My First International Travel

27. Travel in a Foreign county with a friend.

I spent a week at the beginning of this month my first time abroad, in Dubai.  I would have posted more while we were there, but I decided it was a vacation from everything, including blogging.

My boyfriend (Who I will refer to as "IT" at his request) is working out of the country right now, and has been for the last couple of months, so we decided to take a vacation in Dubai.  After a hassle trying to get my passport, and a long first flight by myself, I arrived.  Then proceeded to sit in the airport for three hours until IT got there and we found each other.

June 30th
My first time flying alone, and I go across the ocean.  I don't sleep on planes, sleeping while in transit makes me motion sick, and one a plane ride of 12+ hours would be extra miserable if sick.  Instead I watched the following movies:
Sinister 2 - Which I'd seen most of before, and this version was "edited for content".  There was only one major scene that I noticed was missing, but a few other things in the movie made more sense with it in.
The Boy - I enjoyed the twist ending!
The Otherside of the Door - most of it.  The dog died and I turned it off.
Everest - I joked afterwards that the scariest movie I watched on that flight was Everest, being a aspiring climber of the mountain, and a rock climber, I know a bit about it.  I knew about the event, too, but couldn't remember who survived, which made the movie that much more stressful.

Also during the flight we were told that we were hitting some turbulence, my first thought was of the second Sharknado movie...

July 1st-3rd 

Because we were both pretty tired, and hadn't seen each other in over three months, the first few days we spend mostly sleeping, watching animal planet, and just wandering around the stores and water near our hotel.  

My first impression was that everyone was very friendly, there were a lot of people who would talk to me, and ask me questions - mostly things like “where are you coming from?!”  Others would just smile and/or wave.  I mean, I did stand out quite a bit, plus I was wearing jeans, a flannel and a beanie.

The whole city was fairly relaxed and welcoming, as long as you were respectful.  It was Ramadan for the first five days of the trip, which meant during the day everywhere selling food was either closed, or at least had curtains closed so you couldn't see inside, and here were signs in the grocery stores asking people to refrain from eating in public places.

A lot of people were really nervous about me going because it's a Middle Eastern country.  I can tell you I felt just as safe there as I do in my home town.  One of the biggest questions I was asked was "will you have to cover yourself and everything? and "are you sure it's safe there?".  While they are a muslim country Dubai is also tourist-centric city, so they rely on tourism heavily, which means they would never get away with having a dress code that strict.  Even the dress code I'd read about online - and was very nervous about breaking - wasn't really enforced, and there were a lot of people in clothes I'd read would be deemed inappropriate.  And again, I felt just as safe there as I do at home, because they are a tourist city and if it was as dangerous as people I've talked to seem to think it is then no one would visit! So if that's a concern of yours, and a reason you don't want to visit you have nothing to worry about.

July 4th

We visited the Dubai Mall, one of the largest malls in the world.  It was really cool, we didn't actually buy anything, or go into many stores, but just walking around was exciting.  They had some cool art around, a lot of people from all over the world, weird but awesome stuff like a full dinosaur skeleton, and my personal favorite, the Dubai Aquarium. 

The food court situation was actually pretty interesting.  They didn't shut down the food court during Ramadan, but so as not to be disrespectful towards those that were fasting they had it blocked off.  I'd never thought about that as a possibility, I honestly expected anywhere that served food to be closed completely during the day.

The bigger thing we did was go to the observation of the Burj Khalifa, AKA the world's tallest building.  Looking down at the city, and watching the sunset from 1,821' up in the air was pretty incredible. Unfortunately, I forgot my nice camera this day, and was left with only my iPhone to take pictures with.  

We did laugh at the plush version of the Burj that they gave each of us.

July 5th

This was the day of our aquarium visit, so obviously I made sure I had my nice camera on this day so I could take tons of pictures of fish, and other aquatic creatures.

We signed up for one of their special experiences, so after wandering through and looking at all the animals for well over an hour and a half, we got to hand feed rays! I was really excited, and I'm actually half tempted to cross number 76 (Swim with stingrays) off my list, because we were actually standing in the water with them, even if we didn't technically swim.  Much to my parents' dismay, no pictures were taken of us feeding the rays.  There was a pretty decent sized Nurse Shark swam up to us trying to get us to feed it, but our "guide" scared him away.  The big leopard whipray wanted some treats really badly, too, however he also wasn't allowed to have any.

Some quick Dubai Aquarium fun facts:

• In 2010 there was actually had a huge leak that caused an evacuation in the mall.  
• It is the second largest aquarium in the world, 
• It houses the over 1,650lbs "King Croc" and his mate "Queen Croc", they are Australian Saltwater Crocodiles.  He was originally captured because he was causing problems in a small town!

July 6th

We got to explore a little more, and walked from our hotel to the beach.  Despite the heat it was a nice walk.


Because it was so hot during the day we opted to go back to the hotel, and then visited the beach after dark.  It was really cool at night, there were a lot more people there, and the water was so nice and warm.  The water was significantly nicer temperature, in my opinion, than my home near the beach in Maine is.

July 7th

For our last day of vacation we spent a lot of time in the pool in our hotel, and playing the new most popular mobile game - Pokemon Go.

I wouldn't have started playing the game while on vacation abroad, except IT and I wanted to play it together.  So we did join the trend and went on a walk just to catch new Pokemon.

July 8th

Unfortunately every vacation has to come to an end, and IT's plane was over three hours before mine.  So I got to wander around my terminal in Dubai for a couple hours.  I try to collect postcards, and snow globes because they're usually fairly inexpensive, and easy to find.

After doing a few laps around the airport out of boredom I bought a donut and sat to wait for my plane.

The plane ride back would have been much longer, there's only so many movie franchises I can watch in a row, but we got to stop in Milan for about an hour.  Italy is somewhere I've wanted to visit for a while, I'm even learning and teaching Cheyenne commands in Italian, so it was pretty cool that I got to stop there of all places on my way home.

The rest of the trip was very uneventful, other than my confusion about going through customs in the USA (it was ridiculously easy) because it was different than when we landed in Dubai, and a three hour layover in JFK where I played a lot of Geometry Dash and Piano Tiles while trying really hard not to fall asleep.

Firsts:

Other than being the first time I've left the USA there were quite a few other "firsts" for me on this trip.

• June 30th: Flying by myself - it was pretty terrifying, let me tell you.
• June 30th: Having a meal on a plane - it really wasn't that exciting, but it was a first.
• July 1st: Visit to the Asian continent - while this is implied with it being the first time I've left the US, I decided to include it anyway, then someday I'll have the dates of the first time I visited each continent!
• July 1st: Stay in a 5-star hotel - we didn't even realize it was a 5-star hotel until we'd been there a few days and googled it.
• July 6th: Having a Krispy Kreme donut - life changing ;)
• July 8th: Visit to the European continent - not a very exciting first time in Europe.  I stayed in the airport the entire time.  I still technically have been, though.

My April 2016 Boston Trip (told mostly in pictures)

View from the train.

 This past weekend was spent with a couple friends in Boston, Massachusetts.  We took a train down on Saturday morning, and back on Sunday night.

One thing we did not think about was hockey.  Unfortunately our train down was completely full, and North Station was crazy packed because the Bruins were playing.  The station was the only place where we actually had any issues with the amount of people, so it worked out pretty well.

North station!!

Our first stop in Boston was to the New England Aquarium, of course.  I did want to be a Marine Biologist, and I kept fish for a long time so the aquarium was the first place I thought of to go.  We decided to walk

Boston still had the tiniest bit of snow.

Penguins, looking adorable, of course.

At the aquarium, after visiting the Shark and Ray touch tank, I took my camera out and started taking pictures of as many think as possible.  I definitely think I got some good ones! The penguins were surprisingly difficult to get good pictures of.  If they weren't moving the lighting was bad, or they'd be standing near their sprinkler things, which made the pictures look weird.  I got a couple, and did some editing.  This one is my favorite.

The whale skeleton backlit by the big center tank is in the running for my favorite picture I took at the aquarium.  I wasn't sure it was going to turn out, but the lighting works really well for it!

A gorgeous Freshwater Spotted Ray!

 The entire aquarium was my favorite part of the aquarium basically, but the freshwater tanks were actually inspiring.  While I don't have any fish right now I plan to set up my tanks again in the future.  They had some really cool freshwater tropical fish there, so now I'm psyched more than ever to get my tanks back up and running.







This turtle was swimming along the glass a lot, so it was pretty easy for me to get a bunch of pictures of it! This one was probably my favorite.

 One thing that happened that pretty much sucked was that I lost all my stuff that I bought at the aquarium.  I collect postcards, and Snow Globes, so I bought those, and some stuff for my family at the gift store of the aquarium.  I set it down while my friends and I were getting food, and accidentally left it and walked away.  When I realized it was missing a couple minutes later I went back and it was all gone.  That was a very disappointing part of the trip.

Two of the people I as hanging out with on Saturday I know through the theater, so they really wanted to check out a theater there in Boston.  We only went into the lobby area, but it was a really beautiful place!

 On Sunday we went to the Museum of Fine Arts in the morning, I didn't really take any good pictures in there.  Afterwards we visited the Cheesecake Factory for lunch.  Cheesecake being one of my favorite foods, I was very excited.

 Amy and I wandered around Boston for a while after that.  Neither of us are religious, but we definitely considered going into this church to look at the inside, because of how beautiful the outside of it is.  The bells were ringing, too.  We walked by as a church service was beginning, which is the only reason we didn't go in, we didn't want to disrupt the service, or leave halfway through or anything.




Even the doors on it were gorgeous!













We found the bridge with locks on it, it looks really cool.  Amy pointed out that it's right over a road, so if it does end up getting too heavy it could be really dangerous.  I don't think that'll stop anyone, though.

We walked through the Boston Common and met quite a few friendly animals.  I always try to slowly sneak up on animals to take their pictures, birds mostly, but occasionally others, so when I saw the ducks, goose, and squirrels in the park I started trying to sneak up close enough to get some good pictures.  Little did I know, I wouldn't really have to.

The ducks all stayed in the water, but let me get within a few feet of them to take some pictures.  The one I wasn't expecting to let me get anywhere near it was the goose.  I went especially slow up to it, for a couple of reasons.  Obviously if I'm trying to get a picture I don't want to scare it away, but I also didn't want it to attack me.  Geese are known for being vicious after all.  This Canadian Goose was somewhat friendly though.  It let me get close enough that I probably could have touched it, I didn't tempt fate by trying.  It did swim alongside me and Amy for a while when we walked away, until it was distracted by a pug.

Quite possibly my favorite part of the trip (stop judging me, this was amazing) was feeding the squirrels right out of my hand.

There were so many squirrels, so obviously I was trying to sneak up on them to get some pictures.  When a squirrel ran towards me I was really confused at first, but them quickly squatted down to try and get a picture, it then ran away.  However, I found a bunch more friendly squirrels, and started trying to get them to come up to me.  A couple did, and sniffed my hand, but ran away when they realized that I didn't have any food.  After a few minutes some people came by, and fed some popcorn to one squirrel before dropping a handful and then walking away.  I went over to it, and started hand feeding one squirrel to get some amazing close up pictures.  I have a ridiculous amount of pictures of friendly squirrels now, but it was definitely worth it!




So that's pretty much it! After the squirrels we explored Boston for a bit, then went to the train station and rode home.  I'm looking forward to more travels in the future, I've got a few more planned for this year.

If you want to see all my pictures from the trip to Boston check out my Flickr!

Gearin' up, snapshot style.

I received my Canon Rebel in the mail on Tuesday, and finally had a chance to play around with it this morning!

Lucky for me today was the first day I've seen our newest "neighbors".  Two new birds have moved into our birdhouse.  Last year I snapped some pretty cool pictures of the last couple to live there on my iPhone.

My cats and dogs were also featured heavily in my photography this morning.

My camera is a Canon EOS Rebel T5.  The kit I bought actually came with the camera, three normal lenses, four close up lenses, three professional filters, two memory cards, an external flash, a carrying case, a full length tripod, a USB cord, and a couple other neat things.  I'm super psyched to have so many new things to play around with.  I didn't have to spend as many hundreds of dollars as I expected either, so that was nice.  A good quality beginner camera with lots of accessories, it's the perfect place to start me on my photography journey.


I also have recently received a hand-me-down MacBook Pro that works a lot better than my old one.  Lots of photo editing and more blogging should be happening now that I have a working laptop.  Salt Pump is a beautiful place to blog from!

Laser Tag, Trips, and Electronics

Finally I post about my trip to play laser tag, one of the things on my list that I finally got to cross off!

On Valentine's day this year my boyfriend decided to take me to play laser tag.  He read my list and saw it, so that's what we did! We visited Hilltop Arcade in Somersworth, played some arcade games, and then played laser tag.  I had a lot of fun, and I will definitely play laser tag again.  It was the perfect Valentine's date.  

As the title says I have a couple of trips planned that are coming up pretty fast.  First, my friend Amy, and I are going to be taking a train down to Boston for a weekend in April.  I won't post too much about it not, but some of the trip highlights will be visiting the aquarium, getting piercings, my first visit to the cheesecake factory, and much more! It's going to be a let's do as much as we can in Boston in a weekend as possible type trip.  I'll post a detail plan soon.

And the last subject of this post, electronics.  My boyfriend bought a new laptop and gave me his old Macbook, and today I ordered a Canon Rebel T5 off Amazon.  The camera should be here before our Boston trip, and hopefully I'll have a couple days to play around with it and figure it out beforehand.  Definitely look forward to those pictures, and keep an eye on my Instagram, and Flickr to see them all.  I've got three lenses, and a couple filter sets coming with it, so I'll be able to do some cool stuff.

Area spotlight: The Scarborough Marsh

Today's spotlight is the Scarborough Marsh in Scarborough, Maine.  This marsh is the biggest saltwater marsh in the state, with about 3,100 acres of various types of marshlands.  It's also a great place to visit, birding, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, even walking and biking, it's a beautiful place.

My favorite thing to do at the marsh is photography, obviously.  It's actually many people's favorite things about the marsh, the different species of wildlife, especially birds, and the gorgeous scenery it's the perfect place for pictures.  My family actually had a photoshoot done there a couple years ago!

Fishing is another thing that is quite popular at the marsh.  With a fairly large population of Striped Bass (or "stripers") swimming in and out with the tides many saltwater fishermen.  There are even some clam flats open for clamming.

Sorry for the blur, my phone hates zoom.

Though I haven't really been specifically bird watching here, yet, I haven't completely missed some of the species there.  The most common species I've seen are Snowy Egrets, and of course, Seagulls.  Great Blue Herons aren't uncommon either, they are often seen flying over the roads of the towns surrounding the marsh.  Mallards seem to be the most common duck of the area, the marsh, and Milliken Mills pond almost always have a pair or two of mallards on any given day, I haven't ever seen a nest, but occasionally you even see the ducklings following their parents around in the water! It's very cute, and always fun to see.  One of my favorites is the Glossy Ibis, I don't see them often, but they're gorgeous, and fun to watch!

There are many trails, including the Eastern Trail that I talked about last time.  Most of them are walking only, unlike the Eastern Trail where you can also ride bicycles.  Another way to see the marsh is by train! There is a train track over the marsh, that's definitely an interesting perspective!



Of course, no tour of the marsh would be completely without talking about the canoeing and kayaking opportunities.  The water is fairly calm, and some of the channels are very wide, making it easy to paddle.  Along the way you'll see lots of different kinds of wildlife, including many species of birds, and possibly some mammals species, such as muskrats.



If you get hungry after spending all day in the marsh you can visit the Clambake, just down the road from the parking area at the Eastern Trail opening into the marsh!

 There's a seating area with big windows looking out onto the marsh, and there are always lots of hungry seagulls outside.  While waiting for your food, and eating you can watch the wildlife outside the window. and when you're finished you can take any leftovers outside to feed to the seagulls.  The birds there have been fed like that for so many years that they will take food right out of your fingers if you hold it out to them.  Just be careful, their beaks are sharp, and it can hurt if they accidentally bite you.

No matter what you decide to do I'm sure you'll enjoy your time at the Scarborough Marsh. :)

Area Spotlight: Eastern Trail

This is my first post highlighting the wonderful things about where I live in Southern Maine!


I'm starting with the Eastern Trail, one of my favorite places to ride my bike, walk my dogs, look for turtles, and practice photography.  Last summer it was my favorite place to fish, also.

The Eastern Trail is 65 miles with some beauty scenery.  It goes all the way from Kittery to South Portland.  It's usually well traveled, but never too busy, people walk their dogs, jog, run, go cycling, and even ride horses down the trail! 

The trail does follow some roads in certain places, but it's fairly well marked, and easy to follow.  I can easily ride my bike 6 miles out and back in under two hours because most of the trail is fairly flat.  The many trails going into wooded areas off the main trail are nice for walking, too, though a bit more muddy with a lot of roots making it hard to ride through.

My favorite place is a little path into the woods off the main trail that connects to the Milliken Mills Pond, where I find several different species of turtles, frogs, fish, and birds! It's an area full of wildlife.


A couple of animals that live there are the usual, chipmunks, grey and red squirrels, painted turtles, wood turtles (I believe, though I'm not a turtle expert), garter snakes,  largemouth bass, pumpkin sunfish, and many many birds, there are also bigger animals, such as deer, and raccoons.  According to the lake survery I found we even have eels, and a couple types of catfish in the pond.

Some people enjoy kayaking or canoeing on the pond, though it's not the most popular activity on this section of the trail.

"Ralph" the Painted Turtle.

One section of the trail also crosses the Scarborough Marsh, that is my other favorite section.  The marsh is next week's spotlight, so I won't go into any detail today!

The trail's website.

Only one of these pictures has been edited at all.  These are not pictures from my Instagram, most of the pictures on my Instagram are edited in some way.  All of my photography is currently taken and edited on an iPhone 4S.

Blog update

I've just updated my blog a bit.  Mostly added links to my various social media.  I recently created a Tumblr to go with this blog, it has a sampling of my photography, and a few things I've reblogged.

For those interested I'll go a bit more in depth about what I post where.

Twitter -

• Favorite picture of the day, either mine, or someone else's I've used with permission.
• Summary of recent blog posts.
• Occasional retweets of things I think are worth sharing.

Today's favorite picture.

Facebook -

• Most liked pictures of the day from my Instagram.
• Summary of recent blog posts.
• Special "Facebook only" pictures and posts that I don't post anywhere else.

Instagram -

• My photography from traveling, hiking, visiting nearby places

Tumblr -

• Sample pictures from my Instagram
• Summary of recent blog posts.
• Occasional reblogs of things I think are worth sharing, that almost always have something to do with my list.

This Blog -

• In depth posts about things I am doing, almost entirely about my list, or other travel related things.
• My full list.
• Links to my other websites, and to other people's blogs that I enjoy.

That's currently all!