indulgent fountains

The reflections on the water of the Medici Fountain in Paris is a giant painting palette. All the autumn colours have been swirled around, broken down, and refracted. The swimming ducks contribute to the confusion. They complicate the patterns even more with the circular waves they leave in their wake. The entire thing is a giant Impressionist painting rolled into a kaleidoscope that changes almost every second. I woke up stupidly early this Thursday morning in New Zealand and thought of being here two autumns ago.  

on lugging around film cameras overseas

Christian Quarter, Old City, Jerusalem

See the entire set on Flickr here.

I'm always towing around film cameras overseas. Yes, digital is way more convenient in every possible way. But I adore shooting film. My first major multi-stop overseas trip was captured on a little Olympus camera and I bought the cheapest film possible from various pharmacies and supermarkets. Sure I'd get a little jealous when my mum and brother would get to review their digital camera pictures at the end of the day. However, I still remember every single shot I took on that Olympus. I'm not sure I could say this about the trips I've taken on digital. The things I shot on film on that trip weren't disposable. Each one, to me, was a perfect little moment meant to be savoured. When we were away, Rob would sometimes um and ah about taking a picture and I would blithely say, "Take it. Pictures are free." On Polaroid and any other film camera, they actually aren't. Each shot has to, literally, be worth it. 

it's not all eat. pray. love.

Day 99 & 100 Palm Springs, a drive back to LAX

There's barely two days left of this; our hundred-day flight from home. One of my favourite quotes is by Alain de Botton, in the Art of Travel:

If our lives are dominated by a search for happiness, then perhaps few activities reveal as much about the dynamics of this quest...than our travels. They express... an understanding of what life might be about, outside the constraints of work and the struggle for survival.

On our last day in Palm Springs, we're treating ourselves to a special brunch at the Parker. The waiters outnumber the guests by 3 to 1, it's so early in the morning. They all wear white pants. On the table across from us, a tiny little gryphon is ensconced on a chair, being fed bits of toast and waffle. 

frigid deserts

Day 98 (Christmas Day) Joshua Tree National Park

We're hiking in Joshua Tree National Park on Christmas Day. It brings back memories of Petra. But American. Which means you can drive to the start of the trail, the paths are clearly marked, and there's no one scamming you for money to use the toilet. Also, it only costs $15. 

jumping with cabazon dinosaurs

Day 97 (Christmas Eve) Upland, Cabazon Dinosaurs, Palm Springs

On our road trip to Palm Springs, we pass by Upland High School, site of Rob's early Californian high school days. He recounts the Taco Bell inside the cafeteria, the skateboard he bought from a friend which he brought all the way to New Zealand only to have it stolen, and the good grades he used to get because there was nothing else to do. Honestly, the scale and size of this high school is something else. I'm getting used to feeling incredibly provincial in America. Everything is B.I.G. Big. Sometimes, necessarily so. Other times? Questionable. 

last sunset at the canal

Day 96 Malibu, Venice Canals

On Tuesday mornings, at 7.30 am, the street in front of our Venice garage/shack gets swept. We wake up at the crack of dawn and blearily circulate round Whole Foods, buying Christmas groceries to bring to Palm Springs. We come to blows over dessert. It had to be over dessert. Rob wants to make a chocolate bowl and fill it with ice cream. I desperately want a cherry pie because 'Murica. In the end, my cherry pie wins the day. I gaze at the chocolate stand for a long time. There's nothing under US$3.99.

rollercoaster roads at Echo Park

Day 95 Echo Park, Costco Fail

I'm feeling like povvo Martha Stewart today. In the morning, I slap together tuna sandwiches and thrown in some funfetti chewy Chips Ahoy and fruit in a my souvenir Liberty bag. 

homeless at the end of the santa monica bike path

Day 94 Santa Monica Farmer's Market, end of the Bike Path

We have a love-hate relationship with our little Venice Canal garage. On Air BnB, it looks positively adorable with bright white walls, cosy quilts on a bunk bed, papier mache tigers, and Henri Rousseau-esque paintings on the walls. There's two bikes that you can use and you can cruise to the start of the Venice Boardwalk in less than five minutes. Throw a football behind you and it'll land in the canal, if there wasn't a wall.

It's still adorable in real life. But it gets bitterly cold at night and damp with heat during the day.  The bed sinks in the middle and there's barely any power. If you've got too many things plugged in and decide to take a shower, chances are the switch will flip and you'll be dripping water naked in the stall.  

stages of a sunset from griffith's observatory

Day 93 Santa Monica, Abbot Kinney, Griffith's Observatory

The night before I had to fish an insect out of Rob's left ear. True story. All day at the Getty, he'd complained about something fluttering in there. At night, I took a look with the aid of my cellphone flashlight and there it was, looking back at me with it's two tiny beady eyes. I don't know who was more scared; Rob because he had a living thing stuck in his ear or me because I was solely responsible for getting it out of there. A few Google searches later, we came out of CVS with the wrong-kind of tweezers (the pointy kind). In thirty minutes, I was stabbing Rob's ear drum with it. In the end, he got it out himself by pouring olive oil in his ear, drowning the bastard, and letting it float out. The next day, we look at all the suspiciously damp corners of the shoddily-converted Venice Beach garage we're staying in with new eyes.

twisting through the hills off sunset boulevard

Day 92 The Getty, a drive on the Hills, Venice side streets

The art inside the Getty has no hope of competing with the building and the views outside. That's saying something 'cause there's Monet's Haystacks, Vincent Van Gogh's Irises, and a gorgeous parade of flower-crowned Alma Tadema ladies.

songs about santa monica

Day 91 Annanberg Space for Photography, Sunset Boulevard, The Grove, the Freeway, Santa Monica Pier

The Annanberg Space for Photography has an exhibition on climate change around the world. There's photos by Magnum photographers of the effects of natural disasters on coastal cities in Japan, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Africa, and the USA. It's a very LA kind of exhibition, if I can make a sweeping generalisation. I have a better time than expected. It has all the bells and whistles; murals, helpful infographics, tv screens everywhere, a library filled with expensive coffee table photography books that they beg you to look through, touch screens, and comfy booths and director chairs. 

a fifth avenue crawl

Day 89-90 IHOP, Chelsea, Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwarz, Staten Island Ferry, LA

My uncle's back in town. We have two choices for breakfast, he says. "We go to Chelsea Market. There's lots of nice places. Good sandwiches." Sandwiches. Okay. "Or we go to IHOP."

the harlem shake

Day 88 - Lower Harlem, Upper Harlem, Columbia University

On the subway to Harlem, a large mountain of a man walks up and down the subway cars, promising the "greatest show" if only someone would give him some quarters or even pennies. "I take pennies!" he hollers. He's studiously ignored. I play Temple Run 2 on my phone. He starts to bless Bill de Blasio, the current mayor of New York at the top of his lungs. "GOD BLESS BILL DE BLASIO. SO LONG AS BILL DE BLASIO'S THE MAYOR, IMMA DO ALRIGHT. GOD BLESS HIM AND HIS BLACK WIFE AND ALL HIS LITTLE CHILDREN." An older man gives him a dollar bill. He's so surprised by this that he trips on someone's feet in an attempt to hug the guy. "It's fine, it's fine," says the guy who gave the dollar, looking nervous and quickly backing away. He gets out at the station and our Bill de Blasio fan sits down. Essentially, his performance consists of someone paying him to shut up.

off broadway shenanigans

Day 86-87 Brooklyn Flea at Crown Heights, Pete's Tavern, and off-Broadway

Honest, we can't not go to the Brooklyn Flea. My aunt Carol does an admirable job of not twitching a facial muscle when we announce that we're gonna get on the 4 train (yet again) and speed into Crown Heights. I hear her on the phone later on. "They've even made it to Brooklyn. They've gone to Brooklyn a bunch of times."

I don't think she quite understands our fascination. Mine came from too much time reading internet blogs of mid-twenty to thirty somethings having fairy-light lit dinners inside cavernous brick buildings, discovering Mast Brother Chocolates, Saipua, and Bellocq, and seeing pap photos of Michelle Williams and Heath Ledger, in 2012, wandering around Boerum Hill and Williamsburg. Topped off by liberal sprinklings of Girls, of course.

star spotting and two pools in the ground

Day 84-85 East Village, Little Italy, Financial District, Tribeca, Greenwich Village, Times Square

We're strolling downtown to the East Village. It's frigid but the sun is out. I don't know why it bothers. It plays very little purpose in warming anyone up. We wander into a school's basketball court and Rob gets nostalgic for his school in Queens, PS 19. We're pretending to slam dunk without a basketball when school is let out and the high school kids are peering at us through the chain link fence. Shame.

understudy blues and the day we finally get into shake shack

Day 82-83 Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, back to Broadway, Studio 54

We lose both our umbrellas in the torrents of rain and wind crashing down on everyone. They committed suicide as we rushed across the intersection to get to Shake Shack on Fulton Street. We're back in Brooklyn, drenched and dodging infuriated, gridlocked drivers. 

off the island

Day 80-81 Nolita, Chinatown, Lower East Side, Brooklyn Bridge, DUMBO, Central Park

Today, there's no aim to our wandering. We're dawdling on the streets.

the most wonderful time of the year

Day 78-79 Still in Midtown, Broadway, and Times Square

Last night, we sweated it out in the overheated basement of Strand Books, getting flustered by the giant stacks. One floor up, somewhere in Fiction, a lucky stranger will happen upon a lurid raspberry wool hat (seen here in 2009), dropped by yours truly during a feverish hunt for a non-existent paperback version of Emily Gould's Friendship. 

I mourn it overnight until I realise there's an Anthropologie on Fifth Avenue that's five minutes from where we are. This store is a legitimate tourist destination for me. I touch everything possible in the store. Even Rob manages to occupy his time fiddling through the mindblowing range of pretty unnecessary decorative door handles and drawer pulls. He looks at them like an alien life form arriving on earth for the first time.

uptown midtown downtown crosstown

Day 77 Midtown, Lincoln Centre, the High Line

The Lufthansa pilots are flying today but striking tomorrow. We're off but sans three jars of Parisian terrine. Heathrow confiscates it from our carry-on, deeming it a paste, liable to be used as a type of deadly but delicious meat bomb. The guy is apologetic. Rob is sweet. "Don't worry. You're saving us from heart disease," he says, as if it's the guy sliding our meat paste into the bin that needs consoling. My mum admonishes me later on. "You packed it in your carry on?!" she cries. Read between the lines, she means, Beginner's mistake.

submerged pumpkins in canal water

Day 76 - Canals from Haggerston to Mile End, Brick Lane, Shoreditch

London won't let us go. Our flight to New York is cancelled due to a Lufthansa pilot strike over pensions. Google Now informed us of this, like a truly efficient, mind-reading personal assistant. Our  travel agent in Wellington, a real life person, remains none the wiser. The computer wins this round.