Category: world travel

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North American Throwdown

Manchester, England, UK

We were told by one of our British friends that Great Britain passed the USA in the medal count…

…if you take into account medals per capita, that is.  Apparently, that’s a thing here.

 

Wandering around Olympic London is fun and all:

[fgallery id=9 w=500 h=450 t=0 title=”London Olympics 2012″]

But like we said in the last article: WE GOT TICKETS TO A GAME BABY!!!!

It was supposed to be a women’s soccer battle royal, Boston Tea Party style, with Team USA facing the host nation: Team GB.  However fate, and Canada, had other plans…

Continue reading “North American Throwdown”

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Quirky Melbourne

Melbourne, VIC, AU

Then one day about a month into it, we woke up and realized that cleaning up horse poop at 3:45am 6 days a week sucks.  In our defense, we were kinda tired that month so it took a while.

Now that were done “playing with horses” we actually had the time to start exploring this town.  Melbourne is one of Australia’s largest cities.  It didn’t occur to us what that would mean to two people who spent the previous year wondering around island countries with national populations smaller than most European villages.

Continue reading “Quirky Melbourne”

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Mostly European Cowgirls

Melbourne, VIC, AU

Unbeknownst to us, this job put us smack into the middle of the backpacker working trail and as a result, our workmates were not who we expected.  In what we anticipated to be a primarily Australian work group we found ourselves surrounded by 2 Kiwis, 3 Germans, a Sweede, 2 French, a Scott, 2 Americans (us) and a paltry 5 Australians.  The foreigners outnumbered the locals by more than 2:1.  Also the overwhelming majority of employees were female or as Greg put it to his unmarried brother Chris,

“Dude, wanna meet a bunch of young European Cowgirls?”

the horse hands
Exactly one person in this picture is actually Australian.

 

“Then come to Australia.”

Continue reading “Mostly European Cowgirls”

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Chicks Dig Scars

Melbourne, VIC, AU

…just usually not so much on themselves.

While Greg spent the majority of his time feeding and mucking Tiffany got to “train” the horses.

At this point we should point out that Tiffany has a tendency to…smack things (Aside from Greg, that is).  We’re not saying that Greg has ever been approached by a pastor at church but he has had to field a few worried glances from time to time from fellow parishioners.  It came with the territory when he decided to marry a woman who gets her kicks zip lining over tropical rainforests and sailing through gale-force winds.  As Tiffany puts it, “I don’t bruise easy.  I just hit things hard.”

Tiffany & silver fern
Don’t be fooled, she’s probably better with a hand gun than you are. Seriously.

Now we’ve already gone over how these horses are half-ton hyperactive 2 year-olds that are fed nothing but sugar all day, every day, right?  You put them together with Tiffany on a daily basis and well…

It keeps it interesting

Continue reading “Chicks Dig Scars”

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It’s just so darn PRETTY!

Auckland, NZ

Looking out over Auckland Bay towards Mount Rangitoto.

 We don’t do this very often, but there are a number of pictures that we’ve taken around Auckland that just don’t have much of a story to them, but are still pretty cool.  Here they are for your viewing pleasure!

Continue reading “It’s just so darn PRETTY!”

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Kiwis (The birds, not the people)

From Tortoise orgies to custom made giraffe barns, the Great Kiwi Roadtrip makes it’s way to the Auckland Zoo!

One of the things that we absolutely had to see in New Zealand was an actual live kiwi

(Finally: the bird, not to be confused with the people by the same name)

Being as we were road tripping the length of the country these birds call home, we thought this was going to be relatively easy.  Turns out that it’s not…

Continue reading “Kiwis (The birds, not the people)”

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Storming the Hedges

Dunedin, NZ

The Kiwi Roadtrip continues!

At long last we finally come to it.  Our grail, our Mecca, our El Dorado, our own little land of Canaan in New Zealand, if you will. (yeah, we’re still reading the Bible.)

The culmination of our quest, the living beating heart of our journey (well this part anyway), the Vegas of our Great Kiwi Roadtrip…

 

Castle Kiwi

(Aka Larnach Castle)

There remained but one final obstacle to overcome, one last trial to endure before the castle would indeed be ours as the very land itself conspired to bar our path… Continue reading “Storming the Hedges”

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NZ North Island Grog Files

New Zealand – North Island

Soft Drinks

L & P

Type: Soft Drink

Rating: 3 sheets to the wind

Website: http://www.cokecareers.co.nz/products
(yeah, Coke bought ‘em.  That’s globozation for ya.)

Notes: It would be wrong to have a page about the drinks of New Zealand and not mention Lemon & Paeroa.  It’s the New Zealand soft drink and we’re really not sure why it hasn’t become a world-wide sensation!  Like you’ll see in other places on this page, New Zealand does not save their best efforts for “the good stuff” because even their widely distributed common drinks are just excellent.  Continue reading “NZ North Island Grog Files”

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Lazy Birds

Dunedin, NZ

The Kiwi Roadtrip continues!

As long as you don’t mind the pressing need to bundle up in order to explore a land listed as “one of the closest to Antarctica” it’s sometimes hard to decide which is more magnificent, the countryside around Dunedin or the immaculate buildings in the city itself:

Continue reading “Lazy Birds”

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Visitor’s guide to San Jose

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?

city of San Jose

Let’s start with the touristy stuff…

Continue reading “Visitor’s guide to San Jose”

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