The Bees Knees

This is our vagabonding travel blog. We're a couple traveling around the world. We're going to share our journey right here for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy like a bold malbec, a torpedo (the beer) or a block of sharp cheddar cheese.

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True Romance

Travel is true romance

It’s like watching your lover wander

You seemingly don’t have a chance if you believe in nothing but perfection.

Travel is true romance

you don’t have to wonder anymore, 

you just take your time

combined

to sweat and fret and try not to regret

this traveling that is the essence of unconventional, unwritten about

true romance.

There are no immediate questions.

Your wonder escapes you

onto the horizon as 

you question not romance,

but life

and cascade your past away from your future

and venture back to your lover

for living free. 

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The Bees Knees turned 3 today!

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Florence

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Enjoying Upstate New York's in-season produce this summer

[newjerseyhumanists]

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

~Bertrand Arthur William Russell ; born May 18, 1872~

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We have neglected our blog since we’ve gotten back home and our life has changed and also returned back to normal. Life felt really boring and weird for awhile when we got back home- we both lost our purpose and felt pretty lost in general which is ironic because we got pretty comfortable being lost in a van in Australia and on the island of Capri for instance. Our life for the time being has come full circle and now it’s about making a living and creating a life that’s full of good moments and making new plans. Traveling was surreal, we were up in the clouds for awhile and it took us sometime to get back to reality. It hasn’t been easy, it was a tough transition but hard work and a positive outlook has really helped us both. What I love most about our trip is knowing our travels are just the start of a lifetime of travel, not necessarily a bucket list trip as I imagined and life can be lived anyway I want. The only limits to life are the one's you believe you have or the one’s others convince you that you have. If you want to get off the grid, that’s your prerogative and good for you for living your life the way you want. That wasn’t instilled in me from a young age, but now I’ve lived through an unconventional lifestyle for an extended period of time and we found our own way, saving our own money and enjoyed ourselves and have great memories. I hope to carry this feeling for the rest of my life because it's empowering and it’s easy to get caught up in following the majority or fitting into a mold.

For now, getting our first apartment together, adopting a cat, making homemade pickles (random!) and being around those we love in town has been good.

[larmoyante]

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Franz Kafka (via larmoyante)

[gadling-blog]

(via Deep Thoughts With Gadling on Pinterest)

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Missing our trip...

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It's kind of sad that its taken us weeks now to post something. We are home! It's hard for us both to believe that our trip is over. We are trying our best to figure out what's next after 8 months of traveling. Here we are at our friends' wedding in Jamaica in the beginning of February.

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When we walked down to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, we should've known that amid the history and star studded fixtures that any movie buff pictures when they're asked who their favorite Hollywood actor or actress is, there is also the less glamorous side to show business. In this case, the cheesiness of a tourist trap oozes out of the walk of fame street with tacky modern day scoundrels trying to make a living, hounding anyone who gazes down at the stars to take a Hollywood hills tour. 

It was a fun walk nonetheless! 

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Our Foodie Escapade in LA

No one has ever denied that "knowing people" is a bad thing, have they? We went from Hawaii to LA for a 3 day trip before going to Jamaica for our final destination before heading back to Rochester. 

Thanks to Dan, a friend from Rochester who calls LA home, we went on a food tour of LA. He introduced us to the restaurant he manages, Son of A Gun in West Hollywood and we indulged in one of the most delicious lunches we've ever had. It would be hard to top. From hush puppies to lobster rolls to a fried chicken sandwich, it was another unbelievable moment. Dreams do come true. They have for us. 

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On the road since June and we've gotten from Rochester all the way to LA, taking the long route. Yes, we arrived in the mainland USA! 8 months of traveling is hard to explain. Life altering for sure. Going home within the next week with our plane tickets booked is very bittersweet. But wait, we're headed to Jamaica for our friends' Kate and Shaun's wedding first. We still have a lot to look forward to :)

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The pleasure involved with eating food on this trip has been pretty endless for us. We went to a sushi restaurant in Waikiki for their late night specials as recommended to us by our good friend Jordan. This tuna bowl, beautiful just to look at was delicious to eat. Japanese food in Hawaii, we'll take it!

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Hawaiian Dancers and Pipeline Surfers

Oahu, Hawaii

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Our Hike to Lava

With our minds set on finding the lava flow of the Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island and doing it our way, we set out on an evening hike with friends we've met while working on the farm. It felt like an adventure with some ominous turns here and there. We have felt very lucky on our travels, it seems like when we go searching for something, if we're patient we usually get to see something special. In this case, we tentatively hiked to the area around the lava flow and inspected the land. To be honest, we all got scared at one point-we didn't know where the hell we were going and with no tour guide, did we take the necessary precautions? What if we fell into lava? Armed only with our walking sticks we inspected the newly formed rock before moving forward, and if we saw something glowing retreated until it wasn't so hot.

  We walked on the young volcanic rock and as we got closer to the actual lava flow, our feet became hot and we could smell the sulfur. As the sun set, we decided to walk towards the shoreline where the lava flow meets the ocean and that is where we saw the dazzling orange, red lava. Our Junior high Earth Science teachers would be so jealous, these were our thoughts, that and oh my gosh, we really get to see this lava flow into the ocean and references to the Lord of The Rings and middle earth were thrown around.

  It was out of this world, we felt like we were walking on a different planet and in a sense, we were walking on the largest mountain in the world (technically speaking) and also the youngest  part of Earth that there is.

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We had a stellar road trip with new friends in the back of their pick up truck over the weekend. We camped at spots around the island and spent time taking in the abundance of nature that the Big Island has to offer. We swam in a bay, checked out two towns, hiked to a waterfall, relaxed in a natural heated pool and went to Hawaii's Volcanos National Park. We don't want to leave the Island!

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The big island, Hawaii ( not to be confused with Honolulu)

We’ve been loving our time here so much, it’s been difficult for us to get to tumblr to post on the blog. We’re back in the States and it feels so good.

We’re staying and working part time on a farm with macadamia nut trees, coffee trees, chickens and other things such as avocados and bananas. By the way, when we think of good coffee, our thoughts go immediately to Mark’s Aunt Keena (hi Keena! We miss you so much!) whose coffee at the public market in Rochester is the best.

In a nutshell, we are on a beautiful farm on the big island with lovely people and we’ve been fortunate to spend our time off snorkeling and swimming at beaches in Kona. We’ll get more in depth later.