L.A. inked

November 14: I don’t actually have a photo from today as we “skipped” it – which happens when you fly from the US to Aus. If I had taken a photo though, it would have looked something like this:

November 13: To celebrate our last day abroad we returned to Venice Beach, cos we liked it that much. Zanne got herself a skateboard deck that had the word “Venice” on it in graffiti-style writing (we have started collecting skateboard decks for art – we received a vintage deck for our engagement party). Noah insisted on carrying said deck for Zanne (who is his most favourite person ever I think, he is her little shadow), which got him a lot of cute comments from passersby.
The day was all over too soon though because, before we knew it, we were at LAX and Zanne and Noah were exchanging smiles with Alanis Morissette.Homeward bound!

November 12: Today we had a chilled out day in Venice Beach and Santa Monica. We caught a bus to Venice Beach and walked slowly back to Santa Monica Pier along Muscle Beach.
Venice Beach is rad! We all loved the vibe there, and all spent up big on souvenirs courtesy of the local vendors.
We had dinner at Johnny Rockets where Zanne was determined to win a Betty Boop doll for Noah out of one of those vending machine things with a claw.
We have video footage of the whole saga – first it was Zanne vs Machine, then it was Owner vs Machine, then it was Waiter vs Machine. It was our waiter who eventually won the doll – using his tips – and he kindly passed it on to Noah.
The finale of the epic battle inspired applause from the entire restaurant – it was hilarious! We’ll post a link for the video once Zanne has uploaded it to youtube.

November 11: Today we did a sightseeing bus tour of Santa Monica and Hollywood. It was kind of a non-event cos there really isn’t anything to see in Hollywood if you ask me.
However – EXCITING! – Zanne and I sought out Kat Von D’s High Voltage Tattoo Shop in West Hollywood (we’re big fans of LA Ink) and got ourselves some cheesy honeymoon tattoos.
We had actually planned on getting said tattoos in Venice Beach but we were all “when in Rome”.The funny thing is, when we first started dating we had joked about getting tattoos at “LA Ink”. I love that we make things happen. I think we’re cool.

November 10: Day one in LA, a.k.a Disneyland. I’ll be honest, when we made plans to take our nephew to Disneyland it was with him in mind, I didn’t really think we’d enjoy it much. Man, were we wrong - Disneyland was so fun! We didn’t have time to see everything and we didn’t go on too many rides cos we only went on the ones Noah could go on (Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Buzz Lightyear, Roger Rabbit, Pinocchio, Pirates of the Caribbean, Winnie the Pooh, Finding Nemo) but no matter, being there made us feel like kids again. I loved Toon Town – it made us feel like we were in a cartoon. And we all loved meeting Mickey Mouse – ha!Zanne and I are already making plans to take our future children there :-)November 9: We rode the Greyhound from San Francisco to LA – never again! The 8 hour bus ride didn’t bother us, it was the other passengers. Let’s just say some of our fellow passengers were talking to themselves and some couldn’t afford luggage. Oh well, you live and learn.We eventually met up with Shannon and Noah at our radical hotel, The Comfort Inn in Santa Monica, just in time to have Mexican for dinner. Nice one.
Shan

the mayor of castro street

November 8: Today we did a cheesy bus tour of downtown San Fran. Cheesier still we rented a tandem bicycle and rode to the Golden Gate Bridge – those bikes are harder to ride than they look! So much giggling, so much fun.

November 7: Day one in San Fran - this was one of my fave days.
We started out by doing a walking historical tour of the Castro. Given that we have a vested interest in gay civil rights, are active in our community and (I) watched Milk on the plane over from Aus, we were super excited for the tour. We learned a lot about the Castro area on the tour, as well as Harvey Milk. We learned of the history of the Rainbow Flag (created as a banner for Harvey Milk by drag queen, Gil Baker) and of the current freedoms we/Californians enjoy because of Harvey’s achievements while he was in office (a total of just 11 months!). It was a wonderful tour and it motivated us to be more active activists, and of course to daydream about living in the Castro – a place where, if you wish, you can walk down the street wearing nothing but a thong, hat and sunglasses.
We wandered the Haight in the afternoon and I educated Zanne about Janis Joplin. We got as far as Golden Gate Park before turning around and heading back to the Castro though – the park had a creepy vibe, there were very shady characters just metres away from a childrens’ (approx 5 year olds) soccer game offering drugs to passersby.
In the evening we caught up with Sharan, an English girl we’d met on our Castro tour. We had dinner at Harvey’s before searching out a lesbian bar in the Mission called Lexington(?). We were quickly wasted! It was random, spontaneous good times.

November 6: Today we flew from New York to San Francisco. It was beautiful to see the Rocky Mountains, even if they did cause us hours of turbulence.

Shan

new york city cops they ain't so smart

November 5: There was tragedy on this day…
We spent our last day in New York walking around the whole city taking very particular and precise photographs of those things and places we had liked most in the City.
Eg: We walked over 30 blocks to take photos of the Chelsea Hotel. I loved the photos I took of Zanne outside the Stonewall Inn and also hanging from the street pole of Gay St. We took a sunset cruise of the Hudson and I took some lovely photos of the Statue of Liberty with the sun setting behind her.
When we returned to our hotel all photos from our Rebel had been deleted. It was very upsetting :-(
The photos here were taken on our point and shoot camera. As you can see, we were honoured to visit John Lennon’s Imagine/Strawberry Fields Garden as well as his last home, the Dakota building.

November 4: On the day that the Yankees won the World Series we saw the Knicks play at Madison Square Garden. Way before that though, we did sightseeing bus tours of the sights south of Central Park (Fashion District, Financial District, Chinatown, etc) and Brooklyn. We cruised some markets, ate hotdogs from a street vendor, purchased some rad souvenirs, took many photos AND enjoyed a carriage ride around Central Park with a horse name Romeo (thank you Kelly and Tarquin!).

November 3: Our first day in New York began with breakfast two tables away from Goldie Hawn and some gawking from Zanne (we returned to the same diner every day thereafter - granted it was a good $7 breakfast). We did some sightseeing on foot around Central Park and 5th Avenue (by which time we were daydreaming about living in NYC) before hopping a Sex and the City Bus Tour.
As I’ve mentioned here, I’m a huge SATC fan and was very much looking forward to the tour. We saw many of the sights including: the New York Public Library (where Carrie and Big were to be married), Buddakan (where Carrie and Big had their rehearsal dinner), The Pleasure Chest (where Charlotte purchased her Rabbit), Steve and Aiden’s bar, Scout (which is actually called O’Neil’s and is not, in fact, on Mulberry St).
The tour gave us a bit of wondering time in the West Village (as Samantha’s apartment was in the Meat Packing District) – such a lovely area. While there Zanne picked up a rad Marc Jacobs tee (“I pay my taxes, I want my rights”) and a coffee table book about the intriguing characters (read: mobsters) of New York’s past. We also enjoyed a cupcake from the infamous Magnolia Bakery (Miranda and Carrie shared one of the same cupcakes when Carrie revealed her crush on Aiden). To end our day, and for the second evening in a row, we had burgers from the deli a block down from our hotel in our newly upgraded, smoke-free room with King bed.

November 2: The first day of our honeymoon!We woke super early (3.30am!) in order to make it to our 5am bus which drove us to Seattle. We flew from Seattle to New York and saw the sunset over Iowa in between. Today was a long day what with the buses and planes and shuttles and when The Holiday Inn gave us a smoking room (AKA an ashtray) when we checked in at 10pm we were too tired to complain.

Shan

i want candy

November 1: Our last day in Vancouver – who knew it would come around so quickly!
We spent the day packing the remainder of our gear and cleaning the apartment before heading to Stanley Park in the evening to ride the Halloween Ghost Train. Man, Halloween is so fun! (We also found $20 on the ground and saw Raccoons on this night).We leave for New York tomorrow but Shannon and Noah are staying in Vancouver for another week – they’ll meet us in LA on November 9.

Lastly, we went trick or treating. Again, this was something new for us and we loved it. It was so fun to see everyone out and about in costume and to see the effort that so many people go to in decorating their homes. We visited many houses, but the haunted house in particular was super cool (though Noah (our 18 month old nephew) didn’t seem to think it was particularly spooky). Speaking of Noah, he makes a pretty cute skeleton I say!Then there was pumpkin carving(!). Halloween is not a custom in Australia so we (Zanne, Shannon and I) were most excited about our pumpkin creations. Shannon carved a Noah-kin, Zanne carved a Dracula-kin and I carved a Shazanne-kin.October 31: The day before the day before happened in 3 parts:First there was park adventures including duck feeding, running in gumboots and much hidingOctober 30: Breakfast at Sophie’s Cosmic Café, bus rides, packing and shipping, hide and seek and cubby housesShan

Shazanne to Earth

We are still alive - I promise! We've had a hectic few weeks of honeymooning and moving back to Australia and starting new jobs and catching up with friends, and during all that time internet access has been limited. But we went and bought a wireless USB for our laptop yesterday so we are now back in the world of blogging! Shan will try to upload some photos tonight and I'll be sure to update ya'll on all the fun stuff we got up to on our honeymoon and since we've been home. Be back soon!

gimme a sign

Zanne and I have been packing up our stuff (again) this week and I came across a newspaper I had stashed away. The day that we were deciding once and for all whether we were going to stay in Vancouver or return home to Brisbane, our horoscopes read:

Gemini: Your ambitions may seem impractical to some but what do they know and what do you care? Get ahead and stay ahead.

Aquarius: Do you fantasize about running away and starting again from scratch? Take charge of your life and make it so you don't need to run away. Do it today.

We thought these were pretty amazing that day - another sign that we should live our lives on our terms?