Filed under: Road trip | Tags: California, China Town, Food, Holiday, Mama's, North Beach, Northern, R&G Lounge, San Francisco, Tadich Grill, Tourism, Travel, Vacation, Wine
If you’re reading through Facebook, click here.
Elena and I spent last weekend in San Francisco. My grandmother has been in Toronto since the end of August–she’s just hanging out around here for about 6 months, and she wanted to visit her family in Sacramento. We took her to SFO so she could get picked up by her sisters. She’s spending the rest of the month in Sacramento, and Elena and I had the rest of the weekend to explore San Francisco together.
Some places you should definitely check out:
- Mama’s: An awesome breakfast place in North Beach. They’re really good and really popular. Get there early if you want to try their food. We waited about 45 minutes but it was worth it. The place closes at 3pm everyday.
- Tadich Grill: The oldest restaurant in California serves awesome seafood. Again, really popular. The staff there is awesome–they’ve probably been working at the restaurant for decades.
- R&G Lounge: A popular Chinese place in China Town. Try their live deep-fried crab with garlic, ginger and hot peppers.
Filed under: the ussh. | Tags: 2009, Florida, Miami, Naples, Summer, Travel, Vacation, Video, Vimeo
If you’re viewing through Facebook, click here.
Filed under: the ussh. | Tags: Budget, Buffalo International Airport, Cheap, Coach Canada, Expedia.ca, Florida, Fort Myers, Megabus, Naples, Planning, Tips, Tourism, Travel, Vacation
Haha, what a lame picture.
We all know how much this summer has been a rip off. The weather has been spotty as hell, and up until yesterday, things started to clear up—you know, when it wasn’t pouring buckets outside.
Summer school is clearing up and I wanted to plan a last resort getaway out of the city before things picked up again in September. The month ahead is shaping up to be pretty busy with all these new and exciting projects coming through and I’m transferring schools.
I’m a cheapass and I managed to book a trip to Florida that is probably going to cost me somewhere around $500. Granted there were some advantages, but here’s how I did it:
1. Free Accomodation.
Luckily, Elena’s grandparents have a condo in Florida that is pretty much empty right now. Right off the bat that is a huge chunk of our travel costs gone. Kitchen + free living for the win!
2. Fly out of Buffalo.
This isn’t something new, but I will admit that it needs to be stressed. Direct flights out of Toronto to certain parts of Florida are hella expensive, but a hop across the border to Buffalo will seriously save you somewhere between $200 and $400.
This time I booked with Expedia.ca and the list of cheap flights is just awesome. Granted there are some retarded connecting flights to get to Florida, it is still way cheaper—and in CDN dollars!
I suggest taking either Coach Canada or Megabus. They have direct bus routes to Buffalo International Airport and man are they cheap. If you time it right, you can grab a seat for $1; if not, it’s only about $16-20 one way.
3. If you can, use the kitchen.
If your accomodations allow it, I highly suggest buying groceries and using the kitchen. We all know how cheap food is in the US, so why not take advantage of it?
Filed under: the ussh. | Tags: Authors, Books, Cuba, Ernest, Fiction, Floridita, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway, Life, Travel, Writing
I look sad because I had waited all day for this photo and the camera was about to die.
Hemingway is probably one of my all time favourite authors, and this blog I stumbled across today sums up why:
His writing has been described as sparse, but I think efficient is a better word. He managed to convey in his short declarative sentences the emotion, the feeling, the very sense of the place he was writing about. More than any other writer, he gave me a feeling that I knew the place he was writing about. Be it Spain, Africa, Italy, France, or his beloved Florida Keys, he captured the essence of what those places must have been like to me.
True dat. When Elena and I were in Cuba, we decided to take a day trip to Havana. Part of the tour included stops where Hemingway hung out and wrote. I had never been so excited in my life.
The hotel where Hemingway wrote much of "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
Hemingway made Cuba feel like one of his novels—every single part of it. From the fisherman to the marketplaces, or the bars to the parties—the trip became one huge Hemingway novel.
"Floridita", a bar that Hemingway frequented.
Filed under: Travel | Tags: Budget, Canada, Cheap, Downtown, Extended Stay Deluxe, Finance, Good, Holiday, Hotels, Ideas, Ottawa, Recession, Tips, Travel, Trip Advisor, Trips, Vacation, Value
Things are about to get busy this week—I’ve got a full work schedule that’s gearing up for some crazy projects, and I start summer school tonight. In between that and my writing, my life is going to be pretty jam packed. Elena and I decided a quick, cheap getaway was in order before things got hectic. We headed to Ottawa to visit some friends and walk about, soaking up the “beauty” of our nation’s capital.
We’re not people who like to spend big. I mean, we do have a tumblr blog that tracks our cheapness. Here are some ways we cut down on costs—and I mean really cut down on costs, but still managed to enjoy a great little holiday:
Book a hotel with a kitchenette.
Hotel rooms can be expensive, and for a two night stay you’re looking at somewhere between $300 to $500 with taxes. Screw that. I did some searching and found the Extended Stay Deluxe, Downtown Ottawa. All rooms have a kitchen and it’s apartment style accomodation. Room was great and had everything we needed for cooking. We managed two nights for around $200.
A room with a kitchen means cheaper eats.
So we got this room with a kitchen. That meant that we wouldn’t have to spend a lot on eating at restaurants. In fact, the only time we ate outside of the hotel was to get a quick dessert after dinner one night. That was probably our biggest splurge…at $20. We bought groceries for the entire weekend; enough for two breakfasts, and fixings for our steak dinner (my dad had steaks he wasn’t going to cook, so we took them along with us). In total we spent around $30 for groceries that lasted all weekend.
We walked everywhere.
This is a given. Our hotel was conveniently located minutes away from all the major spots in downtown Ottawa.
Budget when going out.
We managed to barely spend $40 on drinks when we were out with friends. We bought a case of beer that was good for dinner and hanging about before going out. We still managed to party. Our second day was long and full of walking, so after dinner we opted to stay in and watch a movie I had brought along. We also splurged on a deck of cards. Our last night included drinking wine and playing cards until 2 am.
If you’re driving, make sure parking is decent.
Parking can be a huge drain to your wallet, even for just a weekend stay. I scoured TripAdvisor reviews on the area and hotel to see what other people were saying about parking. The hotel charged $11 a day; the lot around the corner charged $5 a day, but the ticket would run out at 6 am and you’d have to change it; Cooper Street, where the hotel was located, had free parking all weekend. BOOM! Because we left early enough and arrived before any weekend rush, I managed to snag a free spot on Cooper street right in front of the hotel. Take a look at reviews and comments before heading to your destination, especially for little things like this.
Filed under: Travel | Tags: 2009, Cuba, Culture, Don McKellar, Guantanamera, Music, Song, Tourism, Travel, Video, Vimeo
I was showing my parents the pictures from Cuba and forgot about this video. It’s a band playing Guantanamera at a road-side stop on the way to Havana. The lead singer was loving the spotlight I gave him, and his attention was solely on my camera lens. I guess it was his 15 minutes.
This song was everywhere in Cuba—it’s the country’s most popular song, and it associates with Cuban culture. I can’t get enough of it. I remember first hearing it in Don McKellar’s movie Last Night.
*I’ve linked the video because I know when Facebook imports this post, it’ll screw up the formatting and embedable media.
Filed under: the ussh. | Tags: 2009, Food, Foster's Inn, Life, Lunch, Review, Road trip, Shakespeare, Steak, Stratford Ontario, Travel, William
I parked in front of this building, really.
Elena and I were itching to get away from the city for a little bit, and it really didn’t matter where. The two of us piled into my car on Saturday and headed to Stratford, Ontario. If you work with me and I told you this, you’ve all probably said, “WTF? Why Stratford?” It was the only place we could think of really.
Anyway, the plan was to get up early, eat a hearty McDonald’s breakfast, and hit the road. That didn’t happen. I drank far too much the night before and had a little trouble getting up the next morning. In fact, I spent much of the early hours of the morning hugging a toilet seat.
This is what it actually looked like.
From what I remember, Stratford looked a lot more picturesque. I mean it’s kind of lame that the place is trying to be some kind of carbon copy of the actual Stratford in England, but the way it is now is just ridiculous. That Avon river is literally a pile of mud. I remember paddle boating or something—wait maybe kayaking—when I went there years ago. It’s literally just a swamp of mud.
We stopped in some chocolate shop and bought fairly overpriced chocolate. The town was empty; I’m guessing that we had shown up a week before the start of the spring season, so nothing was really going on. Oh wait, there were all these stupid hippy/punk kids playing hackey sack and busking near the river. They really don’t have anything to do in that town. Geoff told me that most of them are on drugs.
After a bit of walking around and browsing through bookstores, we had lunch at a place called Foster’s Inn. They’re known for “Great Steaks”. That’s another thing: all the stores in Stratford had taglines in quotations! I asked Elena where they were getting these quotes from; was there possibly a popular resident who went into these establishments and said things like “The Best Fudge In Town!” or something? Whatever. I had one of their “Great Steaks” though; it was alright. Elena doesn’t think “It was alright” is a plausible remark on anything. Well guess what, Elena, you’re “alright”.
It was an alright day though (HAHA), but I wouldn’t really recommend the place unless you’re going to see a play. Or maybe you just have a fetish for seeing everything named with “Shakespeare” in front of it.
Filed under: Travel | Tags: 2009, Airport, Clothes, Cuba, gawker, Luggage, Packing, Time Lapse, Travel, Varadero
Gone to Cuba for a week! Enjoy the cold suckahsssss. Above is a time lapse video of me packing!
I got lazy and didn’t want to add any music. This is the first time I’ve done a time lapse, so shut up.
Filed under: the ussh. | Tags: 2009, Clubbing, Cuba, Dance, Drinks, Family, Firkin Pubs, Guvernment, Nightlife, toronto, Travel, Valentine's Day
My cousin has been visiting from back home for about three weeks now. Her brother was here two months ago, and I had managed to take time off to hang out with him and show him around. By show him around I really mean get unbelievably drunk. I wasn’t able to do the same so soon; she had arrived with her parents literally two weeks after he went back to Australia. She’s managed to see things, and for the most part she enjoys staying indoors, so me being busy with work and school hasn’t kept her from stitting around and doing nothing. She leaves tomorrow, and it’ll probably be another year until we see each other again. It’s sad really; I don’t have any family here, and it’s hard being isolated and having to grow up on your own without them.
Depressing goodbyes aside, we had a pretty good finale weekend. Friday night had us getting drunk at Last Temptation on something called polar bears; a shot that literally tastes like an after dinner mint. Saturday night had us doing something I never do; we went clubbing. My cousin’s friend was also visiting from Australia and he managed to get us in because of some product launch his cousin was doing at Guvernment. I’ve never understood why people want to wait in line for an hour, pay obscene amounts of cash for cover, and then more obscene amounts for drinks. All while leaning against a bar with music that makes it hard to hear anyone say anything, and watching fat girls dance provocatively in the dark. We hung around for a while and went to the different stations and ordered different shots. Mostly polar bears. Ducking out at around 1 am, we headed to a firkin pub at Front and Wellington and tried to chug down as much cheap beer as we could in an hour. 2 pitchers and 2 pints. The girls were falling asleep in the booth, so it was up to me and Kannan, my cousin’s friend, to do most of the drinking.
With Elena working, Valentine’s Day wasn’t exactly what I was hoping it to be. She didn’t mind, but I told her I’d make it up to her when we get to Cuba. 4 more days!
Filed under: the ussh. | Tags: 2009, American Apparel, Baby Rib Men's Brief (3-Pack), Bargains, Clothes, Cuba, Deals, Fashion, Nylon Taffeta Swim Trunks with Lining, Online, Shopping, Store, Travel
Wash your hair you stinking hippie!
Yeah, I’m just going to say that with this week being hectic already, I opted to buy the remainder of whatever clothing I needed online. If you’re my friend on Facebook, then you already know from my status that I purchased underwear online last night. I’ll tell you why:
1. American Apparel had a deal again. It was $36 for a pack of three, “slashed” from $41.
2. I needed a new pair of swim shorts; the ones I purchased for my Halloween costume are white, and poses the problem of being see through when I come out of the water. Nobody wants to see, as one review on the site put it, my “triangle of no”. Maybe they do?
The shorts were $36 also, and if you remember my costume from halloween (or just look at the picture above), you’ll know what shorts I’m talking about. Again, the shipping was free.
You can’t go wrong with slashed prices and free shipping. Trends and hipster backlash aside, it’s good quality material and I like the colours. I could care less if it was made on this continent.
