Uncategorized
-
First Days in Sydney, Part 2 (Food, Festivals, Driving)
In part one, I covered the beaches & wildlife, and ended the post by saying Nick and I were off to dinner at a local restaurant, which brings me nicely to my next favorite thing about Sydney… FOOD! Everywhere we have been here, the food has been fantastic. Sydney has a worldwide reputation for great food and great coffee, and boy have they earned it. Even when we visited the most hole-in-the-wall pub, with sticky floors and tables and a surly bartender, the burger we ordered was cooked to perfect medium, juicy and clearly homemade, with a gorgeous salad and fresh hot chips. We are looking forward to our first…
-
First Days in Sydney, part 1 (Beaches & Wildlife)
Well, we’ve now been living in Sydney for a few months – we arrived on Oct 17 and it’s now Jan 10 – and I think it’s about time for a quick photo-heavy post about our first experiences in this amazing city. Instead of going through as a timeline, I’ve grouped under major headers/experiences… BEACHES (of course) One of the first things we did was check out Bondi Beach, which if you did not know is a fairly famous beach just east of Sydney (technically it’s part of Sydney, but the suburb is called Bondi Beach). We arrived fairly early (well, for a Saturday) and had brunch overlooking the beach, which is stunning-…
-
Last Days in San Jose
Leaving San Jose was a bit sad for us. Not only because we had to sell our coast-mobile dream car 🙁 but also because we really had made some significant connections there with people who we were now close to. We also both really loved the area – with a special fondness for San Francisco in particular. We spent our last few weeks in SJ re-visiting old favourites (especially making sure we got our fill of Mexican food). Let me take you through our farewell to San Jose in a few photos…
-
Wrights in Oz!
Hello from sunny Sydney!! How fitting that the first line of my previous post is “All good things must come to an end”… Nick and I had no idea while we were on our road trip through SoCal that in just a few short months we would be gone from San Jose and living on the complete other side of the world. We were set to stay in San Jose for at least another three years, and maybe even longer. We had even kicked off the process to apply for permanent residency (green cards)! However, in late summer, I learned of an incredible career opportunity, still with Adobe, but in Sydney,…
-
Hwy 1 Road Trip – Part 3 (San Diego Zoo)
All good things must come to an end, and it was now the tail end of our amazing SoCal road trip. We left Anaheim in the morning, and headed down to San Diego for the final two nights of our tour. We stopped at Balboa Island for a frozen banana and walked all around the island, but unfortunately I forgot to take pictures (wtf). You can read about Balboa Island here though, and look at some nice pictures that other people took. We arrived fairly late the first day, so only had time to grab some dinner and sleep. The next day though, it was off to the San Diego…
-
Hwy 1 Road Trip – Part 2 (DISNEYLAND!!!!!)
Finally continuing my last post, here’s part two of our big road trip down Highway 1…we spent 2 days in Disneyland!! But first, we had to get there from Cayucos, the tiny little beach town where we stayed. We didn’t make too many stops along the way, but had time for a picnic by the beach and a little bit of a photo op by the ocean… [googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m29!1m12!1m3!1d208369.88457889954!2d-120.91552930851637!3d35.31146133643884!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!4m14!1i0!3e0!4m5!1s0x80ecdf88ee79c031%3A0x80edbb62a64c9c15!2sCayucos%2C+CA!3m2!1d35.442751099999995!2d-120.8921254!4m5!1s0x80ecf834e9cc5417%3A0x5c42c6f63f4629b6!2sAvila+Beach%2C+CA!3m2!1d35.1800113!2d-120.7319127!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1410634490255&w=600&h=450] We didn’t really stop again the rest of the way down, but drove through several beautiful beach towns like Santa Barbara and Malibu as we made our way to our hotel near Disneyland. The map isn’t retaining my custom route for some…
-
Hwy 1 Road Trip – Part 1 (Hearst Castle)
For those who don’t know, State Route 1 (SR 1) is a major north-south state highway that runs along most of the Pacific coastline of the U.S. state of California. (from Wikipedia) “California State Route 1” by User:NE2 – Email me if you would like a copy of the GIS data I created for the highways.. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Since moving to California, Nick and I have had it on our list to drive highway 1 all the way north, and all the way south. We drove the northern portion during our road trip to Seattle in February of 2013, and we’d driven as far south as Monterey together. Earlier this year, we…
-
Napa wine tour
Back at the beginning of May (omg, I know, I’m so behind on blog posts), Nick’s mom and two of her friends came down to visit us! We had such an awesome time showing them around the Bay Area. We took them to many of our favorite places and a couple of new places as well – namely, to Napa! Nick and I hadn’t been up to Napa yet, despite visiting a few other wine areas (Sonoma, Livermore) several times. Napa has a reputation for being a little snobbier and a little more expensive than the other regions (since they were the first big region and have a lot of…
-
Tourist adventuring with P&K&D
Back in April, some very good friends of ours from Canada came to visit for a week. We had a busy week showing them around and taking them to do some of our most favorite things around here – beach, hikes, SF, and sports. The day after they arrived and got all settled in, the first order of business was a surfing lesson in Santa Cruz….at 7am. Santa Cruz is about a 45 minute drive from us so that meant we left at 5:45am to be sure to be there on time. It was a pretty grueling morning with a bleary-eyed stop at McDonald’s, but we made it. Not all…
-
Berry Creek Falls Hike
The Berry Creek Falls loop has been on our “to hike” list for a while now, pretty much ever since the first time we went to Big Basin State Park last June. It’s rated as a strenuous, 11-mile hike with about 2,000 feet of total elevation, and we’ve overheard park rangers telling others to set aside 6-8 hours to complete the full hike. If you’re curious, you can read a lot about this hike at the following links: http://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/BerryCreek.html (beautiful photos) http://www.bahiker.com/southbayhikes/bigbasin/waterfallloop.html (bahiker.com is the bible of Bay Area hikes) http://www.everytrail.com/guide/berry-creek-falls-loop-at-big-basin-redwoods-state-park (detailed walkthrough with step-by-step instructions) We finally decided to embark on the hike this weekend. We had a huge breakfast…