I heart NY - Part Two

Seven nights in New York. It's summer. It's hot. It's busy. It's crazy. It's fabulous.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

We're off....London, New York, Amsterdam, Cannes, Paris. Four of us - Pies, Jamie, Karina and I on a world adventure.

There's no place like home

I came home to NZ for a whirlwind three and a half week visit. There's nothing like the smell of the air when you step out of Auckland International airport. It's salt and sea and freshly cut grass and it's always the same no matter what time of year it is. And it always make me fall in love with NZ. Right up until the part where they charge me $250 in excess luggage to fly to New Plymouth, despite me calling to confirm I wouldn't have a problem. I had three perfect days at mum and dad's. I wish I could've stayed there the entire time. I absolutely love being at La Galena. They have the most fabulous life and it was gorgeous weather. We ate yummy food, mooched around at the vineyard, enjoyed the restaurants, cinemas and galleries of New Plymouth (NP rocks!) and enjoyed each other's company. I'm pretty sure Reow remembered his mum coz he slept on my bed every night. He's enjoying the country life and was stalking a little bunny rabbit for the days I was there.

Then we flew down to Wellington and as luck would have it I managed to get a temp job back at Clemenger in the TVP department. It worked out perfectly. I spread myself around Pies, Jen's and the Marshall's houses and had a blast catching up with everyone.

Hooters

The funniest thing was that the only thing Annie really wanted to do in Hawaii was go to Hooters. Hooters is a chain where all the girls basically where skin tight lycra tops with 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' written on the back and shiny orange lycra undies. The menu primarily consists of fried chicken wings and beer. So obviously, we're not really their target market. In fact, I think we were the only females there. Anyway, Annie was just so, so excited to get these chicken wings (as you can see in the pic) that she thought we'd should order 50 wings (between three of us, remembering of course that I'm a vegetarian). The next pic is Stacey about 15 chicken wings in. Hilarious! The girls had to eat cold chicken wings for breakfast, lunch and dinner the rest of the week. I'm told they're better cold anyway.

The Aqua Bamboo & Spa

We booked what looked like a nice hotel on the internet in Waikiki. We got the deluxe, one bedroom suite as a treat to ourselves. When we arrived our room was hideous. What we thought were going to be pool views were in fact views of a concrete jungle and busy street. It was so noisy that we couldn't even sit on our balcony (and our holiday highlight was going to be cocktails on the balcony!) The kitchen was skody and in the lounge and the bathroom was skanky. The room was dark and dingy and got no sunshine. We were heartbroken. Annie asked if we could be moved to the other side of the hotel. We would have to downgrade our room, but if we spent one night in the gross room we could move to the other side for the rest of the week. The downgrade was amazing. We had three balconies, a separate kitchen, afternoon sunshine and a view of the pool complex. It was perfect. Here are the girls enjoying the sun on our balcony.

The Hawaiian Princesses

Aloha Hawaii

After two winters back-to-back all I wanted to do was lie in the sunshine on a beach. My dream came true and I got to have five glorious days in Waikiki on the way home. Annie came and joined Racey and I from Hong Kong. It was so, so fun to see her. Love the Matty for letting her come while he slaved away at work. Here are a few pics. I'll have to do them in a couple of entries.

Farewell Vancouver/Whistler

My six months came to an end so quickly. Racey came and joined me for my last week. Here's a few pics and of my last Whistler trip.

SATC

So of course, in New York we had to do the Sex and the City Tour. Here's Racey and I on Carrie's stoop and having a cosmo in Steve and Aidan's bar. I didn't get a pic of us getting a cupcake from Magnolia bakery. They are supposed to be the best cupcakes in town. It's a tiny wee bakery that is open until about 11pm...all day long they have a queue for their cupcakes and, in peak times, a bouncer is employed to enforce the one in-one out rule. The cupcakes are worth the wait!

I Heart NY

Pies left and I got to count down the sleeps until Easter, when I got to fly to New York to stay with Stace. Four days of restaurants, shopping, cupcakes and cosmpolitans! Bliss. Her Mum and Aunty were there too, so we had a great time with all the girls.

Hi my Pie

So, all a bit out of the blue, Pies decided he was coming back to visit...for a week. And so he finally got to meet Vancouver without rain, which is a completely different city to Vancouver with rain.

What a treat.

Mike & Lorelli

I had the very good fortune of being able to attend Mike and Lorelli's gorgeous wedding in Banff National Park. I flew to Calgary and hired a cute little Chevrolet and drove to Banff. It was - 30 degrees...which I believe to be too cold for human survival. I felt like every cell in my body was freezing over and my body was shutting down. It was even too cold for my electric toothbrush to work ( I thought it was broken but it worked perfectly as soon as I returned to Vancouver)

Aside from the fact that I was so cold I could hardly step outside, the ceremony was lovely: the couple clearly head over heals in love with each other, "my brother" doing a fabulous job of Maid of Honour and the bride glowing with excitement. Some of the highlights were Lorabelle and her dad dancing to Nat and Natalie King Cole's 'Unforgettable', Grandma and Grandpa Stone getting busy as a part of this strange Canadian tradition where all the couples at the wedding have to do a raunchy kiss to be copied by the wedding couple, and the bride leading the way in some good old line dancing.

I'm back

Hello. Long time no blog. As I write I am in the Bilderberg Garden Hotel in Amsterdam. But I'm miles behind in blogging news so I will try and catch you up. Here goes...