Oxnard, CA

My current job is in Oxnard, CA (a.k.a., "the 'Nard"). It's in Ventura county, along the coast, about 1 hour north of Los Angeles. Apparently the city is looking into changing the name, no joke. I am renting a room out of a decent-sized house from a really cool couple who have a little baby and a pug. They rent out a total of 3 rooms downstairs, and I still haven't met the other renters. The neighborhood is Oxnard Shores, a very pretty, beachy part of town with a lot of vacation houses/rentals. There's a nice view of the Channel Islands, and a couple miles down the road there's a harbor with a lot of boats and (from what I hear) restaurants, etc. The rest of the town is not nearly as pretty and I don't think there's much going on downtown. Of course I've only been here a few weeks. Here are some pics in and around my neighborhood, taken Dec 24:

Oxnard Shores
Pacific Ocean
Oxnard Beach Park

Christmas in Southern California - the reindeer are made of palm tree bark!

Southwest Roadtrip

Day 1 - Sunday
Left San Antonio early, on the road by 8:30 with my friend from NJ, Bilal, in the passenger seat. We hit our first tumble weed a few hours later. I10 passes through a whole lot of nothing for many, many miles, with the exception of the occasional roadkill and multiple for-real oil wells, which I'd never seen in person before. I think the tumble weed still won as the highlight of that portion of the trip.

Arrived in New Mexico. The southern part of the state was somewhat dreary. We made only short stops so that we could get to Bilal's uncles house in time for dinner.
Artesia, New Mexico

It was dark by the time we got to Alamogordo. Our chosen route took us through Lincoln National Park, and even in the dark and the dust we were completely floored by the view from the middle of the hills. (How does one distinguish a really big hill from a mountain?).

Bilal's family moved to Alamogordo just a few months ago. His uncle, a doctor, is a total character. He kept me in stitches while his wife doted on us, a total sweetheart. The kids (10ish and 13ish) were impressively well-behaved and friendly. They treated us to dinner at Chilli's and then all hung out and chatted about movies and whatnot. I turned in 11ish, exhausted.

Day 2 - Monday
We had to go back to see Lincoln Nat'l Forest in the day light - and were stunned to realize that we were already surrounded by picturesque hills as soon as we stepped foot outside. The Park was fantastic. Had a quick lunch and said goodbye to Bil's fam.


Headed West towards White Sands National Park, just a few miles outside of town. It's crazy to see two drastically different and equally breathtaking parts of the country in the same morning, just 20 or so miles apart.Sand-not snow!
The "sand" is actually gypsum

It was cold. But we couldn't stop taking pictures so suffered through putting the window down at 75 mph to get a clearer shot. The drive West in New Mexico continued to be fantastically scenic, the clouds blanketing the hills and the pink-purple sunset.

We arrived in Arizona after dark, and the drive got really boring again, just dark nothingness on either side. I tried not to back seat drive when Bilal was at the wheel. We searched for a hostel in our destination, Tucson, and found a nice quiet, clean spot called the Roadrunner with very friendly people - I only had to share a room with one girl so I was alright with it. Felt more like a commune than a hostel with an older crowd having conversations about new agey stuff or other places they've lived or been.

We hit the town, starting at Grill, part diner and part bar/venue. I was freezing, had soup and an excellent Arizona amber beer. A group called Soundtrkrs from Portland played electronic music behind a screen showing b&w news and film clips. I'm sure it was really deep but I didn't have the attention span for it. We then went to 80's dance party night at Club Congress, attached to a hotel. It was surprisingly crowded for a Monday night. We turned in after that.

Day 3 - Tuesday
The next morning we had waffles and cold ass showers courtesy of the hostel. I chatted with my roommate, a chick who moved here a few months ago to escape LA ironically. Bilal is making friends (they're talking about hip hop and/or racism now?) and I am going to put lotion on my hands for the hundredth time, as it's so dry... we stopped into a coffee shop, explored downtown for a few minutes and got on the road towards Phoenix.

Tucson

Phoenix visit was brief - just ate lunch in Irish pub, and talked to my agency rep about a job in Oxnard, CA. Continued on to Flagstaff. We instantly liked it there- SO cute. I got a private room at the Grand Canyon International hostel, which made me happy, and we signed up for a guided canyon tour. That night went to Criollo Latin Kitchen mulled wine, chatted with staff there, I had the most delicious red potato soup ever and then we shot pool and listened to jazz at Mia's.

Day 4 - Wednesday. Woke up in Flagstaff and joined group for guided tour. There were 5 of us plus the guide - a hippie chic from Australia, old English guy who was more in shape than all of us combined, a quiet American with a fancy camera, and a really cool guide (Greg?). I was in awe of the canyon, shocked by how little fencing there is to prevent people from plummeting and inspired to hike more. Loved the hike even though it was snowy on some of the paths and thus slippery!! Other people stood way too close to the edge in my opinion but we all survived.Grand Canyon
Hike
Bilal with hippie

That evening, Bilal and i were set on trying Brix, the "spendy" sister restaurant of the mulled wine place supposedly rated "15th in Arizona." It was a fantastic meal and very good time. Stopped back into Mia's which was having open mic night, chatted to a couple locals then headed in. I stayed up a while looking for a place to live in Oxnard.

Day 5 Thursday

Sad to say goodbye to Flagstaff - Bilal is thinking of moving there. Thai for lunch and much discussion of where to go for the night. In the end Vegas was the choice made. The drive there was gorgeous and we stopped for a quick photo-opp at Hoover Dam.

We stayed in the Luxor, a typically huge hotel on the Vegas strip. We were starving so went to one of the buffets - terrible food, save for the hummus. Had one over-priced drink and walked around inside the hotel casino area for a few minutes. We totally pooped out and went back to the room; Bil was snoring by 11:00. We are such wild party animals.

View of Vegas/sphinx ass from our hotel room.

Day 6 - Friday
Headed towards California. Made it to Santa Barbara to stay with our friend Jillian by early evening. Santa Barbara is just about 40 minutes from where I'll be moving. We went out locally Friday and drove up to wine country Saturday.
On Sunday I made my last official drive of the roadtrip down the 101 to my final destination of Oxnard, CA. Overall a good time, and I'm very glad I had company along the way.

Amsterdam and bicycles

Amsterdam was a little overwhelming at first, since we arrived at the central train station in downtown at rush hour - note rush hour includes as many if not more people on bikes than cars. The number of bikes and the way people ride them there is just hard to describe. Not only are the bike lanes excellent, there are stop lights for bikes, people carry their groceries, dogs, babies, 2 or 3 friends along with them and the bikes themselves are so nice (at least the ones we rented were).

Bike parking lot outside central station - does it NO justice, could not capture all the thousands? of bikes there in one picture
Our fancy rentals - so much fun.

Renee, I don't think I'm in Texas anymore..

Eureating What?

The best part of traveling? This is not a trick question: Eating. While we had some damn fine non-traditional foods while abroad - tapas in Berlin or Indonesian in Amsterdam, for example - I think we did a good job of sampling local cuisines.

Here are some highlights:

Frites, chips, fries - whatever you want to call them, I ate SO many fried potatoes on vacation, I've sworn them off through the end of the year.
Belgian waffle with chocolate sauce ... yummmmmm

Mussels in Belgium. Expensive and honestly not any better than the mussels you get in the States.

Dutch food - Renee had a chicken pancake (crepe-like) with a sort of curry sauce and I had a hutspot - potatoes mashed with carrots and onions, topped with what I would describe as little meatloafs. Deee-lish. Oh and hot chocolate!

Pickled herring sandwich from a street vendor in Amsterdam. Really good but your hands will smell of herring for the rest of the day.

Dutch cheese tasting - learning is delicious!

Currywurst , a Berlin specialty. I loved it.

White ("breakfast"?) sausage with pretzel and kaesespaetzle - basically German mac n cheese.

Ireland was the only place I needed to take tums. All week my system was a little, um, off. Suspect #1: Guinness beef stew with carrots and cabbage.

This was what I would describe as a seafood pot pie with peas and chips. And a hot whiskey.
Fish n' Chips = of course!! It was the size of my arm!

European Bachelor Parties

You know how traveling abroad can be a real educational experience? Well in Europe, Renee and I learned a few things about bachelor/bachelorette parties - known as stag parties and hen night, respectively. We saw a couple parties on the overnight ferry to Holland, as well as a couple parties our first weekend, in Antwerp, Belgium.

They tend to have themes that all the party attendees dress in accordance with. For example, the bachelorette party on the ferry had a nautical theme. That would be the hen of honor wearing her underwear outside of her trousers ...
One guy was Tony the Tiger - maybe Renee got some explanation on that one ...
And this was my favorite. . the bachelors tend to sell something for beer money. This particular Dutchman was selling pieces of his shirt - at one Euro a pop, I couldn't pass it up!

Ireland

We LOVED Ireland - so scenic and music everywhere. And sheep! Go to Ireland if you like sheep.
We took a 3-day Paddy Wagon tour of Ireland's Southwest coast, including Galway (one of our favorite spots on the trip!) and Killarney. The bus tour was great - stress-free and got to meet a lot of other travelers of all ages.

Me with donkey


Thatched roofs
Colorful buildings

One of the awesome bands we saw play (frequently there was no stage)