structures that were once homes.

    We spent the evening yesterday with good friends, who welcomed us to their Toronto living room for the night, to break down the drive to Detroit. I must say, I've always found to drive to Toronto long, but it seemed short yesterday, and getting to Detroit was short too... Maybe my mind is already getting used to the long road ahead...

    The border guy was a big enough d*** to make us (wrongfully) think Detroit was not so friendly to it's visitors. Apparently, two girls, nurses, one who works in Saskatchewan, one in Ottawa, who both live in Ottawa, who plan to drive to California and back, was difficult to grasp. I was in the passenger seat and I decided to start answering the border guy's questions for Jack because she was getting short tempered. We all know how great I am with border agents... What's too much information? What's too little?

    That part done with, on we go! We went straight for the Detroit Institute of Arts, mostly because it was the only address I had for my GPS... Which was beautiful! We arrived almost directly at the museum, so hadn't seen much else at this point. The museum is ridiculously beautiful, and huge, and screams money. Oh the irony. A building that screams money in a city we all know isn't doing too well... The Public Library across the street was an old, what was once I'm sure a beautiful, building, under construction. It's a weekday and no one was there, I have a feeling there isn't much rebuilding going on...

    Art museums, more Jack's thing then mine, but honestly really well done! Their special exhibition for the month - photography of The American RoadTrip. How perfect! Their descriptions of certain paintings even made me happy I read them, and I hate reading.

    We then headed out more into suburbia. Suburbia to me means pretty row houses and greens lawns like Orléans. This was a different suburbia, a community where the Heidelberg Project colored houses with all kinds of hilarious and happy things, with "art" lining the sidewalks. I would say 75% of this community was abandoned and boarded houses. Quirky, odd, perfect. Off course there was a lady there to welcome you and explain what you're currently starring at, who just HAPPENED to have an uncle AND a cousin who died recently, and she had to go to the hospital today for dehydration, and she lost her house, all in the last few months! So she asked for money. She also spoke super fast with a think Detroit (said with swager) accent, so I only understood every few words. That aside, this was a surreal experience.

    Honestly though, at first I was thrown off by the "hey, how you doin'" from everyone we passed, but eventually you get used to it. They all ask, and they all wait for an answer. They seem really genuine when attempting to check in. The unfortunate part, and Jack actually agrees with this, is it's still difficult to find a sense of security around here. I want to. I want to trust the people of Detroit, to think they just have a bad reputation, and that's it. But when you see first hand the amount of abandoned houses, of people clearly struggling, of businesses closed down, of empty streets, you understand why some people can resort to violence or crime.

    Blocks away from downtown Detroit, you have empty or abandoned buildings. It doesn't wait to hit the "bad" neighborhoods, it starts right smack downtown. Of course there's your usual fancier suburb, some with "neighborhood watch" signs (we won't be parking there for the night!), some with beautiful green lawns. But they are vastly outnumbered by the falling apart, sometimes still lived-in-can't-understand-how-its-still-standing houses.

    Detroit has been interesting for sure. A quick walk through the downtown core that showcased the incredibly rich architecture, topped off with a quick drive around Belle-Isle to admire the water front ended the day. We found our parking for the night through a pretty clever little app - RV Parky, and we're settled-in in front of the Michigan Welcome Center, where the view of the Ambassador Bridge is absolutely amazing.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LRoute 66, USAVee L

    Homeless again!

    3 September 2016, Kanada ⋅ 🌙 17 °C

    It may be for a shorter period of time, and I may not have had to move (although it feels like I did), but I'm homeless again.

    I'm preparing for a month long road trip with my partner, Jack, where we hope to sleep in the car we're traveling with. That's a whole month of living out of a 50 cubic feet 2013 Hyundai Accent. The plan, which is always tentative, is to go to Detroit, then Chicago from where we will follow route 66 through IL, MO, OK, NM, AZ, and CA. We rented out our apartment for the month, which left me homeless until we leave on September 6th or 7th. That's right, I don't know when we're leaving, that's as much planning as you're going to get!

    I spent the last few weeks imagining how I wanted to set up my car, and the weekend attempting to execute. So far, so good, I've got a 3/4 inch plywood plank across the back of the trunk onto the folded seats, and a second piece of plywood in front of it, finishing the base of the bed for the 3.5 inch foam mattress to lay on, but also doubling as a table we can pull out from the side door. The mattress was cut down to size for a snug fit around the wheel covers. I have folding legs for the table to rest on the back of the car. Hopefully my plan will work to keep the BBQ smoke out!

    Trying to keep weight at it's bare minimum, I had to be selective on what to bring. Cooler for dry food - I won't be able to keep cold food considering I don't plan on buying ice along the way. The BBQ and whatever goes along with it - which means ridiculous over thinking from me including containers to do dishwashing, and the soap, and the sponge, and the utensils, and the pots, and OMG I can't sleep. I have 2 packing cubes of clothing, a couple sweaters, flip flops and sneakers. That is it, that is all.

    This trip will be quite the challenge for me - anxiety is usually at it's peak when I don't know where I'm driving to (or being driven to). My sister likes to bring up when she was driving back in high-school, my friend Candice in the passenger seat, and she drove onto the highway going the wrong direction. I flipped out. Flipped. Yelling for her to turn around. More recently, I was already in the parking lot of the mall I needed to be in, but didn't know where a certain store was inside this mall. I wanted to park closest to that door. I yelled at Jack for not googling fast enough to tell me where this store was because I was at a stop sign and didn't know whether to go left or right. My challenge to myself - keep my cool throughout. Or at least don't yell at Jack. It's ok to get lost. That's what I will keep telling myself. Especially when you live out of your car, you can survive anywhere.

    This will be my first road trip! I've over prepared the car, under researched the trip. Thankfully Jack covered the research for us from La Loche, SK. The quirkier the better! Along route 66, I'm excited about the giant astronaut holding a rocket, the bunny farm, the largest rocking chair, the largest fork, everything is so perfect! Once in L.A. we will make our way back via HWY1, up the pacific coast, dropping by Seattle and Portland, then cutting back across to home. Who knows if 1 month is enough to do this all, but doesn't really matter. We'll come back when we have to.

    So welcome back all! And welcome to the new readers! Let's start this new journey!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LPrince AlbertVee L

    This is hard...

    2 Mei 2016, Kanada ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    Apparently trying to be creative and original while writing about life in PA has proven to be challenging... I went for a bike ride! And we walked some dogs! That's about it. Spending most of my evenings having a nice, home cooked diner (we haven't been to a restaurant since our arrival with the exception of breakfast this morning), having a glass of wine or beer, chatting with Jack or Fartun (who continues to be very interesting and welcoming), sometimes netflix, sometimes puzzle in the sunroom, sometimes hookah. When everyone around you warns not to walk outside at dark, you tend to start to listen... So we don't go out much. The movie theatre is a 10 minute walk away, an afternoon showing of Jungle Book was fantastic !

    The SPCA is a little too far to walk, so our friend Jenn was awesome enough to come with us. Truth be told, I had researched this place before leaving, trying to find a way to fill Jack's eternal void for puppys. She found out about it having seen it in my search bar and she went with Jenn while I was working last week ! The little cheat. So we all went back together this week. You fill out a 2 page questionnaire, they don't even glance at it, and then take you to the dog cages to have your pick! Give you a leash, and off you go, with the informal promise to return at some point with the dogs. Mine kept pulling and humping everything, including me, along the way. Slightly challenging. Jack says to write it was amazing. More then amazing. Amazing, and wonderful, and beautiful, and she wanted to bring them home. End quote.

    The bike ride - we borrowed bicycles from Gwen, the lady who handed us the keys to the apartment, and we rode along the "rotary trail", which circles the whole city. Within 2 minutes of peddling (no exaggeration), we were on the outskirts of town with huge flat fields to our right and housing districts to our left. Rode past one of the 2 jails, didn't make it as far as the penitentiary. The best part was riding along the river, the wind, the sounds of nature was gorgeous ! Passing by the downtown portion along the water was an area where the homeless or addicted gathered during the day... The most entertaining site was these two older ladies, sitting on a bench overlooking the water, passed right out, chins down against their chests, still managing to sit up. From the back, you could have sworn they were enjoying the scenery!

    The jails and penitentiary make our work clientele interesting. At least once per shift, most often 2-3 per shift, we have inmates visiting the emergency. They call them Pen Pals. Usually handcuffed to the beds, 2 guards minimum at the bedside. Our tax dollars at work - sometimes 6 guards waiting for inmates in the emergency.

    I think sometimes our new co-workers forget that we've worked in an emergency before arriving, almost wanting to check in if we're ok with the intoxicated patients or the attention or drug seakers. The amount of "pseudo-seizures" I've seen in the last couple of weeks is impressive. People need to YouTube or Google seizures before deciding to fake one... It can't be that hard to be more convincing... Those cases are fun, the ones where you can read into the games, sometimes chose to play along, sometimes point it out. It almost becomes a who's smarter game - and trust me, I win most of the time.

    The not so fun cases are the addictions/depressions/suicide attempts that seem all too common. Having had plenty of exposure at Montfort, I'm all too comfortable with the population of users in PA. Problem is, I'm seeing as many people in PA for addiction or using related issues as I was in Ottawa - Ottawa has a population of 1 million, PA has a population of 40,000 - that's not including all the people who qualify to go to the detox center in the hospital instead of coming to the emergency. I understand rural life is hard, and obviously isolating, but when the difference is that visible between a big city and rural city like Ottawa and PA, there's a serious problem. Just last night, I treated about 8 total patients, 3 of which were drug related issues. Two different worlds, and the social issues here are, to my eyes, much more obvious then those in Ottawa. Suddenly the downtown intox's we see at Montfort no longer seem so bad... Here, teens are showing signs of detoxing within hours of using... I had to give someone narcotics to try and stop the detoxing symptoms from missing a methadone dose... Giving narcotics to help narcotic withdrawal symptoms, that's a first. Almost like the doctors don't fight it, it's something that's been accepted, and now our job is to help prevent further health issues. Harm reduction at it's best. Breaking the cycle of generations of using is almost guaranteeing a doomed generation to come... What to do?

    This is definitely opening my eyes to realities Canadians live. Realities that are easy to ignore from the comforts of my successful, white, middle class family in a city with plenty of opportunities and good role models.

    Jack here- You haven't heard much of me, but fear not, I'm overlooking each blog by Vee! Our evenings have been pretty laid back, wine and work galore. Last night, Fartun and her wonderful car and I went looking for wine...We ended up in a liquor drive-thru. Yes, you read that right, a LIQUOR DRIVE THRU. You drive up, look at the beer/cooler/wine/liquor menu, make your selection like you would at McD's then drive up to the window and poof! more alcohol in your car. I kid you not. This town that struggles a little bit more than average with alcoholism has made it even easier! You don't even need to walk out! Later that night we picked up a teen outside the hospital who was asking for some taxi money and drove them home. Before I continue, yes, I pick people up and I won't stop. I believe in people and helping them out and that won't change despite your horror story - trust me, I've heard horror stories. So, we drive her home and she asks where we from, I say Montreal/Ottawa and Fartun says Toronto. This kid is a-mazed. Straight up "that's so cool! I've always wanted to go there!" and looks just flabbergasted at our presence. She blew me away. They dream of going to Toronto. When we talk about 2 different realities, we ain't exaggerating. This folks, this learning and all, this is good. Trust me though, I belong in cities - the energy, the movers and shakers, the let's call them "less traditional" folks, I belong there. In the meantime though, I'm learning and growing an understanding more about this reality.    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LPrince AlbertVee L
    11

    I'm failing at this!

    21 April 2016, Kanada ⋅ ⛅ 4 °C

    I guess I'm not doing as good as I was in Africa... Turns out, there isn't that much to write about around here!

    Last Saturday (I know I'm late), we got a ride with Jenn and her boyfriend Jeff into Saskatoon, about an hour and a half drive. Jenn is the other contract nurse working in emerg - in case you lost tract. The drive up was the same as our bus ride - flat and uneventful. But the company was nice!

    Saskatoon is this really cute town! And by that, I mean the 2 main "downtown" streets and along the river front were beautiful, with so much charm. Everything else was just typical town of wide roads with little traffic and big plain concrete buildings... The downtown had all these cute shops; we had lunch on the patio of a vegetarian café, and then walked to the waterfront. It was a gorgeous day, sun shining.

    Jack saw an add for a tattoo convention that happened to be now, so why not! Took a taxi over, and walked back the 45 minutes inside this rich fancy neighbourhood of houses along the water. In which, I found my future home! All along the river itself was what seemed to be all new art and statues or designs in the ground, all representing Saskatoon's history. Of course Jack had to play around with the statues, or jump on the ground that stated Prince Albert.

    The tattoo convention was a first for me! Rows and rows of portfolios to look through, artists to chat with, or watch them at work! I fell in with one of them but she's base in Edmonton (I think...), so maybe there's a road trip in my future! It was nice to be amongst people you know enjoy similar art. If only I had all the money in the world, I felt like telling some of them "here's a ton of money, now cancel your other appointments and let's talk sleeve!". Soon I hope, soon.

    As for our time in Prince Albert, almost too easy... Nothing to write about! No stares. No name calling. No awkward looks. Many people at work seem to be avoiding conversations revolving around Jack and I, but no comments. I find I haven't been asked the typical "how long have you been together" or "where did you meet", which is the only hint towards discomfort.

    Not even any comments on how I look. I made a joke about me looking boyish the other day and I got crickets... Lol. So again, I feel like there's discomfort in the air, but who knows! Maybe my jokes just aren't funny!

    My approach has been to just be super nice to everyone. Walking into Shoppers the other day, these two sketchy looking men were outside, and one asked for a cigarette. With a huge smile I responded that I didn't smoke. His reply - "alright, I like your hair man!" Which made me confused as to which gender he was associating to me. On my way back out of Shoppers, from the same gentleman I got "hey, Rihanna!". Lmao! There's a first!

    Small town differences - sitting on our balcony we saw a guy arrive at his friends place via 4-wheeler. We saw one of those farming golf cart kind of things crossing the highway. Special mention again for all the darn pickups on the street. A co-worker just bought a house and said "it's JUST 2 acres". According to our boss, our building is the only building with an indoor pool in PA - score! A co-worker was telling me about their regulars, or frequent flyers as we call them, and everybody sees them around town. They can tell you who's brother with who and who's mother was in last week...

    That's that folks! Not too much to rapport. Jack had herself a great day volunteering at the local SPCA and walked/played with dogs all day. She wouldn't stop talking about it and telling me all about Mia the beagle. I just finished working 2 nights and she's about to start 3 nights. Our schedules don't exactly match up, but that's ok. I'll be trying to entertain myself in the next couple days...    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LPrince AlbertVee L

    I'm not in Ottawa anymore...

    15 April 2016, Kanada ⋅ ⛅ 0 °C

    Well then, it's confirmed - I'm not in Ottawa. I was chatting with Jackie, our nurse educator, yesterday about phone numbers. They have recently been told to dial in the area code because the big phone people might be introducing a new area code; I figured, oh yeah, like in Ottawa, makes sense. What I found out today - she didn't mean the city or region, she meant the province ! Yep, I leant that you only recently have to use an area code for the ENTIRE province. So you could be calling hours away, long distance charges and all, and no area code needed! Maybe I'm just an idiot, or completely naive as to stats for Saskatchewan, but apparently their population is just above 1 million, so quite similar to Ottawa. The region though, slightly bigger.

    Another tell-tale of a smaller town - I spent my morning break listening to a conversation about how many chickens Jackie was buying, and how many pickling jars she could get. I then spent my lunch break talking about buying "a quarter" land which is apparently 160 acres for 50 0000-220 000 $ depending on the quality of farm land. This girl was attempting to buy a piece of land next to hers, 160 acres, 120 000 $. That's nuts!

    I found out yesterday that the nursing salary scale is a full 10$ more an hour then in Ontario. That's 20% more then ours! Their top salary scale is more then what I'm making as a contract nurse. And yet because of the money they also give my agency, we're the last people they call in for overtime. So that's not happening. What am I going to do with my 6 days off alone next week!

    I don't want to talk too much about the job itself, that's not very interesting. I got 2 shifts of training, including a total of 7 hours of shadowing, and my next shift Monday - I'm on my own! Sure, that makes sense... Lol. Apparently that's more training then most agency nurses get. There's even nurses that have worked there for a year, and are just starting to work in their OBS sections with monitors, and we as more experienced nurses will be mostly scheduled there. That's not stressful at all. The saddest part is there aren't any orderlies! The puke, the pee, the poop, all me. The glasses of water, blankets, repositioning, all me. I even have to wheel my own admitted patients up to the floors on nights... No porter. It's all very interesting. I asked what their wait times were, and she said they were shameful - about 30 minutes to 2 hours. I almost died laughing.

    The population / clientele is already proving to be quite different. Different people, different struggles. I really don't know how much detail I can give on the clientele, so obvious confidentiality issues, so this is definitely not something I'll be bringing too often. As a general look, seems like overdoses, suicide attempts, and sexual assault will all be a new challenge to my nursing skills.

    Well, I'm sure there's plenty other differences, so I'll keep you all posted!
    For now, we've been very good with our groceries, cooking, lunch packing, coffee making in the morning... This apartment is really well set up, everything we need, down to the heat lamp above the shower. Plan tomorrow - Saskatoon with our fellow co-worker / agency nurse and her partner. More explorations!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LPrince AlbertVee L

    First impressions

    11 April 2016, Kanada ⋅ ☁️ -1 °C

    Just the drive up to PA from Saskatoon was already confirming - I'm not home anymore! People say the prairies are flat, but boy they weren't kidding! Ottawa doesn't have the biggest hills or any mountains really, but it has enough to make it look textured, or the illusion of rolling hills... But here, flat. Flat, flat, flat. A speed bump would be a welcomed change in altitude! Since it's post-winter, the fields are endless views of yellow. Nothing interesting, nothing growing, just lots of yellow. Our bus from Saskatoon to PA would stop in these miniature towns along the way, not picking up anyone really...

    Arriving in PA was a bit of shocker - its a city. It's a small city, but it's a city. Not a single building over 3 floors high, yet bigger town then we expected. The roads, much like my dad warned, are all 4 lanes wide despite the lack of any cars on them, it just makes it longer to walk. The parking lots go on for miles in front of stores, despite them being empty. This is definitely a driving town. But still - everything we need is a short walk away! I would say about 80-85% of the vehicles are either SUVs or pickup trucks. Pickup trucks being most of those.

    We had a training today for non violent intervention with violent patients, and at one point we had to act out scenarios. Long story short - one of the women there, probably the most typically small town lady I've seen yet (curly mullet and over sized t-shirt) was repeating "I want to go home" over and over again. When she was finally asked why she responded "I miss my cows". And that ladies and gents and in between, is how you know you've exited the city.

    Small towns also brings on small town sensitivity training, or lack thereof. During the training today Jack kept having to bite her tongue at moments such as the presenter saying "like if you don't want negative attention, don't wear tight scrubs pants, or low cut shirts, and watch how you bend over". Talk about victim blaming. I had more trouble with the lack of inclusiveness of the presenter. I mean, I'm in the room - he's got a pretty clear clue that he needs to be inclusive and yet at one point he turned to the one cis-man in the room and asked if he had kids, to which the cis-man says no. The presenter goes on to say that means he's the only one in the room who would understand how it is to feel hopeless watching your wife deliver a baby. I almost wished I had kids in that moment. Almost.

    That being said, my first 24 hours here has been great! I haven't felt judged at all, haven't felt threatened. We have a roommate in our apartment who happens to be Muslim from Somalia and she's fantastic! It could have gone much worse. Super friendly, we had drinks together, she has a wonderful laugh. Tonight she even said our relationship (Jack and I) reminded her of her relationship with her husband (currently in Kenya). That to me means she's acknowledging the relationship and is ok with it enough to compare it to her own. This is great!

    The apartment is 2 bedrooms plus a TV room plus sunroom. It's actually massive. Living and dining room. Fully equipped kitchen. We have a huge master bedroom with walk in closet and personal washroom. 15 min walk to work. And the cherry on top - there's an indoor pool and sauna and hot tub. Booya! We're actually having 4 friends over for a pool party tonight! We made friends!

    Granted, this is a 24 hour impression - but so far, no intimidation! The people I met at the training, or the people I'm crossing paths with, or Gwen who showed us the apartment, have all been really nice. Friendly smiles, no awkward looks. So far, so good. Not even the typical "don't worry, I'm not homophobic" conversations, just nothing. No issues. That's 24 hours in.

    I'm excited for this bit of time - starting in the emergency Thursday. Plenty of things to do. Making friends already. This is good!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LPrince AlbertVee L

    Slightly Different Adventure

    11 April 2016, Kanada ⋅ ☀️ 0 °C

    Hey folks! This blog risks to become much more boring, slightly less eventful, and probably shorter then the previous, but too bad! It's happening anyways!

    I wrote the east Africa blog with the mentality that only my parents and siblings would be reading. Turns out, lots of people I would never expect read, and a few siblings didn't (you know who you are!). This one though, I really am writing expecting most of you to stop following halfway due to the potential lack of interesting things to rapport, but I want to remember. My lack of memory means I gotta write it down, or it's gone.

    So this is the blog about two queer city girls, making their way to small town Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to work in an emergency department. It's both Jack and I's (yes, she's also coming) first contract as travel nurses, so it might be interesting.

    Throughout Africa, I felt perfectly safe with my sexuality, despite it being illegal (death or life imprisonment) in the countries we visited. That was mostly due to the fact that no one would ever think gays existed around them. Jack and I made the decision not to hide ourselves in PA, and I have a feeling it might be more difficult then the trip. When Canadians see me, they see gay. They see different. Now, I'm used to being judged, that's a daily for me, and I've grown a thick skin. But this is in Ottawa, where it might not be the most liberal town, but I'm sure it's a few years ahead of PA. The comments might be more often, the stares might be longer, and I might be watching over my shoulder more. Or who knows, I might get none of it, and be welcomed with open arms; I'm sure not every small town follows the typical reputation of closed mindedness. After all, there is a pride parade in May! (Yep, with 21 people confirmed on facebook!). I guess only time will tell.

    As for prep work - I google map'd the whole town, printed out the downtown, wrote down restaurant ratings, checked out which coffee shop was open along the way, checked out registration fees at the local recreational center... And Jack's prep? Listening to me tell her all about it.

    Let's do this!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LEast AfricaVee L

    Budget and packing

    29 Maret 2016, Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    This one will probably only interest fellow backpackers or want-to-be backpackers, so some of you might want to skip.

    Money. Something I've probably always been a little too interested in. I enjoying speaking of budget and costs out of interest and curiosity, not because I'm actually that broke or that cheap. So for those who don't care, skip ahead. Jack and I, together and individually, are often asked how do we travel so much? It's easy, it's about priorities. I want to see and do things, so I spend less on food and accommodation. I'm not a foody, I don't get amazed by spices or dishes, so I can save a lot of money eating local, simple foods. As far as accommodation, I just need a bed. Preferably clean sheets, but even that's negotiable since I have a sleeping bag. A shared washroom is perfectly fine. Using local buses allows us to be mixed in with locals, to do as they do. I don't use minibuses because they're cheap, I use them because they use them.

    I had budgeted, in my mind, a very generous 100$US per day for this trip. I spend a fraction of that. A quick calculation with the budget we've been keeping (out of curiosity, we never stopped ourselves from doing what we wanted to do) says that we each spend 4200$CAD, not including the Addis Ababa to Entebbe flight, so grand total of 4838$CAD spent since leaving Ottawa January 8th. That's 59$CAD per day, each. FYI - my rent was 1300$, which means I spent almost the same amount as my rent. Now I give you this info not to somehow show off on the cheapness, and not to show how much money I might have, but to show that it can be done on any budget. This is how I travel as much as I do. Some people spend the same 4800$ in 2 weeks in Europe, and that's ok. Like I said, priorities - everyone has their own. I want to see the world, as often as possible, and that's what makes sleeping in a not so fancy place, or eating beans and rice for the 4th time in a row, perfectly fine.
    That's that for money.

    As far as packing goes, I think I actually did pretty ok! I always had extra space in my bag, I'd say around 8 liters was empty throughout. I say 8 because my bag is 46L and Jack's is 38, and I'm confident my things would fit in her bag, but snug. I had originally brought 3 t-shirts, but since one was stolen, did the majority of the trip with 2. It was ok, but a third would have been great - so I confirmed, 3 t-shirts is perfect. My long sleeve shirt, thin like a t-shirt, was something I could have left behind. I only wore it in the evenings when it was cooler (so mostly Ethiopia) but I could have easily simply warn my sweater. If I still had my sweater - it being a zip up and black, it looked dressed up if I needed it too and still kept me warm, it was perfect. One regret, bringing flip-flops instead of a small loafer like pair of shoes. I didn't use my flip-flops at all. Yet when going out in the evenings, when everyone around looks all made up and fashionable, entering a bar or nice restaurant with either sports sandals or hiking shoes isn't the best way to present yourself. So having a pair of small, simple and presentable loafers would be nice. Last thing I'd change, my camera. Yes, I love taking pictures. But the truth is, I can't really tell the different in quality if I had a nice hybrid camera or something along those lines, instead of my heavy and bulky DSLR. My camera is the biggest and heaviest piece I have, by far. Eliminating that, and having a small compact camera, would give me an incredible amount of free space in my bag. And the reason I want that space is it's still pretty hard to carry a 46L bag on and off buses and up staircases and both of us with bags on a bike and everywhere else your backpack follows. Jack had a lot more ease getting in and out of minibuses with her 38L. I didn't use my 2L waterpack/hydration pack too often, but during hikes, it fits perfectly inside my day bag which made it so useful. We also brought a hammock tent, which we did use a few times. But we used it more as a bug net on top of beds, or a tent on the ground. So to do over again, I'd either bring a travel mosquito net that I would still use outside if I felt like it, or a travel tent, depending if the country I'd be visiting has camping options.

    So to sum up my ideal packing, the bigger items would be as follows : 1 rain jacket, 1 zip up sweater, 3 t-shirts, 1 pair of pants, 1 pair of shorts, 3 pairs of underwear, 2 bras, 2 pairs of socks. The key is making sure everything matches with everything. 1 bathing suit, 1 sarong (used as towel, sheet, cover-up, etc). 1 day bag that folds into its top compartment (or very collapsible). 1 hydration pack. 1 pair of hiking shoes, 1 pair of sports sandals, 1 pair of loafers. 1 very compact sleeping bag (mine is for 9C and up, so not the warmest, but it packs to about 15cm diameter and 30cm high). Tent if camping is an option.

    As far as my firstaid kit goes, I over packed my pharmacy, but still probably wouldn't change anything because it's what I do. Being a nurse, I rarely need to go to a clinic or see a doctor for a prescription. I know what I need, so I'll take my own supply. I have cipro (which came in handy twice during this trip), azythromycin, keflex (for the odd skin infection or abscess), polysporin, zovirax cream for the odd cold sore, some bandaids and gauze and nursing tape (which actually came in handy to fix my tent), mini scissors, and a pill bottle with a whole mixture of things like imodium, Tylenol, gravol, a sleeping pill I can't remember the name of, naproxen, hydration tablets, and I'm sure there's more. I may be overly prepared, but it comforts me to know I can have access to my own mini pharmacy when needed.

    Cosmetics themselves are easy, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, gel, shampoo and a soap bar in a soap box. Sunscreen depending on destination.

    Then there's all the side stuff, like a universal sink plug (super useful for daily laundry), laundry soap, phone, earphones, phone charger, adapter if needed, diving book and PADI certification card if I plan to dive, tissues, and the obvious passport and flight itinerary (I always bring a copy since many countries demand to see a proof of exit).

    And let's not forget the travel book! My only piece of research. I generally leave with no research done at all, so I wouldn't go very far without it.

    That's it. You don't add the "in case", you never say "well I have the space", you never say "maybe I'll want it". If there's a doubt, you don't bring it. Remember, if you really need it, you can buy it there. Every tiny item added to a backpack makes a difference.
    That's that for packing!

    I guess that sums it up. For those who are interested in backpacking, I hope this helps get you motivated! No matter if you're leaving for 1 week or 1 year, carrying a small backpack makes all the difference in accessibility. I would pack the same bag for a week as for a year. I might actually be more likely to pack more for short trips since I know I won't have to carry it too long! Traveling is more and more accessible, it's being done more and more, and therefore countries are getting even easier to manoeuvre independently. These packing tips can apply to even the fancy travellers out there! Who says you can't have a backpack and walk into the Ritz? Or give it to your driver? A small, easily carried bag just makes transitions easier. Now is the time to explore before tourism changes the face of these countries for ever!    Baca selengkapnya

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  • Vee LEast AfricaVee L

    Travelling... In general.

    29 Maret 2016, Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    No more travelling stories. No more new adventures in East Africa. This post is really just thoughts on traveling, and comparing the 4 countries I just did. Sorry if you don't find it too interesting. If you're interested in backpacking yourself, I'll throw in some pointers.

    When I left for this journey, I thought East African countries would be similar, and that I could apply one thing learnt from one country to another. Boy, was I wrong. All 4 countries were so incredibly different. Ethiopia was incredibly religious, devoted, traditional in its ways, even the youth still do shoulder dancing in clubs, and they still listen to traditional music, and wear traditional ceremonial clothing during religious holidays. In one word, Ethiopia was traditional. Rwanda was very green (the greenest of the 4), helpful people, yet somber, introverted, and didn't seem to have a past that went beyond the genocide. As if it took over any of their past worth mentioning. Uganda was joyful, outgoing, loud, and proud. And finally, Kenya was rougher, it was the most diverse population, it offered the most variety in towns within its borders, and had incredible wildlife.

    The country I felt safest in - Rwanda. The least safe, Kenya. The happiest, Uganda. The poorest, Ethiopia. The most needy children, Ethiopia. The most needy adults, Kenya. The greenest, Rwanda. The cleanest, Rwanda. The most organised, Rwanda. The most English, close call between Uganda and Kenya, but I'd give it to Uganda. The best food, Ethiopia by a landslide. Although we spent the least in Rwanda, I can't say it's the cheapest because we just didn't do big ticket activities there... The cheapest, on day to day, Ethiopia.

    The best moment, seeing chimps, Uganda. The best activity, cycling through Hell's Gate National Park, Kenya. The coolest sight, the volcano, Ethiopia. The best capital, Kampala, Uganda. The best town vibes, Masaka, Uganda. The most surprising town, Lamu, Kenya (so different).

    As for how it was to be me in East Africa, interesting. I was often misgendered, which isn't surprising. The surprising part is that it was never associated to my sexuality, as I'm sure it is back home. Not once did I feel someone was doubting my sexuality. They would go from apologizing for having called me sir to asking if I have a husband. And in these parts of the world, I was very thankful for this. Problem is, it only shows how little exposure they've had to queer people and how far they have to go until they can have acceptance. It was incredibly hard at first to resist speaking about Jack as my partner, or not admitting to anyone along the way the true nature of our relationship. Like most things, it got easier with time. So much easier that I am now worried as to how we will go back to being partners. How does a couple go back to it's ways when you've been friends for 3 months? I guess we'll find out soon enough.    Baca selengkapnya

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