mad march

So I worked it out, it's going to take me approximately the rest of my life to blog about the America trip. And besides you dont want to hear about stuff I did in another country many moons ago, not when so many mazing things are going on right here little old Adelaide!

So forget America, rAdelaide is where its at ya'll

During the season that locals like to call "MAD MARCH" Adelaide plays host to a bajillion (accurate number) of festivals and events that transform the city into a hub of activity, art, culture and fun times!

Over March Adelaide is host to:
Adelaide Fringe Festival

Adelaide Festival of the Arts

WOMADelaide

Writers Week (as part of the Adelaide Festival)

Clipsal 500 (but we dont like to talk about that one)

I got right into the spirit of the festival season this year by signing up to volunteer at both the Fringe Festival and the Adelaide Festival. I was keen to get amongst all the festival atmosphere as much as possible, and I wont say no the volunteer benefits ;)

While I did do some dud jobs, which included spending several days folding letters (no papercuts though!), there were also some really cool jobs that I was lucky enough to get.
Working the traditional Fringe Opening Parade was an interesting experience to say the least. Along with other volunteers my job was to crowd control and ensure people kept on the correct side of the road. This was tough job as the parade was to go down the west side of King William rd and spectators were to stay on the eastern side. But people being people this did not go as smoothly as probably desired. But it was a great experience in working on the logistical side of putting on an event of this magnitude which helped cement my desire to work in the production/planning/organisational side of arts events.

Cue crappy phone photos of the parade:

For the Adelaide Festival of the Arts my role was primarily helping out at Writers Week, being a source of information for patrons and helping in the bookstore with crowd control.

Held in the beautiful Women's Pioneer Memorial Gardens, Writers Week was a great success. It was great to see so many people of so many different ages to come down and hear some really fantastic writers speak about such a wide range of topics. I really enjoyed my time spent in the info booth sitting under the trees, listening to writers talk and giving out the occasional program. Seeing so many people truly excited about the written word inspired me to get into reading again. I used to be a massive bookworm when I was younger, but then life got in the way and Harry Potter became the only books in my life! But im currently reading Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave, so im moving up in the world. 

I also did a shift at the Festival Centre, or as us artsy people lovingly call it, the Fezzi Centre. The shift was in the info booth and just required me to give people information and directions. It was great to see so many people in and around the Festival Centre excited to see some form of theatre, dance or music. This is exactly the reason I love this time of year in Adelaide. The Fringe and Adelaide Festival gets people excited about the arts, which sadly is not as popular, at least with younger audiences, later in the year. The shift at the info booth was also great because Betty who I was working with got given a free ticket to Ennio Morricone and I was given a free ticket to Raoul. With tickets costing anywhere up to $150 we both won big time that day!

Lastly, I dont mean to brag but the benefits of volunteering at these festivals are pretty great. My fringe pass got me into the Fringe Club or Artist Bar where we all the artists go to chill out. My Adelaide Festival pass allowed me express entry into Barrio, the pop up festival bar (more on that later). The festival pass also entitled me to discount rush tix for festival shows. I got tickets for myself and Mum to A Streetcar and later this week im going to see The Caretaker with friends.

The festival season is officially over now and Adelaide is slowly turning back into its sleepy old self, but the memories of Mad March will not be forgotten by those like myself who cannot stop talking about the amazing shows and the amazing fun they had and who are already looking forward to next years festivities!

Keep your eyes peeled for my reviews on Fringe and Adelaide Festival shows.
(assuming i dont download any more saturday night live episodes...)

what happens in vegas...

Vegas: yes it pretty much is what you see in the movies.

This is a town where its normal to drink on the street out of big ass yard glasses and have tiny mexican women flick business cards in your face in order to entice you to see "nudes nudes nudes", such wholesome family vibes.
But I shall be returning!

We stayed in the MGM Signature which was by far the most swanky hotel i've ever set foot in. Vegas does not disappoint, the toilet had a television. But then i would expect nothing less from America.

Of course we did the obligatory gambling, with the brother standing in the corner away from the table because he was only 17 at the time. He turned 18 while we were in New York. How harsh of us to take him to a country where the legal age is 21. good times.

 Our winnings! Mum turned out to be a roulette champion!

 The adorable lions in the MGM Grand.
They were non-plussed by the cowboy convention going on outside their home.

 Gondola rides inside the Ventian/Palazzo casinos.

Mum and I got very lost in these two casinos, they are very big and the inside

 looks like the outside, thats how they get ya! You could go insane in Vegas 

 Clearly loving life, one too many wines...

 Because one queen is never enough. 

This is old Las Vegas, its called Fremont Street and I can easily imagine 

Frank Sinatra and the rat pack struttin' their stuff down here.

And then we found these hilarious chairs. 

While in Vegas we took a trip over to see the fabled Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

We had opted for a fly over of the Grand Canyon in a tiny little plane, which delivered some amazing views but you can see the fear in the brother's eyes that it was a rather hair raising experience.

 On the day it was extremely turbulent and James is not the biggest fan of flying even in the best weather. We can all laugh about it now, well i was laughing at the time, but at one point he bit his lip so hard it started bleeding and I turned about to see him bleeding from what looked like his gums. It was intense. Now I call him Bloody Gums McGee.

But the views were amazing, its a pretty big hole in the ground!

                      

                   

 Hoover Dam

 Damn its big!

(pun intended)

 Fun Fact: Hoover Dam is not actually named after J. Edgar Hoover its a different Hoover. 

Who knew?

So there it is, Vegas
it really is something else.

so that went well..

Ahh how naive I was to think that I would be able to update this blog on all the crazy cool things I did while I was away in the states. 

In the past year quite a few of my friends went away o.s on exchange for uni or for amazeballs holidays, while I sat at home glued to facebook desperately awaiting some photo uploads of such adventures. 

When said "friends" did not allow me the pleasure of living vicariously through them by not uploading a single photo while they were away it is not enough to say i was majorly bummed. I vowed I would take a different approach when the fam and I went gallivanting across the U S of A, that I would not only feed my family and friends facebook stalking desires but would also keep le blog up to date with humorous stories and many a photo. 

That was then. This is now, almost two months since we returned and not a single word written. 

I discovered that it is in fact mission impossible to keep a blog up to date, while darting coast to coast and visiting eights cities and passing through practically all 52 states, and I am not Tom Cruise. 

So here and in a few posts that follow is a quick sum up of the places we visited in photomontage style with perhaps a tale of wit and or woe thrown in for good measure. 

Let us start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, in LA the city of angels.....

Hollywood Boulevard: yeah its pretty scummy, 

its hard to believe that the glamour of the oscars exists right in the middle of this filthy street

 Paramount Studios: Best studio tour ever. 

We totally went on the set of 'The Doctors'

 Johnny Rockets: We were repeat offenders here, 

having it in almost every city we visited!

 What's LA without a palm tree!?

This is one of my favourite photos I took over the course of the trip.

 Just shooting the new Ryan Gosling/ Sean Penn movie

 'Gangstar Squad' outside Grauman's Chinese
what of it?

Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive, so very fancy

 Venice Beach: All glamour and rollerskates in the movies. 

All medicinal marijuana and homeless people in real life.
"The Doctor is in"

 Being awesome in the Hollywood Hills.

A cool little experiment with the brother's film camera 

He took some great shots on his vintage and fisheye film cameras

If hes kind enough I will share them with you!

So that was some Los Angeles highlights, its not a detailed image of what we got up to, 

because we just did soooooo much! To give you an idea of how much we crammed in, I took:

five thousand five hundred and thirty six

photos in 32 days.

What can I say? I loved it!

Botanical

For all you rAdelaidians im sure you've heard tell of the infamous $6 pizzas and sangria at the Botanic on North Tce, and if not, shame on you! You need to get yourself down there quick smart and experience it for yourself!

After much confusion trying to organise it on facebook, (its times like these social media does not make life easier), I caught up with my high school friends for a good pizza feast down at the Botanic. These girls are the ones who made high school bearable: claiming the tourism classroom as our own at lunchtime, driving to hungry jacks in our frees and generally not doing a lot of work and having a lot of fun. 

In the three years since high school ended some of us have drifted apart. What with going to different uni's and undertaking the impossible task of actually being grown up and becoming a functioning member of society, it becomes hard to see all your friends as much as you did in school. But with the recent spate of 21st birthdays this year, we found ourselves back to our old ways giggling like little school girls. 

These birthday gatherings reminded me how awesome these kids were and why we were all friends in the first place. So we decided that we must not wait until the next milestone birthday to see one another again, enter the Botanic. 

It was a great Friday night spent chowing down on amazing pizza and then choking on it when you remembered stories of stalking big nosed boys for reasons unclear to you. After pizza time we wandered down to Cocolat, a place where even Willy Wonka would be awed. I had the most amazing coconut milkshake, like a liquid bounty! The night also gave me a great opportunity to try out my shiny new digital SLR camera, and it's safe to say im in love! 

An great night spent with good food and amazing people, lets do it again soon ladies!

 Lauren's 'go to' photo face

 Is it just me or does the guy in the poster on the wall look like a

 young Justin Timberlake, the N*Sync years?

The Rundle Lantern, its not super exciting, but you can see it from a plane at night

(and people wonder why Adelaide has a sleepy reputation...)