A Hard Day at the Office

Ah yes, another hard day at the office. . .our word for the beach. This area of the Baja is notorious for it's wind - in fact they had their big kiteboarding festival this past weekend, so when by 10:30am today the wind hadn't started gusting yet, we figured that today would be a "beach day". Kim and Brian had discovered a great beach about 30 minutes up the road (we will get to that in a minute) and we decided to pack up the wagon and head on up there. Now the road - every time we travel on the gravel roads here, I know that Brian is just itching to take a grader to it. We did one road yesterday that was 30 km of wash board. Some of these roads make the Demspter Highway look like a small piece of driving paradise! To get into Los Barilles, we have to cross 2 arroyos (big flood ways) at which point the pavement and 2 lanes end and the sand/dirt road that quickly expands into a 3 1/2 lanes begin. It is always a crap shoot as to where people are going to be driving - one would think that it would be fairly standard - stay to the left, but nothing is normal down here :-)

Today after about 20 minutes of large rock ridden, narrow winding road, we landed on a gorgeous beach with not a soul on it. We unloaded our crap (we travel with a lot of stuff - chairs, umbrella, cooler, towels, snorkel gear, etc.) we all planted our asses in the sand for an afternoon of work. And by work I mean, 20 minutes on the front, flip and 20 minutes on the back, followed by some water time and possibly a walk. Or in my case, putting my chair at the waters edge and reading my book.

On this trip we have instituted a new way of decision making that seems to be working fairly well, however Kim hasn't gone yet and that is that each day a person is responsible for making the decisions on where we go, what we eat and if we hot tub or not. Yesterday was my turn - we went to the beach in La Ribera, I made chicken soft tacos for supper and we hot tubbed. Today was Brian's turn and we went to the beach, I made bass with tequila, garlic and pepper with a nectarine salsa and we hot tubbed. Tomorrow is Kim's day to decide. We have already agreed that there will be a time limit on decisions or we could be at home all day before she decides. One thing to note is that in exchange for lodgings, I have offered to cook. :-)

We are almost at a full moon which is making for some spectacular evenings in the hot tub. Also being out in Cabo, we get amazing views of the stars. Now my friend JB, I am sure your star vistas are a bit better being in the desert and all, but coming from Calgary and all the light pollution, it is great to be able to see all of the stars nice and bright. I marvel at them every night before I got to sleep.

Oh - one last thing - it truly is a small world. Brian has NWT plates on the jeep, so this guy wandered up while we were sitting there. I had my iPod on when he introduced himself and when I got the sense that the conversation was going to go on for a while, I turned over and took off my iPod. Lo and behold, it was Gord Rozon - a consultant that I had worked with about 6 years ago up in the Mackenzie when I was working in the Beaufort. Him and his wife have a place just south of the beach that we were visiting. I think he has the right idea - semi-retired, able to work from there with the odd trip thrown in to places like Asia. . .sounds like a plan to me!

Ah the Baja

So I made it down to the Baja safe and sound with no big excitement along the way. I had a lovely 6:30am departure and given that customs and security don't open until 5am, figured that there was no reason to be there too early. Plus knowing that I have Elite status and get to check in a a dedicated counter and my Nexus card would let me fast track customs, I wasn't too fused. They both were nice and handy but Calgary, unlike Edmonton, does not have a dedicated security line up for people flying either business or with Elite/Gold status - I wish they did! I flew down on US Airways which I think merged a bunch of years back with American West - good flight, service was good and I would definitely fly them over United! Only down side was that there was no inflight entertainment :-( I had a short layover in Phoenix and then a nice bumpy ride down to Cabo. The poor pilot tried every altitude between 25 000 and 37 000 feet and it was all rough. As per usual, there were a bunch of dumb people on my flight who couldn't fill out a customs and immigration form properly, thus a long and slow line when l landed - probably took about 30 minutes to get through. Why couldn't my Nexus card work here?!

Kim and Brian have got a great place down here in Los Barilles. Although we are not right on the beach, it is only about a 2 minute walk away and we have fantastic ocean views. As per typical Los Barilles weather, it was pretty windy yesterday however today there is just a light breeze. I told Brian this morning that is because the Big Guy upstairs knows that I am here so he is giving us calm weather :-)

For my first night's dinner we tried a local restaurant which turned out to serve Greek food - not quite what I was expecting or hoping for but it was really good. It looks like they also make a mean pizza there so we will definitely go back and try it out.

Not sure what today is going to bring. So far it has been coffee and bailey's in the sun! :-)

Have a good one folks!

Baja Bound

Holy cow - it has been a year since I have posted on here! Guess it is time to get back on the horse again (this is a tribute to you JB :-) ) Seriously though, the reason that I haven't been blogging is because I can't access my blog from my home computer for the same reason that I can't access Google - I "broke" something when I uninstalled Google Chrome and since then, I have been SOL for both, thus no blogging. If you are wondering how I am doing this now, I am on my work computer.

So tomorrow nice, bright and early (6:30am) I will be Baja bound! I am heading down to Los Barilles, which is about an hour north of Caba San Lucas down on the Baja. My friends Kim & Brian have rented a house down there for a couple of months so I have decided to go and join them for a week. I have travelled with them before - to Palm Springs in 2009, and I really enjoy their company. To be truthful though, this was not the trip that I had planned to take this week, so in other words, they are my "plan B" - but they know that! :-)

Originally my friend Ann and I (who I often travel with - went to Palm Springs with her in 2010) were going to go down to the Mayan Rivieria this week, however it just wasn't in the cards. About 2 weeks ago, she had to break the sad news to me that she couldn't go. I seriously considered going down by myself and plopping my ass down at an all-inclusive and bake, drink and read for a week but then I remembered, I get bored with me when I travel by myself. So I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to work instead. Plus, I had already planned to head down to the Baja from February 9 - 20 to see both some family in Cabo and then Brian and Kim up in Los Barilles. Early this week I got an email from Kim saying "why don't you come down next week - we would love to have you!" So I did a bit of looking and managed to find myself a cheap ticket to Cabo ($520 rtn!). On Wednesday I booked the ticket. It is now Saturday and I am getting ready to leave and not a moment too soon - this -30C with the windchill weather just isn't doing it for me!

The next part was a little harder - finding someone to look after Horton. His regular sitter Elaine is on holidays for 3 weeks (which I knew) and she had thought that her neice might be coming down to run her dog walking/sitting business but I guess she decided not to. So I checked with Elaine's back-up and my some time back up Maureen and she too couldn't take Horton b/c she already had a lot of dogs. So what to do, what to do. I mean I can't just leave him with anyone. I managed to find a dog walking/sitting company called Dawg Tired and after doing a little research decided that they were qualified enough to look after my boy. My big thing is where does he sleep? He is staying with a lovely lady named Lynn and he gets to sleep in her room with her however he will be on a bed on the floor - yah - I wanna see how well that one goes over! In any event, she came and picked Horton up this afternoon and he was not happy to be leaving his mama, but as I told Lynn, he had better suck it up because I am not cancelling my holiday because of him!

So now I am just in the office finishing up a few last minute things before I head out. I am not taking my BB 1) because I am on holidays and 2) there is no cell service where we are, so I need to make sure that everything is in place. I also managed to get a pedicure today, pick up a few odds and ends for Kim & Brian, including some coffee - had to be Nabob and now I am off to a girlfriends for supper - we are having tacos and I am bringing dessert. Guaranteed it won't be some fancy frozen peanut butter pie or whatever it is that Brenda makes. (another ode to you JB :-) )

Will try and keep this posted regularly and hopefully will get in a few pictures.

Just another cosmopolitan city

So a lot of people have asked me what Seoul is like, and honestly, it is like any other large, cosmopolitan city (at least what I have seen so far - keeping in mind I have spent most of my time in a meeting room in the hotel :) ) This morning I went for a walk down Tehran Road (in front of my hotel) and I could have been in any major Canadian city with the exception that I couldn't read any sign on any building. My Korean isn't that strong - okay, how about we say non-existent!

Yesterday morning (after I did my blog), I decided to go to the fitness centre in the hotel to have a run on the treadmill. I figured that if I was up this early, I might as well make some good use of my time and get back into the swing of things. Now the hotel (I am staying at the Grand Intercontinental Hotel) has a great fitness centre complete with a 25m pool, a tanning booth, large lounge areas and a few torture devices in the gym area. They have those belts that you put around your (fat) ass and it vibrates (I didn't try it out - I would have felt like an idiot) and they also had this roller/massage thing that I couldn't quite figure out, nor was I going to try as I figured that I was going to give the group of Korean men in the gym something to talk about anyway. As you all know, God has endowed me well and I think that all of the old Korean men that were in the gym quite enjoyed it! I have never seen so many people warm up and stretch so well around me as I did then! LOL!

Up until this trip I liked to think that I was fairly adventurous when it comes to food, but I have now realized that I like things that are familiar. Yesterday morning we went for breakfast in the hotel and let's put it this way, I don't think pho (vietnamese soup) is for breakfast. Nor do I think that sushi or oyster soup are breakfast items either. I am more of a waffles/toast/bacon type of girl. One thing I have noticed about the Korean diet is that it is high in protein and low in carbs (although they do seem to like their pasteries). Also yesterday at lunch we had Chinese food - go figure - we are in Korea and we had Chinese - today we had Japanese! I was impressed with myself as I ate the shark fin soup that was put in front of me yesterday. It wasn't bad but let's put it this way - I didn't ask for seconds! Tonight we are going out for Korean BBQ and I have made it clear that I won't eat puppy or any "parts". One of my goals this year is to cut back on my Starbucks intake, but I have to admit, I caved this morning. When I was out on my walk I came across a Starbucks and since I hadn't had breakfast, I decided to treat myself. Thankfully they have managed to proliferate everywhere! The menu was pretty much the same although I couldn't order a Venti mocha, nor did they have decaf! They did however had a Honey Orange Latte but given that I am not that adventurous with food, I opted not to have one.

A few things I have noticed over here include a lot of really bad teeth and an absense of dentists. There are also a lot of 7-11s around. Along the Han River coming into Seoul, they seemed to be every 500m or so. Go figure! I have had a hard time mastering international phone calls (although I finally did figure it out) and my ability to use a foreign ATM has been challenged as I have mentioned above, my Korean isn't that strong and many ATMs are only in Korean. Plus, the largest bill that they issue is the 10 000 won which is equal to about $10 CDN, so if you want more than say $50, you end up carrying this big wad of cash.

Tomorrow I should have some better pictures and posts - we are heading out to the DMZ and will also do some touring around Seoul. Until then. . . searching for my Seoul!

Searching for my Seoul

Yah, I know, cheesy title but I think it is kinda cute. :) Good morning from Seoul, South Korea. It is currently 5;30am here on Thursday morning (and 1:30pm on Wednesday in Calgary) I have been asked by a few people if I was going to blog on this trip and I am going to try - that is assuming that I have something interesting to share - and I already do! For those of you who are wondering why I am over here, it is for work and not pleasure, although there will be a pleasure component I am sure. I was invited by some of my co-workers in Houston to join them for some meetings - who was I to say "no"!

Being the eternal planner that I am when it comes to travelling, I researched out my flights to make sure that I was picking flights that had adequate connections in Vancouver and that were Shell complient and I settled on a flight leaving Calgary at 9:15am, arriving at 9:42am in Vancouver. That would give me 2 hours and 10 minutes to make my connection in Vancouver. Enough time to buy a book, maybe a magazine or two and kick back and relax in the Maple Leaf Lounge (and start my blog). Yah, that plan failed. The weather in Calgary yesterday was not very good and my flight that was supposed to leave at 9:15am left about 11:00am, thus arriving in Vancouver at 11:30am. Needless to say when I arrived in Vancouver I was a tad bit panicked as all of my good planning (or so I thought) had gone out the window and my flight that was leaving from the complete oppposite end of the airport was to leave in 20 minutes - ugh! Good ol' Air Canada to the rescue though. . .they had the golf cart waiting to whisk me and about 5 other peoople off to our gate. I have always wanted to do that. . .fly through the airport on the golf cart (or fly as much as you can on a golf court :) ) So I managed to make my flight and surprisingly, so did my luggage. Nothing too exciting on my flight to report other that the super hot pilot, who seemed to be missing a wedding band and/or a wedding band tan line and the 60+ year old lady with the plantinum blond corn rows resulting in a pony tail on the top of her head and botox lips with this awful orange lipstick that matched the trim on her top. Yep - she was a sight. True to my form I wanted to take a picture but unfortunately there was no way of doing that - which is too bad b/c she looked rough!

Flying into South Korea and looking down, it looked cold - winter is definitely here as well. What struck me was the clusters of apartment complexes surrounded by what looks like agricultrual fields. The airport in Seoul is a lovely, very modern and clean airport - kinda reminded me of flying into Toronto. Going through customs and immigration was a breeze, although the guy kept looking at my passport photo and then looking at me - my hair is short in that picture and longer now. I was expecting to see more of a security presence here, but I didn't really see anything. The drive in from the airport took us about 90 minutes and our driver obviously had never used the defrost function in the van before b/c within minutes we were completely fogged up and Bryan, one of my co-workers was having to take over the controls of unfogging us.

My initial impressions of Seoul driving in (keeping in mind that it was dark) was the it reminded me of driving into any big city and then when we got to South Seoul, where we are staying, it reminded me of downtown Vancouver. One thing to note is that they have the biggest intersections I have ever seen! The picture below is the view from my room.

Yep, I know, not my most exciting blog - but it is a start! Not too sure if I will have anything to exciting to update today, but keep checking back. I am here until Sunday (I think) - so between now and then I should have something exciting to say/show you!

Friends in England

I have a few friends who live over here and no trip would be complete without being able to try and see them. Before I left, I sent my friend Andy and note and said that I was coming across and that I would like to come up to Newcastle (NE England by the coast) to visit him and his partner Caz (Caroline). I met Caz & Andy last summer when they came over for my friend Susan's wedding and they ended up staying with me. I reminded Andy that I am from Alberta and that to travel 3 or 4 hours to visit someone overnight was not unheard of, so I would like to come up and visit. So on Monday, I hoped on the train and headed up to Newcastle for a quick visit. I had a lovely train ride through the English countryside - we stopped briefly in York and a few other little places - in all it took me about 3 hours to get there. Both Caz & Andy took the day off to show me around Newcastle which is completely different than London. For one, it is a much, much smaller city and thus way less crowded and visit. After dropping off my bag, we went on a nice little walking tour of the heart of Newcastle (they have some lovely streets), then headed down to the Quay and walked along the Tyne River and stopped for a coffee. There is a bridge in Newcastle that was built by the same guy who built the Sydney Harbour bridge - will post a picture when I get back - they look the same, although this one was much smaller. In the evening we went to this great restaurant that had the most amazing collection of furniture, that you could buy if you really wanted it. Here I had the requisite English fish & chips with mushy peas. Can't say that I ate the peas - I don't like them to begin with, so why the hell would I want to eat them all mashed up?!

Yesterday morning after having a lovely breakfast made by Andy (my request of scambled eggs whites mystified him as they weren't setting up right at first - just crank up the heat), we headed out to the coast (which is about 10 minutes away) to Tynemouth and walked a long the beach. The water here was bloody cold (it's the North Sea). We also went out to see St. Mary's lighthouse but it is on a small island that you can only get to when the tide is out, as you have to walk across, but the tide wasn't far enough out, so we could only look at it from the mainland. What a lovely little seaside town though. . .I can just imagine what homes cost there! (subject of another post!) After a quick visit to the coast, I hoped on a train back to London. All in all, I was in Newcastle for about 24 hours but it was worth it! It was great to see another part of England but even better to see some friends!

When I got back to London, which happens to be sitting in the middle of a massive heat wave (it is supposed to be 32C today), I hopped on the tube (during rush hour) and went down to meet my friend Karen for supper. We ended up going to the famous Brick Lane for Indian. They say that the food here is more Indian than in India and I would tend to agree. You can't come to London without having a curry. It was probably by the far one of my cheapest meals yet. For 3 of us, it was only 43 pounds (which for here is cheap) - we managed to negotiate the wine for free. As you are walking down Brick Lane, there are guys who stand outside of the restaurants trying to get you to go into theirs (we are talking tons of Indian restaurants) so as a patron, you have negotiating power - we asked for wine and got it! Had a most lovely evening out with Karen - it was so great to see her and to see another part of London.

Today I am going to go and do a bit more wandering around/shopping and then head over to Trafalgar Square for the Canada Day celebrations. Before I left, I bought myself a Canada Day 2009 t-shirt at Old Navy that I intend to wear. I am damn proud of being a Canadian so I am going to show it today. Plus, got to show all of these Brits that we aren't part of the colony anymore! LOL!

Happy 142nd Birthday Canada!

Food Lovers Paradise!

I have come to the realization after two days that if I lived in London, I would weight about 400lbs. and an alcoholic! London is a food lovers dream! Yesterday I took the tube into the City of London to meet Tylor for lunch (the tube is nothing special) and we went to this place called the Bouword Market (sp?) which is what the Calgary Farmers Market aspires to be but never will be. This place was AMAZING and I have the most to die for grilled cheese sandwich. There was kiosk after kiosk fresh food. And the cheese. . .omg - the cheeses! Yesterday Tylor and I went to Waitrose to pick up a few little last minute things for his bbq and once again I was in a food lovers heaven! I swear I am the only person who goes on holidays to scope out the grocery stores. At Waitrose, the people working in the store were wearing suits and pumps. When I asked for something, she told me where it was and then asked if I wanted her to take me there - is that service of what! As well, the market on Portobello Road (Tylor lives in a mews off it of) was eye candy! The produce over here is phenomenal! I have never seen anything like it in Canada. Getting back to the market, it was packed - for those of you who live in Calgary, imagine Calgary Stampede crowds on the streets. You could buy just about any kind of fresh food that you wanted. Then to top it all off, today we went to Whole Foods (yep - I am a nerd!) I just wandered around the store wondering how much groceries I can bring back with me! I was in food heaven there!

On Friday night I met up with Tylor and a couple of his mates from work and we went to a place called Smiths on Smithfield which is in the meat packing district, or just off of. It really reminded me of NYC. Then we went to a restaurant called Vinometro for a lovely late dinner (ie - we weren't seated until 10pm) What amazes me about London is that you are able to drink in the street. So while we were waiting to get into the restaurant, we ordered a bottle of wine, sent one of the guys off to buy some crisps (chips) and we stood on the road drinking our wine!

Yesterday was the housewarming BBQ (the reason why I came over here). Tylor had procurred himself a bbq ($30 & made in China). While he put it together, I spent a bunch of time prepping for his event. Him and I spent the better part of the day cooking and cooking and more cooking - he belongs to the same group as me - OverProviders Annonymous! We had more food than you could shake a stick at! Just as his guests were to arrive at 5pm and about the time he was going to start the charcoal for the bbq, the clouds opened up and pissed down us for about an hour. So needless to say we had a few issues getting the bbq going and didn't get any food served up until after 8pm - but damn was it ever good!!!! He had about 20 people over (including a bunch of Canadians) and a most enjoyable evening was had (probably b/c A LOT of wine was drunk!)

I am trying to stay on some semblence of my training program so when I hauled my ass out of bed this morning at 11:15am, I went for a run. It was only moderately painful. One thing I noticed about here though is the absence of people out running or walking their dogs. I think people thought that I was strange running down their street. In the end though it felt great (and will help with all of the food and wine I have consumed!) We went to Harrod's today as there annual sale started yesterday. It truly is a store of excess. I found this lovely Valentino purse that I just LOVED but I was too scared to even look at the price tag. I am guessing it was about $8k based on some of the bags around it. The one thing I noticed about Harrod's is how inflated some of their prices area. I think a lot of people shop there so they can get a Harrod's bag (which is so not my thing). Tylor did manage to pick up some knives that he has been looking for on sale. We wandered around Kensington a bit more and have now come home.

I haven't exactly been doing the touristy thing. I haven't seen any real notible attractions yet, other than St. Paul's Cathedral but I was too late to go on the tour when I got there. Oh, I have been taking the tube and I did ride on a double-decker bus today. Tomorrow I am heading up to Newcastle on the train to visit a couple of friends and back to London on Tuesday where I am going to get together with my friend Karen for supper. Wednesday my plan is to go to Trafalgar Square for Canada Day. I am hoping b/w all of this and when I leave that I can get a bit of shopping in - although I do find it rather overwelming! I have though found 1 pair of shoes I want - yes - only one!