“Keep Austin Weird”, that is their motto and yes Austin was a bit weird. It attracts a lot of hipsters and seemed to be completely different to any other place in Texas. There was live music everywhere and it really lived up to its name as the ‘Live Music Capital of America’. There were even…

After crossing the state line from Louisiana, we were in Texas!  We had really been looking forward to visiting this State.  It didn’t take long for us to arrive in Houston.  We were a bit bewildered by all the criss-crossing concrete highways and somehow always found ourselves in an exit lane.  Nevertheless we managed to…

Hey y’all! We flew into New Orleans in the early afternoon and were picked up by a transgender uber driver. We were not expecting the South to be very liberal but came to find that New Orleans was one of the exceptions. New Orleans has been fun, accepting, diverse and eccentric. One of the most noticeable…

Ah Vegas. The glitz, the glamour, the tackiness, the freedom. We soaked it in. We weren’t expecting to enjoy Las Vegas that much given that we are not that keen on gambling, we thought it would be shallow and tasteless. It turned out to be so much more. It is basically a place you go…

The drive to Death Valley National Park from Yosemite was going to take about 7 hours and we were going through some pretty boring parts of America.  It was just straight highways with nothing to see and nowhere to really stop. We pulled over for a quick lunch on the side of the road and…

We left San Francisco pretty early to pick up our rental car. We were doing this part of the trip with our friends so were able to split the cost of the car between us. After packing the car, and adjusting to driving on the right side of the road, we were off to Yosemite…

We touched down in San Francisco around lunchtime on a Friday. We were a bit nervous about going through US customs but it was a breeze. An easy US$9 train took us right into Union Square. We were staying at Amsterdam Hostel, which was about a 10-minute hilly walk away. We were immediately struck with…

UPDATE – It turns out that the USA Visa Requirements say one thing but the border officials do another.  Because New Zealand is a Visa Waiver country you just need to apply for the regular ESTA to go in and out of the USA from Canada.  As long as you have a valid Canadian Work Permit…

Starting a travel blog is something that I had wanted to do for a long time.  I have found that reading through travel blogs has been invaluable in helping me to plan my trips overseas.  They have also given me a lot of in depth information on the places I wanted to visit, which has…