NYC Trip – Day 7 : Coffee Cake

4.45am is probably the earliest i’ve ever been up. And i have to say it’s completely unnatural. For me anyway.

Jess bravely drove our rental car to LAX from Palm Springs and although the GPS did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to and sent us off-course several times, somehow we bluffed our way back on track and made it to the rental car drop off centre in L.A. Even following a debacle there and despite being 40 minutes late for our check in time, the airline (or the random guy who checked us in at a portable desk the roadside) didn’t seem to notice. Refreshing for anyone who has ever flown with Jetstar.

I’d been at least 72 hours without coffee but again ran out of time to buy a cup before boarding. I ended up grabbing a piece of coffee cake instead, purely based on curiosity born from the Seinfeld ‘Drakes Coffee Cake’ episode. That curiosity paying off in the form of sugary goodness. Best decision i could have made.

I slept* for the first few hours of the 5 hour flight and awoke to the girls (and the rest of the plane) watching ‘We Bought a Zoo‘ which i had no choice but to watch (I even question this myself) and before long was surrounded by crying women. Although i do admit i fought my own tears back pretty hard.

When we arrived at the airport we learnt an important lesson that we carried with us for the rest of the trip. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH ANYONE! A man on the Air train kindly offered to help us on our way. Before we could object he had our luggage on a trolley and was charging ahead. For his ‘help’ getting us to where we already knew we were going, he charged us a flat rate of $20 PLUS TIPS! I would usually object to someone clearly taking advantage of naive tourists, but It’s harder than you think to object when they lay it on thick about supporting their families this way. This was quite the learning curve for us.

We took a taxi to Chelsea to our new home for the next 2 weeks, where my brother Todd was meeting us. Pretty much the smallest apartment of all time and grossly misrepresented as being able to house 4 people. Clearly only appropriate for 3. So we purchased a blow up mattress at an all night Kmart with 3 levels of every kind of crap you could ever think of, with the size alone exceeding any notion you have of how big you think it might be.

The last adventure and best part of the day was having our first slice of late night pizza and garlic balls (so much garlicy goodness) washed down with ice-cold Canadian beer. Aahh…

When we got back to the apartment an episode of Seinfeld was on and could you guess which one? Drakes coffee cake! Serendipitous.

<;;3 Love note: Finally logged onto wireless and skyped my man for the first time on the trip.

* The word ‘slept’ is used extremely loosely when describing a state of attempted rest on flights of any kind.

**All pics taken with an iPhone 3 and run through befunky.com editing.

NYC Trip – Day 7 : Coffee Cake

4.45am is probably the earliest i’ve ever been up. And i have to say it’s completely unnatural. For me anyway.

Jess bravely drove our rental car to LAX from Palm Springs and although the GPS did the exact opposite of what it was supposed to and sent us off-course several times, somehow we bluffed our way back on track and made it to the rental car drop off centre in L.A. Even following a debacle there and despite being 40 minutes late for our check in time, the airline (or the random guy who checked us in at a portable desk the roadside) didn’t seem to notice. Refreshing for anyone who has ever flown with Jetstar.

I’d been at least 72 hours without coffee but again ran out of time to buy a cup before boarding. I ended up grabbing a piece of coffee cake instead, purely based on curiosity born from the Seinfeld ‘Drakes Coffee Cake’ episode. That curiosity paying off in the form of sugary goodness. Best decision i could have made.

I slept* for the first few hours of the 5 hour flight and awoke to the girls (and the rest of the plane) watching ‘We Bought a Zoo‘ which i had no choice but to watch (I even question this myself) and before long was surrounded by crying women. Although i do admit i fought my own tears back pretty hard.

When we arrived at the airport we learnt an important lesson that we carried with us for the rest of the trip. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH ANYONE! A man on the Air train kindly offered to help us on our way. Before we could object he had our luggage on a trolley and was charging ahead. For his ‘help’ getting us to where we already knew we were going, he charged us a flat rate of $20 PLUS TIPS! I would usually object to someone clearly taking advantage of naive tourists, but It’s harder than you think to object when they lay it on thick about supporting their families this way. This was quite the learning curve for us.

We took a taxi to Chelsea to our new home for the next 2 weeks, where my brother Todd was meeting us. Pretty much the smallest apartment of all time and grossly misrepresented as being able to house 4 people. Clearly only appropriate for 3. So we purchased a blow up mattress at an all night Kmart with 3 levels of every kind of crap you could ever think of, with the size alone exceeding any notion you have of how big you think it might be.

The last adventure and best part of the day was having our first slice of late night pizza and garlic balls (so much garlicy goodness) washed down with ice-cold Canadian beer. Aahh…

When we got back to the apartment an episode of Seinfeld was on and could you guess which one? Drakes coffee cake! Serendipitous.

<;;3 Love note: Finally logged onto wireless and skyped my man for the first time on the trip.

* The word ‘slept’ is used extremely loosely when describing a state of attempted rest on flights of any kind.

**All pics taken with an iPhone 3 and run through befunky.com editing.

NYC Trip – Day 6 : Coachella – Day 3

Breakfast by the pool again and for some strange reason, in stark contrast to the 2 previous days, it was stinking hot!

Starting to get really upset about no one seeming to know the difference between espresso coffee and drip coffee. But the food was good. Americans sure know how to put on a buffet. Gotta give ’em that.

The last day was a full-on band day requiring focus & dedication. Although my voice was almost gone and i was simply exhausted, the sheer awesomeness of the bands carried me through. We purposely cut down on alcohol therefore cutting down on socialization to make sure we got to all the gigs we had planned to.

So… back on the shuttle early to get there in time to see Band of Skulls – better in real life, Santigold – one of my favourite sets, and Fitz and the Tantrums -very interesting. It was so hot through the day we took shelter on the ground in the middle of crowds to get some shade.

Also saw Real estate, Goyte (with a special appearance by Kimbra), Girl Talk, Florence and the Machine and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg with special guests 50 cent and Eminen. And, of course, 2pac.

Apparently Rihanna came out with Calvin Harris and Usher came out with David Guetta. Other notable guest enjoying the fest were Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Katy Perry, and Kate Bosworth. Although i saw no one note-worthy.

All pics taken with an iPhone 3 and edited at befunky.com

NYC Trip – Day 4 : Coachella – Day 1

In reflection – Definately one AMAZING day!!

We made the early morning move to The RENAISSANCE as part of our Coachella package, but not before scoffing down a free buffet breakfast by the pool. Boom! And why are waffles not an integral part of every Australian breakfast?? Weird.

We then packed our vodka & Mist disguised as water to drink on the shuttle, making life even more wonderful once we finally arrived. Made a french friend as soon as we walked off the bus, and soo many more on our 2 kilometre walk to the actual festival. Coachella is enourmous, well organised, pretty and clean. There were 5 stages, trance huts, 2 beer gardens, a ferris wheel, and a Red bull tent with a saloon inside and ridiculously priced vodka Red Bulls.

Apparently the Hoff was crowd surfing during Arctic Monkeys, who were great considering im not even a fan, but somehow we missed it. Unfortunately we missed a lot of bands we intended to see whilst being carried away with socialisation. I believe we then saw some other bands before watching the Black keys at the end of the night. I also believe they were amazing. But i can’t be entirely sure.

We spent quite a bit of time in the Red Bull tent mostly to keep warm, visit our good friend Ben (whose job was to socialize. Score!) and mingle with other Australians that seemed to be almost everywhere.

Pics 6 & 9 courtesy of Alexandra Smelt via FB and last pic courtesy of Red Bull. All others taken with an iPhone 3 and edited in befunky.com.

NYC Trip – Day 3 : Palm Springs

Up at the painfully early hour of 5.30am to catch 2 buses and a taxi, another bus and another taxi out to Palm Springs. Again, slightly hungover, and in need of a maccas fix, we stopped in on the way to grab a few bacon and egg mcmuffins. Somehow there was a mix up with simple dialogue and i ended up with what they call a ‘biscuit’ which is actually a scone. I don’t know about you but i definitely want my bacon and egg on a muffin and not a scone.

Palm Springs is a beautiful desert town, much like vegas; except relaxed and cheap, and we stayed at a surprisingly lovely BEST WESTERN. It turned out to be easy enough to hop on a bus (all trips are only $1!!) into town to track down a spray tan for our first day of festival fun. It was our first spray tan in a booth and was weird but kinda fun.

Last thing to do was to meet up with our Ozzie friend Patrick that bought a Coachella ticket off us so we could all drive to hotel Renaissance to pick up our tickets a day early.

Finally got back to our hotel to chill with 2 over-sized pizza’s and a bucket of soda in a hotel room soaked in nail polish and fake tan. Yum.

All pics taken with iPhone 3 and edited in befunky.com