Entries Tagged 'Travels' ↓

Los Angeles is a big sprawling place. We’ve never stopped here before and thought we would this time. The climate sure is intoxicating, even though they’re coming out of winter (judging by the winter clothes the locals are wearing) it’s still quite temperate and still has a landscape of blue sky and palm trees. We’re staying in a fantastic hotel on Santa Monica beach – here’s the view from our window.

Getting anywhere is a mission. We met our New York ‘land lady’ for lunch yesterday in Beverly Hills and she was absolutely horrified that we went there on the bus. I told her we were only in town for 3 days and she responded in the best New York accent ‘SO?!’ I guess you’re supposed to hire a car. She said everyone drives, and everywhere is 20 minutes by car. For us, everything is an hour by bus! It seems to be the transport system for crazy people from those who rant at you for no reason, ranting at themselves and shouting at pamphlet ads to removing their suit to reveal a Superman outfit underneath!

Quick list of stuff we’ve done:

• Walked along Santa Monica beach & explored promenade shops
• Gone by bus up to West Hollywood to meet Rick & Julia on the night they were also in town – walked the Hollywood Walk of Fame looking at all the stars and batting away dressed-up movie characters wanting to charge you to have a picture with them (on your own camera) and people flapping tour brochures.
• Gone by bus up to Beverly Hills to meet Sandy for lunch. She was lovely! Pure New Yorker, brought out to LA for work (ex film producer! and we watched her actor son in an episode of the TV show Numb3rs last night!) who told us lovely stories about the LA psyche and her life. It was such a great thing to do and she totally trusts us to live in her apartment. While we were at lunch The Mister was asked for ID – she said he should feel very chuffed about that – everyone here is cut and injected to look younger (and actually looks the same, which everyone does!) so he’s feeling all springy and youthful now!
• Wandered along Rodeo Drive – was a bit disappointing, not sure why, I think they whole glossy big shops with doormen thing is a bit overwhelming if you just want to have a poke around. It’s like even when out for a stroll you have to prove you can afford to be there.
• Went down to the Santa Monica pier and The Mister played some arcade games (some old shoot ‘em up game he hadn’t played since he was a teenager), got a strip of photobooth photos (your booth is so much classier and QUICKER @freezingkiwis), saw lots of random stalls with merchandise that could involve you: your face in a photo with the ferris wheel behind, your name on a grain of rice, you as a small clay sculpture, your future as predicted by the tarot cards. We went back after dinner and rode the ferris wheel – yes ME on a ferris wheel. It wasn’t until we had our tickets and were almost at the front of the line that The Mister told me he’d never been on one before! It wasn’t so bad
• Had some bad BAD coffee – been here 3 days and only had 3 cups. And the first was only half the bucket of searing hot milk I was presented with. The latte they serve at breakfast on the veranda of our hotel (such a cool place to have breakfast) is drinkable if you leave it to rest for 15 minutes!
• Gone by TWO buses up to Universal Studios in the sometimes torrential rain – not sure what I expected but it wasn’t really what I expected. Expensive day at a theme park although the 2 tours we did were pretty good although designed for mass reproduction – studio tour and special effects stage. Had a bit of my first cinnabon – it had some kind of gooey icing on it and I don’t think there was any real cinnamon present, was some kind of reddish cinnamon paste. Oh, well, I was excited to do it!

Santa Monica was very cool. Would visit there again.

Finally had the constant rain since 2am this morning that the Bay of Plenty desperately needs. Family are busying themselves with rainy day activities.

My Mother the pyromaniac

The Mister is making raspberry jam

The niece is making jewellery under the supervision of Father

Now we cross off the 3rd recipe from A Treasury of New Zealand Baking. Last night The Mister decided to give the all-in-one pav a go. He had to become acquainted with Mother’s 42 year old Kenwood mixer (appliances don’t last like they used to, although having said that at the end of the 10-minutes beating time it leaked machine oil into my hand when I removed the beater) which made him feel like it wasn’t really hand made seeing as the mixer did all the hard work.

It was a great success! I drew a circle on the baking paper to help him with a nice round shape.

It rose up and up and only cracked a tiny bit – Mother was jealous!

It was a great mound of light crisp meringue outer and delicate marshmallow inner.

And I’ve just found this photo from Christmas 2005 when The Mister actually  made his first pav, and the niece was supervising back then too! (She’s very amused to see this photo, “look how little I am and look how long and funny his hair is!!”)

I know it’s hard to see in the photo but we went down to the Whakatane Heads yesterday to see Moko the dolphin who’s made his home on local beaches around the East Cape and Bay of Plenty, after seeing on Twitter that he was in town.

Lots of people crowded to watch him frolicking with kids on flutter boards and swimming alongside the tour boats coming back from White Island.

You can just see him above the head of the 3rd person in from the left.

Last night I ended up making a second thing from A Treasury of New Zealand Baking – for dessert, plum cake with spicy plum sauce. This involved a trek to get the plums first (with the niece egging The Mister on to check if the electric fence was going with a blade of grass (which he did! (it wasn’t))).

Then The Mister kindly cut and removed stones from 1.5kgs of them. Bit of a palaver making the sauce, picking out cloves, cinnamon stick and vanilla pod, sieving it, reheating and it remained very runny but tasted SO good and soaked into the very buttery cake.

And behind every good photo is a photographers assistant, if you’re wondering how the book was staying upright in that last photo, here’s what was going on behind the scenes!

So that’s 2 for 2 that ended up looking pretty much like the picture in the book! And all made from the cupboard and our own harvesting – didn’t go anywhere near a supermarket!

Up in Awakeri I received a late Christmas gift A Treasury of New Zealand Baking – a collection of kiwi favorites from well known New Zealanders. With the family around it’s always tempting to bake because everything gets eaten pretty much straight away and you don’t have to wait a week before trying something else – so today I started.

Blueberry scones for lunch.  Nikau is serving these at the moment in place of date scones (noticed they did this around this time last year as well so perhaps an annual summer tradition) so I just had to try them. The mixture was very sticky and I was quite concerned they’d be very doughy and solid.

But they were light and delicious and just like the ones I’ve had at Nikau! And just like the picture in the book. Even my niece who announced she doesn’t like scones but seeing as I was making them and they had yoghurt in them she’d give them a go liked them!!

Been a while since I’ve posted one of these (probably because people smirk at me for not knowing some of the words I don’t as a supposed writer!) Anyway, today’s word is (which I came across when searching for apartments to live in in New York next year … considering this 35 story monster on the East Side – bit of an eye-sore in the neighbourhood and some may think clinical like a hotel but if you’re going to live in New York why *not* go for a place that will have absolutely stunning views of the city? It’s a toss-up between a Chelsea loft and a view.)

fenestration

The design and placement of windows in a building.
An opening in the surface of a structure, as in a membrane.
The surgical creation of an artificial opening in the bony part of the inner ear so as to improve or restore hearing.

Thanks again dictionary.com

Some notes from our road trip up to Palmerston North for the night 2 weeks ago so The Mister could speak at a geek club meeting.

• Nice drive up. Coffee at Brown Sugar in Otaki and got to pat the cat.
• We cruised a few restaurants finding one to stop at for dinner – as is often the case in small town New Zealand, the vegetarian choice always seems to be ‘ask staff for daily special’ – the fettuccine cabonnara I ended up with was fantastic although I wasn’t too keen on the raw egg yolk on top. Scraped it to the side instead of mixing it in as I guess I was supposed to.
• Went for a nighttime walk around The Square after dinner and it has certainly been spruced up, quite safe, blue & green lights, bridge, fountains. There were ducks sleeping right there on the grass. We saw one duck warming itself up by standing over an uplight in the grass but then noticed she had quite a crowd of ducklings sitting on it! Smart way to keep everyone warm.
• We stayed at the Coachman Hotel which was pretty dated and unfortunately had rather a lot of WiFi dramas which I certainly didn’t need given the crazy last 2 weeks I’ve had at work.

Here’s the best of my arty Square shots.

We’re going “to beeeeeee a part of it! New York! New Yo-ooorrrk!”

YIPEEEEEEE it’s official. We’re off to live in New York next March for 4 months. It’s a dream come true. We’ve been working on plans with Xero for a while now to find a time when we could work from home and we choose that home to be an apartment somewhere in Manhattan. And we’ve finally made it happen.

We’re going in March so that we get 4 months before the height of summer, and so that we have a decent amount of time there during baseball season. It’s going to be freezing in March, and quite changeable – I’ve been looking at the temperatures over the last couple of years – anything ranging from daytime highs of minus 7 to 25!!

We’re in the throes of organising airfares and investigating furnished short term rentals. It’s going to be a big change for us and our teams – although we have quite a few people working remotely now so I’m sure we’ll all just adapt.

It’s just so great Xero can let this happen for us. I can’t explain the breathless excitement and bursting feeling in my heart sometimes when I realise it’s going to happen. Not quite counting the days but definitely watching our spending – obviously this will not be a cheap exercise and the last thing we want to worry about when we’re there is running out of money. And trying not to think that we WILL have to come home.

Had a couple of days in Auckland playing lady wife while The Mister spoke at a Microsoft conference. Well, wasn’t really playing ladies as I went into work – got to spend some time in the Auckland office for the first time.

Compared to Wellington, Auckland is so busy and warm and there seems to be plenty of money about still – lots of flash cars and people out drinking coffee. Including us – just HAD to stop at this outdoor cafe that had orange umbrellas – not only the orange but the ability to sit outside and not freeze or get blown away! Plus they had cinnamon buns.

Called into the Ruby store on High Street – didn’t even look at the clothes – got distracted making kissy noises at the 2 orange canaries they had!

I still get a buzz out of seeing the Sky Tower whenever we’re up there – it was practically Xero blue on this visit!