Over spring break in late March, I trekked across the East Coast of the United States. It was my first visit across that side of the country, and I covered a substantial amount of ground. This will be a series of posts on my travels and the things I saw along the way. Stop one on my trip was the Midwest heartland and the city of Detroit, Michigan, which I spent a day visiting my old friends Patrick and Elizabeth ...

Sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay, just a couple of kilometres from the shore, is one of the most notorious islands in US history: Alcatraz. The very name invokes dread imagery, a reputation forged on the backs of notorious criminals, impregnable walls, and Hollywood drama. Yet behind the hype, "The Rock" has a storied history beyond its time as a prison. I visited in early February, taking a night tour of the island.

Alcatraz Cruises is the company ...

This is part V of a series on my trip home to Australia for the US winter break (see part I, part II, part III, and part IV).

December 7th, 1941. A day that will live in infamy. Up until that date, the US had been content to sit on the sidelines of World War II, and clandestinely supply the Allied Forces. Peace negotiations with Japan had stalled; Japan refused to give up the territories it had amassed or the ...

This is part IV of a series on my trip home to Australia for the US winter break (see part I, part II, and part III).

Hawaii is one of the two non-contiguous US states (the other being Alaska), and consists of a series of islands floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. O'ahu is the major island, though it not the largest; that honour belongs to the aptly titled Big Island. O'ahu houses the state capital ...

This is part II of a series on my trip home to Australia for the US winter break (see part I here).

Santa Barbara is a city of close to 90,000 people just a couple of hours north of Los Angeles. The area is known as the "American Riviera", partially thanks to its pleasant climate. The city draws heavy influence from Spain, with its original inhabitants being Spanish missionaries and soldiers, and even today much of the architecture is ...

My trip back to Australia for the semester break was a long one. Prior to Christmas, I packed into a car with four other international students at Berkeley, and we drove down California Highway 1 from San Francisco to Los Angeles. From LA I flew to Hawaii and visited Honolulu for a couple days, and finally jetted back into Sydney two days before Christmas Day. This is the first installment of a series of blog posts about this great trip ...

Like many other kids, my favourite page of the newspaper growing up was the comics page. Though it was later supplanted by the crossword page (though that's another story), my introduction to traditional media come in the form of those inked scribbles, filled with pithy wisdom, fantastic events, and witty observations.

One of my most beloved comics was Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. I still vividly remember cleaning my local library out of Peanuts cartoon books on a regular ...

Spending money in a foreign country is a frustrating process. Credit cards typically charge a currency conversion fee of 3% or so, and hit you with an exchange rate that's inevitably worse than the actual rate, sometimes by several percent. Travel cards are offered by various banks and currency exchange companies, but there are a plethora of hidden fees for loading money onto the card, as well as a fee for the card in the first place. Currency exchangers ...

While Utah is justly famous for its skiing, it is also full of many interesting sites besides mountains. That being said, there are some very, very pretty mountains (particularly for someone who has grown up on the driest continent on earth).

Salt Lake City was the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics (a fact made famous by 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's leadership), and many of the facilities constructed for the Games remain present in the city. The large ...

The goal of seeing at least 10 states in the US leaves plenty of room to see interesting places that wouldn't normally be on the tourist list for an overseas visitor. Today I'm writing about state #3, Utah, and its capital, Salt Lake City. I visited with my friend Tara over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Thanksgiving is the most important holiday in the US. Celebrated ...