South Island Vegan Road Trip - Part 2

This is part two of my South Island vegan road trip. if you haven't read part one yet you can catch up here.

After eating out quite a bit in Wanaka Nick and I cooked for ourselves most of the time in Queenstown. Accommodation was expensive and the hostel had a huge kitchen so it was a good way to even out our day to day costs. We made and ate veggie burgers, spaghetti with marinara sauce, tofu scrambles, and a lot of peanut butter toast. Simple easy meals that are perfect for busy hostel kitchens. We contemplated taking a trip to Doubtful Sound, most people use Queenstown as a jumping off point for that trip, but we'd heard so many stories about the mist making it impossible to see and it's not a cheap day trip so we decided to skip it. We'll head to Iceland one day to check out fjords when we're not travelling on a backpacking budget!

The one time we did eat out in Queenstown was when I spotted some pictures of Bespoke Kitchen's vegan breakfasts on Instagram. They looked amazing and I knew that we couldn't skip it so we went out for brunch on our last morning. We both ordered the pancakes and got a matcha latte and a green juice to share. We also couldn't resist grabbing a chocolate muffin topped with chia jam.

We'd read rave reviews of the pancakes online and they certainly didn't disappoint. These were some high end pancakes, thick and fluffy and topped with all sorts of deliciousness including poached spiced apples, coconut whipped cream, raspberry chia jam, seeds, and freeze dried berries with a mini jug of maple syrup on the side. I could have done without the seeds (I hate seeds!) but once I moved them to one side these tasted just as good as they looked. 

South Island Vegan Road Trip - Part 1

When Nick and I arrived on the South Island we were both feeling a little lost, we hadn't had time to sit down and plan our South Island road trip at all and we had no idea where we were headed - just that we had a car and the freedom to go anywhere. The very first thing that we spotted as we were checking into our hostel was a flyer for tours of a peanut butter factory! That was clearly a sign and we were sold. I was on the phone booking our spots in seconds. Coincidentally someone I knew from Brighton was in the area housesitting so we hooked up with her and her husband and headed to the Pic's factory in Nelson the very next day.

Pic's are actually a super cool peanut butter company, the founder started making PB in a concrete mixer in his garage and selling it at farmer's markets and it's grown into a bit of a peanut butter empire with stockists all over New Zealand and a chunk of the rest of the world. Pic seems like a cool dude, he's all about employing local people and keeping the business local as it grows. Pic is blind and him and his lovely seeing eye dog made a great video about the cool PB journey he's been on.

North Island Vegan Road Trip

Nick and I started our New Zealand road trip in the North Island and the first thing on our agenda was picking up our rental car from Hitch Car Rentals. This was a super straightforward process and we were whizzing all over the place in our Budget Hitch in no time. New Zealand is definitely a destination where you'll want your own wheels, even major cities like Auckland are challenging to navigate on public transport and they're sprawling so not everywhere you want to visit will be walkable. A prime example of this is Tart Bakery which was our very first road trip destination. I wrote a whole blog post about them here because they're really that good so check it out. Our second stop was Moustache a super hipster cookie shop located on K Road. I was a little dubious about their vegan options as two of the three are gluten free but I bravely forged ahead and ordered one of each flavour.

These cookies seriously exceeded my admittedly low expectations and reminded me that I need to step up my XGFX baking game. I've eaten some epic gluten free baked goods in the past but I've also eaten a whole bunch of awful gf "treats" that would put people off of veganism altogether. 

Planning a Self Guided Trip to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park

Visiting Uluru was an absolute must for me and Nick during our time in Australia but working out how to make it happen took a while. Flights were expensive, we didn't think that we had the necessary skills to drive there, and finding a tour that didn't include eating kangaroo seemed impossible. I also knew that being on a tour with people who planned to climb Uluru against the wishes of the Anangu people would irritate me so much that I probably wouldn't enjoy the trip. In the end we planned our own self guided tour of Ulura-Kata Tjuta National Park and Kings Canyon.

Here's what our five day trip looked like.

Vegans Explore Tasmania

When I was a little kid Tasmania was one of those mysterious far away places that I never imagined that I'd travel to! Hilariously as I grew older I realised that Tasmania is just part of Australia, a cool part but still, somewhere that you could feasibly travel to. When I saw photos of the stunning scenery whilst planning my Australia trip I knew that I had to go asap. Nick and I flew to Hobart from Melbourne, picked up a rental car at the airport, and headed out into the wilderness. Our first night there was challenging, it was 4 degrees outside, the hostel had no heating in the rooms, and the building wasn't well insulated, we were very, very cold. We didn't let that dampen our spirits though and hopped out of bed bright and early the next morning assuming, correctly, that it would actually be warmer outside. Our first destination was Freycinet National Park where we had set our sights on hiking up to the wineglass bay lookout.

This hike was, of course, mostly uphill but it was manageable and we were glad that it was a little chilly in parts. There's usually a slightly longer hike that takes you down to the beach but it was closed for maintenance and we were more than happy with this shorter hike. The bay is gorgeous and the hike was challenging enough to feel like a proper work out. After descending from the lookout we had a look at the park map and headed on to our next location.

Road Trip! The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road has been on my must visit list since I was a teenager so when Nick and I were planning our trip around Australia this was on my must do list. As I may have mentioned upwards of a hundred times we love a road trip but car hire can be pricy so we kept our eyes peeled for relocations. If you haven't heard of a relocation before it's exactly as it sounds, a rental company needs to get a vehicle from one location to another and so they let you hire it for a nominal fee (in our case $5 a day) in return for you moving it for them in a timely manner.

We had three days to get from Adelaide to Melbourne which was just right. If the weather was nicer I guess it would have been fun to have an extra day to fit in some beach time but as you can see from my photos it was rainy and windy for the majority of the trip so the slightly tighter schedule was no problem. On day one we drove, drove, drove (well Nick did!) from Adelaide to Port Fairy, about six hours, so that we could kick off our first proper day on the road with a walk at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve near Warnambool. We'd read that this was a great place to spot wildlife especially early in the morning and our getting out of bed at dawn was rewarded with some fantastic kangaroo, wallaby, and emu sightings.

Aussie Adventures with Quokkas and Ice Cream

My travel itinerary has been jam packed and almost totally wifi free for the last week or so so I'm just posting a short(ish) but pic heavy post today. When Nick and I were looking into flights from Bali to Australia we realised that we would be able to fly into Perth and then from Perth to Melbourne for far less than it would have cost to fly straight to Melbourne. It made sense to have a little Western Australia adventure! We stayed in Fremantle and the way that our cheap flights worked out meant that we were there during the week, unfortunately all of the vegan spots there are closed during the week! If you want a foodie adventure then try to visit from Friday to Monday when most of the cafes and the markets are open. We went into Perth to visit museums (I loved the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts), drink bubble tea, explore the Asian food stores, eat at Lord of the Fries, and to watch The Big Sick at the cinema on Cheap Tuesday. Have you seen The Big Sick yet? I loved it! I'm a huge rom com fan but as a feminist they definitely push my rage buttons. I don't think there were any moments that made me angry in The Big Sick though! There was even a decent joke about mansplaining and the whole movie was laugh out loud funny as well as cute.

Another of my very favourite thing about the Perth / Fremantle area was 100% vegan gelato spot Gelato 101.

This epic ice cream spot is located in Cottesloe which is right between Fremantle and Perth on the main train line and we were blown away by their ice creams.

Vegan Road Trip - Brisbane to Cairns Part 2

This is part two of my Brisbane to Cairns vegan road trip series, we already picked up our Hippie camper, visited Noosa, ate a whole bunch of delicious vegan food, and spotted a koala in the wild so if you haven't read that post already you can catch up right here. 

The Whitsunday's were somewhere that both Nick and I had crossed off of our list of places we'd be visiting on this trip because they aren't exactly a budget friendly place to get to and we just didn't think that we could afford it. The closer we got though the more we realised that we were both thinking that we wanted to go but thought that the other wanted to stick to the original plan. A frantic afternoon of planning and organising ensued and the next day we were off in a boat heading to the Whitsunday Islands with Whitsunday Bullet one of the more budget friendly options whose day trip included visiting a snorkelling site (great practice for me before our planned trip to the Great Barrier Reef) as well as a lookout point and the famous beach itself.

The peep's from Whitsunday Bullet even pick you up at your hotel / hostel / campsite and take you to the port so you don't have to do any pre planning you can just book and go.

Cruising from Chongquing to Yichang Vegan Style

I was about a quarter of the way through Peter Hessler's excellent book River Town when I decided that I needed to see the Yangtze River for myself. It took me about eight years to make it happen but during our travels in China Nick and I finally made it. We decided to book a three night cruise with Victoria Cruises because it seemed like the best way to see not only the Three Gorges but to really get a feel for the river. We arrived in Chongqing by sleeper train from Xi'an at around 5am and immediately made our way across the city by bus from the train station to the port. The cruise was scheduled to start boarding at 5pm so we left our luggage at the port so that we could explore the humid bustling port side city in comfort. Finding the left luggage office was a total mission filled with people insisting that they were in fact the official left luggage spot for the cruise (yeah, no.) and many detours around the construction happening literally everywhere. After about an hour of wandering in circles we found it and were more than happy to leave our bags with two official looking ladies and a cat.

After 11 years of vegan travel I've learnt not to trust people 100% when they say that providing vegan food will be no problem so our plan for the day was to eat, explore, and then find and purchase snacks for the journey. I always pack snacks for flights, day trips, and tours but I was especially focussed on my snack game this time. When the place you're going is a floating hotel with no access to shops you need to be extra prepared.

Adventures in and around Melbourne

I've written a couple of posts about eating vegan in Melbourne, check them out here and here, but what should you be doing in-between meals? There are a whole bunch of great non-food related things to do in and around Australia's second city and here are a few of my favourites.

• Go on the Official Neighbours Tour

You might not really be from the UK if you've never seen an episode of Neighbours. Many hours of my childhood, teenage years, and early twenties were spent watching the goings on at Lassiter's and Harold's, and for a while I seriously wanted Susan Kennedy to be my mum. With this deep love for the show a Neighbours tour was a must!

Unsurprisingly all but one person who'd been dragged along by a friend was British and everyone was enthusiastic about the tour. You get to visit Ramsay Street and check out the studio lot where a bunch of the other location sets are which was so fun. Many photos were taken! Our guide was both knowledgeable and hilarious and we learnt a whole lot of stuff about how the show is filmed including how they always make it look sunny in Erinsborough when the reality of Melbourne is a little different.

Vegan in Beijing: Part III

Two of my very favourite things about Beijing were walking along The Great Wall on one of the most beautiful days of our whole trip and eating delicious vegan food at SUHU Vegetarian Tiger. Visiting The Great Wall had been on my travel wish list for quite some time and I was super excited to plan our day trip out there. We really did choose an amazing day, the sky was blue, there was no smog hanging around, and it wasn't too hot. It was basically perfect and I'll tell you more about it right after I show you the delicious eats from Suhu Vegetarian Tiger! 

Nick and I ate at Suhu quite a few times during our stay in the city and I would highly recommend it. The menu is large and varied, the front section of the menu is where the larger more expensive dishes are to be found but if you're travellers on a budget like us you'll want to flip towards the back of the menu where the staple dishes are located.

Up and away!

So as you may have noticed 2017 has been a little light on the blogging front. Sure, I've been working  a lot which has meant less time for adventures, and I've been living somewhere that isn't really conducive to cooking projects or food photography, but I've also been trying to work out where on earth this life of mine is going. Back in January I told y'all I was taking a job at Lush in central London but I knew that that wasn't where I wanted to be long term. Nick and I came back from our travels with an idea in our heads, we learnt a lot of about ourselves whilst we were away and we decided that what we want to do with our lives is hang out together, spend more time in nature, work with animals, and promote a compassionate vegan lifestyle. Simple. Kinda. We had our hearts set on moving to Scotland with dreams of a farm sanctuary at the forefront of our minds but for a whole host of complicated reasons, most of which are totally beyond our control, now is just not the right time so we had a little rethink and have decided to re-pack our backpacks and head out into the world again.

With our #lifegoals in mind we've decided to spend the next year or so embracing our freedom (I have a sneaking suspicion that running our own farm sanctuary will put an end to travel for quite some time) and getting experience working with farmed animals. This seems like the perfect combo and I am pretty freaking excited to tell you all that we're heading to Australia!!

Haeinsa Temple, Daegu

If you have plans to visit Korea I'd definitely recommend a short stay in Daegu. It's the perfect place to break up your journey between Seoul and Busan splitting the 5 1/2 hour ITX journey into two more manageable chunks. The main reason to visit Daegu is to check out Haeinsa Temple and, if you have time, Donghwasa is also worth a visit. As you can imagine at the tail end of nine solid months in Asia Nick I had visited more than a handful of stunning temples ranging from small local temples in Taipei where we were privy to Chinese New Year celebrations to the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We were pretty temple fatigued and, if I'm totally honest, not 100% up for making the bus journey out to Haeinsa but, as soon as we arrived, we were so glad we'd made the effort to keep pushing on through our burn out.

Haeinsa temple is a ridiculously beautiful complex located in the Gaya mountains. On the day we visited the sky was blue and the clouds were fluffy - it made us forget all about our less than lovely hostel in the city centre! Haeinsa is home to the Tripitaka Koreana, or buddhist scriptures, which are made up of 81,350 hand carved wooden blocks.

Things I've Learnt Whilst Travelling.

I've been looking at my blog with something of a critical eye recently. Not in a bad way, I've just been making a few tweaks. There are more posts on the front page of the site now, it only took me six years but I learnt how to do page breaks! I want to try to make the blog more engaging for people who've been reading it for a long time at the same time as keeping it informative and interesting for readers, new and old, who are looking to plan their travels. It's a difficult balance to strike and I feel like I've been veering a little too far in one direction and not enough in the other in the last year.

I want to write some shorter posts to compliment my travel epics. Some will be silly, some will be more personal, some will be mini-guides to places I just stopped off at for a sec. Basically I'm going to start blogging more. Yay!

Tuesday will be my regular posting day; expect the usual city guides, restaurant reviews, and stories about volunteering, festivals, etc. Then each Friday I'll be posting shorter posts like this one. Don't hold me to the days of the week, when you're travelling the internet can be a fickle friend!

This is a part serious part tongue in cheek post. These aren't all of the things I've learnt whilst travelling, far from it, and they aren't the "OMG I've had an epiphany about my life" moments, but they're all true facts!

Vegan at Tokyo Disneyland

Tokyo Disneyland is going to be an interesting experience for those well versed in Disney parks as well as Disney newbies like Nick and I. The queueing is unlike any other theme park we've ever attended but if you go in with a plan you're sure to have a fun day. 

The first decision you need to make is which park to visit. There are two Tokyo parks, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. Both are conveniently located in the same place right by Maihama station but they're worlds apart when it comes to rides. After watching some helpful videos on the Disney website we ascertained that Tokyo Disney Sea is the park with the scariest rides and therefor wasn't for us! I prefer something more mellow, think Professor Burps Bubbleworks not the Flying Carpet. I can get down with little rollercoasters but I prefer not to go upside down and I don't like that feeling where you plummet towards the ground leaving your stomach a few meters above you and Nick can't deal with things that spin... it was at this point that we wondered whether we should really be going to a theme park at all but we wanted to give it a shot as we were doubtful that we'd ever end up at any of the other Disney parks.

Nick has less patience when it comes to queueing than I do (weird given that he is the more patient one in almost any other situation!) so he did a tonne of research and read a lot of blog posts about how to get the most out of a one day visit to Tokyo Disneyland and I'm going to share what we learnt with you.

Adventures in Taipei!

Oh hi! It's been just over a week since I left Bangkok and arrived in Taipei and I'm loving it here. It's amazing how a change in both pace and climate have reenergised me and reignited my passion for exploring. Whilst I loved the time I spent in SE Asia this past year, 8 fun-packed months in total, I've definitely learnt that hot weather is just not for me in the long term. Good to know! Relentless heat seems to sap my energy in a way that even the darkest winter days don't manage to do and there's only so much exploring I can get done in the heat before I just want to curl up and hide in an air conditioned room or, when I reach breaking point, in another country with much milder weather. This weekend's cold snap aside January in Taipei is very similar to March or April in the south of England, drizzly and around 17°. I find it so much easier to explore a new city wrapped in a few layers and with an umbrella to hand than I do when the mercury is hitting 30° plus every day. 

I'm going to be spending a month in Taipei and this marks the start of a slightly different style of travel for me. Over the next 6 months I'll be spending longer in each place I visit, a month here, a month in Tokyo, a couple of months volunteering at a cat sanctuary, some travel in-between and an open month in South Korea at the end... maybe by then I'll want to be moving constantly again? For now though I've definitely been missing some of the great things that come with being settled somewhere more long term - making friends, cooking breakfast at home, having the occasional chilled day, getting to know somewhere properly, actually unpacking my backpack. And on top of all of that Air B&B style accommodation is cheaper if you stop somewhere for a month or more.

This is my new street, I love it! I'm definitely still in that stage of being somewhere new where literally every single sign and doorway and shop front is fascinating. I love that feeling! 

It's sometimes hard to know where to base yourself when you've never been somewhere before so a good bet is to pick something within walking distance of a couple of different MRT / metro / tube stations, that way you can get almost anywhere in your new city easily.

A Travel Update From the Balkan Peninsula.

I'm back in Croatia after just over three weeks spent exploring The Balkan Peninsula in our tiny camper van, and, as you might’ve noticed, I took a week off of blogging. I’m definitely feeling a little guilty about that especially as it’s the middle of Vegan MoFo, one of my favourite events of the year, but there’s just been so much to take in and process and reflect on that finding the mental energy required to put pen to paper (as it were) has been impossible until now. 

So, until I delve deeper into my time in some of the places I felt most connected to, amazed, surprised and just straight up blown away by (Kosovo! Sarajevo! Albania!) here’s a peek into the Balkan leg of our European road trip.

Another day, another border.

Our journey started in Bosnia and Herzegovina before we turned and headed north towards Serbia and Novi Sad, next we travelled down to Belgrade and into Kosovo over the border at Korminjan. Macedonia was next and following our time there we opted to avoid putting our van (and ourselves!) in danger on Albania’s mountain roads by making our way towards the Albanian Riviera from the Macedonian side of Lake Ohrid via Greece’s smoothly tarmaced motorways. We stopped and spent a blissful couple of days eating dolmades on the beach near Igumenitza before navigating the full length of the Albanan coast, only dipping east to visit Tirana, before making our way to Montenegro’s Adriatic coast and finally checking the Bay of Kotor off of my must-visit list.

We've crossed nine borders where we’ve been questioned, searched, come across more sheep than we’d imagined would be likely and had our passports repeatedly stamped on brand new double pages (an irritation for any world traveller looking to save those spaces for necessary visas ) all the time never forgetting that being able to move freely and cross borders at all is a privilege that the majority of people do not benefit from.

Are the sheep Montenegran or Croatian? Who knows!

There have been double rainbows and bears and iconic landmarks have been ticked off of lists. We took the van on what might be the tiniest ferry imaginable and the roads have been some of the worst we’ve ever seen let alone driven on. We’ve seen remnants of war that bring the realities of conflict into sharp focus and I’ve never been more anti-war.

I don't think this really illustrates how bad the roads are in some of The Balkans!

World's smallest ferry?

Destroyed bunkers on the Albanian coast.

I've been hissed at and had coffee thrown at me, I’ve cried about how little I can do to save all of the stray cats and dogs and I’ve experienced some of the warmest hospitality imaginable at the tiniest family run campsites - many of which were located in the back gardens of peoples homes.

A welcome gift of homegrown grapes.

Our first campsite in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It's felt like an adventure in the truest sense of the word and I cannot wait to tell you more about it next week.

Vegan in Croatia: Pula to Plitviče

If you're into quiet cities and Roman architecture you're going to want to visit the coastal city of Pula whilst you're in Croatia. Located on the southernmost tip of the Istra peninsula I started my Croatian journey there after spending time in Slovenia. It was a wonderful introduction to this newish (I visited Zagreb a couple of years ago) country and I enjoyed wandering the streets, testing out the Croatian postal system (I've been sending out zines from all over Europe this summer) and, of course, exploring the Roman amphitheatre which is located right in the middle of the city. 

Exploring the amphitheatre brought back memories of my trip to Rome when I was 17 and studying ancient history - I was a terrible student but I had a great teacher for that subject and my interest in all things Roman has stuck with me ever since. I'm still just as easily distracted now as I was back then though but really who could resist spending time trying to photograph this adorable pup? 

After much walking in the midday sun my stomach was grumbling and I headed towards the only eat-in location on Happy Cow Fresh Sandwich and Salad Bar. You know how I feel about most salads so sandwiches were really the only option and thankfully they had two kinds to choose from; Smoked Tofu and Olive Tapenade and Hummus with Salad. Nick and I ordered both to share but I had my eye on the tofu tapenade. This is also where I'll try to shoehorn this post neatly into today's Vegan MoFo theme - Recreate a Meal From Your Childhood. I ate sandwiches as a child! These are sandwiches! Boom!

Thankfully Nick preferred the sandwich with the hummus and salad (just lettuce really) so I was able to chow down on the majority of the better sandwich. Win! Our next stop was Zelena, another Happy Cow find, and somewhere we were hoping to find the usual array of mock meats, cheese slices and chocolate bars. Instead we found somewhere altogether more interesting, this little organic vegetarian shop whose name translates to "Green" stocks organic fruits and veggies as well as a plethora of home-made products.

When I enquired about whether they had any chickpea flour the guy I was chatting to grabbed a bag of chickpeas and told me he could grind me some in 15 minutes! Amazing. As well as the chickpea flour I picked up two locally made dark chocolate bars, one with rosemary and one with rosemary and garlic. The rosemary bar was fantastic and I've been stashing the rosemary garlic bar in the fridge for a chocolate emergency but I bet it's delicious and I'm fascinated by the combination of ingredients. I also picked up a freshly squeezed peach and pear juice to drink on the way back to the campsite as well as some kale chips (okay, those were Nick's). Zelena is a great store that I'd highly recommend you check out whilst you're in the region - the people working there really went above and beyond to help us and I really hope that their little store is still going strong next time I'm able to re-visit Pula.

Our base whilst we were in Pula was Camping Stoja where we found a great shady pitch in-between some trees. Truthfully we chose this campsite because it looked like it was by the beach but thanks to a lack of understanding on our part about this part of the country the beach wasn't so much a beach as a slightly hard to get down to rocky outcrop. Not the most comfortable place to soak up the sun unless, like some campsite regulars, you had the foresight to bring a chair.

Still, the pitch was cute, we took cute pictures and I enjoyed a peaceful early morning walk on the beach / rocky outcrop when the light was at it's best. Beautiful.

Our next stop was Plitvice Lakes National Park, one of the places that inspired this road trip and an interesting lesson in what to do when your dreams don't live up to your experience. I'll start with the good - Camp Borje, the site closest to Plitvice Lakes National Park was a dream. It was quiet with no marked pitches and a little shop that sold bread and wafers, two of our road trip essentials! There was also an adorable dog who just kept coming back to me for cuddles and pats. At first I assumed that she belonged to some fellow campers but it transpired that nope, she just lives at the campsite and really enjoys socialising with different campers every day. Certainly not the worst life for a stray pup.

That's pretty much the only good thing I have to say about Plitvice. I'm kidding. Kinda. Our first shock upon arrival was the enormous queue... I hadn't set an alarm for 7am to stand in the biggest queue I'd seen since Kyary Pamyu Pamyu at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. I stood in that queue alone for an hour because it took Nick that long to find parking, realise he'd left his reusable water bottle at the campsite, turn around, go get it, and then park again. It was a tedious beginning to the day but I was still excited, I made it to the front of the queue and look how cute the ticket is? Well yeah, it had better be cute for £17! £17 to visit a park!! Complete madness. I was kinda pleased to discover that this included a ride on both an electric boat and an electric bus because damn, I woulda been pretty pissed if I'd had to pay £17 and then pay even more to get around the park! 

The boat was cute. Nick and I skipped the next 30 minute long line for the bus by deciding to visit the park in the opposite direction than the signs suggested. This meant we were afforded a peaceful ride across one of the lakes by electric boat which, whilst every seat was full, was the most most serene moment of the day.

I loved how clear the water was. I loved seeing the ducks bobbing about and being able to see their little feet through the water!

I did not love how overrun this place was. There was a whole hour when we walked the trail through the central part of the lakes when I was never less than a foot from someone else's back. You couldn't even really stop to look around without being that totally obnoxious jerk who's holding everyone up. I've visited plenty of national parks in my time but nothing has ever come close to the madness of Plitvice.

If you do want to visit I would highly recommend avoiding peak tourist season completely. Not only is it horribly busy but they also jack the price up from £10 to £17 during July and August (who doesn't want to pay more to have a crappier experience?!). The car parking sitch' is ridiculous too because when you've had enough of all of the people and are desperate to get the hell outa there you have to stand in another enormous queue to pay for your parking! My other tip (especially if you're going to ignore tip number one) is to treat this as a theme park rather than a park park, kinda like a less terrifying Jurassic Park. Thirdly the park opens at 7, if you want any semblance of peace and normality get there at 6:30.

I have no idea how it would be possible to limit the amount of tourists coming into a park but holy wow do they need to get on that, if the people in charge don't reign in the visitor numbers somehow they're selling the park short and stealing away some of it's natural beauty which is such a shame.

Austin : Fun, Food and Friends

I'm on the road again and reflecting on the truly amazing whirlwind that was my Austin adventure. It's taken a little longer than I'd like to blog about it because it turns out that finding working wifi whilst you're living in a van and staying at campsites is not as easy as you might think. My new tactic is to ask to try the wifi before committing to stay which is working out much better as you can tell by the fact that this post is live on the internet! I'm currently somewhere in-between Bremen and Berlin and my next post will get you up to date with my European adventures but first, Austin.

Y'all know I love Austin, I've got to have mentioned it a million times here, on Twitter and when we've hung out in person. I'm pretty much obsessed. But why? Well, super cool in-the-city things aside (I'm looking at you Barton Springs and Alamo Drafthouse) you're also a short-ish drive from some super cool scenery that just makes you feel like you're really in Texas!

There are also a multitude of swimming holes out in the hill country including the Blue Hole in Wimberley where we took a detour en route to Fredericksburg. Being outside makes me happy!

Why were were en route to Fredericksburg you ask?! Peaches of course! Fredericksburg is famous for totally delicious peaches and we weren't disappointed with our visit to one of the many pick your own farms there. As well as getting to wander amongst the peach trees we also checked out this beautiful meadow full of wildflowers. Wildflowers seem to be everywhere in the Austin area and I love them.

Back in Austin and no trip is complete without a trip to Panther Field House. FNL Forever.

Obviously food is one of Austin's major draws, there's vegan food all over the damn place, and not just any vegan food, really freaking great vegan food. One of my favourite spots is BBQ Revolution who, despite irritating me occasionally by being closed when their site said they should be open, make food that is just so damned great that I could go back there again and again and not get bored.

I order the Smokey Soy Curls, Bacon Ranch Pasta Salad and Coleslaw and on this occasion Nick dug into a plate of No-Bull Brisket, Mac-N-Cheese and the same pasta salad I went for. These BBQ Plates come with a slice of white bread and sides of pickles and onions.

The soy curls had an intense depth of flavour that I wasn't expecting, they were wonderfully smokey and peppery without being too hot to handle or overpowering the flavours of the sides, and the bacon ranch pasta salad, a new addition to the menu since my last trip, was the perfect accompaniment to the smokey curls. BBQ Rev's coleslaw is crunchy, creamy perfection and I love their commitment to doing BBQ right with that slice of white bread - no pandering to the average vegan's penchant for wholewheat. I miss this place a lot!

Right next door to BBQ Rev is Bistro Vonish who do things a little differently, Chef Craig is focussed on local and organic produce and this truck has a fine dining slant that can't be found anywhere else in Austin. With that in mind we obviously ordered the mac & cheese. 

To be fair to the rest of Chef Craig's delicious looking menu this is the only chilli / paprika free mac and cheese in town so I quite literally HAD to order it. I was so glad I did because wowza, this was some top notch mac, it was not only creamy and perfectly cheesy it had that wonderful crispy layer that I remember from my dairy based mac days and that I hadn't found since.

With daily changing menus and delicious specials (Mac & Cheese Kolache anyone?!) I can't wait to see this truck move into a brick and mortar later this year.

One brick and mortar that I'm head over heels for is Sweet Ritual, this super fun all vegan spot has a frankly ridiculous amount of choice including fun sundaes like this one, the RedHotVegans.Com Sundae, which has toasted marshmallows, chocolate sauce and crumbled graham crackers (kinda like a digestive Euro friends). It's So. Damn. Good.

My personal favourite Sweet Ritual memory from this trip had to be the day they decided to celebrate their half birthday by offering Conenuts... a soft serve cone with a Red Rabbit Bakery doughnut sandwiched in-between the two. OKAY! Of course Stephanie, Nick and I met up there as soon as she got off work and we proceeded to smear ice cream all over our faces whilst talking about the awesomeness of this dessert for a good while. I went with a vanilla lavender glazed doughnut and topped my soft serve with colourful sprinkles. It was joyous.

More joyous Austin memories were made at Arlo's, home of one of the best vegan burgers I've ever eaten. I've lost count of the number of times I've eaten this burger and despite now having to switch their regular Bacun Cheeseburger patty for the Chick'n patty it's still excellent. Strangely I might even like it more now.

Arlo's is situated downtown outside a queer friendly bar, is open late and now has sides to go with this beauty of a burger. What more d'you want?!

Pizza was a huge feature of my time in Austin and one of my fave' pizza experiences was the night I celebrated my birthday with a whole host of Austin buddies and outa towners at Via 313. They use Follow Your Heart cheese which is amazing on pizza and just incase you missed me raving about this pizza last time I visited it's really freaking great. It's Detroit style which means it has a well oiled deep crust (but not like Chicago style deep dish) that they bake the cheese right into. It's then topped with wonderfully flavourful marinara sauce and then, if you so wish, you can add veggies. I would like you to keep your veggies away from my pizza so I always order the Classic.

Post-pizza and far too many drinks later we payed one of Austin's late night karaoke establishments a visit and I tormented my friends with horribly out of tune versions of Aerosmith's Don't Want to Miss a Thing and Aqua's Barbie Girl, y'know, just to see if they really wanted to be friends with me! They seemed to find my awful outa tune singing amusing so I guess they're keepers.

I rounded out my Austin trip with a brilliant day spent with friends making epic pizza's, driving golf carts and hanging in the jacuzzi. Jessica and Wes from Maximum Salad had the genius idea to veganise Pizza Hut's Hot Dog Bites pizza which, as you can see, was a tremendous success.

You can watch the video of the whole pizza process here! I came up with mac and cheese pizza which was obviously brilliant and Stephanie surprised my taste buds with a cauliflower and popcorn tofu pizza which I was sceptical about but she was totally right. It was delish'.

Until next time Austin, until next time!