virtual vacation - New York

following on from my yesterday's post about helping me come up with travel suggestions for my cousin Deb who is coming all the way from Perth, Australia in a few days for a month long round the US trip - let's start with New York!

I have been to New York 3 times and still haven't seen half of it, as I guess is true of all places we visit - which I guess is why I am a fan of living in different places, it's the only way to truly see a place... but, I digress.

I've done the carriage ride in Central park, been to the top of the Empire State building, visited Times Square, Chinatown, dined at chic cafes in SoHo, and seen shows on Broadway, but I know there are so many more things to see...

So I think the best way to do this is split this up into places to see, things to eat, and stuff to do.

let's start with tourists attractions in New York - which ones do you think are must sees versus hours of waiting around for an anti-climax?

Olivia gave me some great tips on:

Rooftop bars (sounds so cool and hip)

• 230 Fifth
• Plunge @ Hotel Gansevoort
• Dream Hotel

Secret/Prohibition Bars

• The Back Room
• Little Branch
• PDT (Please Don't Tell) - you go to a hot dog cafe and then step into a london phone booth and a door will open:)

Good Eats

• Buddhakan
• Alta
• Pastis
• Ariba Ariba
• Norma's

Where else should we send her?

photo from Natasha here

want to plan a virtual vacation?

My cousin Deb is coming to the US in a few days, and is going to be in New York, Chicago, Orlando, Nashville, Dallas, Vegas and San Francisco. She'll be spending just over a month touring round and has been asking me for months for ideas, and me being very lame am only just getting around to it (yeah, I know - I suck)... anyhoo, I was thinking that we could have some fun and plan a virtual roadtrip to these places and come up with some ideas of cool things she could do (making up for my lack of planning ahead) what do you think???

so here is where you guys come in - I need recommendations on fun things to do in all these cities, then I'll post (over the next few days) some of the things I have come up with and we can add it altogether.

Here is her rough itinerary:

New York - 1 to 9 August

Chicago - 9 to 14 August

Orlando - 14 to 18 August

Nashville - 18 to 21 August

Dallas - 21 to 24 August

Las Vegas - 24 to 28 August

San Francisco - 28 August

Depart Los Angeles - 5 September

and technically it's not a road trip because she is flying from city to city, but that gives extra time in each place :)

spring in sonoma sneak peek

we had such a fantastic time in sonoma this weekend, and of course I took way too many photos, so here's a sneak peek until I can sort through the pics tonight.

have a great monday!

powdery skiing last week

here's some photos from last week's trip to the snow, this time to Kirkwood (near Tahoe). the drive up there was beautifulthe sun was shiningand it was time to get back on my new skiswe couldn't have asked for better weatherLexie and Bryce at the top of the mountain (Hannah took this pic on her phone, since I was too chicken to go up at this point... and you can see why I might be chicken...

I preferred to ski with little people like this cute little dudeHere's Bryce (laying down), Lexie (with her hands in the air), Hannah (kneeling) and Ken (my very cool boss in the foreground)
the snow started falling sunday afternoon

which meant gorgeous conditions for Monday!

and there was nobody on the slopes

sunshine and lots of snow

here's a video I took of me enjoying the powdery snow

me as cyclops
and by Tuesday I made it to the very top of the mountain
where the views were spectacular!

sleep in a tree?

I took one look at this place in sunset magazine and knew that I wanted to sleep here - isn't this so romantic?

road trip

we're hitting the road again today and taking a road trip to Portland, Oregon to visit Bryce's family for Thanksgiving. It's a 12 hour drive, and we hear there might be snow on the way, so we're going to take it easy.

I hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving (for those of you in the US) and a great week to the rest of you!

El Tour de Tucson

*Warning* You might want to grab a cup of coffee, this is gonna be a long 109 mile post...

This weekend we flew to Tucson, Arizona for El Tour de Tucson, the largest bicycling event in the US. Peter, a friend of ours talked Bryce into competing in the crazy 109 mile road race across Tucson about 8 months ago and he's been donning his little lycra shorts and training for it as often as he could ever since.

On Saturday morning we got up at some ridiculous hour (5am'ish) to join the thousands of people who willingly do this race every year.

It was quite the spectacle seeing the sea of helmets and lycra - people come from all over the US and the world to compete

look at him in his bright orange jersey with tyres to match - we thought for sure we'd be able to see him coming in this get up!

but it seemed you needed to be a bit more creative to stand out amoungst all these bikers

The race started at a chilly downtown Tucson at 7am with over 2000 bikers heading off for the 109 mile part of the race. The sun was hardly up and being the desert it was freezing cold

Peter kindly brought his tandem bike along so he and I could ride the first part of the race with Bryce to cheer him on

but the place was a zoo and we lost him straight away - everybody just looked the same on all those bikes... so we decided to ride for a while and see if we could see him.

Riding a tandem bike was a new experience for me, and at first a little freaky since I was in the back with no control of the steering or the brakes and I just basically had to keep my feet on the peddles and make sure I kept up with Peter.

but it was kinda cool, with my hands free I got to take some good shots :)

this guy was the craziest guy we came across, and I am not just talking about that outfit...

here he is (bad photo) on a unicycle...

Yes! see him behind me? that's right 1 wheel for 109 miles... talk about madness!

there were all sorts of people on all sorts of bikes

and lots of police presence to make sure everyone stayed safe - all the roads were closed down to let the bikers through.

here we decided that we were not going to be able to catch Bryce and thought we'd take a shortcut and head him off at the next spot

so we headed back to the car crossing the finish line on the way (only about 5 hours too early...) but I cheered out loud and pretended that we won anyway - just for the fun of it :P

So with the bike on the car (my butt was so happy to not be on the bike anymore...) we made a quick pit-stop at Starbucks at U of A

we grabbed a much needed coffee and some breakie, saw this cool car and then started heading out to where the race was continuing

We took the scenic route

which was spectacular - you could see all of Tucson from up here

and lots of cacti

and then some more

the day was so clear and the sky so blue

then we came across some bikers and proceeded to look at every guy in an orange shirt with a white helmet, in hopes of seeing Bryce to give him some protein bars and water and stuff

but we still couldn't see him - if only he had worn an outfit like this guy... we might have stood a chance

we jumped back in the car and headed to the river crossing as we were sure we'd be able to catch him here. this is the place they had to get off their bikes and walk across a dry river bed for about a mile in those little biker shoes they all wore... (we saw lots of people crash here) as if riding your bike for 109 miles was not enough, they had to throw in some danger to keep it interesting...

It was here that Bryce said he saw a guy with 1 leg competing - he had no femur (so no leg at all) and here he hopped along the dirty rocky riverbed using his bike as a crutch - that's what I call determination!

we found some guys in orange shirts - but no Bryce...

we were turning out to be a bad sag (support and gear) vehicle...

but on the flip side I was getting a wonderful tour of Tucson myself!

and some great photo opportunities :)

here is a shot of some kids that were competing in the shorter leg of the race - just a wee 35 miles... it was here that my phone rang - it was Bryce and he was at the finish line!

so we headed back downtown and finally we found him!

not sure how we missed him in all that orange...

he placed 1276 out of 3633 in his 109 mile class (about 7000 people raced in total) Congratulations honey! :*