30th December. New York day 2.

Started the day by waking up (properly) at 9:30.
Best advice we were given was to buy a 7-day subway pass. Unlimited access to any subway for 7 days. $30. So good!!!
Ground Zero was on the list today but we didn't get tickets. So we went to the actual site and stood in an incredible crowd of Americans and foreigners alike. Might get to do a tour later on in the week.
We then headed toward Soho to find the markets. Non existent. Pretty DEV. Meanwhile freezing like never before and stopping at both a pharmacy store and a souvenir store to pick up some gloves.
It was around Soho that we had our first American mac & cheese from Mac Bar. It was easily missed. A noodle-shaped little room that sold 10 different variations on mac and cheese. We got "four cheese" and Shane rated it a 4 out of 5 macaronies.
We walked all over Soho, Greenwich, East Village and Lower East Side just winging it, finding the stores we had in mind and finding other shops along the way.
We decided to have lunch at Katz Delicatessen (from When Harry Met Sally) but upon arrival we saw the queue to get inside was a block long! We were desperate for warmth of any kind- just to be able to feel our faces again. So we went to Tim Horton's next door (it was EMPTY). It was here that we got to whip out our Lonely Planet's guide to New York book in the private booth and hide the fact that we were lost tourists.
We finally found the Friends apartment on Bedford and Grove. It was, however, night time. So all hope of having a glamorous photo in front of it was lost. I HAVE been practising with Neptune Frost (the name given to my new/old digital SLR camera) so I've attached a glimpse of "the" shot I got.
We walked some more around Greenwich and I found the letterpress store I have been dreaming about. Really had to quickly ration how much I was allowing myself to spend in this store in relation to the rest of my 2 month trip and also... How much room have I got left to pack things? I settled with a small pack of cards to send people. (..Or to keep to myself selfishly. If you end up receiving one in the mail, consider yourself HIGHLY important.)
Shane and I each had a slice of pizza (the size of our heads!!!) and caught the subway back home.

...yeah, the pillow was much more comfortable the night before.

Highlights from Detroit, Michigan

The best thing was just spending quality time with my brother, Nathan and sister (in-law), Kellie.
It had been a little over 2 years since I saw them in the flesh and there's something really special about catching up when it's not a Skype- scheduled hang out.

For Shane, this was his first time meeting Caleb (2) and the first time seeing Isabelle (4 and a half) since she was a flower girl at our wedding 3 years ago.

I was having too much fun catching up to write about every day but I'll try to recap my favourite parts..

# Waking up to snow after our first night there. I had never seen snow before so that was just breath-taking! I may have even had a little tear in my eye, peering outside through the window that the Christmas tree was in front of.

# Finally meeting Jason and Jennifer (Kellie's side of the family) after how many years of hearing stories about them?! They are Wonderful people who are easy to talk to. Their daughter Ella (1 and a half) is just lovely to watch. And their home is just incredible. We spent Christmas lunch there with Jennifer's parents and sister, as well as Kel's Dad & Stepmom. I met them on my last visit so it was great to see familiar faces and to catch up again.

# Christmas Eve. It was just a spectacular day from start to finish. A fresh batch of snow; Last minute shopping; Christmas Carols at the Woodside Bible Farmington Hills Church; Setting out presents for the kiddies; Nibbling on Santa's cookies... Late night chats by the fire and late night present-wrapping.

# Sledding. Shane and I got taken to the top of a large hill. I was a little nervous, but the kids led the way and showed us how it was done. Oh my! It was so much fun!

# The enormous snow fight Nath and I battled out after we made miniature snowmen. I got thwarted but managed to leave a memorable impression of his face with my snowball. Kel had hot chocolates with marshmallows waiting for us inside, along with warm towels to defrost my icicled hair.

# Late night chats, general hang outs and sing-alongs with Kellie, when the boys were in a different car or playing games downstairs. Sister bonding time was amazing. I'm really going to miss that.

# Shane and Caleb. Those two really hit it off for some reason. (The fact that cars are a huge part of these boys' lives might have something to do with it. ) My ovaries were practically bursting with glee everytime Caleb snuggled up close to Shane. Really beautiful moments.

# Isabelle giving me an enormous hug on our last night. The kiss goodnight on Christmas Eve was pretty special too. AND it was on Camera-Skype Camera that is... This means I have witnesses! Lollie, don't ever forget it! I certainly won't!

# That time we went to Canada. We drove all of 30 mins across the Ambassador Bridge and ate a spontaneous dinner at a Mexican restaurant in a town called Walkerville. The eatery was called "Walkermole". Get it?
I ate some incredible tacos- flavours I can't even describe. And finished off with an icecream burrito - with caramelised apple and fresh pomegranate. Salivating just thinking about it!!!

I know I must have left out a whole bunch of stuff.. But as a whole, we had a great time and are so thankful we got to spend so much time with Nath, Kel and the kiddies! Detroit was a hard place to say goodbye to.. Miss the family already.

But New York is next! So onward the journey goes..

Another incredibly long day...

Well we left Casa de Sarlow at 3:15am yesterday morning to catch a 6am flight to New York via Washington DC. I wasn't having a good morning... 90 mins sleep, had a close call with a VERY SLOW car on the way to the airport, saying good bye to the family for who knows how long.
At Detroit Airport, I tripped over GOODNESS KNOWS WHAT and fell dramatically for everyone to see. How embarrassing. Also, my new shoes ripped a little mid-fall. I was carrying my enormous backpack at the time so getting up was a struggle. Oh I cringe at the memory.
For both flights, Shane and I were at opposite ends of the plane.. So packing the Uno in hand luggage went to waste. The tiny plane to Washington went through the usual safety drill over the PA system but started to skip. It was half-way through the part about "using your cushion as a safe-safe-safe-safe-safe-safe-safe-safe-ty-ty-ty-ty-ty-ty-ty-ty- floatation device" when the one and only flight attendant cut it off and read through it all manually from a sheet in a photo album.
After landing in Washington, there were no ground staff, so we waited on the plane for about half an hour before boarding a bus to take us to the terminal.
I slipped and fell flat on my bum when exiting the bus. This was also in front of a huge crowd and highly embarrassing. It was a little lucky that I wasn't bawling my eyes out with humiliation of 2 stacks in one day!! But more lucky that I had my amazing Husband with me to save the day (yet again) and all embarrassment was tossed aside while he helped me up. Someone else rushed to my side to help me up (a fellow passenger walking by), which was not left unappreciated. She stressed concern and assured me that it had happened to her as well. (Americans are very friendly!)

Well once we finally landed in New York, we gave the shuttle service a call to let them know we were waiting for them. Long story short, we waited 2 hours to be picked up. Once finally picked up from the Blinkin shuttle, we endured the 2 hour trek to our hostel- stopping at everyone else's destination first, giving us a glimpse into the high lives of the other travellers. Things we noted were fairy lights at hotel entrances, bell boys, dimly lit lobbies and general proximity to upper class society/ Times Square.

Once we got to the "Royal Park Hotel" (practically in the Bronx), Shane and I looked at each other and sighed. Where the heck did they get their name from?! No bell boy, no fancy lobby. Actually, the lobby is probably the fanciest part about this place. We trapsed our bags up to room 42G and discovered that "Shared Bathroom" literally is one toilet, one sink and one shower per hotel. I was pretty busting to use this toilet at this stage and there was a queue.
It was about 5pm when I burst into tears and needed a hug because I was just too tired. (Haha, Jana, I fear that I resemble a new Kindy student!)
We went to bed at about 5:30pm- my head hit the very comfortable pillow (or maybe I was just too tired to know any different).

We woke up and it was still dark. My phone said 10:30. I said to Shane, "Man! We slept right through and got a sleep in! We MUST have been tired!!!" Shane proceeded to get dressed and talk about breakfast while I wished we could sleep some MORE (surely I had slept enough)... We turned the tv on to help wake us up and decided to check my phone a little closer. Yep, it was 10:30PM. We had about 4-5 hours of sleep under our belts and laughed at how foolish we were.

We are still laughing about it! We turned the tv off and went back to bed, praying for a better day tomorrow.

Christmas Eve

Another fresh lot of snow today.

This is Christmas Eve...

Merry Christmas to everyone in the right time zone!

Santa comes tonight!

Sending Michigan love...

It snowed last night

My first real snow experience.
Ohboy!!!!

The very long day...

Well the 19th December was a real bitch of a day.
Woke up at the crack of dawn ( or earlier because we couldn't sleep).. Left our hotel for peak hour at the train station.. lugging our heavy luggage up the stairs because there are some stations that don't have escalators or elevators. Barely fit on the train- felt like a sardine.
Anyway, a few trains later, we made it to the airport. Waited in line for about an hour. Technical problems with the self check-in so had to wait for someone to serve us.
Our flights were Japan airlines to Chicago, then change to American Airlines for Detroit. Our clerk had trouble understanding this, so the whole check-in thing took way too long. Anyway, we finally get on the plane.. I pop a Valium straight away because I want to get as much sleep as possible (landing in Chicago at 7am the same day..) I got about 30 mins sleep before being WIDE AWAKE all of a sudden. So I watched a bit of tv, had some food and popped another Valium, hoping to finally get some rest. No such luck.
So 11 hours later, we arrived at Chicago, exhausted. We had 2 hours before we needed to be boarding our flight to Detroit. But the line to get our passports stamped was about 800 people long. There were only 3 clerks rostered on and Shane timed the average person to go through was 5mins. There was no way in hell that we were going to make that flight. The valium had started to kick in ( 11 hours too bloody late!) and 3 hours later, it was our turn to give our fingerprints and stamp passports etc. but SO much time had elapsed since we got off the plane, that the monitors had deleted our flight details so we had no idea where our luggage was. At this stage, I just lost it. Bawling my eyes out because I'm just too tired and expecting the worst: will we need to buy new tickets to Detroit? Will we need to buy new luggage? Will we need to spend the night in Chicago?
Luckily I married the best kind of man- the kind that calms me when I'm wound up and comforts me when I'm delirious, tired and upset. We found the bags.
I told the lady who looked at our tickets that we had missed our flights.. She said "oh, you too?" So obviously there were a lot of other annoyed people too.
We waited for another 45 mins or so to see if we can make another flight out the same day. The lady said that they were completely booked out for the day.
But she had a fiddle around and said we could get there by a connecting flight to Kalamazoo (who has ever heard of such a place??!). PRAISE THE LORD, we didn't have to pay a cent and headed straight over to where we needed to be. But waited another bloody hour or so, to go through security. After all that, we were finally able to use a pay phone and call Nathan- who was already at Detroit airport waiting for us!! I was devastated! I hated not being able to contact him and let him know what was happening until we had a stinking pay phone. So instead of arriving at 11am, we would arrive in Detroit at 4:30pm.
So flipping exhausted and dehydrated because we weren't allowed water in the airport until we got passed security.
Kalamazoo was only a 40 min flight so after the last bazillion hours we just endured, it felt like no time.
Once at Kalamazoo, we enjoyed the most amazing cheese pizza of my life before boarding once more for Detroit, trying to keep our eyes open.
It was only an hour or so away and what a sweet sweet relief it was to run into my brother's arms at the end of it all.

Feels so good to be back at their house. Late night chats with Nath and Kel, playing with Isabelle-my niece, waiting for Caleb, my nephew to warm up to me.. Good food, good smells, an amazing shower... And sweet, sweet, glorious bed. Zzz