A North American Tale

It was a dark and stormy night when the Goulaszes arrived in New York City. Feeling abandoned by our friends who weren't there to meet us as the airport, we wandered the city contemplating the mood and impressions of the Big Apple. Why are all the buildings so tall? Why did Konrad just get kicked out of an electronics store? Why are New Yorkers so abrupt? And where are Doug and Felicity?


Exhausted from their travels, perhaps it was not surprising that we would find them the following day gorging themselves on a pastrami on rye sandwich! Or perhaps that was a Reuben? Whatever it was the trend of eating excessively had just begun!

United at last and with bellies full of pastrami (which incidentally took the rest of our stay in New York to digest) we headed straight downtown to pound the pavement and take in the sights.

The Polish paparazzi geared up for a few days of solid happy snapping. Celebrities all over New York were alerted to stay indoors and the rest of the crew were forced to endure an average of 60 shots per hour – he’s a hard worker, this one.

Not to put our resident photographer down too much, we were nonetheless delighted with the result of all this shuttering activity! As we pounded the pavement, he snapped the sights, hung off balustrades, opted for avante garde under-the-park-bench angles and generally became to our tag along Japanese tourist.

But with all this walking, the crew was starting to whinge! “Why aren’t we eating? Where are we going? I’m hungry!” Given our reputation as being the tighest travellers to ever grace the backpacking circuit, we were of course appalled with having to spend all this money on food, and were forever chastising this inefficient use of calories. But we eventually relented to the request and took them out for pizza :)

The next day feeling guilty about the amount of food consumed, we hit the park and tried to burn some calories. I’m sure we needed to do 16 laps to burn off all that food, somehow we only managed one!


“Holy Fuck Batman!"
“You can’t swear on this blog Robin!”
"Fuck off Batman, I can say whatever I like. And by the way I wasn’t swearing, I was referring to a really cool electonica outfit that our superheroes took in whilst in Brooklyn one night”

“What’s that – you’re hungry again? I’m confused …. Are we filming the next version of Supersize Me? Oh I get it, this is the diner from Seinfeld!!!! My all time favourite TV show! That’s fine, we can eat there. I want the Big Salad like Elaine”

How did Doug manage to steal the keys off Michael Schumacher? Perhaps Michael shouldn’t haven’t been so busy playing paparazzi. Doug will of course argue that he was doing all of New England a favour after Michael nearly cleaned up a few pedestrians in New York. Irrespective, following his first performance Doug was banned from commandeering the wheel again.

Between Doug’s driving and Flick’s navigating how we got to Boston I don’t know :) But when we did get there we found it to be a beautiful city and a welcome change of pace from New York.

Forever calling out for her daily icecream, we were all surprised to learn that Flick had never tasted Ben & Jerry’s. This was possibly just a line of course but given that we only had to make a 4 hour detour to visit their first icecream factory in Vermont and with a resolute (did I mention hungry) girl in the backseat of the Chevy we made a subsequent food stop. (Watch out for next year’s Cheesecake Brownie flavour – it got Flick’s approval!).

Ou est-ce qu’on? Tout le monde parlent en Francais ici. Ils sont confus. Ils ont les ‘ARRET Signs’ au lieu de ‘STOP’, lls dissent ‘faire du maganizage’ .... for those who don’t speak bad French or for those Frenchies who don’t understand our bad French, these confused Francophone Canadians seek to be more French than the French … pity they don’t have any idea about good cheese or wine! And come on guys despite chips with cheese curd drowned in gravy being quite nice no self respecting Frenchie would go anywhere near poutine.

Wow despite what we just said about Quebecans that’s one impressive chateau up there! Possibly more impressive than any we’ve seen in Europe!

Busted! Doug are you thinking of buying something special for Flick? Could there a special announcement sometime soon?





Are you kidding? These two stud muffins aint getting hitched anytime soon!


Sad to have parted company with our travel companions and feeling like we’d packed on the pounds it was time to burn some serious calories in the Rockie Mountains! We spent a week travelling through Banff, Lake Louise and Yoho National Parks – taking in some amazing hikes, spectacular scenery and spotting loads of wildlife along the way! (Try 7 Black Bears plus countless lazy Hoary Marmots).

Our journey ended in the lovely city of Vancouver, where despite staying in possibly the dodgiest part of any city we’ve ever been to, we had a great time enjoying the harbour, beaches, parks and mountains that make this a beautiful city and great place to hang out!

We are now resting at Hostel Vlandis for a few days in Seattle before flying to San Fran on July 7th. We look forward to our 4th of July parade experience and also spending lots of time with this ever expanding family! Thanks guys so much for your hospitality!

Til next time ...