Monday 29 September 2014

The Holiday!!!

Alright, with all the intention of keeping this blog up to date whilst I was on my holidays, it all went out the window the moment I step foot onto a plane on my way to Dubai. Sorry!

The first part of my holiday was to spend a day in Dubai before we (as a family) flew to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for 10 days for my brother's wedding. My brother told me to bring bathers as we would have a chance to swim in the lake (its a huuuuuge lake) so I was excited about that. The holiday started off rocky, I won't go into too much detail, only a few close friends and family members know about this which affected me for a while. I am unharmed. I wanted my brother to have the best week of his life marrying his beauty. I will leave it at that.

This was the cold food left on the table at the wedding (kinda like appetisers)
The holiday there consisted of gift giving and receiving - its huge in the Kyrgyz culture, eating (a lot of meat), travelling to the lake and mountains, living in yurts, meeting new people and sight seeing. We flew back to Dubai at crazy o'clock and spent a few more days shopping and sight seeing. I had an extra day to spend in Dubai before I flew to Canada (via China) so I bought myself an all-day travel pass and took the train down Dubai for a day.


Homemade pasta in broth served to us in the Yurt
Dubai is crazy. Not as big as I had imagined. Everything you ever needed from everywhere, are there. There is a downside to it as they do have plenty of expats working there with very minimal wage. It gets things done but a sad contrast to the richness you see in the buildings and local houses.

The flight to Canada was eventful. No entertainment provided under China Southern for the first half of the flight. When I landed in Vancouver, I was relieved to be once again in an English speaking Country. I took a small seaplane (sits 10 ppl) over to Vancouver Island where the Canadian's family lives (in Nanaimo).

Nanaimo is a quiet town on the Island where deer roam pretty freely amongst houses, very cute. We spent a few days doing some home stuff, ate in different restaurants, went to visit shops before we headed to Victoria for a day to see more family.

We went to Edmonton to support the Triathlon World Champs and hung out with some Melbourne friends who also travelled over for a holiday and for triathlon. Edmonton is where I pretty much did most of my shopping and had my first taste of Victoria Secrets. Holy Crap, the things they sell are amazing! I always thought that I was too normal to shop there until I actually went in and found out that I am able to buy 90% of the things they sold. Lets just say I visited a VS shop whenever I saw one and bought something at every shop. They are not expensive (way cheaper than Australian products) and what I have been told, they last forever! Australia - you really need to open a proper Victoria Secrets shop here! I know I will be buying them online if I needed more.

After Edmonton, we travelled back to Vancouver Island before we headed to Vancouver to ride the Whistler Gran Fondo. This is a 120km ride from Vancouver to Whistler. Let me just say - don't do this ride on the back end of a holiday when you have had only one ride on a bike over 2 months. The total elevation was around 2100m. I busted my guts on the ride, took me over 7 hours as I stopped at most of the aid stations and was in granny gear for most of the way there. I may do a proper write up of this one day if I have time.


We spent 2 days in Whistler with the Canadian's family before we headed back to the Island. There wasn't much time left on our Canadian holiday after Whistler as we had to drive back to Victoria to return our loan bikes.

We flew into Vegas on the 10th Sept for 3 nights. We stayed at Paris and spent some time at CrossVegas, Interbike and up and down The Strip. CrossVegas was amazing! The scale of the course along with the scale of support towers over what we have in Australia....like 100 times over! The next day, we ventured down to Interbike....holy cow! Ausbike is childsplay compared to Interbike. You seriously need to take a whole week to go through the exhibition. The scale is unimaginable! After crazy Interbike, we spent the last day just venturing down the other side of The Strip.



The last leg of our holiday consisted of spending 3 nights in LA. We decided to keep it to the coast and stayed at Marina Del Rey but ventured up to Santa Monica (on foot, taxi, bike) over all 3 days. We did some shopping (definitely not as much as Edmonton) before buying excess baggage for our last flights home to Melbourne. We walked a hell of a lot in the US which was great.

 


I know this is predominantly a training blog so I have kept the holiday write up at a minimal. For those who are "friends" with me on Facebook/Instagram would get a better insight of how my holiday was.

I am now back in Melbourne, Australia...I am planning my next holiday already (going to Japan) and forecasting my next holiday back to Canada.

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