New York

After being reunited with friends and family during Thanksgiving, and spending a few days up in Oregon visiting my younger sister at her new school, I began my final adventure of my long summer/winter break in New York City, where one of my good friends is now going to school! It was of course really great to see my friend after not seeing her for so long, and another thing I especially liked about this trip was having someone host me, show me around, and plan out what to do! This was just what I needed after so many months of having to plan everything ourselves while travelling! Though my time in New York was brief, I had heaps of fun and I am definitely hoping to return someday once I have enough money to start travelling again. 

Yet another sunrise flight. While the 3 and 4am wake ups for these flights are brutal, they definitely provide some nice views (and are a good money saver).

For my first meal in NYC, we went to a gourmet mac and cheese restaurant. Though I don't have pictures of every meal I ate during my trip, the friend I was visiting basically makes a hobby out of going out to eat, so trust me when I say that every meal we ate was absolutely delicious.

So fun being in the city in December! So many beautiful decorations all over the entire city.

Walking on the Brooklyn Bridge, with Manhattan in the background.

The gingerbread village that I helped make. 

On the second day of my trip, we got up bright and early to get in line for cronuts. We arrived at 7am, waited in the 36 degree weather for an hour (necessary because they're very popular and only a limited amount of cronuts are made) until the place opened, and then finally got our cronuts! This month's flavor was chocolate raspberry - one of my favorite flavor combinations!

Grand central station!

Time's Square!

Rockefeller Center!

Just outside where they film all the NBC shows. A couple minutes after I took this picture, we walked by Pete Davidson, one of the current SNL castmembers! 

Central Park was much bigger than I expected, and very beautiful, though I'd definitely like to come back some day in the spring or summer when it's a bit more green. 

Strawberry Fields, a memorial for John Lennon.

BRUNCH :) At this adorable cafe I got some great cherry-blackberry oatmeal pancakes.

On the third day it was pouring out, so we (and about half of the city's population it seemed) went to the Met, one of the famous museums in NYC.

Authentic New York pizza - worth the hype.

On my fourth and final day, we walked through the Highline, a long park which goes over a bunch of streets in Manhattan, and also went shopping in Chelsea Markets, where we both had a lot of fun and had to resist buying nearly everything in every store.

Honolulu

After flying out of Brisbane at 7pm on November 25th, I arrived in Honolulu at 7am on November 25th! It was a pretty weird experience to live the same day twice! My layover in Honolulu was originally supposed to be 6 hours, but I wanted to take advantage of being in Hawaii (my first time there), so I decided to make it into a 24 hour layover! Despite being by myself, it was a really fun day, and it was nice to ease into being back in America by still getting to adventure, and enjoy some warmth despite the fact that it was now late fall rather than the spring that I had been used to. It was definitely really strange hearing so many American accents around me, and it was also hard for me to get used to walking on the right side of the sidewalk again. But I did really enjoy the cheap American prices! The fact that one of the most touristy places in America had much cheaper prices than New Zealand or Australia really says something about the prices there...

The first thing I did was hike up to Diamond Head, a short but steep walk up that ended with some gorgeous panoramic views of the beach, city, and surrounding mountains.

Honolulu and Waikiki Beach from the lookout point.

Next, I went to a cafe and got this guava-stuffed french toast with coconut and strawberry syrup! Even from the short time I was in Hawaii, I could tell that they are super big on different fruit flavors there.

Walking around town and along the beach.

After stopping for a pretzel and smoothie (SO nice to get a giant smoothie for under $5, since in New Zealand all the smoothies are relatively small and always $6-7), I wandered into a random hotel and found that they had a really nice infinity pool overlooking the ocean, so I dipped my feet in and watched the sun set (also cool to be able to finally watch the sun set over the ocean again, since in Australia and most of the time in New Zealand I was never on the west coast to be able to do this)

Walking along the beach after the sunset back towards my hostel.

While walking back, I happened upon this fun and informative hula performance!

Early the next morning, I made my way back to the Honolulu airport and flew to the Kahului airport in Maui, where I made my connection to finally return to California.

Brisbane

The third and final stop of our Australia trip was in Brisbane, located on the central east coast of the country, in the southeast corner of the state Queensland. Brisbane was one of the cutest and cleanest cities I've been in before. It was big enough to have a bunch of stuff to do, but not a giant city full of traffic and tourists like Sydney or pretty much any city in America. It's also home to the famous Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which is home to about 200 koalas, a huge pasture of kangaroos, and many other animals. Anyone who knows me well could probably guess that going there was one of my favorite parts of the trip since I get really excited about pretty much every animal. All in all, Brisbane was a really fun and relaxing place to end the trip!

Brisbane!

Brisbane is split by a river. This is taken from South Bank, a cool public park type area with gardens, swimming, bars, cafes, and other fun stuff.

Walking around South Bank.

There's also a cool swimming lagoon. It was so fun to see all the Australian families enjoying the start of their summer after being surrounded by mostly tourists in Sydney and Cairns. 

Another shot of the Brisbane letters and the city behind it.

Walking across the river back to our hostel.

If any of you have eaten with me before, you'll know that I eat literally twice as slow as most people. Well, I'd like to introduce Robin, who eats twice as slow as me - pictures of our plates to prove it.

One of the 200 very lazy koalas living at the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.

Lil tasmanian devil is all tuckered out.

A bunch of kangaroos, featuring the kangaroo in the center who has more muscular arms than me. 

Feeding time! They had such cute, tiny mouths.

Selfie with my new pal.

Kookaburra!

A white dingo. So funny how much it looks like a normal dog!

The Brisbane skyline at night, as seen from the terrace patio of our hostel.

Before my evening flight out of Australia, we went up to Mount Coot-tha, the highest peak in Brisbane with panoramic views of the city and river. A fun way to spend my last day in Australia :')