Little Black Guidebook

holdonlover:

{day-breaking}.

Home is where the heart is, no matter where you are in the world or where you are going I wish you a safe day full of things to be thankful for.

If you are traveling by air this may be an occasion where buying a one day lounge access pass might be worth it to get away from the stressful fray of the terminal. I would also recommend a cup of tea and headphones. Some may say you’re disconnected from the world and tuning out society, but on stressful days a little isolation can be peaceful. Remember if you don’t make it that leftover turkey is rumored to be just as good if not better than the first time around.

Next year’s biggest trip will be 3 weeks in Europe. We start by flying into Paris (only airport we could get mileage reservations into) and end up in Leuven, Belgium  for a conference before returning to London to fly home. We probably won’t stay long in Paris since we were there for a week in 2008 and it is brutally expensive (although worth every penny). We’re also trying to not plan this out exactly with a day-by-day itinerary so we can be more flexible than in the past. All I know is that it will include some time in London, Paris, Brussels, Leueven and a drive through Germany. The main bulk of time will spent in Germany exploring the places of my husband’s childhood, visiting friends and a new country for me.

Unfortunately this is going to to be expensive with these cities in particular. We are going to call back our mileage people every few weeks and see if we can rebook through other cities and avoid the UK and France this time, but it may not work out. In the meantime our eating out budget has been cut in half and I’m looking for creative ways to save. I would much rather pay for experiences than stuff so we’ll be keeping that in mind this Holiday Season/Birthday (5 in the next 2 months in the immediate family). With tomorrow being the very start of the Holiday/birthday craziness, I wanted to keep our ultimate goal in mind.

I have even considered getting extreme with the budget, aka this youtube video on spending $4 a week on food like this family. Couchsurfing here we come!

I hate the mentality that “If You Don’t See [blank] Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later.” I have been to Paris for a week on two seperate ocassions and I still have not climbed the Eiffel tower. People are shocked by this. I have laid on the grass at 2am watching the lights twinkle, but I’ve never climbed it? Well you have to wait in line to get tickets, you have to pay money and then you have to wait in 7, yes SEVEN, lines inside for various stairways and lifts. I would much rather climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe or Sacre Couer for my view and save a few hours to spend tracking down more yummy bakeries.  So if you ask me, the idea of must-see is subjective.

I’m a big fan of Moleskine notebooks, hence the name for this blog, Black Guidebook. These handy journals and notebooks become DIY guidebooks to everything for me from travel, how-tos, DIY house projects, to recipes and more. For more travel journals check out this roundup I found via BlackEiffel.

Wanderlust Travel Journal $16.95
Orla Kiely Travel Journal $17.00
International Travel Journal $39.95
Destinations Travel Book $19.95
Galison Travel Journal (illustrated by Lena Corwin) $15.00
Pierre Belvédère Semikolon Small $11.00
Sukie Travel Journal £9.75
Paper + Cup Travel Journal $16.00
Places to Check Out $10.95

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
–Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Hawaii | Oahu | Foster Botanical Garden | Cannonball Tree, originally uploaded by Aliaaaaa.

Today was the last day of the vacation together part of the trip. Tomorrow hubby reports for duty and I’m off exploring on my own. The navy lodging on Ford Island where we are staying has free wi-fi so I figured I would check-in.

So far we have gone sea-kayaking, taken an intro-to-scuba class, driven around the island, visited a Macadamia Nut Farm, and taken a few walks on the beach.

Today we wrapped it up by going to the Foster Botanical Garden. This small garden would have taken 20 minutes to walk through and wouldn’t have impressed us much without the guided tour. It has a small orchid garden and butterfly garden which were nice, but the rest was a lot of trees and non-flowering plants. However, these plants were really interesting when you take a tour with a botanist. We spent 2 hrs, just the two of us with a botanist taking us through the entire garden. I had no idea that there are over 4,000 varieties of palm tree or how so many of our spices are grown. The Foster Garden has daily tours at 1pm each day which are well worth the time. Typically the tour runs 1-1.5 hrs ($5 for non residents), but tourism is down so it was just the two of us so we got to go into far more detail, it was super cool.

The food has been fabulous and we’ve enjoyed every minute. I’ll post more later on the first two days of the trip.

Here is a slideshow I found on Flickr of the Foster Garden we were at today. It is from photographer Alia Luria who has a Creative Commons license on her work. She has a personal blog here. Thanks Alia, you perfectly captured the garden.

, originally uploaded by ** GON.

Hubby just brought me my Friday tea with a couple home made cookies. Yummy! It makes me feel cozy, just like today’s photo. Have a cup!

Palm Tree Sunset, originally uploaded by ilovepics11.

Ok, maybe I’m kidding myself by asuming I have readers this early into the blog, but I really want to create a community of people who are creating their own little black guidebooks to life and travel.

We are planning a 7 day trip to Honolulu over labor day. Hawaii sounds like a more common destination, but I’ve never been there so I thought I would ask: Have you been to Hawaii? What did you like/do/see/eat? What was your experience?

Tea, originally uploaded by ~ Phil Moore.

I went to a Japanese restaurant for lunch this afternoon and I was sitting there sipping my green tea afterwards thinking: “Why do I have to go back to work?” It definitely feels like the world’s longest Friday.