Day 2.5

It's day 2.5 of co-habitation with the SO.

We're not divorced. Yet.

Just kidding. It's been a fun couple of days as we've unpacked, settled into the new apartment and started buying furniture to complete the place. Unfortunately our movers destroyed a couple of dressers, a mirror and various other furniture so we'll have to buy those as well.

All in all it's coming together slowly but surely. We'll see how long blissful domestic life continues.

Blogging on hold

Sorry about the lack of posts but its been such a pain moving. It's just stacks and stacks of boxes. It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate over the years. Anyways once we are settled in ill resume posting on a more regular basis.

Honeymoon Post 1

Well the past 2 months have given me enough blogging material to keep this blog going for at least till the end of the year. A lot happened. Got married, went on a honeymoon, SO is moving to NYC. Craziness. I should have spread this all out a bit. 

Anyways, I was tasked with one thing for this wedding. Book the honeymoon. So, with such great responsibility, I decided to let the pros deal with it instead of potentially facing the wrath of the SO if I screwed up.

A couple we know used PremierTours to book their honeymoon and had a great experience so I thought why not. They did an amazing job and the itinerary they put together for us was everything we wanted.

After a 9 hour flight from LAX to LHR, we had a 4 hour layover, and then an 11 hour flight to Cape Town. Jacques, our driver/guide/bodyguard picked us up from the airport and drove us to our hotel, Kensington Palace located in the foothills of Table Mountain. Although we were a bit tired after such a long flight, we were refreshed after seeing the view from our balcony.

The room was quite large. Probably can fit our entire NYC apartment in this one room.

The weather on Table Mountain was supposed to be decent so Jacques rushed up to the base of the mountain. It was a 5 minute cable car ride up to the top. 

As one might expect, the view from the top overlooking Cape Town was impressive. You can see Robben Island in the distance. Given more time, I would've loved to check out the former prison site but our time in Cape Town was limited to 2 days and we had a lot to see. 

The top of Table Mountain was eerie. The cloud cover made this place look oddly desolate. 

Don't know why they built this hobbit house here. I guess I could look it up but I'm lazy. 

Jacques then drove us to the Bo-Kaap community in Cape Town. Originally settled by the freed slaves, Bo Kaap eventually became a huge Malay society (mixture of ethnic societies from Southeast Asia, blacks and whites). Cape Town kinda reminds of me Long Beach. A laid back coastal town with a lot of immigrants, its fair share of sketchy areas and lots of drugs. Throw in some Snoop Dogg and Cape Town is repping the CPT.  Anyways, the story Jacques told us is that one guy got sick of his boring walls and decided to paint his a bright color. Soon it became the hit of the neighborhood. I'm sure the rich folks down the street scoffed at the poor immigrants and laughed at their loud, poor colors. Well, take that rich folks, these houses are now a historical heritage. 

The next place we visited was the old fort. Jacques got us there just in time for the noon canon shot. Now I imagined the cannon to be somewhat large. It was about the size of flute. What a disappointment. 

The solider loading up his wussy cannon. 

Sucker went off like a M-1000. I shouldn't have judged the cannon by its size. Hehe. Yes, I turn 31 this year....

This was a corner of the dungeon. I was hoping to capture some paranormal activity. Hey what's that weird shape.....did you hear that? Was that tapping? It's coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!!

Lovely hook thingie. 

The obligatory artsy shot. I bought this camera about 3 hours before we got on our flight so4 this first day was trying to figure out all the functions of the camera. Or I could be like my dad who bought a $1000 camera with a $1000 lens only to use it shoot everything in auto.  

After the fort, we were hungry so Jacques took us down to Camps Bay for lunch and sightseeing. Kinda looks like my hometown, PV.  

I still remember when all this land was empty and there were no houses this side of PV. 

Anyways, after that it was off to the South Africa museum. Our final stop for the day. The SO was not very pleased to have to go on an educational tour especially since this would've been like hour 40 of travelling. 

Some early graffiti. 

Tagging about the mad hunt yo!

An African medicine/shaman. They had a picture of the pope next to it too. I guess it was just showing the different types of religion.  

The SO with Jacques. You can see why we called him our driver/guide/bodyguard. The man was massive. He said he actually lost about 50 pounds too. We saw him get mad and I was about to crap myself

I don't even know why I took a picture of this pot. What compelled me to think hey this would be a good picture. Probably so I could write this sentence in the blog and waste everyone's time. Lose-lose. 

I'm guessing another medicine man. Horrible Sean Connery movie btw. 

I rag on the SO for liking turtles. This was supposedly evidence that turtles can be cool too. I still think they're pretty boring and slow. 

Whale skeleton. I swear in every natural history museum they have a whale skeleton or a life-size whale model. Yes, I get it. They're big. I'd rather have them show me other animals where you're like wtf they're really that big or small? Like I never knew eagles were so damn big until I saw one in Alaska. 

That man is normal sized. 

Anyways, after a wondrous 8 hours of sleep, it was breakfast time at Kensington Palace. Fresh squeezed juices and an assortment of breakfast choices. I love being on vacation. 

First stop was Boulders Beach, a penguin preserve. 

The penguins had some nice digs. 

The middle penguin is a rebel. Fight the power, penguin! Don't let the man tell you that you need to face right. Occupy Penguin Street!!! I'm gonna have to link to an Occupy Wall street wiki so I remind myself later what the heck I was talking about. 

The adolescent penguin was losing its baby fur and heading into adulthood. Soon the penguin parents will look longingly while the mom cries "they grow up so fast" while the dad puts a reassuring arm around the mom penguin. I think I watch too much TV.  

Next post: Day 2 in Cape Town.

Preview of the Honeymoon pics

I have approximately 1200 pictures from our honeymoon. That's just on my camera. I think the SO has another 400. We also have about 60 minutes of HD video. Soo...there's a lot to sift through. I finally got through the 1200 pictures from my camera so thought I'd give you all a preview of what I hope will be the honeymoon post extravaganza.

Cape Town was a lot more interesting than I expected. It reminded me a bit of LA. It's super diverse but still got the beach-y laid back feel. The Malay people are the mutts of South Africa. They're a combination of Black, Indian and everything in between. One guy decided that he'd paint his house in wild colors and it caught on. The result is now a tradition in the Malay neighborhood. 

Just beautiful scenery in Cape Town. Too bad the ocean is FULL of Great Whites and I'm not talking Larry Bird. Ferocious, man eating sharks. Our last day in Cape Town there was a shark attack where a man lost his leg. It's Shark Week every week in Cape Town. 

The Dassi is actually a giant rat. It was cute when I first saw it but now that I know it's a giant rat, somehow the cuteness wears off. 

We were so freaking far from home. To get to Cape Town it was a 9 hour flight from LAX to Heathrow. A 4 four layover in Heathrow and then a 11 hour flight to Cape Town. Yeah, pretty brutal. 

Just awesome views at Cape Point. 

The SO enjoying the views from Chapman's Pass. 

For our safari we stayed at the Sable Camp in the Mala Mala Reserve. Just an amazing experience. I really can't describe how awesome the safari was. The camp was spectacular, Ryan our ranger was so informative and the meals were just superb. I wish I could live there but I'd go broke around day 2.5. Oh and we saw the Big 5 and then some in the 3.5 days we were there.  

Leopards during mating season mate every 15 minutes for 4-5 days. We must've seen these leopards mate about 8 times. I have about 100 pictures of them mating in different locales. It's like I shot leopard porn. 

The main camp had some skins from when the reserve was a private hunting lodge. 

The giraffes have a really bad staring problem. They just stand there and stare at you. Since they have such an advantage in vantage points they end up staring at you from like 1000 yards out and keep staring at you as you get near them. All the shots I have are them just looking stupidly into the camera. This is honestly one of five where they aren't looking at the camera. 

The lion pride on the reserve consisted of about 4-6 males and a whole bunch of lionnesses with 4 pups in the midst. We caught the pups in the middle of a feed. 

Female lion with some battle wounds.

So I have many more pics to go through. Stay tuned!

Home sweet empty home

I suggested to the SO (still applicable since a wife is also an SO) that we could live with my parents to save money. This was said jokingly, but the thought of all that extra cash from no rent did make me think for a half second longer than I should that this could be a good idea. Needless to say, this idea was rejected by the SO and my parents, who are desperate to get me out of the apartment. 

Anyways, to appease everyone, I've been apartment hunting for the past three months. The criteria was 1) the building was nice, 2) the location was good 3) open floor plan 4) floor to ceiling windows 5) washer and dryer. In NYC, this leaves about 3 buildings. Of these 3 buildings, 3 were out of our price range. So the weekend apartment hunts went pretty much nowhere till I found a building that I liked. But, once again the unit I wanted was a bit out of our price range. I noticed a particular unit, which I liked had been sitting unrented for about 3 months. The SO suggested I see if they'd negotiate. I thought "Noo. This is NYC. Demand is sky high." Well, as with a lot of things, the SO was right. Got an email the day after our wedding saying that they'd lower the price to something that's within our budget. Kinda. 

So last night I signed the lease papers, handed over the checks and obtained the keys to.....

our new apartment. Guests will be welcomed through this front door. So white and square.

The living room and kitchen where I hope to regale guests with awesome puns and boring historical trivia. Did you know that...

 View of the living room and the entrance to the bedroom.

The "designer" kitchen. Uh yeah so lots of granite and some stainless steel makes anything designer these days.

Full size refrigerator. To be stocked with lots of beer and cheese. We like cheese.

View from our living room at night. The apartment faces south so should have a good amount of natural light. The natural light will hopefully make the place feel a bit bigger than the 730 sq. foot that it actually is.

As of now we have no furniture and we won't have furniture till probably about November so the move will take some time to complete but at least it's a start. Now the SO just has to get to NYC. Until then...bachelor pad!!!