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?

wrap it up

We shipped 3 suitcases of our stuff back to Brisbane today. We leave Vancouver next Monday - at which time we will have been married for 1 week, at which time we begin our 2 week honeymoon.

When we return to our sunburnt country (read: country of sunburn), we will have been off work for 12 weeks, I will have consumed at least 84 coffees, and Zanne will have watched The Hills, The City, Peak Season, The Office, Disaster Date and Parental Control about eleventy-billion times each.

It feels like we've been here in Vancouver much longer than we have... In fact it feels like we've had about 5 years in 1 this year!

Many hours later:

I’d love to finish this train of thought but I’m tired and busy and am having trouble articulating… Basically we’re busy with organising last minute details of our honeymoon, as well as those of our return home (inc: Zanne has been interviewing via skype and I’m in contact with my previous employer). We’re yet to arrange a proper exit of our friends’ apartment, as well as ensure Shan and Noah (who are staying in Vancouver an extra week without us) are comfortable and, most of all, won’t get lost.

There’s a lot to think about, but that’s the fun of it I suppose. I did intend to write about how much we’ve enjoyed Vancouver and what we’ve learned here, but I think I’ll leave that for another (more clear-headed) day.

Peace out peeps.

my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard

So apparently this is what happens when an 18mth old drinks his own body weight in chocolate milkshake:

From chilled out to psycho in one milkshake!

Shan