Contrasts

It's the end of our day in Las Vegas. Thank god. Driving into the city we could see the thick brown haze sitting on top of the city like a showgirl's feather. It took us a good half an hour to travel about a mile on the freeway before turning onto the infamous 'Strip', where we are staying in the garish Flamingo hotel and casino, formerly owned (I kind of like this part) by the mob.
We spent the day today wandering up and down the strip exploring the various casinoes, and saw such delights as a 5-ish-storey high coke bottle, a miniature Manhattan, some really bored lions, some really expensive coffee, and excess, excess, excess, excess, excess (you get my point).
The contrast could not be more marked between today and yesterday, when we continued for an hour past Las Vegas to visit the Valley of Fire State Park, secluded and perfectly quiet, where the ancient, weathered rock burned red in the late afternoon light, and we drove away as the sun set over the dark, distinct mountains with a sliver of moon accenting it all.

Snow-man's Land

Yesterday, on Christmas Eve-day, Jerry, Poldy and I had our first snow. We drove up to Shaver Lake in the Sierra National Forest, stopping along the way to buy tyre chains from some unbelievably nice people in an auto parts store. They guaranteed us snow as we travelled further up the highway. And sure enough, ten minutes later we started to see the white stuff on the edges of the road. It turned into a coating on the ground, and then a covering for ground, houses, cars and trees, whose skinny branches were striped with the stuff.

When we got to the sign that said Shaver Lake, it was actually snowing. We parked in a car park, not sure yet where the actual lake was, but excited to get out there and make the promised snowman (Poldy has been rather impressed with the many inflatable snowmen he has seen in peoples' front yards - particularly those with Christmas dioramas inside their bellies). We coated Poldy in many layers of puff and jumped out to play. Several snowballs, one snowman and more than one big flying stack later, the snow started to get heavier; much heavier. We overheard some Americans hurriedly making to leave, and thought - probably over-reactingly - that we'd better get out of there. So all in all, we spent about fifteen minutes in the snow, and we never saw Shaver Lake. But it was pretty magical.

Big Sur

We got to spend a couple of nights in a cabin in Big Sur, a stretch of gob-smackingly beautiful coast in California. It rained a lot, but we managed to get out into it a little bit. In fact we were very rugged and adventuresome, and (look away, Dad) forded a little river of freeezing cold water in our bare feet. It felt very Fellowship of the Ring.

After it had started raining proper, I donned our enornous new yellow rain poncho, in which I looked like the mother ship of the yellow highlighters (shame there's no photo) to take the short walk to see this sight in the Julia Pfeiffer Burns National Park:

San Francisco

We loved San Francisco, hills notwithstanding. Chinatown especially, where we imagined Lee from 'East of Eden' consulting the mah jongg-playing elders about 'timshel'. The weather was fine, the architecture lovely, the hotel pretty cushy and the shopping excruciatingly good. And there were murals everywhere you looked.

Our intrepid boy

I feel compelled to write a post in praise of our wonderful little traveller, who has been so adaptable and made this trip such a joy so far. We're putting him through all sorts of trials - cold, jet lag, long days, sixteen layers of clothes, American food - and he has taken everything we've thrown at him with perfect (well, toddler-perfect) grace, and at the same time enhanced our experience by his enthusiasm and joy, not to mention how he has helped us connect with the locals. And even yesterday when he had a meltdown in the car that forced us to pull over and comfort him, he chose this spot to do it:

Christmas trees I have seen #2

Lame; Boston Common

Bahston

We were lucky enough to be hosted for a few days in the stately and serene (compared to New York) town of Boston by some of the nicest people in the world, Tamsin, James and their lovely son Gus, who was immensely enjoyed by Poldy.

Embarrassment fatigue

Inevitably when travelling, one does something totally gauche and embarrassing at least once a day. For example, today Jerry and I forgot the size of an American 'slice' of pizza in a San Francisco restaurant and ordered enough to feed most of the Bay Area. Luckily the American people are polite and kind enough not to make you feel worse about it, but when it's happenning every day, it's best to just get used to the feeling.

It's a phenomenon I had forgotten in between trips; thankfully it belongs to that category of travel feelings and experiences - along with the constant weariness and discomfort - that leave your mind pretty much the moment you step off the plane at home, when you only remember all the wonder and excitement. Sometimes I think travel is better for remembering it than for actually doing it at the time.

New York street food...

...is as bad as it looks. But if you want to eat like an emperor for 20 bucks:

Chinese takeaway.

Poldy gets down to ancient Andean horn music

Christmas trees I have seen

The most beautiful I have ever seen:

In the American Museum of Natural History, a tree decorated with origami animals.

And the worst in every way:

In Grand Central Station. Yes, a Christmas tree made of TVs.

Times Square

I am pictured here on the street just where we emerged from the Times Square subway station, in front of what we thought at the time must be Times Square. Then we turned the corner and saw it (and the following image nowhere near does it justice).

I wish I had been taking video while we were there, because only with audio - and probably not even then - could you fully comprehend the chaotic assault on the senses presented by this place. It was raining, the crowds were mad, there were taxis honking and about four fire engines came past us, sirens wailing and horns furiously blasting as they tried to get through the traffic. Grumpy, damp, and lacking the day's first cup of coffee at about 3pm, we tried to find some shelter from the madness in Macy's department store - forgetting that it is two weeks until Christmas...

 

Death and Taxidermy

We went to the American Museum of Natural History yesterday, thinking Poldy might enjoy it. He sure did, but the museum itself is amazingly old-school, packed with dusty stuffed animals in half-arsed dioramas - but still sort of fun - perhaps mainly because of watching Poldy squeal and run from exhibit to exhibit, saying 'am'mals'. Also the dancing (Poldy's) to traditional Andean horn music was kinda funny (video to come soon, hopefully).

There's some pretty impressive taxidermy there, but it's also pretty sad - looking at a whole frozen pride of lions and wondering if they were really the one pride, once. Does visiting this place inspire people towards conservation? I don't really think so. And would it not be better just to go to a zoo and see these same animals, actually alive?

On a similar, conservation/environment note, I was sick to my stomach this morning when the morning news/chat show did a segment on recycling - this amazing town in somewhere-or-other, where everybody does it! You keep your recyclables separate, and put them in their own wheelie bin! Imagine! And to make things even worse, the people in this town were doing it because they were paid to. Any optimism I may have had left that we could get it together in time to stop the world from carking it has taken a serious hit since I went to the supermarket here and got everything in double plastic bags.

crunch

Our first bite out of the big apple. Apparently the cliche can't be resisted.

Emphasis on the 'big', by the way. How come nobody ever told us that New York is so vast? We've been here for three days now, walked miles upon miles, and not even seen an edge of the island. That is, not since we flew over it on our way in at half-past midnight last Saturday morning - an unforgettable sight - like a map carpeted with light, or the most decadent piece of jewellery; its outlines clearly etched, features, such as Central Park and the Empire State Building, clearly visible.

So far Poldy has been an absolute champion of a travelling companion. He was excellent on the flight - he stayed well contained, didn't get upset, and was happy to sleep on our laps, which basically has never happened before. The only problem was the gigantic screen in the bulkhead blaring in our faces all night. Six hours waiting in LA was fine. Jet lag, however, seems a little more pronounced in little kids. For the first two nights he woke up at 11pm (3pm Melbourne time, when he normally wakes from his afternoon nap), and bounced off the walls for a good two or three hours. But travelling with a child is worth any hassle at all, that is if you want to make connections with the locals. He has received so many smiles and comments, and opened the way into conversations for us, which always makes travelling more fulfilling.

Since I have limited internet time, some first impressions:
New Yorkers are kind, polite, friendly and lovely!
It's, um, really really cold.
I've come up with the theory that American food is 'lowest-common-denominator' food: the savoury stuff tastes of salt and not much else, and the sweet (and also sometimes the savoury) stuff tastes of sugar and not much else.
Coffee in New York is not bad, not bad at all!
We did pretty well with our cold weather gear - we look like locals, and have been asked for directions many times.

Highlights:
Aforementioned unforgettable aerial view.
Reading books on the floor of Barnes & Noble with Poldy and a random bossy little girl.
Friendly New Yorkers.
Bagels!
Central Park - no wonder Manhattanites can't see any reason to live anywhere else, with all that open space in the middle of the city.
Soul food in Harlem: waffles with bacon, fried chicken and maple syrup. Sorry, arteries.
Lying in bed with Poldy in full silly mode, him squeezing my nose and saying 'honk', repeatedly.

Lowlights:
An attack on bad tummy somewhere on Lexington Ave, with no idea of the nearest 'restroom'.
Unfriendly flight attendants on United. What price courtesy? Apparently about $500 (the price difference between United and Qantas).
Aforementioned 'happy hours' in the middle of the night.

More to come soon.

Butterflies

And sort of octopusses and stingrays.

Luckily I have the soothing task of getting my book off to the printer to relax me.

This is just one outfit

One of the downsides of being (married to) a teacher is that if you want to go somewhere for longer than two weeks, you will always have to go in December/January. So we're pretty much going to see half the world in winter. Really winter. I just checked the weather forecast for New York and we are looking at a pleasant-sounding 37 degrees fahrenheit as the maximum for our first day there... which is actually a rather frightening 2.7 degrees celsius. Snow is forecast for our second day.

How will we cope? We'll see. I've had lots of advice from Australian friends: 'don't wear flat-soled shoes, the cold goes straight up through your feet' (oh yes, I'm definitely going to wear high heels while travelling with a toddler); 'make sure you have one of those big puffy coats' (have coat, don't have puff); and 'layers, layers, layers' (yes, yes, yes). Meanwhile, a few American acquaintances have enjoyed to pooh-pooh the whole concept of being cold in New York's mild December climes, which is lovely and comforting, but I don't quite believe them. Who do I believe, the ones that know? Or the ones that know what it's like to be a total wuss in the cold? We'll find out soon enough.

The Big Plan (or, watching caution go fluttering away)

Travel makes us happy. Owning stuff doesn't (unless it's, you know, the complete series of Buffy on DVD or a particularly schmancy miniature to paint). So it's a wonder that it took us such a long time to realise that the money we had been saving for a house deposit would really be better spent on some of those big fat expensive plane tickets to other parts of the world. I try to gauge what's worth doing in my life by flashing forward to my death bed, where I then flash back to what I've done and whether I'm glad of it. I figure I'll be much happier to have had an interesting life than to have owned a house (not mutually exclusive for everyone, of course).

And on a similar note, I can't think of anything more valuable we could give our child than a worldly perspective, an open heart and an open mind, and there's nothing that gives that more than travel.

So, Big Trip #1 is almost upon us. We've never travelled further than Bright with our little boy before, so we're starting off 'easy' - the USA: English-speaking, infrastructurey, familiar, the veritable home of mod-cons and we have family and friends there. It's only a few days away now, so watch this space.