You can save for months, read all the brochures, make all the reservations and trawl through reviews on trip advisor, but sometimes the best moments while traveling are those that are completely unplanned and take you by surprise. 

Caz and I thought we had it all planned out. I mean, not that we are meticulous planners, but when it comes to visiting a new city we check out the places we might want to eat or drink, we make lists, we compare notes and we add everything to Google Maps just in case. So on this particular night, we had our pre-dinner drink, our post-dinner drink and our dinner all lined up. We'd been talking about it since dinner the night before. It was going to be great.
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Ok, so after all that talk about getting back on the blogging bandwagon I fell off again.  This time involved a dark, stormy night and what will hopefully be the only time I succumb to the underside of Barcelona they warn all the tourists about. Yes, I should've known better. Yes, I was drinking, with people I hardly knew, in a part of town I'd never been to before, with my phone in my back pocket. Not for long. 

Cue a very painful Saturday morning, and I'm not talking about the headache.
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The best way to get to know a place is often just to throw on some shoes, a pair of sunnies and start walking.  Not checking a map, not ticking off must-see attractions, just getting out there and wandering where your heart, and your feet, take you. In my case, that often means following my nose, towards the scent of fresh baking, of chilli or garlic hitting a hot pan, of coffee beans being ground.
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Almost ten years ago two of my very dear friends bought me the most beautiful Vietnamese cookbook for my birthday. At that stage I had not visited Vietnam, but it was a cuisine I would come to love, and this cookbook was to become one of my favourites. It was named Secrets of the Red Lantern by Pauline Nguyen.
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It's been a long time since I've written. Since March New Zealand has been taken completely by storm by a raft of limited edition chocolates and I've fallen down the rabbit hole. My waking hours have become a succession of deadlines and meetings, followed by wine and chocolate. I make it sound hard. It's not that bad.
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Following on from that one time we had the best pizza ever in Japan, once we'd got home Wil was keen that I re-create this dish.

Thankfully some other wonderful people had spent hours trying and testing, working on a recipe that although involved, was not too challenging, just a little time consuming.
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There was this one time, at band camp, when we were eating pizza, in Japan...

It doesn't sound right. Surely in Japan you should be eating sushi, sashimi, an okonomoyaki or some ramen?  We did that too, and plenty of it, but one stand out meal from our three week trip to Japan earlier this was (surprisingly) pizza.  On the second day of our trip, quickly flicking through a brewing magazine Wil stumbled across an ad for pizza. But not just any pizza, Chicago style pizza.
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Yep. Did it again. I've been a bit slack lately (forever, so it seems) and I haven't been writing. It's sad really, because I enjoy writing, and over the past few months I've bet a bunch of somewhat random people, friends of friends or friends of family, who've asked about the blog and about my writing.

At work I've been roped more and more into content creation.
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One of the best parts of traveling is the people. Whether you're meeting and making new friends or catching up with those you've known for years, having someone to share new experiences with make those experiences all that more enjoyable.  On our recent trip to Melbourne I was lucky enough to catch up with several friends from years back before I was sent out to the middle of nowhere for work.
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I'm a planner. Wil's a 'by the seat of his pants'-er. Sometimes this causes friction. Sometimes it all comes together. Our meal at Bowery to Williamsburg was one of those 'all comes together' times. I'd read about their pastries and the name had stuck in my head so when we were hurriedly walking back to meet Chris on our very first morning in Melbourne and I saw a wee sign with "Bowery to Williamsburg" written on it there was an about turn and I took off up an alleyway.
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