Tiffany and Greg Around the World
San Jose, CA, USA
So let us assume for a moment that you are not a video game and / or D&D junkie (and you remember things like corkscrews when bringing over bottles of wine to your friend’s house). Barring that, what does one do for amusement in Greg’s home town?
Let’s start with the touristy stuff…
More from the Grog Files:
In this installment of our adventures in international drinking we explore wine made purely from bananas and blueberries in the Cook Islands. We also sample the beer they ferment on this tropical island.
Oh yes, we also started including websites of the purveyors when available so you can order this stuff and taste around the world a bit for yourself!
Just go to the navigation bar above, hover over “Grog Files” and select “Cook Islands”
Or just click on “Cook Island Grog Files”
San Jose, CA, USA
When in San Jose Greg likes to party. He likes to party a lot.
But perhaps we should take a moment to define this word, as its meaning could be somewhat…skewed depending on your perspective and life experiences. To many people, this would involve nightclubs, expensive bottles of vodka, private tables, next day hangovers, loud music and expensive, if somewhat revealing and usually uncomfortable, clothing.
Greg’s mother loved Greg’s high school partying habits. He had no curfew, none. This conversation happened regularly in his home as a child:
“Mom, I’m going to a party, I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“OK, just be sure to call at 10.”
Usually he forgot. But that was ok and not because Greg had a cell phone. Greg’s mom just knew where he was.
San Jose, CA, USA
San Jose is Greg’s home town. Many of you have been told, by Greg himself even, that it’s San Francisco but it isn’t. Why were you misled? You see, the San Francisco Bay Area is huge. It’s simply massive…a mega-city that’s 7.15 million people strong. It’s actually comprised of three large cities with several dozen large towns all filling in the gaps. The entire bay is inhabited so town lines are sometimes a bit… arbitrary.
Enroute San Jose, CA, USA
It provides us with endless amusement that after all the places we’ve sailed to, all the countries we’ve travelled around by boat, that we’ve flown into and out of Auckland, New Zealand…the “City of Sails.”
Sometimes we just enjoy being contrarian because we can be.
There comes a moment of truth in every long-term traveler’s trip when they are forced to confront a simple question with a heck of a lot of implications:
“Is this worth going home for?”
Auckland, New Zealand
Since the topic of drinking came up a few times over the past few entries let’s let Greg share with you a little story about something that happened to us in New Zealand and an important lesson he learned from it:
Greg: Remember how we got this amazing invite to have Christmas with a Kiwi MasterChef contestant and his family?
So yeah, duh, we did that. This dinner lasts several hours. Several. As we’ve said, Kiwis are really nice people and if you befriend a really nice person and they invite you over for a feast…well you should expect to be there a while. At the very beginning of the afternoon I had 2 glasses of wine with everyone. After that, I called it quits because I was the one who was going to drive us home that evening and you know, better safe than sorry right? Besides, they had Coke Zero so it’s not like I was deprived or anything.
Like I said, we were at this dinner party for a long time. We had hors d’oeuvres, we had dinner, we had dessert, we talked, we mingled, it was great. Everything you could possibly want as a traveler invited into the home of a local for Christmas. Hours flew by. Tiffany even made key lime pie from scratch, or perhaps I should say from crumbs, as you previously saw I was involved in that.
So it’s pushing midnight before we’re ready to leave. My mother, who has joined us for the holidays, asked if I’m Ok to drive. It wasn’t a reflection on how I’m was acting or anything, it’s just my mom. She asks. She’s proactively safe and good like that.
“Yeah mom, I’m fine, I haven’t had a drink since before we had food and only 2 glasses then.”
Continue reading “Breath Test FAIL!”
Auckland, New Zealand
So when you’re done eating ridiculously good food and celebrating the holidays by watching explosives detonate over the main business district for New Years or just strolling around and being overtly assaulted by the beautiful scenery and cornucopia of pleasant scents …what do you do for fun in Auckland? What would an Aucklander do if they were bored and looking for something to do on, oh say, a given Thursday evening?
Continue reading “Looking for a Good Time”
As promised, here is the first installment of our adventures in international drinking! Anyone wanting to join us as we taste our way around the planet need only click on the “grog files” tab in the navigation bar.
Auckland, New Zealand
Come on, how often do you get to call first on New Years? Well, if you’re a Kiwi probably about once a year but still, we’re American so it’s cool!
Sydney claims first and the world gives it to them but that’s hogwash. Auckland is closer to the dateline, so they have lawful first claim.
Also, Sydney has fireworks off a bridge over water (weak) while Auckland launches explosives off the Sky Tower which is right over their main city buildings…way more dangerous…which means way more cool!
Auckland, New Zealand
Auckland just smells good.
Being people who grew up in cities, we got used to the smells that are a normal part of urban life: car exhaust, cleaning chemicals, in San Francisco the smell of cable car brakes is fairly common. Millions upon millions of people living closely together are going to generate smells. Most of them are not overly pleasant.
Auckland hasn’t yet hit that people to landmass ratio and there is an abundance of vegetation throughout the city. So as we walked around it was not unusual to stop suddenly, look at each other while sniffing the air and say, “wow, that smells amazing!”
Like we said, it was early spring when we arrived and while it was way too cold for Tiffany to think anything it its right mind would grow, apparently no one had told the Kiwi plants that.
