recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day four: denver.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.

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DENVER, COLORADO AND ITS SURROUNDING AREAS

When you’re on a cross-country road trip of such brutal proportions, a day off — any day off — just seems like absolute heaven. Such was the case our first full day of not having any driving responsibilities — we had a day off, being chauffeured around by Kathy and Ed, in Denver and its surrounding mountain town areas. What wonderfulness!

This is apparently me sleeping.

Kathy and Ed’s kitchen. I’m always glad there are other people around to take photos (especially Xinlei for a lot of the trips I go on with her) because, left to my own devices, I focus too much one miniatures and could really seriously care less about anything else…

Breakfast was super chill. Kathy had bought a quiche that was heated up (she’s not horribly amazing at cookery), and I stole some of Ed’s cereal (a non-sugary kind I had wanted to try for a while… but was not impressed, no no)… we ate outside on the patio, and it was super nice… got a good view of some little prairie dogs. Haha. Cutie patOoties!

Then we went to a state park called Roxborough, and it was right next to the famous Red Rocks Ampitheatre (which seriously looks like the most awesome place to see a show — right there next to The Gorge, if not better). Description on a Colorado parks website describes the place as, “More than 1.2 billion years of geologic time are represented by the spectacular red-rock formations found within Roxborough State Park, which is located southwest of Denver. Ecologically, the park is highly diverse as a result of its location in a transition zone between the plains and the mountains. The area’s geological structure has resulted in micro-climates that have produced seven distinct plant communities in a unique mixture of prairie and mountain species. As a result, Roxborough is home to abundant wildlife, including black bear, mountain lion and deer.”

It was about a half hour or maybe more drive to get there from Ed and Kathy’s house (which is actually located in Littleton, Colorado, which I believe was the site of Columbine). It was actually pretty crazy… I wouldn’t think it would matter that Denver is a mile high, but I am apparently so out of shape that slight inclines were initially me wearing me out. My body definitely got used to it after a little bit, but initially I couldn’t catch my breath and I was seriously like, “WHAT THE FUCK!!! HOW AM I THIS OUT OF SHAPE!?!!” I mean — I guess I am still out of shape cause I probably shouldn’t have been out of breath at all, but the fact that it’s a mile high makes it a LITTLE better. Very little, though. Pathetic. The image below is one Rose took, of a view from a teeny tiny little lookout point that took like 1 minute to walk to.

Having traveled so much, places always remind me of other places, and geographic formations always remind me of other geographic formations. This one reminds me of the formations at Cumbe Mayo in Cajamarca, Peru, just a little bit. I guess in some ways it’s funny to no longer be astounded by beauty in nature in such an extreme way, but at the same time, it’s not that it isn’t remarkable — it still is — but it is no longer remarkable in a way where I feel it necessary to constantly say aloud, “Oh my god, this is so beautiful!” but sometimes I forget that other people haven’t traveled nearly as much as I have, and that as a result, they still do need to say these things… sometimes I need to remind myself of that. It’s like with Burning Man, where everyone was like, “Your mind isn’t blown right now????” and I was just like, “No, this feels totally natural to me.” And it wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed by anything that was going on — I was — but nothing felt so incredibly foreign that it was constantly astounding me… it was just like, “Well, clearly this is a environment where anything goes, and here it all is, splayed out, and it is just going.” I guess there is nothing in the positive realm of things that people do that really blows my mind anymore; the things that blow my mind are more in terms of things that exist in the universe, or the really truly horrible things that people can do. I don’t consider this jaded, though… it just seems like… tolerant. But maybe is my skewed view. But anyway…

Well, we didn’t see many animals, though we did see a praying mantis that was sitting real pretty and nice… which is pretty cool, since I have never actually seen one before… it was just sitting there forever. Such beautiful things!

Apparently Colorado peaches are a big deal. Or at least this is what they kept telling us.

We later on went to the mountain town of Georgetown. Small mountain town with cute little tourist shops, fresh air, etc. Think it was very much reliant on tourism, and one of the shop owners mentioned to Kathy that the reason was coming to an end because the days were getting drearier.

We took a tour of a place called the Hotel De Paris, which was pretty interesting. We were not allowed to take photos inside, but the place had a really interesting history, with a founder (Louis Dupuy, though that was his fake name because he was running from the law in France or something) who knew nothing about architecture but a lot about business, and he did really clever things like saving money where it didn’t matter (in terms of striking visitors with a good impression) and spending money where it did matter. For example, he had these really ornate table legs on his dining room tables but when you lifted up the table cloths, the tables were just crappy wooden planks. Or he would get slightly mismatched objects that looked just close enough alike that no one would really notice unless they were really studying them in-depth. Clever dude. Also used a hotel to try and spread his ideas about good hygiene — through hand-washing, less people in an individual room, etc. Through the tour we learned that Coors Beer was founded around the same time and that they were contemporaries, and that Super 8 was also around at that time (but was much lower-class than this particular hotel). The lady who was giving us a tour totally had a crush on the dude posthumously — it was very obvious — and we all definitely got a kick out of that. Here’s a before and after shot of the place just because it’s interesting:

One of the shops, being hella senile and shit. I got a major, major kick out of the tennis balls. Major. Side note: As we were leaving this shop, Kathy destroyed one of Ed’s sunglasses, which I guess was like… the fifth one she’d destroyed in a couple months or something. Not sure how the woman even does it!

The Trading Post was a cute little shop there. The store owner was a cute little man. He got really excited about taking a photograph of us and dressing us up. This picture below frightens me a lot because I feel like I look like Yee-Ma. Lord fucking god.

There was this really cool antique shop and bookshop in town where I found an excellent book (I read the first few pages and definitely needed it; don’t remember what it was, but it was about travel and one guy’s adventures, basically, and it was a very, very old book…). I thought it was $15.00 or something, which was cheap, a splurge for me because I didn’t need it. Turns out it was actually $45.00, and the $15.00 was a leftover remnant. The shop owner said that they liked to keep those older prices of the books on the books because it spoke to the book’s legacy, and I really liked that. They had wonderful books in there. When I explained to Rose the situation and why I didn’t buy it, she said, “They didn’t honor that?” and I said that it made sense that they wouldn’t… and she said something like, “You’re a good person,” which is the strangest response to that thing because to me, that’s just what makes sense…

On the way back to Littleton, we stopped by another little town, but again, there wasn’t so much except for a little town and some shops. And apparently a pizza joint that is totally the jam, but we didn’t really eat at it (constant abstinence from food, I’m tellin’ ya!). Not sure what makes a Colorado pizza a Colorado pizza, though. I’d be curious to find out sometime. Then we went back to the place and ate some roasted veggies, bean dip, tortillas, etc. that Kathy had bought the previous day, and it was like, presto! Instant meal from a bunch of pre-made things! But it was good, and there was some fucking jamming queso, hah. NOMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

After it got later, Rose and I wandered downtown and just wandered. Here are some of the things we found…

13th and Sherman St. I’m not at all interested in this mural. What I am interested in (but we did not get to eat at) is this vegan and vegetarian restaurant right next door to it, called City O’ City… it was so nice-looking and so hoppin’… then again, Denver was just a hoppin’ place, in general…

This is a truck next to a show we walked by, which I knew Troy would kill me for not going to… George Clinton and Parliament Funk! AND IN DENVER? I’m sure it woulda been fucking awesome. Unfortunately, it was also like $45. A dude in line who answered my question about what it was insisted that we should go, and I mighta, but the price was just a bit too steep for the two of us.

Denver’s downtown area (pictured above) was just in general kind of rad. Here were some of the extremely large-scale installations found there, that again, makes stupid Seattle’s Sculpture Park seem just so dumb… (someday I’ll get over how much that thing sucks…)

After going downtown, we visited Gypsy House Café (1279 Marion St.) a bit north from downtown Denver. IT HELLA RULED. Man. If I had this in my town I would DEFINITELY go there everyday. I’m talking… normal bookworms, Muslim women, gothic kids galore. It was fucking fascinating. And they had hookah. And they had a super vegetarian-friendly menu. Shit ruled so hard. I think there was a venue attached to it in the back (where I suspect some kind of goth show was going on??) but I can’t really be sure.

Anyway. I eavesdropped on a LOT of conversation, mostly on our peer-aged Muslim gal pals who were talking a LOT about makeup, and one of them was talking about how she went canoeing fully covered but pulled her head veil back because, “A hijab tan is the worst thing ever.” I thought that was just the most hilarious thing… they also talked a lot about how people would welcome them to the United States after they said they were from Colorado, even though they were born in the States, just because people wouldn’t believe them. Bum deal.

This is a sign found in their bathroom. Fun one.

After working at Gypsy House Café for a good hour-and-a-half or something, we decided to go onto Larimer Square, which Ed had said would be a “happenin’” part of town… and it definitely was, though in a frat boy-y kinda way.

What we ran into on the way there was fucking Denver’s OKTOBERFEST! We were clued in by this really horrible metal-punk-Irish band, complete with accordion, but even more obnoxious than one might ever expect from a band like The Dropkick Murphys, even. God, that shit just doesn’t work for me and just never has, though I applaud their efforts… I guess…

My eyes were definitely popping out of my head when I saw these marshmallow treats, and I was definitely wondering, “WHAT THE FUCK!?! WHY DON’T OTHER PEOPLE USE OTHER KINDS OF CEREAL THAN RICE KRISPIES FOR MARSHMALLOW TREATS? GENIUS!!!” I mean, it’s not that novel of an idea really but it so is, too… I think I need to combine my newfound love for Peanut Butter Puffins (seriously, the best thing ever…) and make marshmallow treats using those… omg omg omgogmaogmoamgoagmoagmoamg. I am already pre-dying with taste satisfaction. RECIPE FORTHCOMING ZOMG. OMG AND I CAN ADD SOME BANANA TOO HOLY SHIT.

The rest of Oktoberfest is what one might expect: a bunch of drunken idiots milling about. But everyone seemed to be in high spirits, extremely friendly, and bro-y, but in a different way from the usual bro. They were all like skater-snowboard bros, which is a more tolerable kind of bro (and which, up until recently, I hadn’t really considered a bro, but they are bros in other people’s eyes, I guess). MM-HMM. Yeah, I’m kind of a boring counterpart to these kinds of things just because I don’t like, party. Or drink. So I just kind of sit, and for some people, it’s weird to go to a bar with me as I do not drink or whatever. With multiple people it’s fine, but with just one person, it’s sometimes like, well, might as well not.

Along the way back, we passed one of many marijuana dispensaries, but this one is particularly dope because it’s built out of an old gas station. Caaaamoooonnn. That totally rules…

Anyway, got sidetracked there. This was just a funny thing we happened upon walking by a tall skyscraper building… and both of us did a double-take — for good reason, obviously.

That was pretty much the end of the evening. Crawled home and back to bed.

recap central: turkey, day ten: cappadoccia.

friday, may 1st, 2010.
Super early wakeup to go hot air ballooning. The aim was to go in time for the sunrise but that was a mega fail, because even though we got picked up at 5:30am or whatever, that’s too godamn late to see the sunrise! They’re total liars! I must say, though, the sunlight was PRETTY good… almost as good as magic hour, though not quite. We were also one of the later groups to get off the ground, which was kind of a bummer. Ah, well.

For a while, I’d been skeptical over whether or not to ride on the hot air balloon, since I’m scared of heights. It was a bit remarkable how un-scary it is, though. I could even look nearly straight down without feeling fear at all. It was weird. And I’m not over the fright; in Troy I’d climbed some fairly steep steps in the Trojan Horse and it was a bit scary. Not debilitating, but there was definite fear there. But the hot air balloon… I dunno, man. Not scary at all. It’s weird, though, these baskets have to be hopped into; they don’t have doors! I’m sure some do, but not these.

When we got back onto the ground, some champagne bottle was popped and people drankz da joose. It was pretty interesting watching the crew pack up. Going on a hot air balloon ride is pretty expensive, definitely, but at the same time there DO seem to be a lot of costs around. I think the crew for our balloon alone had like six people in it, and they were there to follow the balloon where it landed. The beginning spot is not the ending spot, and the actual spot is kind of random, depending on how the winds are blowing that particular day.
They also gave out these corny little paper certificates… it’s funny… I wrote my name on a list as “Vivian Hua!” but because I is actually a character in Turkish, they thought that I wrote i. Funny. So my name ended up being “Vivian Huai”.

Anyways, we went home for an hour to eat breakfast and then headed out again. Sherry and I got to ride in the front seat of this van on the way back. Woooooo.

Btw, the Turkish word for stop is DUR!

First stop in Cappadoccia this day was the viewpoint of Pigeon’s Valley. A ton of pigeons live in Cappadoccia’s valleys because farmers use the pigeon shit to fertilize their crops, since the terrain is kinda unwieldy. Funny. This is a weird rest stop with an evil eye tree and a pot tree.

There, some guy is selling these peanuts covered in honey and sesame (delicious!) as well as dried elderberries (never had them prior to Turkey, but the texture is great!)

Next, we went to a co-op where they weave rugs and carpets, mostly. The Turkish government sets up co-ops for country gals to weave in so that they earn a living and those living in cities can purchase goods from the country, since the major cities do not produce the rugs. We learned all sorts of stuff about rugs, like how to determine quality, and how the Turkish double knot is stronger than a single knot and yadda yadda. Watching those girls work was pretty insane. They are machines, and quick ones, at that. Crazy.

So there was the first room which was the weaving room. The second room was a silk room. SICK! SICK! SICK! Luckily, it didn’t smell as bad as the pan-fried silkworms being sold on the streets of Korea, but it was still really disgusting smelling. Luckily, I had a neck piece on my zip-up that I could shove my nose into and breathe out… cause I am a pansy when it comes to smells! BLAHHHHGARRR!!

The third room was a dye room. Some cute little old lady was the dye technician at that particular co-op. She ruled!

The brown color was created using walnut shells. The host guy said that the secret part is not where the colors come from, but how to fix the colors… and the lady wouldn’t share that with us, because that’s a dye tech’s secret.
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But what was neat is the indigo color. Indigo, when inside the color pot, is green!!!!! It’s the parts that touch the air that turn blue. So, when you pull indigo-stained wool out of the dye vat, it’s initially a light green and gradually turns blue. Fascinating.

Next, we went to the carpet showroom where they tried to sell us shit. There were people — Kirk and Jenny in particular — who bought extremely expensive rugs. Shit was nice, though.

This guy was pretty cute and kept talking to Sherry about how to double-knot (which is the technique they use to make stronger rugs).

After that, we went to the Goreme Open Air Museum. An amazing thing with lots of indoor churches cut out of the rock and such.

One of the early churches.

One of the newer (but still fucking old) churches.

Hermaphrodite saint. No kidding.

Sherry and I explored the area near the church in our free time and it was really fucking awesome. Lots of non-guarded open areas to explore, some of which have little frescoes and things. Mostly they’re just little man-made caves, which is dope.

Ughhh what’d we do next this day. Who knows. Man. I think we just went back to the hotel.

recap central: turkey, day seven: pergamon / antalya.

wednesday, april 29th, 2010.
Woke up super early and went swimming before our wakeup call, and it pooped us out for the rest of the day, haha.

We woke up the next day and headed to Pergamon. By today, I was still pissed about last night and feeling kinda sick or whatever, and frankly, I was super tired of ruins. I really did not give a fuck. Til the animals.

There was a little turtle on the road, which Al pointed out. I’m SO glad no one crunched it! The turtle walked off the road and was coming to me. Awwwww. I moved him off to the side of the road. I was soooo happy. That turtle made me quite happy. And I spent the rest of the time there trying to find animals – of which there were a lot. I was totally out of it and completely not in the mood to look at more ruins. So instead, I went animal-hunting. And it turned out good.

So many aminals!

That day was kinda a blur because I was so tired and they were completely unspectacular ruins compared to Ephesus. And I was not in the mood, as I mentioned.

We ate lunch at a somewhat fancier restaurant that was more for locals. It was a pizza place; I didn’t feel like eating an entire pizza, so I just ate the free side dishes, of which there were a lot. There was some spice there – this black, kinda spicy kinda nutty spice – that Auntie Ruby really liked, so she asked our waiter what it was and they just gave her a bag of it.

After lunch, Sherry and I went to walk around; there was a nearby DVD/CD store and a market. I got some Swedish film for 1 lira or something – just for fun. When we got back to the restaurant to use the restroom, the parental had purchased some Turkish ice cream and we ate that for the first time. It’s interesting and much thicker than normal ice cream. The texture is great; the taste is pretty usual, I’d say.

We went to the Archeology Museum that exhibited a lot of the findings from Pergamon. It wasn’t a very big museum, but there were some pretty neat statues and stuff. I wasn’t terribly super into it, though. Before we went in, there was a whole bus of schoolchildren. Schoolchildren there wear these bright blue outfits. Al affectionately labeled the students as “Smurfs”; he would constantly say, “The Smurfs are coming!” Anyway, I was wearing a blue zip-up top the same day in almost the same shade, so I went over to blend in with them. Haha. Apparently, Lanny gave all the kids American pennies. Woo!

Some shots of stuff in the museum.

Mr. Ed.

Evil eye spoon!

Awesome Arabic calligraphy!

After the museum, the bus dropped off the people who wanted to take a walking tour in the city center, and we walked back to the hotel. Other people just went straight back to the hotel. It was a pretty fun walk – nothing super notable other than this one guy who walked after us, babbling fake-Asian language to us that sounded not even close to any kind of Asian language. It was like speaking in tongues or something; it was completely non-reminiscent of any language I’ve ever heard. Gross! Not sure what he was doing!

Al got us a bit lost on our walk, but whatever. We passed this square (like the one we passed on the waterfront in Antalya) where there were a shit ton of skaters. Good shit. Why don’t we have more open squares for people to socialize on? Seems like such a simple community-building thing.

That evening was buffet as usual, and then a really epic pool night. After dinner, Sherry and I went to the business center to do some work because there was free internet there. The parentals found a pool table that was open, so we joined them after doing some work. There wasn’t really anyone else trying to play, though, so we ended up playing a few games with them and then just played a zillion million thousand games by ourselves. In total, Sherry and I played four HOURS of pool.

While we were playing with our parents, this guy came and watched and was just smiling goofily. We later found out his name was Achmet and he was a Turkish guy studying university in Antalya. We couldn’t really speak with him cause he didn’t really speak English, but then one of the hotel workers heard us bumming around there and being really weird and loud and it wasn’t particularly busy in the hotel that night, so he came and talked to us and served as translator for a bit. He said he was going to come back and play with us, but mentioned that he was kinda professional. I didn’t really take him super seriously… til later. In any case, Achmet wanted to play with us, so I played him first. Except he was wearing sOo much cologne it made me pretty sick. I was losing to him, too, much to the surprise of all parties involved – possibly except to Achmet – because he played pool like a totally narb. He just kinda hit the ball as hard as possible all the time. So dramatic! So actually, I was losing pretty bad, but then he made the 8-ball into the wrong pocket and was totally celebrating and thought he won even though he lost. I just let it go and let him play Sherry. When Emitz (worker guy) came back to check on us, I told him the situation and from there on it was slated that I’d play the next match with Emitz, and whoever won between Sherry and Achmet would play the winner of the game between Emitz and I. Sherry won the game between Emitz and Achmet. Anyway, when Emitz (worker guy) translated for us the guy’s name, and the guy said his name was Achmet, Emitz was like, “Oh, man, just like everyone else,” or something. Emitz was really, really funny…

So I played him, and he made in all of his balls except for 3 (including 8-ball) on the first break ~__~ He was definitely pretty good. Luckily, I got in like 5 in a row, too, so it was fairly close… cept then he demolished me in one turn, and it was the fastest pool game ever. After that, he played Sherry, but he kept acting like she as handicapped and didn’t know how to play pool, and was trying to teach her… only he kept moving the ball so that she would get an easy shot instead of just telling her where to hit harder shots. It got kind of irritating for Sherry, I’m sure; I was getting irritated just kind of watching! He was good, but still!
Oh yeah, it was funny, because he was working upstairs in the bar / front desk and he told us to call him when we wanted him to come. His number on the tele was like 654 or something, and he would say stuf like, “Call me! You know my number!” purely in jest. Or he would call us from the top of the stairs while looking down at us and tell us to pick up the phone. He was quite funny. When he played the two games with us, someone called him and required him to get back to work, so he kept asking if we wanted free drinks or anything, but we said nah. He ended up sending us two cappuccinos anyway. I don’t think I’ve drunken too many cappuccinos ever!! He wrote our first initial in the foam; for Sherry’s name, he wrote an ____, and for mine, he wrote a W… hehehe! He thought it was Wivian! Or maybe even Wiwian! Wiwian’s my evil twin… like Wario!

Later on, he came to talk to us again and asked if we wanted any cocktails. He ended up giving Sherry a free drink he made, calls Angels And Demons (or something). It was blue and melony! It had rum and whiskey! It took second place in some contest, but he said that second place winners are never remembered anyone, so it’s pointless. I actually really liked it.

When we left – and I don’t remember this – Sherry said he said, “Maybe we’ll meet again… in our dreams.” Haha. He wanted us to go out with him at 1 in the morning, after he got off work, but we declined. Good ol’ Amitz. We had to get up ass early the next morning, anyway.

recap central: england, day four: london.

friday, march 5th, 2010.
So in the morning, Jericho didn’t show up when he was supposed to. We called him a zillion thousand times, and it turned out, he said his aunt and uncle had fixed him breakfast (he was staying with them), so he couldn’t just peace out. The frustrating part was, he sent us Facebook messages telling us he couldn’t make it, even though he knew we didn’t have internet. In total, I must have spent like 5 or 6 pounds that morning trying to call him. Really kinda frustrating.

First stop was St. ____’s Park or something… which is supposedly the most beautiful Square in all of London… except we found St. ____’s Park or something, which was a teeny tiny little square… and we were like taking photos in it and thinking, “This thing sucks. It’s quaint, but… what the hell!” Then we realized we were totally off base and the real park was actually pretty good. Images from the real park:

Someone was feeding birds and freaking Sherry out.

More bird. This bird was a total homie and kept following us around ^__^

We then went to Buckingham Palace, where Jericho met up with us. I mean, I’d seen it before and wasn’t particularly impressed, but this time was major boredom times a million zillion thousand hundred million. It went on forever, and Jericho and Lori had pressed up to the front while we stayed at the back (we had both seen it; they had not seen it), hoping we could leave but not wanting to rush them in case they were actually enjoying the abominably boring procession. If you’ve never been to London, take it from me, motherfuckers: THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE IS BORING AS HELL AND CROWDED AS HECK. DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME!

These ladies, in their various stages of bag-holding, really amused me…

After that, we tried to walk to the bus stop where we could partake in the Big Bus Sightseeing Tour! Woooo. Since Lori and Sherry didn’t have much time, it was the quickest way to see everything… we just did one loop all the way through.

Eventually, we landed near Big Ben and tried to go to Westminster Abbey, but there was something keeping us from going to it, so that was slated for the next day, bright and early. We wandered around a bit and walked kinda aimlessly and ended up going to this random restaurant to eat Fish & Chips. It wasn’t particularly delicious. I had a veggie burger and it was hands down the worst veggie burger ever. Blah. Afterwards, the other three wanted to go on the London Eye, but I didn’t want to cause it was expensive, so we made an appointment to meet at Tate Modern (Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG). I was pretty convinced that they would take longer than I, but we ended up arbitrarily picking a time to meet. I ended up going to a nearby coffee shop and working on my laptop. One of the workers there — whose business card I got but I think I never emailed him, oops — wanted me to work with him cause he said it was difficult for him to find quality graphic designers to work with, blahblah. He didn’t realize I didn’t live in London, but figured it out… when I told him. Haha.

So finally I left to go meet the friends, and the sun was starting to set. I was kinda in a rush cause I was late, but it turns out they were very late as well. I walked along the waterfront, enjoying myself, for the most part.

One homeless guy stopped me and said all he wanted was money for a hot cocoa. I told him I didn’t want to give him money, but that I’d go with him even though I was in a rush. He said there was a shop right nearby, so we went to Pie Minister (24 Stokes Croft, Bristol BS1 3PR, London), a really super adorable pie shop that also sold drinks. They were closing, but the guy who was working there — a very extremely nice chap — let us in. He was so nice! I saw that I was buying the guy a drink, and he made the drink and tried to make small talk, and made this really nice hot cocoa — quite lovingly, I’d say — and gave it to us for free. I was quite smitten with him but I ran outta there quite quickly Had a schedule to keep ~__~

Except the road along the waterfront was closed — the worker told me this — so I had to make a detour around the bridge and it took quite forever to get to Tate Modern. I called Jericho along the way to tell him I’d be late, but they were all late, too. I got there and was in the gift shop forever, and they finally found me but said they had entered somewhere else. Of course.

And so it went, hanging out at Tate Modern. I can’t say I remember all of the stuff we saw, unfortunately. Shit. I have a horrible memory.

recap central: england, day three: london.

thursday, march 4th, 2010.
Took the overnight bus, as previously mentioned, and when I got to Victoria Station in London, I called Jericho. Jericho had gotten a local phone, which turned out to be quite handy for him, sure, but also quite handy for us. Anyway, he met me at the coach station (since I went on this trip I definitely call busses coaches… it’s funny) and we just wandered around. The goal was just literally to wander aimlessly and wander aimlessly we did. We started by picking a random bus stop to get off of: Embankment Tube Station.

Wandering around led us to Somerset House (Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 1LA) where there was a Michaelangelo exhibit going on. It was a bit pricey, but we went anyways. Wherever the wind blows us, after all.

Michaelangelo did about a million renditions of this here piece, The Dream, and many were on display here (Michaelangelo’s Dream was actually the name of the show, after all). Here’s a detail pic I took:

Up next, more wandering, where we saw some funny sights, including this poster! Can you believe Zombie Nation still exists?!!!!

And male Lady Gaga — excuse me, Let’s Go Gaga — body-building. Z O M G.

Some ruined-ish buildings:

We putzed around forever and finally, Jericho decided he wanted a smoothie, so we tried to get him one. But it was major fail; all these cafes and restaurants would have photos of smoothies on their windows, but then we would go in, and they would deny us. Finally, we went to some major coffee shop chain — I forget which — and we were able to get him one. Woooooo! The line was insanely long, though. I should also mention I had my backpack from Iceland this entire time — that wasn’t super fun.

Finally, we decided to head towards the hotel area where we’d be meeting Sherry and Lori. We were slated to meet at like, 2:00pm or something around there, and we got there early and were waiting around the front forever. Finally, I suggested that maybe there was a back entrance, and Jericho went off to check it. Of course, when he left to go check it, Lori and Sherry came around the back entrance where they had been waiting and found us. Miscommunication galore! Sherry booked the hotel with her reward points, so we all kinda crammed up in there. Weeee.

That evening, we pretty much just went shopping. We went to Harrods (87–135 Brompton Road, Knightsbridge
London, SW1X 7XL):

Harrods is kinda too expensive to really buy anything, but Sherry got some cookies — what’re these called again? I forget — to give Tinwin because they’re Tinwin’s favorite things ever. They were like 2 pounds apiece or something ridiculous, though, so I didn’t even try them. [Poor as fuck.] Jericho bought one, though, but he crammed the whole thing in his mouth at once and declared it was delicious, and we were all like, :0 — “You ate it already?!!!”

That evening, we ate sushi across the street. But it was in this building with all these mini fast food conveyor belt things… including a fast food LEBANESE CUISINE conveyor belt! OMG! But Lori is allergic to peanuts, so feeding her miscellaneous foods is kind of impossible… I think she could have eaten like, Indian food, for instance, but she’s never had it ever…

I reckon we went home that evening, and Jericho was supposed to meet up with us early the next morning. Bright and super early. It was Lori’s first time out of the country, so we had to make the most of things!

yeah.

interesting day today. interesting days these days. copy and paste summary.

today >
- met up with guy who runs greyday here (so easy to make connections in portland).
- got screeners for six film festival movies (woohoo! free movies ftw).
- went to a house show (whatevers).
- had dinner at delta with guy i met while doing “talk to us” who is voluntarily homeless (really fucking interesting)… now i wanna go back to delta and eat cuz everything looked so damn good on their menu, and their mac & cheese was yum!
- found ants in my room. fuck. i think they’re gone now, though. thanks, vacuum!

general >
- been watching portland international film festival movies. coverage here.

recently >
- planned out iceland trip with lanerd.
- played a bunch with taylor doggie.
- had weird chatroulette fun at aaron’s.
- drove a-ron and john up to seattle and back, with a few hours of crazy hanging around on the way back cuz john got real sick from pot cookie. :[
- trip back involved crazy 80s sing-along towards the end.
- research club event at tribute gallery with some well, interesting speakers.
- weird art opening event with nim and abe that was downright, well, weird.
- going to the most awesome toy museum ever with nim that was like…………… super old late 1800s, early 1900s toys. just bizarre unmarked hole-in-the-wall, but really fcking awesome.

tokyo, japan.

So, we stayed the night in Hiroshima at the same hostel and then checked out in the morning to head back to Tokyo. YAY! Not much time in Tokyo, so we had to make the most of it.

The shinkasen trip back was like 3 and a half hours or something. We prepared by getting a lunchbox in Kyoto, since we had to go there to pick up our luggage anyway.

SushiMonster scared of shinkasen!! Seriously, though, the first time I rode the shinkansen it definitely felt uncomfortable. The feeling went away after riding it for the second or third time, though.

My lunchbox! Lunchboxes are definitely the way to go as far as variety goes. MMM! Too much of it was sweet, though. I was a little disappointed by that.

Lenny’s lunchbox!

SushiMonster likes this fake tamago thing!

The Tokyo portion of our trip was no doubt the BEST portion simply because there was so much going on, with so much of it going on by CHANCE.

We just went to Akihabara right away and walked around. Went to an arcade where some dude was playing this CRAZY game where there’s like a million things on the screen at once and you pretty much just have to dodge the flying shit. He totally must play that game a lot, because he could maneuver past every little bead and only died once. Tons of people were entranced by him.

I also came to conclude it must suck to be a woman in Japan, because in the arcade, there was ONE other woman, and she was there with her boyfriend. It is absolutely not culturally acceptable for a woman to really play video games, other than maybe some music games (the playful kind with taiko drums or something, not even like guitar hero) or those stupid ridiculous UFO games which I STILL don’t understand the allure of. They are a trip, those UFO machines. They seem so completely and utterly pointless and have such stupid prizes you think that there couldn’t possibly be anyone stupid enough to pay money over and over again to play. But there are people who do. TONS OF THEM! WTH.

We also checked out an old videogame store, which had an old console we used to have at our house. Hollar!

There were also penguins in this window… :/

This waffle covered chocolate ice cream bar Lenny bought from one of the ice cream vending machines. DELICIOUS!!

We spent FOREVER in Don Quixote. At least Don Quixote always results in some interesting photos, even if it’s boring after floor 3.

Takoyaki hat, courtesy of Don Quixote. Actually, I think they spell it Don Quijote.

Hitler Halloween costume. I shit you not.

I also suggested we eat at Yoshinoya since Lenny hadn’t had it before and I needed to show off the cheapness that is yakiniku in Japan. I was the only woman in there, again. I also suspect that’s not fully acceptable, either. WHATEVER. They were all lonely singular men, in there by themselves. Pretty pathetic.

Then we went back to our hostel in Asakusabashi. There was this totally sketchy playground with like two of those springy horse rides or whatever and a bathroom that was open. I totally saw an old dude pissing… like TWICE. He was pissing twice, in full view of anyone passing by because that’s how the bathroom was designed. It was pretty fucking sick, I must tell you. Sick in a bad way.

Anyway, at the hostel, there was an amusing lady manning the front table when we first checked in earlier in the afternoon. Hehe. She had a funny voice. Lenny liked to impersonate her. I can’t describe what it was like, though, cept really high pitched, friendly, and scratchy. Haha.

The next morning, we got up, and it was SUNDAY!! Sunday meant the day that supposedly, one could rent bikes to bike around the Imperial Palace with. Free bikes? SIGN US UP! Turns out it wasn’t as exciting as one might think, though, and the bikes were limited to a ‘track’ that was set aside for people. The Imperial Palace is also kind of a lame place that is completely not worth going to. You can’t even go in!!!

Before we got there, though, there was this antique garage sale in Ginza we passed when we were walking along. Weird. Didn’t know Japanese people were into antiques. Yeah, yeah, I like to generalize.

Bikes for rent! Guess we totally shoulda tried a tandem bike. DAMN!

“Booya. I need a haircut.”

After riding around the lame Imperial Palace and realizing there wasn’t much to do, we went to the Global Festa, which was this festival with some foods from represented countries (mostly African), and a lot of non-profit organizations. Cute event. Very cute.

See kid in orange on the right? Kid in orange was terribly scared of man and/or woman in robot suit. How can one be scared of that? Who knows!

Well, we didn’t really know what was going on at the event since mostly everything was in Japanese and pretty much everyone was trying to promote some non-profit cause like stopping world hunger and helping education in third world countries and blahblahblah. I settled on some food from I-forget-what-African-country. It was like this beef, potato, and carrot or something stew with couscous. Pretty delicious. Lenny got some samosas from Ghana. Mmm, food. He also got some beer which he thought was disgusting but felt obligated to finish anyway since he paid $5 USD for it. It was also expired. Haha!

After that, we headed on over to Harajuku, for the most interesting part of our entire trip!! We had only planned on going to see the dressed up women, but there turned out to be SO MUCH going on in Harajuku that day that we were extremely, extremely amused.

First up, at the Shibuya stop: weird man dancing with flag. YAY!

Then as we were walking down from the train station stop to the Hibiya Park where all the stuff in Harajuku goes down, we passed a SEAFOOD festival. Needless to say, Lenny was in lorv. There was a crab grilling area but the line was super long, so we didn’t try to go there… we would go back, we said.

Then there was some kinda taichi conference or something…

And across the street from the taichi conference, we heard the bustle of music. What is it? What was it?! ROCK MUSIC? OUTDOOR CONCERTS? SIGN US UP!!

The first thing we saw… greasers!!! TOKYO ROCKABILLY CLUB? WHAT THE FUCK?!!

There they had their boomboxes and they were dancing up a fucking storm. Poses, limber moves… some of these guys were fucking old, too! But one thing’s for sure: ALL OF THEM HAD FUCKING FABULOUS HAIR.

SUPERSTAR!

SUPERSTAR!

What else? Rice Riot was an AWESOME electro pop band.

These girls um, played these drums? It was pretty… but not that entertaining.

I forget the name of this band at the moment… Primal something… will update with their name later… but they had these fucking girls in the palm of their hands!!!

“We are robots!”

Headbanging women? YES!

White girl in maid outfit? YES!!!

Have to look up the name of this band too, but their guitarists were REALLY good… very reminiscent of old Incubus like during “Hilikus!” But the vocalist was just okay, unfortunately.

TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE girl band with a vocalist who wasn’t even REALLY singing. I mean, check it out. They have no amps. Their guitars are not plugged in. I FELT like something was amiss when we first walked by, and I said that, but when we walked by again, it became obvious. They weren’t REALLY playing their instruments at all. PATHETIC. I mean, REALLY pathetic.

When we finally finished looking at all the music, we finally headed over to check out the famous Harajuku girls. We were met by THREE!! OR MAYBE FOUR?!! BUT LAMENESS!! There was only one that was actually posing.

Went shopping for a bit. I bought a cool scarf and a cool pair of pantyhose. Lenny bought two fitted shirts and a tie! Good shopping, but lots of people!! And it started raining a little bit.

We then decided to go back to the seafood festival, but poopingly enough, most of the booths had closed and the crab Lenny wanted to eat was gone, gone, gone :[

We decided to go back to check out some more bands. Very good band, Stereo Lynch!! The drummer was AWESOME. Reminded Lenny of Lingo, I guess.

R&B group from America. Los Angeles area, to be exact. They were just OK.

Think we went home right after that… maybe ate some meals along the way. Twas a long day, twas.

—

The next morning, we thought about getting up at 4:30am to go see the Tsukiji Fish Market fish auctions, but then got lazy. That’s way too early. We woke up at like 8:00am instead and bummed around Tsukiji. It took a while to get there. It always does. More tuna than one could ever REALLY want to see…

Tank full of FUGU!!

They don’t REALLY take that kindly to tourists. Whatever, though.

I was slightly in love with these trays of blood and guts. Call me a sicko!

Check out that grain!

This guy was carving up the head of the tuna, and we saw him pick off a piece and eat it as he was cutting it. Haha!

Mmmm, bin of miscellaneous tuna parts. I’m fascinated.

More. Seriously, is there something wrong with me?

Let’s not forget that we had to try one of the dozens of sushi restaurants along the outskirts of the Tsukiji Fish Market. We didn’t want to wait, so we picked a small bar type restaurant with three old people working. It was a very small menu selection, and very very expensive for being so basic. I had wanted to take Lenny to a place like we went to last year, where there was HELLA selection, but this place catered only to tourists and ONLY had the basics. :/ Above is what I ordered… crab, scallop, and cucumber rolls.

Lenny ordered two very delicious toro, ama ebi, and salmon. Evidently the toro and ama ebi were amazing but the salmon was just okay, since that’s a Pacific Northwest thing anyway.

Knives on sale!

After that, we went back to the hostel to check out because it was still like 10:00am or something absurd. And then we were deciding between going to Asakusa to look at temples or to the Science Museum on Odaiba that I thought Lenny would REALLY like. Unfortunately, Odaiba is ass far from everything. So it took a while to get over there. It was worth it, though, and it cost only $5 to get in (it actually cost more than that to actually physically get there because we had to take the subway and then a new line that only services Odaiba).

Just some pretty ceiling decorations.

ASIMO, the famous Honda robot, happened to be there that day!

Giant cool glowing globe thing, plus walkway!

“A working model of the internet.” Kinda interesting.

Virtual videogame horseriding?!

Cool motion sensor thing, where the fish would be able to detect the pillows and would bounce offa them. COOOL.

Just another view of the globe.

An astronaut’s bedchamber.

An astronaut’s toilet.

Evidently all the components that make up the human body.

Toy that let people try performing surgery on their own. :0

Regular cup of noodle styrofoam cup versus styrofoam cup of noodle cup that has been brought into a submarine!!

Cool ass exhibit. Through the mirror, a face would appear in that blue circular thing, but when you just turned around and looked at the blue circular thing on its own, there was no face… just water. A total trip. AMAZING.

And this post is not done yet, but I’ll finish it later. Must go to bed now.

Lots to say about catching the flight back to Seattle, and about the crazy ass Chinese people on the plane. This photo is a partial note of what’s to come as far as crazy Chinese peoples go.

This guy was to Lenny’s right, and he seriously had his feet propped up on the TABLE while he was sleeping. How crazily unsanitary, man!!! And that is seriously only the beginning. CHINESE PEOPLE. THEY ARE INSANE!!!

hiroshima, japan.

We leave from Himeji and get to Hiroshima relatively late in the evening. It’s okay. People tell us there’s not that much to do in Hiroshima anyhow. We pretty much just get to the hostel and chill the first night. The hostel is within walking distance from the train station, so we walk. The map we have is a little shifty, but we make it without problems. It is K’s Backpacker Hostel. The front desk guy is so so so friendly, almost in a ditzy kinda way. Lenny lurvs him a lot. He’s Lenny’s favorite person on the whole Japan trip — tied with Shoji MAYBE. We originally have booked two nights at this place, but we’ve since decided to stay a night on Miyajima Island and decide to cancel one night at the Hiroshima hostel.

So we get our room, which is shared with two other people. They turn out to be two people from England, and they’re on a one year world trip. Just like everyone else, except for Americans. We head to the kitchen… just us and our food we got from a supermarket in Himeji! Yay! We had a whole smorgasbord of random foods to eat. Yay! Clean kitchen, and FREE LAUNDRY SERVICES! This place is crazay!

Bed bed.

Food food.

Left to right… Lenny, potato salad, crab legs (dammit, they turned out to be imitation! No wonder they were so cheap!!), croquette, and my autumn vegetable platter, which was delicious!!

Damn, that’s some real-looking imitation crab!

After eating, we decide we want to stay in Hiroshima after all, since ferries coming back from Miyajima Island run late. No need to stay on the island. So we get our second hostel day added back on… yay!

The next morning, we head out to explore Hiroshima. We start off by taking their local bus/rail thing. It’s $1.50 anywhere you go in the city center area.

We stop by the A-Bomb Dome first. It’s funny because the bus or whatever has all these stops, and all of them are only described in Japanese, except for this one, which is clearly a place only tourists go to… that stop is described in English and Japanese. Haha.

For some reason, birds seriously LOOOOOVED this godamn thing. I mean, like all kinds of birds. Cranes, pigeons, ravens, etc. ALL OF THEM WERE ALL OVER THIS SHIT.

There is a whole peace park in Hiroshima. For obvious reasons. This statue is based off that famous story of the girl who folded 1,000 cranes (yet still died).

Evidently this was also the week for remembering victims who died from the Atom Bomb. It was the anniversary of the bomb dropping.

There were all these colorful booths, filled with cranes from individuals in schools around the world. While we were there, there was a group of I think Australians who sang a song and then placed their string of cranes inside one of the open glass booths.

Monument with a perfect view to the A-Bomb Dome… planned, I’m sure!

We decided to go into the Hiroshima Museum because it only cost 50 CENTS. Which is like, the cheapest thing ever in Japan. They were really clever to make it so cheap, because that was pretty much the only reason we went in, and I’m sure that’s the case with many passerbyers. I didn’t think that the museum could possibly be all that interesting, but man. It affected me pretty deeply. It was definitely an amazing museum. Well put together, lots of useful information, etc.

Model of Hiroshima BEFORE the bomb. Japanese people fucking LOOOVE these godamn models.

Model of Hiroshima AFTER the bomb.

Well, there were a lot of disturbing things in the museum, and it made me feel really weird, frankly. The most interesting things in the museum were…

1) Letters written by the mayors? of Hiroshima to every country who ever runs a nuclear arms test or thinks about running a nuclear arms test, telling them that they should not.

2) The fact that they planned to drop three bombs but later whittled it down to two, and that Kyoto was on the list of places to possibly bomb. Lucky Kyoto and lucky Japan that it was not, but who knows just how many culturally rich places just like Kyoto were destroyed because of the bombings :/ Kyoto was also largely unscathed because all cities which they THOUGHT of A-Bombing were not regularly bombed, because they wanted to study the full effects of the A-Bomb.

3) The fingernails and stories of one boy who got bombed and then tried to suck the pus out of his own fingertips / fingernails because he was dying of thirst. Fucking. Worst. Imagery. Ever. ~__~

An image from a war or something protest in Germany.

Happy chair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

madrid’s reina sofia is love at first sight.

Alrighty, then. What’d I do today? Today was my first official day being entirely alone. Bonnie and Sarah went off to the cleaners and walked around and did some English book shopping and such. I went to the Reina Sofia, where I spent… I think around four hours. Pretty good for a museum. It was a confusingly laid out museum because a lotta random parts of it were closed down, but the one Maquinas Y Almas exhibit is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen. Definitely the most amazing thing I’ve seen when it comes to modern / contemporary art. AMAZING.

But before I got to the Reina Sofia, I was wandering a bit and stumbled across this row of outdoor used book sales tables. I started looking through them. Was going to buy an extraterrestrial sightings book but decided not to. Then I saw some Jane Austen? (maybe?) book and was going to buy it because I like to buy books to translate to learn languages. It wasn’t too hard to read and as a result, seemed really good as a potential translation match. But as I was flipping through it and reading maybe a page or two, this crotchety old woman came up to me and started muttering a bunch of shit and saying that I can’t read it if I’m not going to buy it or some crap. She literally pulled the book out of my hand and slammed it back on the table. I wish I knew better Spanish because I would have actually said something useful as an argument. Unfortunately, I didn’t.

Well, I was peeving the whole way to the Reina Sofia but luckily Maquinas Y Almas picked up my spirits. By chance, it was the first room I went into in the Reina Sofia even though it was strangely places. Hell, though, everywhere in that godamn museum is strangely placed. I mean…………………….. they have four floors, but the only floors shit is on are PART of the first floor (where Maquinas Y Almas was), the second floor, and the fourth floor. What the shite? There was also a half area that was blocked off… not officially with rope or anything, but with a person sitting there telling you you weren’t allowed to walk over there. Frankly, it was all kinda fucking weird.

But Maquinas Y Almas picked up my spirits from the first piece I saw in there. Go to REDEFINE’s ART BLOG to read my review about it, cause it’s a helluva a lot better than me trying to write it again. Lol.

The rest of it was OK. Saw the famous Picasso “Guernica” and some Dali pieces. Nothing else was amazingly mind-blowing after the Maquinas exhibit, though, so that’s too bad. Picasso and Dali both did have a lot more diverse portfolios than I had given them credit for, though, so that was definitely a thumbs up.

That evening, Sarah, Bonnie, and I went to a local supermarket and bought some foods. We went to a Carrefour Express which Sarah had seen. Got some Asparagus and Cauliflower Crème Soup, a beautifully packaged Carrefour brand mango lassi, some Meditteranean flavored canned tuna, tea-flavored water which I’d been eyeing for a while, and some canned marinated clams. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. The mango lassi was like the most expensive thing. But shit was gooooooooooooooood (mango lassi = Indian smoothie type drink).

On the way back, we stopped by a FRUTAS Y VERDERAS (OR SOMETHING) MARKET. Fruits are ridiculously cheap. The banana for 0.85 EURO wasn’t particularly. Nor is an avocado for 0.99 EURO. But onions? Apples? All like 0.20 EURO each. Fucking bargainish. MONEY.

We went back, invaded the kitchen, and cooked some foods. I heated up my tuna and made some soup. Sarah had a red bell pepper which she stir-fried with garlic, and Bonnie had an eggplant she stir-fried with chili, garlic, and onions. Word.

Got harassed towards the end of our meal by two Aussie guys Bonnie really didn’t like. Turns out a lot of northernish Aussies think that the southern Aussies are um, a little off.

Later that night, I went into the kitchen and those two guys were there along with these three other Aussies (a guy named Scott who was traveling by himself for a year and a married couple). The married couple and Scott were cool. The other two guys were nice and fine but they got bit very drunk. Brendan got so drunk he was like a walking zombie and while sitting in the kitchen, leaned over the spit on the godamn hostel floor! We were all not cool with it. His friend kept muttering shite about how he had to babysit that guy and had to travel with him and how it was terrible.

We went out to a pub after, right next to the hostel. Not like I drink, but I went anyway. Brendan continued to pass out at the table. The other people were cool, though.

After that Brendan’s friend had hash, so him and married husband guy smoked some. Scott, wifee, and I left early. I obviously only know a couple names here. @__@

How they scored the hash, though, I guess, was they went to this website… I forgot the name of it… but it basically told you how to get weed no matter what country you’re in. It told them to go to a certain bus stop in Madrid and then lift up an eyebrow at a black dude there. And it actually fucking worked! The black dude sold them some hash for I guess like 30 EURO. I don’t know how much. But I can’t believe that website exists and WORKS. That’s so funny.

Then there was bed. The end.

murder mystery festival in langley.

finally getting around to writing this blog post even though it is now after the fact.

saturday, february 23rd, 2008
so, we took the ferry into langley from mukilteo, and went downtowng.

our hotel was on the outskirts, like a five minute walk away from everything. lol. it was weird, though, no one was in the office and it was just towels and laundry and shit.

there was this phone near the door that has a number attached to it, and you call that number to let the owner know you are there. then they give you a code which you type in, and that opens up this lock where the key is stored. and then you use that key to get in! it was the cheapest hotel around, and it was like, i think $80 a night. everything else was at least $100. but the thing is, it was actually pretty nice. fully furnished with plates and stuff. fridges. microwaves. televisions. etc. fantastic!!!!! bed was comfy too. shower was slightly nasty so i didn’t take a shower. because bathrooms that are not 100% clean gross me out >__>

cafe assassiner was the name of the game!

the people of the town who were ‘involved’ in the game were dressed up.

this lady here, however, is not one of those people. she just dressed up for amusement purposes, with her daughter. most amusing.

went from place to place basically, collecting infos. you collect one tip from each location, to get a total of 64. it’s a way of forcing you to enter each store and hopefully buy something. i’m sure it does well for them. the town of langley is actually surprisingly green and stuff. it’s pretty fucking neat. lots of organic foods and local foods!

this is outside the little tiny langley museum, which is largely run by cute old people. ^__^ see that little bucket on the bottom there? it’s a coin jar thing. i asked some old man how they open it and he had no idea. turns out, though, there is a key spot that opens it up. so cool. inside the museum there were old yearbooks and stuff. fun. the old guy was talking to lenny and apparently he said that there’s like nothing to do in langley and that living in freeland was better.

this is the dead body. hahaha hohohoho.

hallmark was there filming something, so we had to sign some release form to say that they can use our image in their show. i don’t know why they were filming exactly, but i guess nbc was also there.

i bought some soap because it was cheap!! what else. i don’t know.

they really liked things that magnify?!!! and so did we?!!

this antique store had a row of these weird figurines, all of whom were just… singing. it was like, trippy.

another cool store with cool imported hats. this is some kind of wedding hat (really long in the back) from turkmenistan.

same store had this awesome chess set from uzbekistan. in this store, i also found out that my fucking necklace that is “moss jade” is really fucking AGATE. that costs like $1. owned. owned so fucking hard.

a neato planter.

oh yes we had this really nice dinner at a restaurant called “fish bowl”… the gnocci was sooo amazingly good. mmmmmm. and my crab cakes were pretty good too. it was probably the most expensive restaurant there but tasty as fuck! MMMM!!!!!

that pretty much ended our night, and then we went back to the hotel and like, watched fucking “forrest gump” because it was on television. lololol.

***

sunday, february 24th, 2008

this bridge was scary as fuck. i could barely cross it the entire time. cry. hahahaa. but finally got to the other side, only to find out that the other side was a dead end essentially. so we had to walk back after a little bit of time. :[

broom-rape. the best flower ever.

yes.

beach beach.

i love this shit cause it looks like a hand!!!

uber mossy.

fisherman.

oh no we didn’t build this oh no.

yes he is alive. we went to this one beach which i thought was disgusting because it was covered with crabs and slugs and blargHHHAGhGHhh. lenny loved it though. there were a lot of little crabs. pics of them to come. and videos. oh yes, the videos are good.

after our day trip to the park, we went back to the middle school auditorium in langley to find out about the murder mystery festival and who did it. here is the culprit. i forget her name even. there were quite a few people there, though.

here is everyone.

the trip back was beautiful. here are some shots from it.

“do not flush foreign tourists down toilets!” on the ferry.