My Easter Weekend

Have you ever wondered what kind of trip you can plan over a three day weekend? With less than one weeks notice, this is what I came up with....

Day 1: The Tulip Festival in northern Washington.

It's the perfect time of year to see the flowers in bloom and I was blown away by how beautiful it was. Imagine staring at acres full of tulips stretching out as far as the eye can see. It was just gorgeous and this photo does not do it justice.

On a side note - I think that tulips are my new favorite flower!

Day 2: Drive to Vancouver, BC and walk across The Capilano Suspension Bridge .

Built in 1889, the bridge is a whopping 230 ft above the Capilano River and 450 ft long. Did I mention that it sways, shakes and moves while you are walking across it? I am not going to lie - I was scared as all get out my first time across! Of course, I was on it when this 18 year old jackass grabbed both rails and started shaking it back and forth...at that point I thought I was going to have to start crawling to the other side. Luckily, a nice lady on the intercom told him to stop and I walked the rest of the way.

Once on the other side of the bridge they had signs directing you to the "treetop adventure". It's a shorter series of 6 bridges that run between several trees to give you a "squirrels eye view" of the forest. The short bridges were neat but more importantly I used them as practice before my final run across the big one.

On my last walk across the 'big one' I discovered that the fewer amount of people on the bridge; the more stable it is. Therefore, I waited for it to clear out before I went across. Because it was less shaky, I was able to stand in the middle of the bridge and snap some photos and admire the view for a bit without white knuckling the railing! Here is a straight shot down to the river blow - yikes! I stayed the night in Vancouver and the next morning headed to the Granville Island Public Market. It was my first time at such a large public market and I loved it - it made me wish that I had one closer to where I live!

Vancouver was great and I definitely need to go back and spend some more time there. There are a million bridges that connect different parts of the city and here is one of them:

I thought these birds were cool - not to mention there were about 200 of them.

Day 3: Drive to Seattle. I got a late start because I spent so much time on Granville Island that I got into Seattle around 6pm. After checking into my hotel I walked down to Pike Place Market. I wanted to see the guys throwing fish but unfortunately almost all the vendors had shut down. Here is a photo that I shot later on in the evening.

My next stop was the Space Needle. I got there as the sun was setting and it was fun just messing around with my camera to see what kind of photos I could get. I think that this one is kind of interesting:

It was surprisingly more difficult that I imagined trying to take photos that wouldn't come out blurry. The later in the evening that it got, the more the wind picked up and the building began to sway. Not good for trying to get decent shots.

And from the bottom up:

When it was all said and done I came home with nearly 500 photos to sort through...which is just crazy but wonderful at the same time. I loved having the time just to screw around and get creative with my camera again.

I also realized that I can now mark Washington off my list of "states to see". That makes 39 down and only 11 more to go. They are:

*Alaska *Oregon *Montana *Idaho *Utah *Wyoming *Rhode Island *Vermont *New Hampshire *Maine *Louisiana

Anyone up for an adventure?

Who Knew A Ford Escort Had That Much Power?

Have you ever seen a Ford Escort take out a street light pole? As of about 7pm tonight, I can say that I have.

I was sitting in the parking lot of a store talking on my cell phone when all of the sudden I hear this huge boom and see a light pole falling down. It was the craziest thing - a little ford escort must have lost control and hit the pole with such force that it knocked over the pole and then completely turned the car around so it was facing oncoming traffic.

Luckily everyone in the car was OK but holy crap! I've never seen an accident like that happen right in front of my eyes - it was W-I-L-D.

Reality TV At Its Finest

So I finally had some time to watch a little TV this weekend and I was excited to run across a commercial for the third season of Deadliest Catch. I have no idea why I love this show but it has certainly become one of my favorites. When I hit up Google images for some crab fishing photos, I was surprised to see that one of the fishermen from the show ( Corey Arnold ) is also a photographer. Here are a couple of his photos:

Both of these photos came from this site since I couldn't access anything on his direct page.

Speaking of reality TV - it reminded me of a question that my friend Nate would always ask on his annual birthday quiz: If you could be on any reality TV show - which would it be? For me, it would be the Amazing Race. What about you?

Edinburgh / London

Edinburgh, Scotland is my new favorite city and I would move there tomorrow if I had the chance.

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland and has a population under 500,000. The city felt clean, safe and was so much less intimidating than London. It doesn't hurt that the people were all very friendly and welcoming of us. Including one Scot that proclaimed his love for me - which was actually a bit scary.


It was funny to run across a guy who had a sign stating "piper for hire" playing on the street corner (below). It was freezing cold out and starting to rain but this guy just played on. I'll admit, it was pretty cool to be walking around with bagpipes in the background.


In order to make the most of our time in Edinburgh and to see as much as possible, we took one day to ride the tour buses. I'm not generally a fan of these but it was nice to know what you were looking at and to learn some of the local history.

One of the tour buses took us out to the coast and I was able to snap this quick shot. I love boats, the harbor, lighthouses and as previously mentioned, anything that has to do with water!




This little street was just the cutest. It had a lot of great little shops and the only Mexican restaurant that we saw during the entire trip.




After 3 days in Scotland it was time to pack it up and head back down to London. It was nice to take the train during the day so we could see some of the countryside and the coast.




We ended up getting back into London earlier than expected so we headed out to do more sight seeing. I had cashed in some of my Hilton points and scored us a room at the Hilton Green Park. The location was amazing and so worth the 40,000 points! Just a short walk across Green Park and we found ourselves in front of Buckingham Palace. Well, this is just one of the gates....

But here is the real deal!

We did get to see some of the guards change posts but it wasn't the official changing of the guards ceremony. Could someone please tell me how the gentlemen on the far left can see anything!?

We started walking away from the Palace and got a great view of the London Eye:

I have no idea what this is but I thought it was really neat.

We continued walking down to Trafalgar Square which was really pretty when lit up at night. There were crews working like crazy trying to get ready for the big St. Patricks Day parade which was held on Sunday the 18th.

Later that night we ended up stopping by the box office for the show Les Miserables. The seats were sold out but we were able to buy a standing ticket for 10 pounds ($20). We kind of felt like the red headed step child standing at the back of the theatre but it saved us some money and we got to see the show. It was amazing and well worth it!

The next day we headed over to Notting Hill. Sara had wanted to see the Travel Book Store from the movie 'Notting Hill' but since the movie was filmed its been changed into a furniture store. The area was still a fun place to have lunch and browse the shops. Not to mention that the town is just adorable and I loved all of the different colored buildings.

Obviously Notting Hill is a nice area but we were in no way prepared for the price of real estate. There were some ads listing homes for sale around 3-4million pounds. Wow.

The next stop was Abbey Road studios.

On my previous trip we had driven by but did not stop. It was nice to have a chance to look at it closer and add our names to the wall out front. We ended up running into another group of American girls which was kind of funny. They (unlike us) nearly got hit by cars as they tried to recreate the famous Beatles sidewalk crossing photo - over and over. Idiots! The road is far too busy to do that and I remember my previous tour guide saying that many people get hit because of that.

After we left the studio we hit up a lot of the other famous areas of London like Piccadilly Circus and shopping down Oxford Street. We finished our last night in London with dinner in Covent Garden.

It was great to see so many new places and meet so many new people. If I had my choice I would have stayed for an extra 10 days! Guess that just means that I'll have to go back!

Stonehenge / Stanage Edge / Chatsworth House

After spending about 48 hours in London we hopped a train that took us out to Stonehenge. I have to admit that I've always been a bit intrigued by this place - how was it made, why was it made, etc. so it was pretty neat to see it in person.


While we were waiting for our train to take us to Derby, we stopped in and ate at this cute little pub. I'm sure that it is just gorgeous in the Spring when everything is in bloom.



In Derby, we picked up a rental car and head out towards the Peak District. Since I was the only one who could drive a stick shift & who had experience with driving on the wrong side of the road - I was the designated driver. It had been 5 years since I'd driven over there but it was kind of like riding a bike - it came right back. Thank God!


The next big stop was at Stanage Edge which was beautiful! One of the girls had seen it in the new Pride & Prejudice movie and wanted to check it out.

It was about a 2 mile hike to get to the top of the edge but it was well worth it. The views were amazing and we decided to take advantage of it with a little photo shoot. The wind was blowing really hard so I crawled out to the edge of the cliff.

Here is the good / normal photo - check out the countryside behind me. It was just beautiful!




The photo below will give you a little better idea as to why I was crawling to the edge of the rock! Since the cliffs are so high and steep, there were a ton of rock climbers out. It was neat to see them but I couldn't help but think they were crazy!



Here is a photo looking away from the cliffs on top of the edge:


On the hike down we passed a herd of sheep that were grazing. I guess they are used to people because they weren't startled at all when they girls started "talking" to them.







After that we jumped in the car and headed over to the Chatsworth House. This estate was just beautiful and it was also used in the move Pride & Prejudice.



Here is just one of the photos that I took inside the house - this is The Painted Hall.

The gardens surrounding the house were just beautiful. I've always been a big fan of fountains and anything that includes water so I found this fact fascinating - this is the oldest water fountain in the UK and it's entirely gravity fed. Crazy, huh?!
They also had a garden maze which is always fun. The last time I did one was at Hever Castle 5 years ago and that was child's play compared to the one at Chatsworth! It took nearly 45 minutes to find the center and I was the only one to find it! The middle was a bit anticlimactic; there was just a tree and a bench. I didn't even have time to enjoy it because we had to leave right away to get back to the train station to head up to Scotland.

Check back for more about Scotland and the rest of our London stay.

My Backpacking Tour of Hilton Hotels

Here is a conversation that I had with this cute little British man while standing in line at the Hilton in London:

Him: "Are you backpacking across the UK?"
Me: "Well, kind of. We are traveling through England/Scotland but our plans to stay in hostels changed."

Him: "So your trip turned into a backpacking tour of Hilton Hotels?"
Me: "Yeah, pretty much."

Since Sara, Stephanie and I all live in different parts of the US we decided to just meet up in London. After everyone arrived we hit the streets to check out some of the sights. One of the first things you'll see are the words 'look right' & 'look left' painted on the sidewalks warning pedestrians (tourists) of oncoming traffic.

Here we are in front of Big Ben:

Here is a better shot of Big Ben with the London Eye in the background:

And the Tower Bridge:

City Sign:

I just thought this building was cool - maybe because it reminded me of the flatiron building in NY - just not as tall!

Here is a cute little neighborhood that we walked by on our way to the underground station. The bright red was a nice change from all of the other dull colored buildings that we passed.

We spent more time in London at the end of the trip but next up was Stonehenge - more to come on that soon!

All Good Things Must Come To An End

Ten days of vacation is just not enough. I had an amazing time in the UK and promise to write more about it soon. In the meantime, here is a photo that I took in Edinburgh, Scotland. Hope you enjoy.

History Always Repeats Itself

When I lived in Tennessee I had a horrible habit of locking myself out of my house. It wasn't my fault - honestly. Let me explain. Over the course of a year I had remodeled my house and had upgraded all of the doorknobs and locks. The beautiful silver locks that I fell in love with ended up being the locks from hell. When the door was locked, you could turn the handle from the inside and it would still turn thus giving you the impression that the door was unlocked. This tripped up myself and my roommate at least 5 times over the course of a year. Whenever I had guests over they would (with good intentions) try to "unlock" the door which in turn would really lock the door and ultimately leave us locked out of the house. Usually when you get locked out you immediately know what has just happened. That sinking realization is the worst feeling in the world.

Well, that feeling returned tonight. I have a lot going on right now with work, stress and planning a vacation - I really think that I'm losing my mind. I was, of course, multitasking grabbing my purse, ipod, and my bags to run errands, locking the door and walking outside all while talking on the phone with Sara M. I was distracted to say the least. Immediately after I shut the door I knew what I had done. I locked myself out of the house. Tonight was the absolute WORST time for this to happen. None of my neighbors are home, nobody else has a copy of the key and I am standing in the dark outside my door looking in. Idiot.

To quickly wrap this up, it was Will to the rescue with the help of a very tall ladder. The bedroom window was cracked and I stood below and watched how easily he was able to gain access to my home. It was kind of an odd feeling, I must admit. Thankfully he could break in otherwise I would probably still be waiting for the locksmith to show up....

This reminded me of the funniest story that I have of locking myself out. A friend of mine had dropped his dog off at my house and somehow I managed to get locked out. I found myself standing on the front steps staring through the glass door at two dogs that were locked inside. Petrified that they were going to tear apart my house, I quickly walked (barefooted) to my friend Roberts house across the street but he wasn't home. His new roommate (whom I had never met) answered the door shirtless with one boot on and one boot off. He was more than happy to help out the damsel in distress and ended up asking me out. I guess that's one way to meet the neighbors!

Oh yeah, and the dogs (Lincoln & Jackson) were both good boys and didn't wreck anything. Thank God.

Question of the Week

Edinburgh, Scotland

or

Paris, France