Travel | Finding Feasts

LA to Vegas Road Trip via Route 66

The second part of our four part American holiday – Part 1 being Los Angeles with Disneyland and Universal Studios, Part 3 being Las Vegas and Part 4 being New York City – is our much anticipated road trip, an icon of Americana, the drive from LA to Vegas via Route 66.

Although it’s a relatively short day trip of just four hours if you were to stay on Interstate 15, there are quite a few things to see along the way when you start researching it. For those who don’t know, four hours on the road in Australia doesn’t get you very far but thankfully they are such beautiful drives. So to help you nut out your perfect day trip, here’s how we ended up spending, what ended up being close to seven hours on the road.

There were a few main things that we wanted to check off the bucket list for this, as well as appease a 10 year (although he is such a great traveller), and they were…

Doing the road trip in a massive pickup truck – hubby’s bucket list item, mine was a convertible.
Drive on Route 66
See the desert and Joshua trees

Tick, tick and tick! But, as with anything, it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Firstly, looking into hiring a ute for the trip took quite a while, not only actually finding one but putting our faith in the hire company to have our dream car there on the day (there are lots of complaints in regards to this one particular subject, lots!). When dealing with car hire companies you are going to come across loads of bad reviews, but after juggling the pros and cons I finally decided to put my trust in Dollar Rent A Car at LAX Airport … well, they were the only car hire company, near enough to Anaheim to have a pickup truck available to cross state lines on the date we wanted it so I had no choice but to book with them and take my chances.

Even though I had booked the pickup a couple of weeks in advance, I wasn’t going to believe I was going to get it till I was actually standing at the counter of Dollar Rent A Car with the keys in my hand. We didn’t care if it was a bomb of a ute or a latest model, just so long as it was a pickup truck. But, like a miracle from the Road Trip Gods they had one, and not just one but two, which worked out really well as the first one we got into had the oil light turn on as soon as we got in, so we just hopped into the other one.

Our gorgeous ute for the LA to Vegas road trip

We had our American pickup truck for the LA to Vegas road trip, a 2015 Chevy Silverado. We were so happy!

We hit the road about 9:30 Wednesday morning with the itinerary mapped out…

Continue reading “LA to Vegas Road Trip via Route 66” →

BlondieLeave a comment

Christmas in Bali

Finding Feasts - Nusa Lembongan Life

Finding Feasts - Bali for Christmas

Finding Feasts - Seminyak Street

Finding Feasts - Seminyak Markets

Finding Feasts - Kuta Streets

Everyone knows that Bali is our family’s go-to holiday place for a stress free holiday. Yeah you bump into the occasional Bali Bogan but then again I see those around Sydney’s North Shore on a weekly basis too. I love celebrating Christmas at home with family and close friends, the turkey with all the trimmings but Mr H was intent on getting away from it all over the Christmas and the holiday season.

Whilst no particular planning or research was necessary we did seek the advice of our long time friends, Made Damplo and Dani Sulistyo. We have known these two since our first meeting in 2002. Their advice was something along the lines of, if you stay in Seminyak or surrounding suburbs don’t bother driving or getting a taxi. Getting out of Seminyak or Kuta can take 1-2 hours! And boy did we learn that first hand!

Requirements for the holiday were as follows:

Direct flight, arriving at a respectable hour of the day
To have a relaxing, stress free, no cooking or baking Christmas/New Years Eve
A private staffed Villa with plenty of space for all
A place where we can unwind and totally zone out yet be relatively close to bars, restaurants and shopping, preferably within walking distance
Bintang and wine on demand 😎
Private cooking lesson (this one has been on the bucket list for many years now!)

The holiday was broken up into two locations. 5 nights in Nusa Lembongan staying at Villa Bukit 1 followed by 5 nights in Seminyak staying at the Best of Seminyak: Beach & Town Villa 2. On arrival also stayed one night at the Grand Hyatt Bali in Nusa Dua.

Booking our holidays normally rests with me. That’s not to say that Mr H does not have the final say on the decision making process. The research is done by me, mainly because I am an absolute research freak. On this occasion however Mr H did all the hard work. Villa Bikit was found through The Lembongan Traveller, an excellent guide to everything on Nusa Lembongan.The villa in Seminyak was booked through Airbnb, a gamble that payed off big time!

Flight wise our chosen mode of transport was Air Garuda. Everyone has horrible flight stories of planes being delayed, flights being cancelled, luggage going astray or poor service however Garuda has always worked for us. The flights leave Sydney at the respectable hour of 10 am and arrive at 1.15 pm Bali time. Going home is the red eye flight however you can’t win them all, can you? We have always found the Air Garuda staff friendly, professional and happy to help. Asking for that extra glass of wine to settle the nerves is no problem for them. Air Garuda took out the ‘Best Cabin Crew 2015‘ award by SkyTrax, a London based independent airline raking agency. Not bad for, considering SkyTrax surveys 18 million travelers each year! They had also won it the year before.

The lead up to our getaway was not the most enjoyable one for me. Some how on the 3rd of December I had woken up with a strange tummy bug which had decided to take up residence in my body until it was time for us to fly out to Bali on the 23rd of December. Now for those of you that have been to Indonesia you will agree that arriving with a tummy bug is the last thing you want to be doing.

Armed with every pro-biotic, naturopathic and homeopathic medicine under the sun including the harder drugs like immodium the H family were off for 11 nights and 12 days of sun, cocktails and lounging by the pool. Assisting in the Christmas festivities were my work colleagues and friend Naomi and her son Ronan who is in the same class as Miss H.

Finding Feasts - Air Garuda

Traveling over the Christmas and New Year period meant that our holiday was booked well in advance, 10 months in fact meaning that we enjoyed reasonable airfare prices. What we saved on air travel meant that we could splurge on the accommodation.

Air fare cost for the three of us traveling economy was $2,900. Cost of Villa one was $1,900 however that was split between two families. Cost of Villa two was $2,000 for three people. Food and beverage and activity budget was a loose $2,000, $2,500 if you count mine and Mr H’s duty free shopping. I guess in total the holiday cost us around $9,300.

Although we are frequent travelers to Bali there are still so many places that we have not explored so we settled on spending 5 nights on the island of Nusa Lembongan. The island is famous for its jaw dropping sunsets, killer surf breaks and snorkeling. It’s distance is approximately 21.4 km from Sanur which equates to an approximate 20-30 minute speed boat ride.

Finding Feasts - Bali

Our second port of call was the trendy and fashionable suburb of Seminyak, although from this experience anyone and everyone now calls Seminyak home! Dwaine and I were married in Legian in 2004, our reception was at Gado Gado and the after party at Ku De Ta. Back then this part of Bali was almost remote, Ku De Ta was the last bar, past that there was nothing there, now hotels span as far as the eye can see. When we visited Ku De Ta for our post wedding party I had to take my shoes off and walk up a dirt road, fast forward 11 years and wow how things have changed. The place was insanely busy!

Overall we had an amazing time. Would there be things that we would do differently? Absolutely! No matter how much you travel and how many times you visit a destination, you continue to learn.

Read about my whole trip here…

Bella1 Comment

Two Weeks In America – What To Do?

Two Weeks In America – What To Do? – After getting back from our big, but all too short American adventure just over a month ago, I can now sit down share all the wonderful and exciting things we got up to.

Finding Feasts - New York in a week — Top Of The Rock – Rockefeller Centre

Finding Feasts - New York City in a week — Times Square New York, 42 St

Finding Feasts - Los Vegas with a kid — New York-New York Hotel & Casino Las Vegas

To begin with, I’m a bit of a research freak so having this amazing holiday land in our laps (I will explain shortly) with a relatively short turn around was a bit all consuming. From the, “ok, this is actually going to happen” to getting on the plane, left me with just over 1 month to organise. This may sound like a long time for some but when you are planning a holiday with a set budget (hubby refuses to use credit) and three people all liking different things, getting as much prep work done at home is your saving grace.

These are the basics of our American holiday…

Where: Los Angeles then on to Las Vegas (road trip!) and then to New York.

People: We started with family friends in LA then parted ways; they went off to Canada and Master 10, hubby and myself took on Las Vegas and New York.

How long: 2 weeks from go to whoa.

Budget: Excluding the return flights from Sydney to LA we went a smidgen over $11,000 AUD.

Road Trip – LA to Vegas via Route 66

New York has been on my personal dream list for as long as I can remember and my son has been wanting to go to F.A.O Schwarz Toy Store ever since seeing the movie, Big (darn it! missed it by only two months) but apart from those isolated dreams it has always been a holiday to Finland while using my brother-in-law’s London house as a base (he owes us BIG TIME accommodation wise) that has been on the family holiday agenda. Holidaying for my husband and I has always been the getting to the destination, not just waiting around for planes at an airport to get to your chosen point on earth. One of the main reasons that America was never on our immediate radar was there are just no stops from Australia to America, it’s all air travel… long, looong air travel.

But life throws you in directions you would never expect, and this is exactly one of those situations.

A dear friend of ours, Ali, who we have known since school, died a year ago, November 2014 from Motor Neuron Disease or ALS. It was a devastating loss and one of the worst, most heinous diseases you will ever come across. Before he passed he requested for us to join his wife and their two kids on a trip to Disneyland, to fulfill a dream holiday they had been wanting to do together, but the disease prevented this from happening. Melissa has been one of my closest friends since we met at the age of 13 in high school, Ali and my husband have been friends since 15 or so… a lifetime for all of us really.

So this is it, with Ali’s wish a Disneyland holiday was born; three adults and three kids, the perfect combo for such an expedition. Mel was looking at fulfilling all the girly stuff with 6 year old Bailey – and I do mean all of it, while husband Nick and I were fully prepared to be dragged around by Mel’s son Bodie (11) and our son Sebastian (10). This was purely the kid’s holiday, they ruled the agenda, where they wanted to go was where we were going to go. We were there to feed and water them and do every single ride available.

Finding Feasts - Disneyland California in a week — Disneyland Califonia

So now the planning… Disneyland is supposedly at it’s quietest time when our school holidays start in late September early October so that worked perfectly, (especially for Nicko, who loathes, absolutely despises crowds and waiting in queues – more of that story coming up – haha) plus the weather is getting milder so we won’t be melting under the Californian sun (more of that untruth coming up as well!). Next, what to do while we are there? While Mel and the kids had decided right off the bat to do a week or so in Canada after Disneyland (a train into the Rockies, staying at Whistler then a seaplane back to Vancouver) Nick and I were tossing up ideas about leaving it as just a quick jaunt; Disneyland and then back home to Sydney. Then driving to San Fransisco over a few days was thrown in, eventually coming up with quite possibly the most quintessential America trip we could do in our two weeks… Los Angeles to Las Vegas to New York! WOW, this was going to be a big one!

Los Angeles. Las Vegas. New York. Each city is a visual library of everything you have seen your entire life. They have each been written about, sung about, stories made into stage shows and movies. If you think about America chances are that it will most likely evoke pictures from one of these three cities.

If you have ever wanted to do such a trip but were worried about the length of time required or how much of a budget you need, then here is our breakdown to help you set up your own budget and itinerary plus reviews, tips and helpful advice.

Read about our entire trip here >>

Happy planning! Blondie

BlondieLeave a comment

Vertical garden from a wooden pallet

Ask my father and he will tell you that growing up I hated anything to do with gardening. I hated our garden with a passion. It probably didn’t help that mum and dad forced my brother and I to weed the backyard lawn with hand weed pickers! A very mundane and long task! It was a weekend chore that was the cause of many tears and arguments, mainly over me trying to get out of the weeding. The lawn had to be spotless and weed killer free!

Back then I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about with growing your own vegetables, fruits and herbs. To me it was so much easier to just get it from the shop.

Fast forward 25+ years and the tide has changed. I dream of one day owning a little plot of land out in the country. One that boasts a lush vegetable and herb patch. For now though I have to settle for a house with a small courtyard.

Living 10 minutes away from the city has its positives and negatives. Great restaurants are within walking distance. Parking is a bitch, every day! Living in a townhouse means that my ability to have a garden is very limited. What small outdoor area we do have contains a BBQ, outdoor setting and our fire pit (a must in autumn and winter!) The remaining floor space is occupied by Ti our cat and Spot the bunny rabbit. Both furry four legged animals have taken it upon themselves to claim what available land we have left and use it for their toilet needs. Not the compost I had in mind!

The idea of having a vertical garden came to me some months ago when Spot demolished some wild strawberries we had growing in the garden. I started to research balcony gardens and came across vertical gardens designed from wooden pallets. Yipee! With plenty of free pallets around in Sydney my vertical garden came alive last weekend.

It took 6 hours in total. Hubby built the leg support stand but was retired from service when he tried to staple with first weed protector sheet to the pallet, not up to the standard.

I am proud as punch of my achievement. My legs and arms were a little worse for wear a few days after but I now have a little small thriving garden. It will be interesting to see what vegetables and herbs grow best over the coming months and can’t wait till my first harvest.

Ps…If you are short on space in your yard Milkwood have written a lovely story about Best Edible Plants for your vertical garden. Lots of useful information and handy tips on setting up your own garden.

If you have a vertical garden I’d love to hear from you.

Bella 🙂

Bella2 Comments

Our first mushrooming trip!

Mushroom foraging NSW — Slippery Jack Mushrooms

I was introduced to wild mushroom foraging by Bella and her parents early this autumn. Although it was something that mum grew up doing in Finland it wasn’t something that transferred over when she moved to Australia.

Bella and I had always planned mushroom picking trips but seasons came and went. Finally, one weekend in March when Bella’s parents were making their usual weekend trip we decided to join them.

With an early morning wake up we packed the kids, dog and rations and made the 1.5 hour drive down south to Belango State Forest in the Southern Highlands of NSW for our first mushroom experience.

Finding feasts - Mushroom foraging NSW — Saffron Milk Cap Mushrooms

Continue reading “Our first mushrooming trip!” →

BlondieLeave a comment