thepearlandheroyster

[thepearlandheroyster]

Consistent with my trip character, this post is hella late. Better late than never. Honestly I am sad that the trip is over and have been procrastinating writing this post because it’s been fun still living in trip world. But without further ado:

WE’RE HOME!!!!!!!!! On the left is when we left home on October 23rd, 2018. The right is our return home on April 1st, 2019.

This has been a wild 5 and a half months. There have been so many positive changes that I didn’t even think were possible just because of travel. I would definitely say we are returning home as different (better) people.

Jeff and I left as boyfriend/girlfriend and came home as fiancés. I still get a bubbly feeling everytime I think about it! Travelling with Jeff has been the pleasure of a lifetime. We make such a great team I couldn’t imagine doing this trip with anyone else. I would say we are ready to tackle The Amazing Race. Where I lack he picks up and where he lacks I pick up. We have come to learn each other so well I think we probably know the other one better than ourselves. We have such a strong foundation I have all the confidence in the world that we will live happily ever after together. We went from a long distance relationship of seeing each other every two weeks (with a few extra days thrown in randomly) to spending spending Every. Single. Day. Together. for 5 months. I can honestly say, I miss him so much now that we’re home. We’ve been two love birds inseparable on the trip and now we are back to living an hour away from each other. Donations to our house fund can be forwarded to.... ;)

Not only big life changes but smaller changes have been made. Both of our confidences have increased. Jeff used to not enjoy talking to strangers and now he will be the one to strike up a conversation with a random before I even think about it. I feel more comfortable in my own skin and just more self assured in general. It feels as though there’s a wisdom that we’ve gained from seeing so many different cultures and places. I am still a worry wart but I’ve definitely learned to calm down about a lot of things and let things happen as they will. The philosophy of the trip really was “we’ll deal with it when it comes, if it comes”. (Fun fact: we actually messed up our hotel nights in Vegas and were short one night but it was a simple fix).

After all this travel this is what I’ve learned: people are people no matter where you go. The everyday practices might be a little different but at the end of the day people are the same everywhere. The same problems affect all places in some way, shape, or form. People are really are the same which is truthfully not something I thought I would be surprised by but I am. They show anger and greed but also a passion and kindness that can humble you beyond words. Truly there is a kindness in every corner of the world, sometimes in places that you would least expect it (like in our sketchy neighbourhood in LA). I feel so honoured to have been able to travel through and experience so many different cultures and get to know so many kind and wonderful people.

Jeff is now back at his job and I have decided to leave my old job and take a new job at the hospital. We have been very busy with getting reacclimatized to Canada and seeing all of our friends and family. We have much to look forward to (like buying a house and getting married!). Let the new adventure start!

I plan to make some extra posts before I official call this blog done. So stay tuned for just a few more posts (doubtful anyone still follows this since I’ve seen/talked to the majority of people who were following!).

Anyways, hope you are having a wonderful day whoever you are reading this.

[thepearlandheroyster]

Different hotel shows and exhibits. The flowers were pretty cool they were made of actual real flowers!

[thepearlandheroyster]

Who did it better? Vegas or the real deal. Can you spot the different places we went?

We have:

Arc de triomph-Paris

Eiffel Tower-Paris

Venetian canal-Venice

Colosseum-Rome

Cherry blossoms-Japan

Temple-Japan

Inari gates-Japan

Excalibur-England

[thepearlandheroyster]

The night of over indulgence. It started out at Cosmo. It has somehow turned into a tradition of playing blackjack at the bar computers Cosmo while sipping what other than cosmos? As you win (or spend enough money) you get free drink tickets. Well. I do really well at the computer blackjack and so the drink tickets just kept popping out. I started with a delightful dirty martini and then switched to my old stand by of gin and tonic. From there we went to Margaritaville because we had a free margarita there but also got more on top of that??? It was a ROUGH morning the next day. Jeff was in better shape than me and was actually able to get out of bed before 7pm...bless him he got me Powerade and saltines for my poor alcoholic tummy. Keep in mind, it was this morning we woke up to a waterfall coming from the ceiling. Thankfully we were both still feeling pretty at 6am when maintenance was coming in and out of the room and when we did the switch.

[thepearlandheroyster]

Jeff’s dad collects quarters and so we headed over to the classic quarter machines to find some of the ones he needed! It makes for some very dirty work though. It probably took at least 10 washes to get the metal stink off my hands.

[thepearlandheroyster]

We went to Guy Fieri’s restaurant. Had to get burgers (also do Americans only eat burgers? Do they know other food groups exist??? I’m not sure we do??? Maybe that’s why I love burgers...it’s my American blood). Anyways, the burgers were amazing.

[thepearlandheroyster]

The strip.

We ended up staying at the Four Queens in the downtown (Old Vegas) section. I would probably never stay at the Four Queens again. It’s just too in the motion. The Main Street of downtown is insane. More noise than the strip. It is pure sensory overload which is great for a little while but when you’re tired you can escape to your hotel room. We couldn’t do that. We were on a lower floor (8th to be exact) and the noise was actually deafening. There was a makeshift drummer (think pales and wine bottles as drums) that I wanted to have strong words with. He finished by 2am and would start up at 5am WHEN DID HE SLEEP?! Funny enough, we had a mishap with a leaking ceiling one morning (of course the morning we induldged heavily in Vegas shenanigans and were severely hungover) and ended up getting an upgraded room that was significantly better and even had a jacuzzi tub!

Jeff took me to Vegas for Valentine’s Day a few years ago and we stayed at the Flamingo and it was lovely. I definitely prefer the strip because the noise is less in the hotel rooms hah! I am an old lady at heart. Really living up to the name Joyce!

[thepearlandheroyster]

Soooo we were going to book flights home from LA however they were expensive. So we decided to look at bus trips to Vegas and flights home from Vegas. By doing a 4 day mini vacation in Vegas, we saved $600 by flying home from there rather than LA! Hah who would have thought?!

[thepearlandheroyster]

On the Sunday, we decided to head to a farmers market that is apparently a popular star sighting spot but we didn’t see any stars and honestly it was a great disappointment after coming from Melbourne’s amazing market because the one in LA was not even a close competition. I didn’t even take pictures of the farmers market because I was so underwhelmed.

The pictures here however are from the mall we went to on our last day in LA. It was one of the nicer areas we were in and actually enjoyable. There was a decent market where we found a spice Jeff has been looking for for the past 3 years (file powder). We also got a kick out of the label of the Cajun mix. Being in the mood of southern cooking and spotting a place that sold gumbo we decided to have a southern lunch. It was quite yummy.

Our time in LA did not yield any major celebrity sightings. We did however see a dog with the best hairdo anyone can ever have. He literally had better hair than any human I’ve ever seen. It was long and lusciously golden. He probably gets a $500 haircut biweekly. And I mean haircut because that was true hair, not fur. He was being walked by a man in a gorgeous suit with a flock of security. So that person was probably the most famous person we saw and we didn’t even know him.

[thepearlandheroyster]

From Melbourne, we took a 14.5 hour (!!!!!) flight to Los Angeles. It was sad to say goodbye to Australia. Australia was one of my absolute favourite places we went on the trip. The flight was actually a little easier than I imagined it to be. I downloaded a buttload of movies and shows for the plane and also read my book for most of it. The seatroom wasn’t bad and the bathroom on board was bigger than the en-suite I have in my bedroom at home. Also Jeff got the short straw of sitting in the middle (to be fair I had the middle seat when we flew Japan -New Zealand so don’t feel too bad for him because it was payback).

Neither of us had been to LA before so we felt obligated to do the most touristy things possible. We did the Hollywood Walk of Fame and saw the Chinese Theatre.

Honestly, I would never go back to LA. I did not like it at all. We had an air bnb in a reallllllllllllllllly seedy area. The first night we were there we woke up to gun shots outside. I later googled our neighbourhood and it was one of the more notoriously bad gang neighbourhoods. It was famous from a few years back where a tourist family took a wrong turn and ended up wandering the streets and came face to face with a gang who shot and killed the whole family. I will say it is in the process of being gentrified but isn’t quite there yet. To be fair, all of our neighbours said good morning to us when we would see them and we just made sure to be back inside before dark. For anyone going to LA, I would recommend renting a car because the public transit is not the greatest. It still needs to grow and evolve.

[thepearlandheroyster]

The last beach we visited in Australia was St. Kilda beach. It was just outside the city centre so we were able to take a street car over to it. Not too many swimmers but the water was nice enough for us!

[thepearlandheroyster]

On St. Patrick’s Day it’s an obligation for an Irishman to find an Irish bar and drink some Guinness.

[thepearlandheroyster]

During our time in Melbourne, we found the Queen Victoria Farmer’s Market which was a gem. It’s a huge farmer’s market that has everything you could imagine from fresh produce, any kind of meat/seafood you could think of, a flea market, coffee shops, bakeries, spice shops, and more! It was amazing. We ended up here more often than not. We bought a beautiful steak dinner with fresh veggies one night all for under $20 and it fed us for like 3 days straight!

The second picture is a street performance we watched. It was two gentlemen on guitars and they were absolutely amazing! There was a man in a rainbow dress definitely tripping on some hard drugs enjoying the performance to the max! The performers were so good we ended up buying their CD! Their name is Opal Ocean if you want to check out their sound. When we talked to them, they gave us a good laugh because they said they were doing a tour and so we inquired if they were coming to Canada and they said, “yes! We’re doing a whole Canadian tour from East to West starting in Vancouver!” I don’t think geography is their greatest strength. Good thing they’re good musicians.

[thepearlandheroyster]

Our campsite was quite a distance from the actual city. We had a 20+ minute walk and then an hour and 20 minute street car ride to the downtown. On a walk back to the campground the sunset was so pretty the sun looked like a firey ball in the sky. Which is what it is exactly but it looked extra firey this night.

[thepearlandheroyster]

We finally made it to our final destination in Australia: Melbourne! This is the famous graffiti street: Hosier Lane.

[thepearlandheroyster]

Because our van was 3.2 metres high and the bridge to get to the ferry access had a clearance of 3.2 metres, I didn’t want to chance it and so we took a back way to the ferry to get to Raymond Island. Jeff took this on our way back through because I thought the back way looked so serene and beautiful.

[thepearlandheroyster]

We did the koala trail on the island and then veered off from it to walk by the bay.