Cupcakes and aeroplanes

Yes, it's time for me to stop slacking and give you another installment of my trip!! Previously, I hung out with Sarah at the Newseum and she introduced me to Fuddruckers.

I got back to the motel about 15 minutes before Lauren arrived. When she did, we headed to the Applebee's next door to the motel to take advantage of the half price appetisers and the $1 brownie bites, and were met by the least enthusiastic and quite possibly surliest waitress of all time. She pretty much threw the cutlery at us, and literally slid my drink across the table at me. And then she didn't come back for half an hour. Coming from the land of "HAHAHAHA, TIPPING WHAT'S TIPPING?", I thought it was pretty hilarious. Until Lauren reminded me that I had to tip her...

The following morning, we had breakfast at the motel (YAY, FREE THINGS) before plugging in Lauren's trusty GPS and heading out towards Dulles to the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Centre. If you get the chance, you should really go. Because it's pretty freaking awesome, and I'm not particularly into planes. Of course, I failed to plan ahead and had totally the wrong lens on my camera, so most of my photos were taken on my phone. Still, you get the idea:

Felix the Cat on a plane? Awesomeness.

STOVL Propulsion System

Blackbird. It was freaking awesome. And pointy.

Ridiculously tiny Nazi helicopter

Concorde. There was no way to get the whole thing in the frame at once.

The Enola Gay. It was absolutely ENORMOUS.

Space Shuttle Discovery

The great space stingray?

Best mailbox EVER

Discovery

Discovery's heatproof shield thing

The hangar from the outside

After several hours of "HOLY CRAP, LOOK AT *THAT* ONE!"-ing, we ran out of planes to look at, and headed into Bethesda to get lunch. After spending approximately a thousand years stuck in roadworks, we found ourselves at a restaurant with the world's most bizarre salad:

Stolen from Lauren

Yeah. Mixed greens, angel hair pasta and wontons. Mmmmmm... 

Needless to say, we quickly decided that we didn't fancy anything on the menu, so headed next door to a Thai restaurant with far less...confusing...food. When we'd had our fill of delicious Thai food, we headed down the block towards the REAL reason for our visit to Bethesda:

Yup. THAT HAPPENED. We queued for about five minutes to get in the door, most of which was spent reading the menu and going "OMG, HOW DO I DECIIIIIIIIDE????". We ended up getting two each, because OBVIOUSLY. I got double milk chocolate birthday cake, and mint cookies and cream. Lauren had caramel praline crunch and red velvet:

And then we sat in the car and shoved cake into our faces like there was no tomorrow. I can't speak for Lauren's choices, but mine were freaking AMAZING. Quite often, I find that the cake part of schmantzy cupcakes can be a little dry and disappointing. These were not even remotely that. Totally worth the visit. 

Back in College Park, we took a little trip to see Testudo:

Then headed to Columbia Heights for dinner, because that was how far we got on the train before we were too hungry to go any further. After dinner at a pizza place where we got stuck in a queue behind people who didn't understand that a beer called "Chocolate City" would be stout-like, we headed to Target, just for the hell of it. 

I found this special piece of hilarity:

Which came in a pair with a matching suitcase:

And then we discovered that the Target was TWO STOREY and that there was a special escalator for the shopping trolleys. INSANITY. And awesomeness. 

On Sunday morning, we headed downtown for a little trip to the International Spy Museum. Being a Sunday morning at around 10.30, there were tons of people in suits and ties or twin sets and heels. It took me a good ten minutes to work out why: that they'd been to church. Clearly, the eight years I spent at church schools was TOTALLY worth the money!! 

Anyway, the International Spy Museum didn't let you take photos, so I can't share the awesomeness of the James Bond exhibition with you. In summary: the museum was fun, and I would make a truly TERRIBLE spy. 

And we finished off the weekend with lunch at an Irish pub. In Chinatown. Because that's how we roll. 

Next up, more classes, the Library of Congress, and Georgetown. Yes, there were more cupcakes. OBVIOUSLY.

Has anyone else ever seen an escalator for supermarket trolleys? Because WHUT.

K xx

Ancient History, Volume XI

At the end of the last installment, Ness and I (and the rest of our tour group, obvs) had caught a bus from Lima to Pisco. I don't remember a whole lot about Pisco - we arrived, we tried pisco (it's like brandy only it tastes like lighter fluid), we slept, and we got on a boat. So I can't really tell you much.

I CAN tell you that when you drive really fast in a fibreglass boat and you can feel the boat flexing under your feet as it hits the waves, it kind of makes you have a small panic attack that the boat is going to fall apart. Juuuust saying.

The boat trip was to the Ballestas Islands, which are apparently Peru's answer to the Galapagos. There were a ton of birds and sea lions and weird sand formations thingies rumoured to be created by pirates or aliens (no one knows how the Candelabra was created, so I'm going to subscribe to the more ridiculous theories!).

Built by pirates. Or aliens. Maybe.

A flock of boobies. *snigger*

Sea lions. They look pretty, but smell TERRIBLE.

Once back on shore, we spent a couple of hours on a minibus heading towards Nazca. Half way there, we stopped for a wee spot of dune buggying. Public service announcement: wear a sports bra when you go dune buggying. Also, it's a total blast. (Although I'll admit that I chickened out on the sand boarding, because I like the way my skin is when it's still attached to me)

I apparently took absolutely no pictures of this (I suspect maybe I left my camera on the bus??), so here's a video I found on Youtube of doing the same thing at the same place:

Then it was back on the bus for another couple of hours for the drive to Nazca. There was much hanging out by the pool and then an uncalled for dose of being woken up at 6am by a bunch of idiots (not from our group) standing around outside Ness's and my hotel room talking at the top of their lungs about their plans for the day.

Despite the 6am wake up, the day turned out to be pretty freaking spectacular. First, it was a trip to some Nazca civilisation cemeteries to see skeletons with dreadlocks.

They even smiled for the camera!

Creepy dead baby to guard the grave. Because, you know, babies make
excellent guard dogs. Or something.

Then there was a trip to see some local pottery being made.
Guide for the day: So, what do you think these drawings are on the bowls?
Someone: Um. Cactuses?
GFTD: Hahahahaha. NO. VAGINAS!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Yeah. That happened. From there, we boarded teeny tiny aeroplanes for our flights over the Nazca lines. They're completely and utterly amazing (and kind of hard to see in the photos unless you click through and make them enormous).

Teeny tiny plane. The air conditioning consisted of opening a window.

The spider

The hummingbird

There's a monkey glyph somewhere in there, I promise.

Oh, and the pilot looked like the Peruvian version of Maverick (Pete Mitchell Maverick, not Bret Maverick Maverick). AWESOME.

After the flights were over, we headed back to the hotel for dinner, before crossing the road to the bus station to board an overnight bus to Arequipa. Overnight bus rides are sent by the devil to torment you. Especially when said overnight bus rides include a shit ton of hairpin bends. I'm pretty sure my head smashed into the window every twenty minutes all night.

The following morning, we were woken at 6am (again with the 6am!) by the sound of panpipe music through the bus audio system, and then served "breakfast" (which bizarrely consisted of cake) while watching Cinderella III in Spanish with English subtitles. Upon arrival in Arequipa, we had the morning to ourselves, so a group of us went out in search of some kind of breakfast that didn't include cake. We found a cafe, ordered food, and promptly spent about an hour waiting for said breakfast (which was basically just toast) to appear. About half way through the wait, they brought out our pineapple juice, which bore a striking resemblance in colour and flavour to dirty dish water. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, delicious. The rest of the wait caused us to go slightly insane. In our exhausted state, daring Air Force Girl to eat a chunk of butter seemed like an excellent idea.

Yeah. Don't eat chunks of butter...

Next up, Arequipa (properly), hot springs, and Andean condors of awesomeness.

K xx

Fieldwork lessons 2

I've been in Portland for the last few days on another photography expedition. We also had to collect some rocks that are going to be used in the gallery. And once again, fieldwork has taught me a couple of things:

1. Tiny planes have really low roofs. Ow.
2. The security checks at tiny airports consist of "Do you have any sharp objects? No? Great!"
3. Co-pilots with pimples and bum fluff on their chins? Not reassuring in the slightest.
4. If a tiny plane is scheduled to take an hour and a half to get somewhere that takes four hours to drive, it's not because the tiny plane goes really slowly. It's because it goes via Hamilton, something that isn't on the itinerary.
5. Don't watch Fox 8 first thing in the morning. You'll get sucked into a Futurama/Family Guy/Simpsons session and end up running horribly late.
6. Don't wear Converse on fieldwork. You'll end up having to trek through a partially flooded cow paddock and stand on something that SEEMS like solid-ish mud, but is actually a crust of mud with squelchy, watery grossness underneath. Which leads to this:

7. I love my shiny new 55-300mm lens (okay, I knew that one already. Whatever):

8. ALWAYS wear sunscreen. Sure, I should have known this one. But for some reason it didn't occur to me, and now I'm a delightful shade of beetroot.
9. Half of Portland is named after the Hentys. Not surprising, considering the Hentys founded Portland, and therefore probably named half of it after themselves in the first place...
10. A 50m roll of bubble wrap is rather large. Also? It's perforated. Awesome...
11. Posting a 5kg rock from Portland to Canberra will set you back $15.
12. If I lived in a country town, I would a) go insane, and b) be the size of a house from eating nothing but doughnuts from the local bakery.
13. The Mexican schnitzel with chips and salad at the Bridgewater Bay Beach Cafe is delicious. The view ain't too shabby either!

14. Watch out for small dogs when packing six large rocks in bubble wrap and plastic boxes. They may run up and pee on the stack of boxes just when you've finished putting the last of the lids on...
15. Week old bull terrier puppies are *seriously* fugly. I mean, bull terriers are fugly at the best of times. But when they're a week old and haven't opened their eyes yet? They just roll in their own shit and bear a striking resemblance to rats... *shudder*
16. A pub crawl in Portland isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds. Cos there's only about three pubs in town!
17. Waking up at 6.45am with the 'See My Vest' song from the Simpsons stuck in your head on a Saturday morning is incredibly irritating, despite how catchy it is...

K xx