ESTA renewal
$14 (€12.88 / $14.00 / £11.46)

ESTA renewal
$14 (€12.88 / $14.00 / £11.46)
Leaving Los Angeles, USA at 12:55am (-07:00) on Sunday the 16th of October 2016 and arriving in Osaka, Japan at 8:20am (+09:00) on Monday the 17th of October 2016
at a cost of £455.60
So far I've met a leather-clad blues player called Jim and a lovely almost-80 year old lady called Glenda, who has been telling me about her various travel adventures. This is the tenth time Jim has made this journey, from Ohio to Arizona, and Glenda has been on the train since where it started in Chicago (she got off in Tuscon). During our four-hour layover in San Marcos I also met some early-twenties new army recruits, who invited me to go find a bar with them; I declined and stayed on the train to talk to Glenda instead.
The majority of this journey has been through two nights, but the daytime took us through Texan desert, including Marfa (where a bunch of famous movies including No Country For Old Men) were filmed. Valentine, where there's an art exhibition which is a replica of a Prada shop (complete with the latest shoes and purses), and not much else. Sierra Blanca, where the main economy is United States Border Patrol. The Mexican border, inclusive of small wall. One of the train crew is helpfully providing commentary. And plenty of desert brush and interesting mountains.
Apparently passed close enough to the Mexican border that Three have charged me now almost £25 for data not included in my free roaming. Including around £15 during a period of time when I disabled the SIM completely to stop this from happening any more. Hopefully they'll give me a refund. I wasn't even using the phone, it was just background activity. Sigh.
Finally left Texas for a stint through New Mexico. Things started to get greener once we were in Arizona.
After watching the sunset over Tuscon (and a couple of movies) I went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later, over an hour early, in LA.
Leaving Austin, Texas, USA at 6:30pm (-05:00) on Wednesday the 12th of October 2016 and arriving in Los Angeles, USA at 5:35am (-07:00) on Friday the 14th of October 2016
at a cost of $121
I found this purple beanie under the bed in the first flat I moved into in Edinburgh. I washed it, and wore it every winter for years. It's big, and stretchy, and after I dreaded my hair it still fit unlike the rest of my hats. It has plenty of space at the back so when I put my hair up it fits over the top.
I lost it in Providence, RI, last Saturday. It fell out of my coat pocket somewhere downtown.
We had a good run.
It costs $11.50 to get to Providence from Boston on the MBTA commuter rail, and takes about an hour. Amtrak is faster, but costs more.
The weather was gloomy and the city was very quiet. We found an African drum festival in a bar and hung out there for 45 minutes or so.
We walked to The Grange vegetarian restaurant for lunch. Lunch was after 3pm so they just had the bar menu. We ate peanut fried cauliflower, fries, and seitan tacos. It was all delicious and greasy and satisfying. Then we moved to their 'lounge' area for tea, a scone and a muffin, and a couple of hours of hacking. It was cosy and we sat on a swing seat. We packed up when the restaurant started to get really busy for dinner, around 6pm.
We walked back through downtown, to Vinya Test Kitchen, a month-old fancypants raw vegan place. There were only two other people in there. The food was delectable. We shared a starter (tree nut cheese tasting board), main (spinach pie with fancy mushrooms, pea tendrils, and a pecan flax crust) and dessert (pumpkin macademia cheesecake with hazelnut apricot crust) between two of us. And drank a tangy apple and lemon juice, and a bitter, thick orange and rhubarb juice. The waitress commended us for "eating so slowly and mindfully" and we didn't mention that we'd had a fairly big lunch only a couple of hours prior. I recommend trying this place on a full stomach though, as it really did enable us to savour each bite which had been so lovingly prepared (as raw food always is). Our total was a bit under $60 in the end.
We chatted with the chef, Sam Bonanno, for quite some time after the meal. She told us about her raw food experiences in Boston and the rest of the world. Definitely check this place out if you're in Providence and love fine food.
We went to check out the Firewater, which happens something like every weekend over the summer. The canal is filled with floating things which are lit on fire. There's stalls and food and stuff. It was pretty nice. We also found a Breast Cancer festival.
We took the last MBTA train back to Boston at 10pm. The ticket booths were closed and they wouldn't take card on the train and the ticket app wouldn't install on my version of Android. But the staff left us alone in the end and we got a free ride.
Leaving Lisbon, Portugal at 12:30pm (+01:00) on Sunday the 25th of September 2016 and arriving in Boston, MA, USA at 4:55pm (-04:00) on Sunday the 25th of September 2016
Leaving Boston, MA, USA at 7:00pm (-04:00) on Tuesday the 13th of September 2016 and arriving in Reykjavik, Iceland (airport) at 4:30am (+00:00) on Wednesday the 14th of September 2016
The feelings of foreboding that comes with crowds gathering and fireworks being set up a stone's throw from my apartment. No sleep tonight.
Happy 4 July!
Humbug.
Leaving Boston, MA, USA at 7:00pm (-04:00) on Friday the 1st of July 2016 and arriving in Falmouth, MA, USA at 8:40pm (-04:00) on Friday the 1st of July 2016
at a cost of $34
Sitting on the sofa in my host's lovely home after a fun evening with her family. Fiona, the timid cat, was eyeing me up like she wants to be on the sofa but is too shy to ask. She eventually elected for the top of a big cat toy across the room, from where she continues to watch me resentfully. Yoshi, the less timid cat, is content in a little basket.
I got up lateish this morning and after coffee and breakfast and talking about pets, my host and I drove to La Jolla, an upscale seaside neighbourhood in the north of San Diego. We walked along the coast, enjoying the sun, watching the waves crash and baby seals play in the surf.
We drove back to pick up supplies and make lentil and black bean chilli, cilantro and almond pesto (who knew pesto goes with chilli) in time for her nieces and their families to arrive for dinner. A nice evening talking about travel, tech, and life in general. A four year old instructed me on stirring the chilli, ate copious amounts of my homemade coconut oil+cocoa+coconut sugar chocolate, and made me draw snowflakes and build a helicopter from blocks. Once I was on the floor amongst the child chaos it was hard to get up again.
I arrived in San Diego on the Greyhound, struggled to figure out how to top up a public transit card with anything other than a $7 day pass, gave up and jumped on an approaching bus because they're infrequent, didn't have the right change so resigned myself to giving up $5, and a nice lady supplied my missing $1 so I could make the correct fare after all. So that was a welcoming start.
The bus announcement voices have a kind of lisp... "stop requischtid"
Turns out San Diego is one of those US cities where I can't get a data connection on my phone.
My CouchSurfing host had been held up, so she let me know where to find the spare key, and I let myself into her house, and hung out with her beautiful fluffy cat, Kafka. Kafka wanted all of the cuddles.
My host came home and we drank tea and chatted. I went to Sprouts grocery store (very similar to Wholefoods) for a quick instant-noodle dinner, then eventually crashed. I had a mattress on the floor in a private room. The next morning my host left for work before I woke up, and I enjoyed a reasonably productive morning on her couch catching up on life and administrative tasks. Kafka helped with my CHI expense report by sitting on all of my receipts as I tried to sort them out.
Eventually I ventured out. I walked through University Heights and Hillcrest, cool districts with lots of lively restaurants and thrift shops. I found the Spruce Street suspension bridge, which is where a normal neighbourhood is suddenly a canyon full of trees with a massive bridge across. It was stable, but moved just enough underfoot to be unnerving.
I proceeded to Balboa Park, which I've heard was worth going to, but imagined like a park, not massive canyons and hills. It felt wild and had groundhogs darting around but it's also sliced through by freeways, so had that special USAmerican kind of nature vibe. There were pretty good views of downtown San Diego from some points. By accident I ended up in the central part of the park which is suddenly civilised and full of museums (none of which were free). There's a botanical 'building' that looks like it's made from massive bamboo straws or something. Lots of people around and I walked through the background of at least one wedding and one graduation ceremony. I saw cable cars overhead and looked for them, but figured eventually they must be in the zoo. I wandered more, aiming for where HappyCow told me would be a vegan restaurant. I found the WorldBeat Cultural Center, which it turns out is where the restaurant was, and hung out there for a couple of hours eating Jamaican curry and a big cinnamon roll. Food was good and cheap, and atmosphere was quiet and friendly and hippie. Stuff going on in the background like business meetings and dance classes; was a nice backdrop to get my laptop out for a bit.
My legs were aching by that point. Not from the 7 mile walk I'd just done surely... but perhaps from the fact I'd walked about an average of ten miles every day for over a week. My CS host offered to pick me up! Which she did, and then gave me a driving tour of downtown San Diego, and Coronado island. Coronado is an upscale neighbourhood on an island, surrounding a military base, reachable across a massive road bridge. We parked and took a walk along the front; mostly fancy hotels, beaches, posh people..
We ate at Muzita Ethiopian restaurant (yum!) and my host dropped me at a transit station where I caught a bus to my next CS destination.
My new host picked me up from the bus stop! (Americans and cars! Not complaining..). I met her kitties and we talked about pets and breakfast and plans for the weekend. Then I went to sleep in a lovely room of my own with a real bed in it.
I had a really great experience at @mendocinofarms this evening. I was on my way to Golden Mean when I stuck my nose in to see what they had, and ended up staying for a vegan Samosa Dosa, and iced tea. Unusual service sequence of: order with the staff on the door, who then gives you a tracking device and sends you to the counter to pay, where you also get bombarded with free samples of salads (spicy potato salad was ace!). The Samosa Dosa is a hefty wholewheat wrap containing curried cauliflower, chickpeas, potatoes, spinach, onions and some kind of mayo-y substance. It was really filling and delicious; every time I thought I understood it I'd encounter a new flavour or texture combination. And the iced tea was incredible. It's black tea, unsweetened (or I wouldn't have bothered) but it contains passionfruit (which I didn't know when I ordered) giving it this awesome delicate floral twist. It's also a nice space to chill, and I stayed there for a couple of hours pootling around on Twitter. The staff were really sweet, cheerful and friendly and after about an hour and a half kept coming over to offer refills of my iced tea (I declined, I was stuffed). To top it all off, it was very reasonably priced. To top it all off, it was very reasonably priced. At least, compared to what I'd been getting used to paying in LA: sandwich under $9 and iced tea around $3.
I recommend! cc @veganstraightedge
Leaving Portland, Oregon, USA at 8:50pm (-07:00) on Tuesday the 7th of June 2016 and arriving in San Francisco, USA at 10:46am (-07:00) on Tuesday the 7th of June 2016
at a cost of $103.10
Leaving San Francisco, USA at 9:49pm (-07:00) on Friday the 10th of June 2016 and arriving in Boston, MA, USA at 6:31am (-04:00) on Saturday the 11th of June 2016
at a cost of $219.10
Leaving Boston, MA, USA at 6:38pm (-04:00) on Thursday the 2nd of June 2016 and arriving in Portland, Oregon, USA at 9:50pm (-07:00) on Thursday the 2nd of June 2016
at a cost of $252.10
Deflating in beautiful Hidden Peak teashop. No photos, because no electronics allowed! I'm sinking into a soft, velvety plum red chair with dark wooden arms. The decor is tea paraphenelia, Asian rugs, paneling and wood carving. I can't place the music; it has a Middle Eastern Lint and is chanty. In the front of the shop are tea hardware and decor for sale as well as shelves of books. Lamps and dragons. The seating ranges from wooden chairs and stools to squishy (yet still elegant) armchairs and couches. The lighting is soft with a burgundy ambiance from the walls and dark wood flooring and furniture.
I'm sipping Dama, a Yunnan, and couldn't resist picking one of their four raw vegan desserts (an orange, cardamom cup with cashew cream). They have $400+ (per serving) pu-erhs on the menu, which made me smile. They're very serious about tea here. As anyone should be. I came across this place by accident as I wandered through town looking for a place to sit, and it's perfect. There seems to be a guy here who has brought his tea-novice friends for a pu-erh tasting. That's a test of a friendship.
I'm unwinding and sinking and stretching because I walked about 15 miles today. I'm glad I managed to drag myself out of bed for the 0830 35A to Big Basin. I followed this guide and started out on the Sunset Trail, through forests of giant Redwoods. I deviated by accident to Timm's Creek and doubled back to see Silver Falls and Golden Falls after Berry Creek Falls. Despite this, I remained between one and two hours ahead of schedule according to the times given in the guide. I also detoured (deliberately this time) to Sunset Camp; the guide said not to bother but the trail up was very pretty. A change in foliage, footing and lighting from the forest.
The stretch that followed Waddell Creek was long and samey. But the guide hadn't prepared me for the stretch around a precarious edge of a mountain with a beautiful view of Waddell Beach. Seeing the destination made the last few miles a little easier; especially when the destination was glittering sea and sand.
Ready to thrust my feet into the ocean, I came across park rangers with a variety of local snakes. My new friend Bandita (a King Snake) investigated me throughly before folding herself in half and nesting under my hoodie, stretched around my bank in the nook left by my backpack, with her middle poking out one end and her head and tail out of the other. I patiently stood for about 15 minutes as other hikers came and went, none committing to take over as snake-bed. Eventually I had to wake her so I could go collapse on the beach.
I had 45 minutes before the number 40 bus back to Santa Cruz. I plunged my feet into the mouth of the creek and ate leftover Saturn Cafe pie. When heading back to the bus I saw humpback whales spraying and playing in the surf.
I had no phone signal all day, and after the 40 minute bus ride I walked through downtown looking for somewhere to sit down and catch up. And yet it's somehow a relief that Hidden Peak tells me I'm not allowed to.
Oh, I did only eat old bagels all day after all. And a banana, leftover noodles, some chips from the bus station, and leftover pie. Later... pizza.