samandjenny-blog

[samandjenny-blog]

New Orleans - the big easy

So to start the day I was feeling a little delicate... We slept in and eventually headed down to cafe du monde to have coffee and beignets to get the new orleans vibe going.

They were so gooooood.

Then we criss-crossed back and forth looking at museums and cathedrals and beautiful houses.

We stopped for lunch at a fancy restaurant and Sam had a new orleans sampler which included gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish, and red beans. I had crabcake but got to try Sam's food as well. Crawfish are definitely delicious.

We went back to the hotel to sleep off our food babies and eventually dragged ourselves back out to catch the trolley down to the garden district.

We saw some beautiful mansions and incredible architecture.

We were feeling a little more classy that evening so we made our way to a jazz club for dinner and cocktails. We took in the ambience and relaxed while the piano soloist sang with an amazingly deep voice. He even want my requested 'Sitting on the dock on the bay' which made me happy :)

The club was beautiful; dim lighting, leather seats, and a wall of books dedicated to jazz history. The food was amazing and Sam had a really really good steak while I went back and forth with the kitchen trying to work out what was dairy free on the menu. Finally we settled on a hamburger.

Incredible vibe to end the day :)

[samandjenny-blog]

Travel day!

Fairly uneventful day... kinda.. .

We had to go drop off the car and we received a bit of a shock about the bill but that's due to a bit of a misunderstanding on our part and miscommunication on their part. It's still affordable but we probably won't go mental in new york like we had planned.

Went to the airport and I finally got my long anticipated noodles. Which were delicious.

We got our 2 flights, first to Houston; where we had to sit apart :(

Then we ran from one gate straight into our next plane. Sam got on first and saved me a seat by pointing at it wildly whenever I looked at him from the queue in order to make it clear to everyone else that this seat was taken.

We passed the time passionately lip syncing to Hamilton. We got so into it that Sam legit didn't notice we were landing and jumped a foot when the plane touched down.

We got a taxi to our amazing hotel. We've splashed out for this one because we're here for our 6 year anniversary.

We dumped our bags and showered and changed before hitting bourbon street.

Now I am going to state in advance that I have not drunk in a while. I have abstained from alcohol. And what followed was no fault of my own.

We started by just wandering up and down until we heard music we liked and ran inside. We stuck around for a drink of vodka lemonade each and then moved on. Next we hit up a jazz bar and Sam and I stood out on the balcony while I had a glass of wine and he had a whiskey.

Then we went off again and saw that people were walking around with this weird drink that looked like an alien. We asked where they got it from and proceeded with haste to purchase 'The Hand Grenade'

Now I don't know what was in this drink. And I'll never find out since i don't remember anything from that point onwards. But It tasted like melon. And it was lethal.

I remember trying to throw the miniature hand grenades that came with our drinks into a basket on the ceiling.

The rest is a total blank but according to Sam, we left the bar and started to make our way back. I saw someone being given a piggy back and demanded one myself. I started speaking Spanish. I requested a taco in spanish. Sam saw our hotel and said 'there it is look it's covered in flags' and I said 'flags mean nothing here' and dragged him in the opposite direction.... eventually he persuaded me to turn around and got me back to the room.

Then spent an hour trying to convince me that it was inappropriate to sleep on the floor of the bathroom despite how nice and cool it was.

The boy is a saint.

[samandjenny-blog]

Balloon fiesta

So we woke up at 330... and we were pretty unimpressed I can tell you that.

We dressed quickly and got our cameras ready but then Sam checked his phone and we both looked horrified.

My phone hadn't updated to the new time zone.

We were already late.

We jumped in the car and drove off. There was just one problem. Sam drove forward. In the dark he hadn't seen the huge concrete step in front of our parking space and in my horror I couldn't articulate what was about to happen.

We bumped over the first and then the second one, the noise was horrendous and we felt every impact...

When I looked back I saw that we had broken one if them in half at some point. (We weren't the first and a few of the barriers had totally shattered around the lot)

We drove out of their praying that the car was ok, when we stopped at an atm Sam jumped out to inspect the car. It. Was. Fine.

America builds cars to take a beating.

We made it to the fiesta parking and located a good stop to settle in. Sam ate a breakfast burrito and I ate a cinnamon roll bigger than my head. And slowly but surely, we began to freezes to death.

It was so so cold. We were so unprepared. I couldn't move my hands. Sam lost feeling in his face. We had no idea what we were in for.

People had brought full on arctic gear, people had brought duvets and were walking around wrapped in blankets. Whenever we asked people what the temperature was they replied in Fahrenheit and we wandered off none the wiser.

We paced and wandered about to stay warm, we drank hot chocolate, I spilled it on my leg, and for one glorious second I was warm but then the icy wind hit and practically froze my jeans to my skin.

During this ordeal, the sun was slowly rising and we were yet to see a single balloon go up.

It was too windy. No balloons were taking off :(

We had frozen for nothing.

We abandoned our quest for balloons and headed back to our car. Back in the hotel we discovered that breakfast was included and we gorged ourselves on waffles and hot drinks until we regained feeling. And went back to our room for a nap.

We woke up around 1pm and decided to walk to 2 miles to the Indian pueblo cultural centre. We made it eventually to discover it had a car park right there....

We spent an incredible 3 hours at the centre, listening to a Navajo man give a talk about the matriachical society that the Navajo have and why it exists. Then we attended a tribal dance and made our way around the rest of the exhibits and eventually ended up in the gift shop asking the same Navajo man all manner of questions that we have been curious about until we were told that the centre was closing so we left.

We walked back to the hotel excitedly talking over eachother about all the things we'd seen.

For dinner I was desperate for noodles... like, I had been craving them for days... So we were looking for a take out and after about an hour of trying we had to give up and so we trudged over the road to little Anita's Mexican restaurant. I was sad and dejected and resigned to a spicy meal that I wouldn't be able to enjoy.

But then. This waitress took pity on me and gave me the recommendation of chopped steak tacos. And they were heavenly.

She had then cook them with no spice and no cheese and they were the first thing I had properly enjoyed in days! I will continue to sing its praises until I die.

And Sam had fajitas... a huuuge plate of them....

[samandjenny-blog]

Page to Alburquerque

We packed and headed out early to begin the long long drive to albuquerque.

We had arranged with our rental car company to continue with our dodge challenger and not have to drive to phoenix to drop it off. So that saved us a few hours.

We Decided to spend those hours at a place called BEARIZONA.

BEARIZONA is a wildlife and rescue park where they have BEARS.

We wandered around and got to feed the otters and hug a goat and groom a sheep and then we took the wild ride tour of their safari zone where the bears, wolves, and bison had all just been fed.

We witnessed a bison playing football with a pumpkin and watched as the mother bison trained their children to stand in front of the tour truck and hold it ransom until the mother's had been given enough treats. The babies are too young to eat treats so this is pure exploitation on the older bisons part but it was damn effective.

The bears were all rescued from various locations including one who had been recently rescued from 12 years of confinement in a 6' x6' cage. He wandered after the tour truck hoping for some more food to conveniently fall off in either the form of a pumpkin of a small child...

We also saw an elk who was in time out after playing 'king of the castle' with the cars and giving a few of them some pretty interesting pinstripes in his enthusiasm.

After BEARIZONA we headed to a shopping centre to see how much it would cost to ship out bow and arrows home to London (over $100) so we decided to just buy a suitcase to replace my rucksack so it could continue to travel with us.

I didn't get a chance to check out a shop called boots boots boots which was pretty disappointing but it was 4pm and we had a 5 hour drive ahead of us.

We made it without being stopped for speeding once and crawled into bed at 10, setting alarms for 330 the next day to get up in time for the balloon fiesta.

[samandjenny-blog]

Page day 3 and antelope canyon

After a chilled start to the day, we went to go on our much anticipated tour of antelope slot canyon.

We arrived at the tour compliant and were a little taken aback by how gruff and impatient the tour organisers were. But once the tour guide introduced herself we realised that she was actually wonderful and so we climbed into the tour truck.

Now when I say tour truck I don't want you to picture a safari style truck... picture more of a people smuggling style vehicle. It had a benches with no seat belts and tge back was left open so we could all enjoy the dust coming in. Sam and I hid our cameras in our hats to keep them clean. We bumped along the dirt roads so hard that i was fully thrown out of my seat on more than one occasion but we made it in the end. When we arrived, our guide Melody released us and said 'wait you're all alive? Ok, I'll try to drive harder on the way back.'

The canyon was something seriously impressive. It has been formed over thousands of years by water erosion from flash floods. These happen when monsoon rains occur in the surrounding area. You can see evidence of these in the area as you wall through the canyon and see driftwood that has been deposited 3 or 4m in the air, stuck in a rocky crevasse, but the nearest tree line is over 18 miles away.

Melody helped us get some great shots of the canyon and told us a lot about it's rich history.

Sam and I were torn between photographing it and analysing the potential climbing routes it offered. When we asked melody about climbing, she told us of the anasazi tribe who have long since gone extinct but were known to be brilliant climbers and cliff dwellers. Sam was pretty excited by this as there is a make of climbing shoe called anasazi. So it was cool to make that connection.

The canyon is only about 75m long but our tour took a full hour and was so worth it.

After the tour we took the bone shaking truck back to base and then headed to horseshoe bend in the daylight this time...

More great pictures, more awesome scenery, etc.

We went back to the hotel for a nap and waited for the canyon night tour.

Unfortunately that didn't happen. We turned up for the tour but no one else did... no guides... no other tourists....

They seemed to have forgotten all about us booking it months before...

We were bitterly disappointed and sulked our way back to the hotel.

[samandjenny-blog]

Page day 2

So day 2 we decided that page wasnt all that and that we needed (needed!) To go to Utah to see monument valley.

It's a short 2 ans a half hour drive there and we stopped at one point to check out a Navajo gift stand where we brought a bow and arrows. As you do.

We saw monument valley in the dying light of the day and took some great pictures of it.

On our way there we had scouted out a few places for night time photography. So as the sun set we drove back from utah and tried to track them down again. The first area was a little too bright so we drove on and found a great location where we hung out for 40 minutes or so getting photos of the milky way (visible to the naked eye, but beautiful on the camera) before we decided to try and get a photo of horseshoe bend with the milky way over it. Foolishly we were convinced our puny torches that we had brought from Wal-Mart earlier that day would be capable of painting the sides of the canyon with light so that it could be captured on film.

We arrived at the bend car park and were told by a couple of hikers that it was about a 10 minute walk.

They lied.

It was a solid 25 mins to the bend but that may have been lengths somewhat by my continuously shrieking and jumping behind Sam everytime I saw a bench and thought it was a coyote. Nevermind that i was making enough noise to scare off all the wildlife in a 10 mile radius. The desert is scary at night.

We finally made it down there and met a couple of austrians who spoke exceptional English. They had just been to the balloon fiesta in alburquerque and gave us some some solid advice about photographing it.

We waited until they had left and sam set up his camera. We stayed a whole 10 minutes before I became so convinced that there were things crawling on me I could no longer stay still. We abandoned the idea and headed back for the 25mins up hill hike back to the car. This time I included large rocks, car headlights, and carefully stacked stones amongst the things that were clearly coyotes come to kill me.

We made it home safely and ate cold pizza from the night before :) to cheer me up.

[samandjenny-blog]

Grand canyon

Ok so I have some serious catching up to do...

We left Vegas for Page, AZ on Wednesday last week and stopped off at the north rim of the grand canyon on our way.

We had a couple of hours hiking through the stunning scenery, enjoying the less crowded side of the canyon. We scrambled all over the rocks to get the best pictures... including when I made my way out over a cantilevered rock outcropping and sat down with my legs over the edge to pose for Sam. I was wearing a hat which covered my long hair and apparently passers by exclaimed 'what the hell is that guy doing??'

Sam pointed out I was a girl and they were even more shocked (they couldn't see my hands going white holding on to the rock) and on their way back told others 'yeah that photographer knows the girl out there'

We got some great shots and had an awesome time spotting deer in the nearby woods.

We made it to page at 8ish and dumped our bags before heading out to grab some food. We finally collided around 11 and passed out.

[samandjenny-blog]

It was huge.

[samandjenny-blog]

big drive day

After a huuuuge breakfast at mammoth, we got in the car and started the 6 hour to Vegas.

The drive took us through inyo national forest, an extremely windy road that went on for about 50 miles of continuous bends and unexpected drops. We then hit Nevada which had a straight freeway of 150 miles, made it very hard to follow speed limits of 65 until a highway patrol officer very kindly pointed out that we were doing 80 and told us to slow down....we then reached Vegas where Sam had a cocktail bigger than his head....

[samandjenny-blog]

Lower Yosemite falls

[samandjenny-blog]

Yosemite

We saw. A snake.

Our one full day in Yosemite was pretty action packed. We got up before dawn and rushed to the park (a full 2 hour drive away. That is how huge this park is) to make the most of the early light. We bundled up with jackets and woolly hats and lamented our lack of gloves as we photographed the misty valleys and snow capped mountains.

We spent the day doing hike after hike, variously getting lost and wandering along paths with no clear destination. Once the sun was up it was boiling and we were in shorts and t shirt for the rest of the day.

We were on a lightly trafficked path when I nearly stepped on an honest-to-god snake. It was a tiny thing and it was just wandering asking the path... Sam was already reaching for his camera as I leapt back yelling. Our shots are completely worthless, but it was still pretty cool.

Much to Sam's disappointment, we didn't see any bears. But we had some awesome hikes and we got to scramble our way up to lower Yosemite falls for some final shots of the day.

The sun had left the valley by the time we were ready to head home. It got cold very quickly as night fell and on our way out of the park we stopped to get some incredible starry night shots.

Sam froze outside waiting for his camera to complete it's 3 min exposure shots and I just sat in the car staring at the sky and watching shooting stars.

[samandjenny-blog]

Dodged that

So a hurried start to the day to get us checked out and breakfasted in time to head to the airport to pick up our rental car.

At the counter we were disappointed when the rental advisor told us that there were no mustangs available. One look at our dejected faces incured such pity that he decided to upgrade us on the sly. So we drove away in a dodge challenger. Much to Sam's delight.

I was pretty terrified by the horrific noise it made at first but after driving it for a while I was kinda won over by how comfy and responsive it was.

We quickly adapted to driving on the wrong side and in an automatic and just got swept up in the incredible scenery around us as we reached Yosemite national park.

We spent the whole day driving and didn't reach our condo until 7 due to how many times we just HAD to get out and take pictures...

Having only one day here is so hard... We have so much to pack into it...

[samandjenny-blog]

San fran day 3

Last day in San Francisco was so nice. We had a chilled start and then set off to snag a good spot to watch the fleet week airship over the bay.

We turned up and Sam thought people were going to be so envious of the lens he borrowed off dan, but when we reached the edge of the pier in fort mason, we found a dozen other photographers who had been camped out since dawn. Each one had at 2 or more cameras and full body harnesses to deal with the weight of the incredibly huge lenses.

Sam filled up an entire 32 gb memory card with photos of the planes as we watched the Canadian display team, the thunderbirds and the blue angels. As well as the seal paratroopers.

We finally trudged back to the hostel hours later and I realised how much I had burnt my shoulders in the 29 degree heat of the day. So we wandered off to find a pharmacy, we then found a tech shop and brought Sam a portable hardrive so he didn't have to keep culling his pictures at the end of each day...

We finished off with dinner at a cute sushi restaurant that had just opened up nearby. Most amazing tuna nigiri I had ever had.

As always, looking forward to tomorrow.

[samandjenny-blog]

Amazing first day...

We woke up far far earlier than intended and had to try and keep ourselves busy until breakfast was served at 7am. After that, it was all go.

We walked to China town and then fisherman's wharf. I kept taking my camera out as I felt the need to justify bringing it along given Sam's technological superiority; but I certainly didn't get any decent shots in the morning.

We hit the wharf at about 11ish and wandered around, finding things to entertain us.... Sam had to pull me away from the souvenier penny pressing machines in order to challenge me at skeeball! I won. Hands down.

We then figured it was time to go laugh at the sea lions; which we did, at great length... before heading to the hard rock cafe for lunch. But after lunch things started to get interesting....

We heard a huge roar of an aircraft and saw one of the blue angels doing some manoeuvres... We figured that we'd already missed it so why bother getting our cameras out.... But after the 3rd time we decided this was a need to see event. We headed to the edge of the pier and took a few hundred photos of them as they made passes...

After that we spent a couple of hours figuring out the public transit system and managed to grab a bus toward the golden gate bridge. We got some great shots near the bus stop but then we decided to go explore some other opportunities... We ended up on the beach, at sunset, racing the tide to get the best shot in the dying light. It was spectacular.

Cannot wait for what tomorrow brings.

[samandjenny-blog]

Arrived in San Fran

So this has been a long day....

It started at 4 am in London with final packing and ended at 7pm in San Fran when Sam finally caved and went to bed. But that doesn't sound dramatic until you consider the 8 hours time difference put bedtime at around 3 in the morning UK time :/

We've picked up some leaflets but planning our first day is going to have to wait for breakfast time tomorrow :)

[samandjenny-blog]

Taxis

Just got on the ferry homeward bound! We have spent an abominable amount of money on taxis, the second taxi was going up at 10 cents every three seconds! but glad to be on the ferry where we can relax for a bit before a mad rush to get us to our homes

[samandjenny-blog]

Last day

We started out early and got up at 7 to get breakfast then go to Disneyland. We ran in to a bit of trouble with finding how to get the train there and had to pay 15 euros each for train tickets. Buy at about 930 we arrived at Disney. Sam had a massive grin in his face as we explored, I'm not going to lie, I did too. We queues for ages to get on big thunder mountain only for it to be closed due to technical difficulties when we were just about to step onto the ride. We went on a few other rides, including sans first loop the loop roller coaster. After a bit of a disappointing lunch we wandered around the park and wet over to Disney studios for a tour. We must have been having fun because time flew and it was 730 before we left. We both got ourselves hoodies, Sam is stitch and I'm grumpy. When we got to the trim station we found that our tickets didn't work... We asked for help and we were told that we had used them all already. Even though we had return tickets it seemed that we accidentally had used both sets to tickets through the two different turn styles. I thought try would just look at u with pity and say silly tourists but instead we had to pay for new tickets. We were a bit peeved when we got on the train but we made up for it when we turned up at the Eiffel tower. It was light when we arrives so we got some really great photos. We got in the queue and got out tickets to the top. We had to wait in a lot of queues for the different lifts but it was worth it when we got to the top. It was dark by then and the city was lit up perfectly. We went back down again after a while and stopped in the first floor to look around. As we got to the railings there was a huge cheer. Although they were probably cheering at our arrival, I guess some might have been looking at the tower which had started to twinkle and sparkle its lights all over. We got back to the bottom and went back to the same spot as before for some awesome night pics. It was about 1130 by the time we left. We had planned on having a romantic last night in Paris, with a sit down meal somewhere fancy, instead we had McDonald's in the reception of the hostel. We've had a really incredible time on this trip and I hope to do this sort of thing again one day.