The Perfect Cross-Country Road Trip (Part 2)

In my last post, I talked about the West coast portion of my dream cross-country road trip, ending with Montana, and of course, no cross-country road trip would truly be cross-country if it were limited to the West coast, so this post, we continue the road trip on the East coast!

7) North Dakota
Jk lolz. Nobody likes North Dakota. It's just South Dakota without Mt. Rushmore. Moving on.

7, for reals now) Chicago
I have only been to Chicago like three or four times, and most of the times I went, it was winter and freezing cold out, so we didn't really get out much, but the times I have gone and not been a hermit have been pretty interesting. I would definitely want to hang out at Lake Michigan and get some good deep-dish pizza (I had this once and it was delicious) while visiting Chicago.

8) Cleveland
I know, I know, what the hell's in Cleveland, right? Well, my family, for one, and my grandma is a doll, so I would want to visit her. Plus, last time I visited my family out there, we visited some Amish country and it was actually really interesting; they had these kittens running around and really good food and you got to ride in a horse and buggy sort of thing. Maybe I'll hit up some Amish country with my Grandma!

Some lovely ducks I saw on my trip to Ohio Amish country.

9) Vermont/New Hampshire/Maine
I think it would be amazing to visit any of these states in the fall, just to see all of the leaves, even though it is probably a mosquito hell. I visited Dartmouth (which is in NH) with mi amiga Sage last year, and I loved the whole old colonial thing they had goin'. I would also want to stay in a B&B in some town on the coast of Maine, because I think that would be really cute.

10) Boston
I have been to Boston a couple of times, and I absolutely love it. I love the style of all their buildings, and all the cool colleges they have there, and their food is simply *kisses hand and mwahs like an Italian*. I once ate myself into a cannoli coma in Little Italy there.

Side note: If you ever go to Boston, go to Mike's Pastry. Their cannolis are heaven rolled up in a crunchy little waffle thing.

Cannolis are love, cannolis are life.
Image Courtesy of: Oderi's Italian Bakery

11) New York City
I love New York. I love the sirens, I love the lights, I love the skyscrapers and the food and the subway and the people with all their different stories and the fifty-five gajillion languages you can hear walking down the street. Needless to say, New York would most definitely be one of the stops on my East Coast road trip.

12) Washington, D.C.
Museums, monuments, and memorials, oh my! Actually, I kind of hate all of those things, and I just wanted to make that really nice play on words while I had the chance. Anyways, D.C. is a pretty cool place. There are a lot of really cute, old neighborhoods (I love Georgetown) and hipster restaurants and what not. And, my uncles live there, so that's a plus.

DuPont Circle is the adorable D.C. neighborhood where my uncles live.
Image Courtesy of: Wikipedia

So that pretty much concludes my cross-country road trip, as anywhere below the Missouri Compromise Line is not of much interest to me (and yes, I realize that includes D.C., but it is towards to the North-ish, so I'm not counting it). Hope everyone is having a great break! Let me know what you have done/are doing!

The Perfect Cross-Country Road Trip (Part 1)

Who doesn't love road trips?! Fifteen-hour car rides through miles of corn fields, forests, and deserts, eating Twinkies and watching Monsters Inc. way too many times are some of my best childhood memories. Although commercial airlines are nice to get you from point A to point B quickly, I think there is a lot to say for driving; driving exposes you to parts of the country you would likely not ever see if not for road trips and is kind of like a vacation on the way to a vacation! One thing that has been on my bucket list for years is taking a huge road trip across the US, so this post I will be highlighting some of the places I would love to stop by.

1) San Diego
In my dream road trip, I would start off in the lovely San Diego. San Diego is pretty dang close to being the southwestern-most (is that a word?) point in the US, so it gives you the opportunity to maximize the amount of the country you can see. From San Diego, I would rent a convertible (preferably blue, of course) and drive up the California coast. I actually did this for about 100 miles with my mom in 7th grade, and it was gorgeous, so I definitely want to try again to get as much of the coast in as possible.

How fricking gorgeous does that drive look?
Image Courtesy of: Federal Highway Administration

1.5) San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo is one of the cutest towns I have ever been to, so on my trip up the coast, I would be sure to make a stop here and maybe stay in a B&B for a night or two.

2) San Francisco
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I LOVE San Francisco. This wonderful city would be the next stop in my dream road trip. I mean, who's gonna drive all the way up the California coast and miss out on San Francisco?! I would be sure to stock up on peace, tea, and killer Asian food for the rest of my road trip here, too.

3) Yosemite
I have vague memories of visiting Yosemite as a little kid, but I can remember absolutely loving it (probably because we went with my first grade boyfriend)! Yosemite is gorgeous and I would definitely want to spend a while camping here on my road trip. (Fun fact: My parents got married in Yosemite, and that is how I got my name, cuz it's in the Sierras, get it?).

My sister and I road-tripping to Yosemite whilst trying
to pull out my tooth. We were weird children.

4) Portland
Next stop on my dream U.S. road trip would be the lovely little city of Portland, OR. You don't ever want to pass up Portland, with all of its food trucks, bookstores, and bearded guys!

5) Seattle
After Portland, I would head over to Seattle. I haven't been to Seattle for a while, but I would love to visit while taking my road. Maybe I'll take a ferry over to Orcas Island, one day, too.

6) Somewhere Nature-y
For the past few months, I have been dying to go on a hike in Montana. I don't know why; I've never even been to Montana and I kind of hate hiking, but I've had this vision in my head of me hiking somewhere all nature-y in Montana, so maybe I'll hit up Yellowstone or Glacier National Park on my road trip, as well!

Hopefully, this can be me one day... if I don't have an
asthma attack or get eaten by a grizzly bear on the way up there!
Image Courtesy of: All Trips Missoula

So this pretty much covers the West coast portion of my dream road trip, so next post we'll head over to the East coast and finish there!

Sausalito: My Not-So-Skiing Ski Week

As I talked about in my last post, I went on vacation in Sausalito for Ski Week. (Although, it probably isn't so much a ski week this year for everyone in Park City who stayed home; I was out in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt on Friday!) I just got back from Sausalito yesterday, and, I have to say, I really needed that break! Teachers have really been pilin' on the homework for the past few weeks, so a vacation was the perfect way to un-stress.

Sausalito on a map of the Bay Area.
Image Courtesy of: Google Maps

Part of the great un-stressing feeling this vacation had comes from the place we stayed. We did a house swap with my mom's friend from business school, and we got to stay in her adorable little house boat for the week. It's literally floating on the water, so you can just walk out back and go paddle boarding or swimming or whatever. It also had a hot tub that I spent pretty much the whole time in and a turtle named Gus that didn't really like me, but that I thought was cute anyways. 

A sunset behind some of the neighboring houseboats.

Another thing my family and I did on our vacation was go to San Francisco. Since Sausalito is literally right across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, it is pretty easy to get down there (although traffic can make things a little bit complicated). I love San Francisco. I have been to San Francisco a bunch of times, since I visit Palo Alto so frequently, but still, the city never gets old. 

One of the days we went to San Francisco this trip, we visited the Castro, which I really enjoyed. I had driven through the Castro before, but I had never really stopped to get a good look around or truly understood its significance until now. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the US, formed during the 60s and 70s when being gay was much less accepted by the rest of the nation than it is even now. This is a HUGE source of pride for the Castro; they have rainbow flags on all of the street lamps, their crosswalks are rainbow-striped, their sidewalks are lined with memorials to famous LGBT Americans, and they have like eight different buildings and parks named after Harvey Milk. 

Of course, no vacation is complete without some really good food. Since San Francisco is such an ethnically diverse city, you can find a ton of really good ethnic restaurants. While we were in Sausalito/San Francisco, my family and I had some amazing food, my favorite of which was probably Afghan food, which I had never tried before. We ate at a tiny restaurant in the Tenderloin called De Afghanan Kabob House, and I had this pumpkin dish called kado borani, which was very good. I have to say, I was kind of picturing Afghan food to be a lot less appetizing than it was, but it was delicious!

The Afghan pumpkin dish that I ate (but was too busy stuffing
my face with to remember to take a picture).
Image Courtesy of: De Afghanan Cuisine

Sausalito and San Francisco are two very unique and fascinating places full of amazing things to do. My trip this week to these two cities was very much needed, and I highly recommend a similar excursion to anyone who may be feeling the stress of school!

Portland: Keepin' It Weird

Two days ago, I got back from a trip with my mom to Portland, OR. Portland isn't a huge city; it's probably about the size of Salt Lake, but it certainly has a lot of life. Around the city, you'll find vintage hipster bicycles, random chalk drawings, and the well-known sign reading "Keep Portland Weird." This post I am going to highlight the favorite things I did in Portland and show some pictures from each of them (and they are actually my pictures this time, so don't judge my lackluster iPhone 4 photography skills).

The "Keep Portland Weird" sign in Downtown Portland.

My #1 favorite thing that I did in Portland was definitely eat. But not just regular eating, food truck eating. Portland has these huge parking lots with food trucks parked all the way around the perimeter, so you have like 40 restaurants all on one block, practically. These food trucks have food from all over the world. In one parking lot, I saw Georgian (like the Caucasian country), Polish, Indonesian, Moroccan, Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Mexican, Korean, Transylvanian, Scandinavian, Iranian, Greek, German, and Czech food trucks!

View looking down a street of food trucks.    

Coconut bubble tea from one of the Portland food trucks.

Portland has a ton of vegetarians (probably because of all the hipsters), so a lot of the food at the food trucks is vegetarian, or at least has vegetarian options. This made eating ethnic food a lot easier, because often my experience at restaurants consists of order a meat dish meat-free, which is usually pretty much just lettuce with maybe, if you're lucky, some bread.

A Moroccan food truck where I got vegetarian paella.

Portland has a lot of great independent film theaters, and while I was in Portland, I got to watch a couple of movies at different theaters. A lot of people stray away from watching movies while on vacation, because they think they're missing out on seeing the city, and that may be true for a big blockbuster movie like 21 Jumpstreet or Just Go With It, but going to a film festival or indie theater is a great way to become familiarized with the art in the city, and is not all that different than going to an art museum. The theaters there were really neat; one of them had a set up with round tables and plush chairs where you order drinks and dinner while you watch, and the other one even had a babysitting service! 

Another cool thing I did in Portland (and you should do, too, if you ever go around Christmas) was visit Peacock Lane, a neighborhood street with very elaborate Christmas decorations. All of the houses had a ton of Christmas lights, and a lot of them had a "theme," too (like one was themed the Grinch, one Star Wars, etc.) They even had a Elf-themed little hot chocolate hut on the street!

I thought this house was really cute.
It was one of the more simply decorated ones.

One other activity in Portland that I would recommend is the Portland sky tram, which connects the OHSU hospital (which is kind of in the middle of nowhere on this mountain) to downtown Portland. It has an awesome view of Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Portland. Plus, the OHSU campus is fun to walk around in.

View from the Portland sky tram with Mt. St Helens in the background.

Portland is a fun city with a colorful population and amazing food, activities, and art. If you ever looking for short get-away in the US, try visiting Portland.

Oh, The Places I Went: Palo Alto

So I decided I'd mix things up this week and do a "Places I Went" post, rather than a "Place's You'll Go" post, because it's Thanksgiving break, and I've been wearing the same pajamas and sitting in my bed for the past 48 hours, and I really don't feel like going anywhere! Anyways, this week's post is going to be on Palo Alto, which is one of my favorite places on Earth. I am actually from Palo Alto, and my mom works out there, so I visit a ton, but I still get psyched every time I visit. 

For those of you who aren't really NorCal people, Palo Alto is a town in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably about 30-40 minutes away from San Francisco. It is in the heart of Silicon Valley, so it is a very fast-paced and diverse place, very different from the town I live in now, Park City. 

Palo Alto on a map of the Bay Area.
Image Courtesy of: Google Maps

Besides being the hometown of James and Dave Franco, Palo Alto is probably best known for being home to Stanford University. Simply put, Stanford is bae. It is absolutely gorgeous, in a different way than any other school you'll ever visit. It has kind of a Spanish look to it, with a lot of those wavy red roofs and stuff. There's also a ton of nature and gorgeous outdoor art, all of which are really powerful and thought-provoking (and I am not an art person at all). My favorite thing about Stanford, though, is the people there; everyone you meet there is super smart and hardworking and nice, and it makes it a really cool environment to be in.

My friends, Sage and Audrey, and I in front of the
Memorial Church in the Quad at Stanford.

Another really fun thing to do if you ever visit Palo Alto is to go see Google. I did this a few summers ago when my friends, Sage and Audrey, and I went out to a volleyball camp at Stanford. The Googleplex is freaking awesome! They've got a huge cafeteria with FREE food for all their employees and visitors, they've got a slide in one of their office buildings and "nap pods" where employees can take naps during the day. They've got a ball pit, and six person bikes, and awesome booths to work at, and free massages, and a volleyball court, and a free garden, and everything is touchscreen and shiny and rainbow! 

Sage, Audrey, and I on one of the six person
bikes at the Googleplex. 

One of the "offices" at the Googleplex.
Kind of makes me want to quit everything and
become a genius computer programmer.
Image Courtesy of: Abduzeedo

Another thing I love to do when I go out to Palo Alto is visit University Avenue. University Avenue is basically Palo Alto's Main Street. It is home to a ton of really neat (but usually kind of expensive) restaurants and shops. Just walking down University Avenue, you'll see different types of restaurants you probably didn't even know existed, like Siamese, Peruvian, and Caribbean (this place is super good). I swear there's also like twenty-two ice cream places on University Avenue, and all of them are amazing!

University Avenue at night. One of my favorite
things about University Ave is that they have Xmas
lights up year long.
Image Courtesy of: Poeschko

Palo Alto is a really fun town home to an amazing group of people and unique activities. If you are ever near the Bay Area, be sure to stop by Palo Alto; its pretty dang fun!