union square at night

i (heart) san francisco

in hollywood where anything can happen, even "snow" in LA

merry christmas to me!

landed in the U. S of LA

I love flying to Los Angeles because the descent into LAX takes you across all the thousands of houses all laid out in rows that seem to go on forever and ever.

early christmas present

I bought myself the Louis Vuitton 2010 Los Angeles City Guide as an early Christmas present. Flying out to Los Angeles tonight at 11:00pm, after an hour in the sky it will be Christmas Day in New Zealand. Because of the time difference, I will be landing in Los Angeles at 2:00pm on Christmas Eve!

Los Angeles is one of the cities that was added to the already collectable Louis Vuitton City Guide books for 2010. It includes the usual 500+ addresses of places around Los Angeles worth a visit, under headings such as Restaurants, Good Things, Designer Fashion, Bars, Nightlife, Galleries and Excursions.

Also included are "My Los Angeles" pages from well known residents. One of particular interest to me is the one by actor Alan Dale as he was born in New Zealand and grew up in the area where I live; we both went to the same school, not at the same time obviously although he was there around the same time as my Aunty!

Another little book to add to my Louis Vuitton travel collection. I have the Tokyo City Guide from my trip last Christmas, and Carnet de Voyage notebooks for Sydney, Tokyo, New York, London, Paris and Beijing.

gingerbread fire station

america's next top model runway show

Exclusive America's Next Top Model Runway Show held tonight at the Auckland Museum to finish the 2 weeks of filming the show in New Zealand. Of course we are sworn to secrecy as to who the final models are until it finishes screening in America. You will have to wait and see when it screens on TV!

this years' gingerbread house

snowman in africa

To honor the 5th anniversary of the Gucci Campaign to Benefit UNICEF, Creative Director Frida Giannini has commissioned acclaimed author and illustrator Michael Roberts to create a magical new children's book, 'Snowman in Africa'; a sequel to the 2004 'Snowman in Paradise' book.

Through December 31, 2009, Gucci will donate 100% of the retail price from 'Snowman in Africa' to UNICEF.

grabaseat

With prices for the same dates as the grabaseat fares, today was an online frenzy with THOUSANDS of people vying for bargain $1 + tax tickets to their favourite destinations.

With only 10 tickets to each destination, I was LUCKY enough to beat 15,000+ people online at the time to get 2 tickets to Los Angeles! I'm so surprised the website didn't crash with a record number of people online trying to book.

Unfortunately, the grabaseat website doesn't hold tickets so you can get to the last step of putting in your credit card details and then sitting on the edge of your seat to find that you were too late and the seats have gone. Luckily for me that didn't happen this time!

Is it pure luck that I've managed to get 4 $1 + tax tickets in the last 3 weeks??? Wonder what is in store next Friday for the last Friday of their $1 November promo!

$1 + tax flights

Watch this space.

macau

This time I spent the afternoon looking around Macau, as the last trip I basically saw the inside of The Venetian where the Fall Out Boy concert was held. I also managed to go to a few casinos to sign up to their loyalty programmes; now I have membership cards as souvenirs from big name casino/hotels!

wan chai at night

tian tan buddha

Today I visited the Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island. To get there I took a trip on Ngong Ping Cable Car, a 5.7km long bi-cable gondola lift taking about 25 minutes. The cable car has amazing views of Hong Kong International Airport so was a great trip for an aviation enthusiast such as myself.

walking the streets

Did I maybe see one of the most sought after number plates around? Guess the only thing better could be LV8888!

welcome to hong kong

louis vuitton: art, fashion and architecture

Birthday present to myself, and a group shot of some of my other Louis Vuitton books.

fantastic early birthday present

Thanks to the great Grabaseat website, I was able to score a trip to Hong Kong next week for $72.10! To complete their month of 100 domestic flights for $1 each day in October, they had international deals for $1 + tax.

There were only 10 seats and with over 7,000 people online at the time trying to get them I was super lucky! Current price for the same flights is $2,070.60. Will be going for a week and fantastic timing since it's my birthday on Monday. So will be able to spend the following 7 days in Hong Kong and I'm actually really excited about having the time to look around properly as last time I really only had 1 day because of the weather!

And if that wasn't all, I was even LUCKIER to book a ticket for my brother to Los Angeles next week for $122! There were only 10 seats available too and with the normal price at $2,320.30 thats a bargain as well! His flight leaves an hour before mine and he gets back Tuesday week.

Grabaseat has been good to me in the past, where I've had cheap flights to Wellington ($1), Queenstown ($1), Melbourne ($208), Shanghai ($550), San Francisco ($898) and now I can add Hong Kong to the list!

todays mail

Got myself a copy of a japanese magazine that features 114 pages nearly entirely of the Louis Vuitton Mens collection from a number of seasons, including bags, SLGs, some RTW, and other things such as VIP gifts. There is also a great 2 page spread of all the canvas and materials they have used with pictures, including Monogram Groom, Cuir Suhali, Graffiti, Conte de Fees, Monogram Mesh and Eye Love Monogram.

I'm having a lot of fun going through the magazine and seeing things I own like the Soana Trotteur and Force Damier Graphite belt, and also seeing things I haven't really noticed before, like how in the Monogram Groom collection, the jaune and white stripe colour was the only colourway to have the colour first followed by white. All the other stripes had white/off-white and then vert, orange, bleu or rouge.