The past few days

Has been a whirlwind few days...

Birmingham on Monday - spent the morning being shown the sights of Birmingham by a very warm and friendly local - he's spent his life in the city and knew it well.  Lots to say about politics, race relations and what has changed and what has stayed the same over the past 40 years.  Then lunch at The Club (it is said THE Club - you have to emphasise the word 'the' - a Birmingham institution).  Met some fascinating (and very successful businesspeople and talked business, politics, history and etc.

Waited at Birmingham airport a few hours for our delayed flight.  Eventually made it to Philadelphia quite late at night.  Dinner at a cool little Italian place that miraculously was still open. 

Tuesday morning early train to NYC (1 1/2 hours).  Stayed at the Gansevoort Park Hotel and very happy with it.  Good room - cool + good size, good staff, good location (on Park Avenue right near the 28th street subway station).  Met up with Susie for an excellent coffee at The Ace Hotel.  Wandered the streets, visited the New York Public Library (including a fantastic exhibition on religion and religious writings), shopped for discount designer clothes.  Met up with Susie again and dinner at the bar at Keen's - an amazing old steakhouse - the sort of place where you order a martini without even thinking about it.  Then saw Time Stands Still on Broadway - a really good play, with Laura Linney and Christina Ricci.

Wednesday morning at The Met.  My favourite painting was in storage (Zuburan - 'The Crucifixion') but still always good.  Checked out the antiquities, the armour and European paintings.  Met Susie again for a great lunch at Momofuku Ssam Bar - really good.  Wandered the Lower East Side then caught the train back to Philadelphia.  A dinner last night for M's Fellowship group.

I wandered around Philadelphia this morning - good coffee at La Colombe on 19th.  A lunch as part of the Fellowship, with the Chairman of Intel as the guest.  She was very impressive.  A relaxed afternoon and a formal function tonight.

Birmingham, Alabama

Now in Birmingham, Alabama.  I don't think they get too many Australians here.  People seem very surprised to hear our accents and keep asking why we are here and telling us we're a long way from home.

Had dinner at Sweet Bones Alabama.  Amazing barbeque.  Bizarre fried pickles, great brisket, pulled chicken and steak + sides of collard greens, white beans and coleslaw. 

It was a long day today - 3 1/2 hour flight from San Francisco to Houston, then another flight from Houston to Birmingham.  Bad coffee, crappy service on Continental. 

Started very early this morning driving to San Francisco airport - all good, other than a detour over the Bay Bridge when M misread the driving instructions and directed me most of the way to Oakland airport instead of San Francisco airport.

Berkeley

An inspiring poster at Berkeley

Squirrel at Berkeley

A fairly hopeful poster at Berkeley

A very public declaration at Berkeley

America's future leaders

Alcatraz photos etc

Ferry to Alcaztraz

Ferry to Alcatraz

Punishment cell at Alcatraz

San Francisco

More San Francisco

Today is Veterans' Day.  Visited Berkeley by BART (the very efficient train system).  Wandered around town and the very pretty campus.  This afternoon trolley car to Fishermens' Wharf - chocolate sundae by the water and wandered around.  A really nice, sunny San Francisco afternoon.

Yesterday had a really interesting morning wandering around down-market residential areas of San Francisco - the sort of fascinating stuff I normally don't have time for.  San Francisco really has a lot of homeless people.

Yesterday afternoon M and I visited Alcatraz - a short ferry, as the island is only 1 1/2 miles off San Francisco.  Alcatraz was really interesting - an amazing audio tour and a slice of history.

Weird

Not sure which is more surprising - people repeatedly trying to give me flyers for strip clubs while I was walking down The Strip in Vegas hand-in-hand with M (at almost 30 weeks pregnant), or today in Berkeley when a drug dealer tried to sell marijuana to M.

San Francisco #3

Fairmont Hotel

Hayter @ SFMoMA

View from our room @ The Fairmont

View from our room @ The Fairmont

Cablecar

The old ferry building

Michael Jackson & Bubbles - Jeff Koons @ SFMoMA

San Francisco #2

Tuesday early evening in San Francisco. 
It's been a really fun couple of days since we arrived very late Sunday night.

Yesterday I explored Market Street and then wandered down to the old ferry building and the marketplace.  The building is extremely well-restored, and has an amazing selection of gourmet foods.  Lunch was a fantastic hot freshly-cooked fish sandwich, plus an unbelievably good steamed chicken bun from Out The Door (the takeaway version of Slanted Door.  After lunch I headed to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA).  A fantastic exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson photos, plus lots of other good stuff.  Last night a fun and really good dinner at Farmer Brown - 'farm fresh soul food'.  My first experience of Southern food - we had fried chicken and catfish, each served with a biscuit (like a muffin) and salad, plus greens and macaroni.  I washed it down with a shot of bourbon and a Pabs Blue Ribbon beer.

Today wandered back to the old ferry building and my first really good coffee of the trip - at Blue Bottle Coffee.  The waitress seemed almost emotional when I told her they served the best coffee I'd had in America and how it reminded me of home.  Walked around the fisherman's market - very touristy, and lots of claws everywhere.  Wandered around and found the North Beach neighborhood.  Walked through it and sat in Washington Square park, then trolley car back to the Fairmont.  This afternoon shopped around Union Square.  For an Australian, American shops are very, very reasonably-priced at present.

San Francisco #1

After my college football expedition on Saturday night, had a fun day yesterday with Rich, Simone and the kids.  An amazing Mexican lunch in Old Town, complete with giant margarita, then a relaxing afternoon.  A long delay on our flight from San Diego to San Francisco - but we eventually made it to our hotel by about 1am.

We're staying at The Fairmont.  It is VERY old school - more than a hundred years old, and the hotel for which The Fairmont chain of hotels is named.  Right at the top of Nob Hill - at the top of the hill - and our room overlooks the bay. 

Go team!

Just returned from a college football game at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego:- San Diego State Aztecs v Colorado State Rams - Aztecs won 24 - 19.  A lot of fun.  Cheerleaders, a massive marching band, drunk college students, tailgate parties outside the ground and pretty good-quality gridiron - the Aztecs won despite making a lot of mistakes.  The food and drinks were so overpriced they made the MCG seem like an absolute bargain.

San Diego

Now in San Diego; our hotel is right on Pacific Beach and quite nice.  Simone generously picked us up yesterday, and we spent the afternoon with her and the kids - La Jolla beach, then back at their house in (or around) Poway.  Rich joined us after work and we had a really relaxing evening.  This morning walked up the beach for breakfast at World Famous - amazing and huge Mexican-style breakfasts. 

Vegas

Today leave Vegas for San Diego.

My first time in Las Vegas, and I've had fun.  We've stayed at The Encore, which has turned out to be a really really good hotel.  A very big, well fitted-out room with the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, and the hotel has great facilities.  My only negative would  be that it's up one end of The Strip so a bit of a hike to most of the other casinos.

We went to the Republican Party of Nevada's election-night party (thanks to Paula), which was fascinating - and which I've already mentioned.  We went to Le Reve, the show at The Wynn / Encore and it was spectacular.  We ate at a good New York-style deli at The Encore (complete with matzoh ball soup and v good pickles), had a passable coffee at a Parisian-style cafe on a cobblestoned street at Paris and had an excellent meal at The Lakeside Grill at The Wynn.  The Lakeside Grill is situated on the Lake of Dreams, a man-made lake and waterfall inside the resort.  It is actually quite beautiful, and the restaurant elegant with very good service and food.  It was slightly jarring at 7pm, when a giant frog appeared at the top of the waterfall and sang 'What A Wonderful World'.  Actually I think it was lip-synching the Louis Armstrong original.

I played poker for a few hours at The Wynn/Encore poker room against a mix of Nevadans and some tourists and pretty much held my own.  Fascinating people watching.  One guy from New Jersey would not stop talking about how good the biscotti he bakes are.  At one point we had a dealer called Cowboy.  A talkative guy up the other end of the table had recently been to Guetamala, and the table was collectively amazed that one could possibly travel somewhere so far away.  I kept my mouth mostly shut and watched and listened and played and drank the free drinks brought by waitresses in extremely brief outfits. 

And last night we went out with Paula (a friend from New Zealand M has made on the Fellowship she's currently doing) for a buffet dinner at The Wynn - surprisingly good food - a walk up The Strip, and an hour or so of blackjack at Bellagio - I came out slightly ahead.

Sharron Angle's concession speech

Sharron Angle's speech when conceding defeat in the 2010 Nevada senate race

At the Republican Party of Nevada 2010 mid-term elections victory (?) party

M & I

M, Paula and Florence

@ the party

Joe Heck for congress

Grand Canyon November 2010

Election night

Will post more (with photos), but have just returned from the Nevada Republican Party's VIP election-night party.  All thanks to M's EF-colleague Paula.  An amazing evening.  Met some nice Republicans, drank some excellent scotch and ate well, sat in the roped-off area and met major donors to the party, watched many excited volunteers, got some great photos, and watched the election results roll in.  Notwithstanding that I was having a great time, the party felt a little flat given that Sharron Angle lost her Senate bid but a pretty great time was had by an Australian political junkie.

Grand Canyon

Am presently in the Grand Canyon, at the beginning of Epic Voyage II of 2010.

After an amazing Cutler & Co lunch on Friday, I had a fairly interrupted night's sleep.  I gave up sleeping altogether by 5ish, and made final preparations for my trip. 

Saturday morning flew Melbourne - LA, miraculously made my LA - Phoenix flight (with time for a mexican breakfast burrito) and met M at the luggage carousel in Phoenix a few minutes early (about 20 hours after leaving home).  Logistics worked incredibly well.  Watched Kick Ass and Get Him To The Greek on the plane, plus read The Age, The Australian, the AFR, the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Was great to meet up with M after a month or so apart.  She's getting really big.

Picked up our red four wheel drive and got on the road - didn't see any of Phoenix.  Stopped in Sedona for lunch - a really pretty town and a good opportunity to get back into the swing of American-sized food portions.  Amazing vistas from the road, and fascinating huge red rocks - slightly reminiscent of The Kimberley.  Discovered that our 4WD had satellite radio, and annoyed M with the numerous hip-hop stations.  Then listened to Howard Stern for a while.  A good way to stay awake after my long travels.

Eventually arrived in the Grand Canyon (about 4 1/2 hours drive from Phoenix).  Staying at Maswik Lodge.  It is ok.  Met some of M's fellow-fellowshippers.  A good group from all over the world, with amazing and diverse experiences.  Went for a walk - it is SO COLD at night.  Below freezing.  Had a drink at one of the other lodges, then eventually bedtime at the end of an exceptionally long Saturday.

Sunday toured the Grand Canyon by bus in the morning with the group, after a fairly excrutiating canteen-style breakfast (though better than the lunch to come).  It really is very beautiful and basically impossible to describe.  Lunch was also impossible to describe.  Following lunch, many of us (but not M!!) took a 50 minute helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon.  It was, again, fairly indescribable.  It was a perfect, clear day with no wind - the conditions really helped the experience. 

A group dinner.  M had somehow decided it was a Halloween-themed dinner and dressed as a pumpkin.  No-one else dressed up. 

This morning got up really early and drove to a lookout point to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.  Then 3 of us (one Fellowship staffer, an Indonesian lawyer and me) hiked into the canyon for about 3 hours.  1 hour down, and 2 up.  The path was VERY steep.  And, again, very beautiful.   Amazing watching the extremely sure-footed mules on the path.  Oh and yesterday I saw a huge deer, which was very placid.

We are definitely the cool kids of the group having our own car-  everyone else is stuck as they came by bus.  Having lots of interesting conversations with very impressive women from around the world in M's fellowship group.

Tomorrow to Vegas.