Yeah. So.

Let's just pretend the last few days never happened. Too long ago to bother. I'll do it when I've cleaned my room out, aka never.

Unofficial (soon to be replaced) Post

So this isn't a post, it'll be removed soon. It's more of a long distance post-it note.
I'm on my way home now. I'm about half an hour away from getting on a plane to Singapore and then another home to Perth. I'll be home on midnight of Saturday morning.
I'll see you chums at school on Monday.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOH contain your excitement for the sake of normality. Please do not embarrass yourselves.
And if you want to see me before Monday, tough luck, I'm busy learning how to play piano again.
Next stop, Perth. Via Singapore. Or more like Singapore-Perth. Something.
Who cares! I'm coming home!
Next stop, HOME!

EDIT: Until I do end up blogging the last few days, check out my other long-running blog here. It'll tickle your fancy.

33: Day 26/The Homeland..?

Date: 20/7/10
Town: London, England
Time: 7.39pm
Timezone: GMT -01.00
Rule Britannia, Marmalade and Jam...
I won't finish the end of that line because it's rude and I'm a sweet and innocent young person. Or something. It's just a song my family likes to sing when they've had too many drinks, and I'm afraid it hereditary.
So today was the first day in England. Sightseeing is tomorrow so I don't have many exciting pictures for the blog. I would like to mention that I really like England so far. English people are really nice. And sarcastic. But nice nonetheless.
As Mark Watson once said, in Britain, when somebody says 'Yeah, Right' they mean 'No, Wrong."
Or maybe that's just some of them.
There's a lot of musicals in the West End in London as well but we don't have time to go see them.
Oh and also, the last day in New York I got myself a dandy pair of
DOC MARTENS!!!!


Yeah. Doc fricken' Martens. You're jealous, I know you are.
It was a spontaneous - yet expensive - purchase. But they are the comfiest shoes ever. I wore them all up and down the streets of London town - well, back and forth from the shops to my hotel - and it's like walking on air.


So this is a street. I dunno where. Don't hate me.
Also, there are a lot of cars in England. I don't mean just cars, I mean Rolls Royce and Ferrari and Aston Martin and Jaguar and Maserati and Audi and Lotus. And even a Bugatti.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here are the cars I spotted today...


So there's a Maserati Quattroporte, Aston Martin DBS, A BUGATTI VEYRON, and a.... umm... I actually don't know what the electric blue one is. I thought it was a Lotus but it's something I've never heard of before and now I can't remember.
Oh well. Useless trivial information.
Unfortunately this isn't a very exciting post. I don't have any images of England for you at all.
But I found something else very very important that I thought you should know about. Might I mention that not only was there nary a moose and nary a bear in continental USA, but also... nary a Krispy Kreme.


I have been travelling around the world for four weeks and I only found Krispy Kremes on the last three days of my travels.
Oh yeah, I'm coming home in a few days. I'll be home by Saturday.
I bet you're all excited to see me again. I'm just about ready to come home. I don't think I could take much more travelling. It's wearing me out and I'm putting on weight... I think it'll be bananas and rockmelon for the next six weeks.
And California Rolls.
Yum.
I'll get you some good pictures tomorrow.
G'night. Slash, morning. It's 3am in Perth.
Sweet dreams.

32: Day 25/So Long, America

Date: 19/7/10
Town: Manhattan, NY/London, England
Time: 9.02pm
Timezone: GMT -04.00/-01.00

This post is sort of askew because I'm writing it while in the JFK airport but about to get on the plane to England. So, by the time I get to post it, I'll be in England.
So this post is in two places at once. I suppose.
Nothing really spectacular happened today. I went out for Breakfast again and had pancakes again and this time they were the best of all. So I'm pleased to say that the Brooklyn Diner wins best pancakes award for three days in New York City.
(Note: I totally forgot to add to this here blog that I went to the Guggenheim Art Museum today. Usually I rely on my photojournalism skills to help me remember what happened but the funny thing is that you're not allowed to take photos inside the Guggenheim. So there you have it.)
After that, we sort of lingered around the city again, spent some time investigating the M&M's store, bought a kilo and a half of M&M's... all different colours, too. You can get aqua green, baby blue, lilac purple, pastel pink and more. I didn't get a photo but here's some I stole from Google Images.


This store was amazing. So many M&Ms! It's heaven, or at least my version of it.
We went to the Bond 45 restaurant for lunch, we went there for dinner the night before and decided we liked it so much to go back. That's the first time that's happened in any town, in any country in this entire trip. I would definitely eat there every day of my life if I could.
Much of my journey revolves around food.
So then we went to the airport and we got into the British Airways lounge thanks to Dad's Qantas club card again... always handy. Got to have showers and freshen up, and then our waiter brought us drinks and coffees and I shared with him some of my M&Ms - I had enough to go round, after all - and he talked to us and liked us so much he got us a table in the business class lounge where they serve up real food.
Guess being nice to people has it's benefits. It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
Next stop, England... well. Later tonight, I'll be on a plane to Heathrow. So, technically I'll be in England. You know.
Bye!

31: Day 24/Rockefeller

Date: 18/7/10
Town: Manhattan, NY
Time: 8.35pm
Timezone: GMT -04.00

I had late breakfast (again) and of course it was pancakes. It wasn't as good as yesterday's but I'm not naming names, don't want to put down any of the diners, they're all pretty good as far as I can tell.
Today was all quite busy. The day before we had tried to go shopping in Soho area which was a bit of a failure because it was so full of cheap stores that were really not good for anything much, so today we went to 5th Avenue which is where all the fancy schmancy shops are, but first we went to the Rockefeller centre.
The Rockefeller tower is about sixty eight stories high and it's got one of the best views of New York city. We thought, being tourists and all, we should go do the touristy things. So we did.
And here's the pictures, words cannot describe this city.


Yay for good views! Actually all of these pictures were terribly smoggy when I took them but I edited them for your viewing pleasure. Much more aesthetically fabulous.
Then we went for a shop. Now, might I say that I am not the best shopper ever. I am a terrible shopper because I'm pessimistic about clothes, but nothing else much. I love nice clothes but they quite often don't fit. And I'm a perfectionist. There's other reasons but I'm keeping it real, you know.
I found on 5th Avenue, though, some fantastic stores. Sak's on Fifth is an enormous department store that has Gucci and Chanel and Dolce and Gabanna and all that and we stayed for about a minute, saw a nice pair of Prada shoes that were four hundred dollars on sale so we buggered off.
The shops I liked on Fifth were a few shops I've come across in my travels. My favourite three so far have been Urban Outfitters, Banana Republic and Anthopologie. They are nice clothes, sort of like nice prints and patterns and cardigans and all the things I like. I'm upset because they don't have these stores in Perth, but I'm happy because nobody else in Perth will wear the clothes I have now. So it's a sort of good and bad thing.
That's all I can rant about for now, move on!
Later on that night we had nothing to do. So we went back up the Rockefeller tower at night. Of course.
And, as I'm writing this in the airport because I'm behind on the posts, I currently don't have my camera and therefore don't have the pictures I took that night.
So. Stay tuned. I'll get them to you soon.
But, just for Matthew,



EDIT: As promised, a look from the Rockefeller at night. Eep!



Blog ya later.
Next stop, London.

30: Day 23/Hakuna Matata!

Date: 17/7/10
Town: Manhattan, NY
Time: 7.32pm
Timezone: GMT -04.00

Well, today my sister and I slept in until almost lunchtime and then we went out for poached eggs and pancakes. No better way to enjoy brunch, I say.
Then we took a tour bus downtown and we saw a lot of New York that way. We figure we couldn't be bothered walking. So here's some of the things I have seen.


This, my friends, is the Empire State Building from the base - the tallest building in New York. Because it was built in the Great Depression, they used to pay people to travel up and down the elevators turning lights on and off to give the impression that people were actually renting space there. But they weren't.


This is Macy's, it's the biggest department store in New York. It's like Myer, or David Jones, but on a really big scale. Lots and lots of clothes and brands. Very exciting. Macy's is so big and rich they host their own Thanksgiving Day parade, and they even sponsor the fireworks for the annual Fourth of July festivities. And if you're not sure how big that festival is, last year they detonated about 22 tonnes of pyrotechnics. So... yeah. Expensive.


That's a firetruck. It's ladder 18. That's exciting. I love firetrucks. I bought myself a FDNY shirt today, in a souvenir shop. I'm also a bit of a pyromaniac (you should see my candle collection) so it's a little bit contradictory. Oh, when I say pyromaniac, I don't mean arsonist. I just like fire.


This is the Flatiron Building. As you may have guessed, this is not my image. It's not a flying bus. I'm not that amazing. This is from Wikipedia, like most other images of landmarks that I get crappy photos of.
The Flatiron Building is on a triangular block of land at the intersection of 23rd, 5th and Broadway. It was used in the motion picture Spider Man as the headquarters for the Daily Bugle, where Peter Parker works as a photographer. It was the pinnacle of modern architecture in it's day, originally called the Fuller Building but caught the nickname of Flatiron building because of it's shape, and now it's a landmark and the entire district is known as the Flatiron district. It's pretty impressive.


And if you look closely, you'll see a person standing on top of the Flatiron Building. Don't stress, he's not a jumper - Antony Gormely, artist extraordinaire, sculpted about twenty seven or so statues of men and has placed them atop a number of different scyscrapers in downtown Manhattan. They got annoyed at him because the emergency services had hundreds of calls from distressed people who thought they were watching a suicide.
Hah, hah. Nice one, Tony.
Then guess what we did? We went to see the Lion King! Live! At Broadway! On a Saturday! And it was amazing! I am the biggest fan of the movies and I loved the musical! I'm using so many exclamation marks!


Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed to take photos because they make money from buying books with photos in them (and I bought one). So here's some images from Google that I thought you'd like.





It was almost an exact replica of the classic Disney movie on a Broadway stage - the singers were amazing, gave me goosebumps. The lady who played Rafiki the baboon witchdoctor was the funniest, best actress and the most amazing singer. She sang 'He Lives In You' a few times, and she was spectacular.
Scar was my other favourite character - he was everything I thought he'd be.
Lion King holds a special place in my heart - when Rikki and I were little, it was the best movie around. We once spent an entire night at my cousin's 21st birthday party trying to get as many quotes from the Lion King movie into our conversations.
Some of my personal favourites...
- "What do you want me to do, dress in drag and do the hula?"
- "Uncle scar, when I'm king, what'll that make you?" "A monkey's uncle."
- "Are you talking to me? ... they call me... MISTER PIG! AAARGH!"
- "He'd make a very handsome throw rug."
- "Aaare you achin? Foorrr some bacon? Heee's a big pig, yep yep you can be a big pig too, OI!"
- "Ix-nay on the upid-stay..." "Who you callin oopid-stay?!"
- "Mufasa." "What did you say?!" "Uh, I said, que pasa?"
- "Slimy, yet satisfying."
There's more, but I don't have time.
And that's all. There's more, but I don't have time.
Want me to say it again?
... I don't have time.
I'm trying to get up to date. Stick with me, kiddos.
Catchaz.

29: Day 22/New York, NY

Date: 16/7/10
Town: Manhattan, NY
Time: 11.29pm
Timezone: -04.00

I realise this blog is late. I'm sorry, there's so much to do and so not enough time to do it in. So, be kind, and enjoy reading.

These vagabond shoes are longing to stray. And step around the heart of it. In old, New York...
H'okay, let's cut straight to the chase. This city is amazing. I'd stay here forever if I thought I'd survive more than a week. As I mentioned to some others earlier, the closest I've ever felt to this sort of claustrophobia is being in the middle of a mosh pit at Soundwave music festival. But notably less bogans.
And now I'm here I am at perfect liberty to Brooklyn Rage my heart out, if only I could do a Brooklyn accent... Gosh. Otherwise, I'd be totally raging in a Brooklyn way.
If you don't know Brooklyn Rage, then get Googling already.
So we arrived after lunch, having flown through Toronto from Halifax to LaGuardia airport in New York. Didn't see too much on the flight in, because it was rather cloudy.


But pretty, pretty clouds they are.
So we arrived in the 33 degree heat in America, and to my surprise there was very little security checks as we arrived. I would have thought they'd fully take all the stuff out of my bag and make me do trivia or something. They were more adamant about security in San Francisco, actually. Hmmm.
We taxi'd over to the hotel and after check in we walked from the hotel and found ourselves in the heart of NEW YORK!


This place is oh so freaky and oh so big. I can hardly remember what's where and where's what, and if my head wasn't screwed on I would have lost it already. But it's amazing. There's so much to do and so much to see and I think if I stayed here longer than half a week I would collapse and become a vegetable. It's so full on.


This first afternoon we pretty much just had a look around Times Square and Broadway. Apparently the rule for owning a building in Times square is that you have to have some form of advertising on it. So there is billboards everywhere. Also, there's a lot of taxi's. And even though it's illegal to honk your horn in New York ($350 fine) it still happens.
I also watched the seventh firetruck go past me today without my being able to get a photo of it. I have gone almost all the way across Canada and been to San Francisco and I have seen so many firetrucks with the lights and the siren and then some stupid fat person or a bus or a bus full of fat people gets in the way. Always. Grrrrr.
I will get you, firetruck.
So that's all that happened today. A lady at the hotel asked if we were European.
No, actually. We're from Azerbaijan. Get it right, lady.
Oh, and there's bike taxi's. And Dad was getting annoyed that they kept ringing their bells at us to give us a ride, and then I explained that are moderately sized people and the guys on the bikes would rather pull a cart full of not-fat people. Which, granted, was a pretty harsh comment to make, but we watched them all riding around Central Park and we came to realise that it was true.


So that's my first afternoon in New York, and it's so hard to describe. It's just so overwhelming. (And I'll post very soon my second day. I mean it. Really.)
Blog ya later!
If I hadn't decided to be mature and not use emoticons in this blog, I would be using so many colon capital D smiley faces that you wouldn't be able to read a word.
That's how much I love this city.