Leaving Las Vegas

After our less than stellar experience in the Neon Boneyard, we needed to do something else to make this day more worthwhile.

Immediately following the boneyard, we walked down Las Vegas Boulevard in the really shady part of town that the museum is in because Isa saw a cool looking building.

We went home for dinner with the family and then headed out to the Mirage to watch the volcano show.

It scared MJ so bad though, from the very first eruption. She cried and asked Christy to make it stop for the rest of the 10-minute show. :(

After the Bellagio's water show, it's the best free show on the Strip (now that the Siren's show is closed at Treasure Island next door).

And we finally got a brothers pic! That's me (Brian), Jason, and then Christopher. Crazy how we all look alike, huh? /jk

We're all pink because it's across the street from a giant red Walgreens sign.

From the Strip, we drove back up to Fremont Street so Chris and Maryellen could do the zipline/zoomline. When we were here on Saturday, the first opening was at 1:40am, so they reserved spots for 8pm tonight.

Although their ticket said 8pm, there was an hour-long wait to ride still. Not sure how that works. So Isa and I wandered Fremont Street while we waited.

And when we had seen it all (it's only a few blocks long), we went in and played the slots. We each chose a machine and put in a dollar. Isa lost the entire thing straight away without ever winning any of it back. This is how she feels about gambling in Vegas.

I won 20 cents.

But then lost it all a few seconds later.

Finally, Chris and Maryellen flew overhead.


On the way home, we stopped at the iconic Fabulous Las Vegas sign.

And the we got our stuff, said goodbye to Jason and his family, and headed to the airport. Such a fun Vegas trip. Somehow I wasn't tired when we left at 1:30am, so I played around in Final Cut Pro and put this to music.

Elfin Cove and Juneau Alaska Easy Hiking Trails

Isa came up to visit and we played (and worked) a lot! We did three hikes: Brotherhood Trail, the Flume Trail, and Mt Roberts (to the tram). Isa also took a side trip to Elfin Cove to visit her dad who was fishing there with some clients at the time. Here's a recap of her visit:

Kaxdigoowu Heen Dei (Brotherhood Trail)

I've wanted to see this view for a long time and never knew where it was until this season.

It's super easy to get to if you have a car, which we don't, but not hard on the bus either. From downtown (Federal Building), the Route 4 Mendenhall bus took about 35 minutes. Just go out past Safeway and stop as soon as you cross the river. There's a little parking lot there and this view of the fireweed and Mendenhall Glacier is literally from the parking lot.

I Moved to Ketchikan

Today, Isa and I left Juneau and she went home to New York and I went to Ketchikan, Alaska. I know, not fair, right? It's no secret that I don't love Ketchikan. There may be some validity to it, but mostly it's just because I've spent so much time in Juneau. And Juneau and Ketchikan are rivals, just like New York and Boston are rivals. You claim one and automatically trash talk the other.

So me moving to Ketchikan is similar to me moving to Boston. Ew, right? But for no good reason.

Two things I legitimately dislike about Ketchikan are 1. The airport is on its own separate island so you HAVE to take a ferry across to the mainland to go into town. The ferry crosses the channel in all of about 5 minutes - it's narrow. They should just build a bridge and let the bus come straight out to the airport. 2. It rains a lot. Like, way too much. Average rainfall in the US is 39 inches per year. Average rainfall in Ketchikan is 141 inches!! Compare that to Juneau's 62 inches per year.

Anyways, it didn't rain today. And Ketchikan had its annual Blueberry Arts Festival and that was a LOT of fun. So my opinion of Ketchikan improved a little bit today. Here's a video of the festival.

110 Seconds in Asia

It only took six months, but we finally made a video from our trip to Asia. We took all our footage and edited it down to just 1 second per day. Check it out:

Lazy Saturday

We went to see our friends get married down in the City today, and we ate SO MUCH food at the reception that we wrote off all other plans and came home to lounge around the apartment. And it's only a matter of time before Youtube comes on and we start watching Ellen videos, which then lead us all over the web. Here's a few of our favorite videos from today. Enjoy:



This is the coolest magic trick I have ever seen. I cannot even begin to figure out how he did this. If you have any insights or ideas on how this is even remotely possible, throw 'em in the comments.


You can stop it at 1:41 if you want. The whip one is meh.

This song is Uh. May. Zing:



If you watch Youtube, go to Kurt's page and check him out. He's such an amazing producer and film maker (he edited the video above!) and all around talented guy. We want to be his friend. And we think the three of them should tour and come to New York.

And finally, if you haven't seen Ellen scare Taylor Swift, it's pretty great:



Hope you enjoyed our lazy Saturday afternoon. How was your day?

She Said Yes!!!

I know, this is a little late and most of you know she said yes (probably because you know we got married over a year ago). But I finally got around to editing all the footage of my proposal. Some of the footage (mostly the photos, but also the video of us on the horse-drawn carriage) are from the actual date of the proposal. Most of the video is from our reenactments. We went out several different times to get all the needed shots. We tried hard to keep the continuity, but Isa cut her hair and one time we went out it was freezing, so Isa has a scarf in some shots. But I think it turned out great! Here is the finished product:




A few days later, we found a contest to enter it in. I had to shorten it to 3 minutes and change the lyrics so I didn't infringe on Jason Mraz's copyrights, so here is our entry to the Pop the Question competition (to win a two-week honeymoon in Thailand!!!):

Pop the Question Proposal Competition - Brian and Isa Ciccotelli

Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed it! :)

Happy New Year!!

Australia may not know how to do Christmas right, but they sure have New Year’s down pat. There are actually two celebrations – one at 9pm for the kiddies that can’t stay awake long enough, and then the real one at midnight.

We watched the first fireworks show from Cavill Ave, with about 10,000 other people. It was fun and I took some pictures, but I didn’t have anything to prop my camera against so they’re blurry. I took some video, and I put it up on Youtube, you can see that here:

We watched the show at midnight from the beach. Here’s what the beach looked like around 11:30pm.

Isa and I hung out with our friend Liane. We brought a blanket and chatted away the whole night. We love Liane and Nik (her husband, who sadly had to work so he couldn’t stick around for the midnight show. He left shortly after the 9 o’clock show).

The fireworks were really fun. They shot them off from the beach right next to us, so it was really close and really cool. They also shot some off of the top of Q1 tower and the Circle on Cavill building. Here are two of my favorite pics from the night:

So Happy New Year’s everybody. I hope your 2011 is even better than 2010!

Longest Flight Ever

Not to spoil the ending, but WE'RE IN AUSTRALIA!!!

Getting here took a lot longer than anticipated though. So here's the full story:

We started off in New York, with a direct flight from JFK to LAX. Not bad, but it's so sad that they don't serve meals on flights any more. And we got on at 5pm, so they definitely should have fed us dinner.

It was at LAX when the flight started getting interesting. First, we thought LAX would have everything JFK does. Like lots of food. We were wrong. In our terminal, there was one option - some sort of bar/cafe thing - and our slice of pizza and lettuce wrap totaled up at $13. How ridiculous is that? We couldn't wait to get on the plane to get some real food.

We boarded the plane and found our seats in front of some rather rowdy kids. I hoped they would fall asleep soon, as it was nearing 11pm, otherwise this would surely be the longest flight ever. But instead the pilot told us something fell off a luggage cart, and they're checking the damage or something, and we need to just stay put for a bit. Thirty minutes later, they told us to get off the plane and wait in the terminal for further information. Still no food. Still starving. While waiting, we discovered a window so we could see what happened:

Somebody drove the luggage cart into the engine of the plane and they PUT A HOLE IN IT! So they cancelled the flight (after another half hour of waiting). They told us they'd provide hotel vouchers and to come back in the morning. We waited a few minutes because we knew there'd be a line at the counter, but we were not prepared for what we saw when we came around the corner. I didn't realize how many people could fit on a 747 until I saw them all in line in front of us. Isa and I, still starving, decided to play cards (BullS***) to pass the time. Two hours later, completely delirious (because we hadn't slept in about 24 hours) and weak (because we hadn't eaten in 14 hours) we got in the now dwindling line to get our vouchers. Happy to be on the way to a bed, we stepped outside the terminal into another mob of people - waiting for the shuttle bus from the hotel.

We decided to sit on a ledge to wait it out, and we managed to work our way to the front of the mob to get on the second bus (no doubt thanks to the skills we've picked up getting on the bus at 161st Street - people in the Bronx do not believe in lining up for the buses). This dropped us off at La Hacienda, into another line (but this time of only about 150 people or so) waiting to get rooms. Another 45 minutes or so passed until we finally got a room around 3am. Around 3:15 came a knock on our door - the hotel given our room to another family - but we invoked the "first come, first served" rule and sent them back to the front desk.

Four hours later, I woke up for breakfast - the best part of my journey so far (we never did get to eat anything else the night before) - and it was wonderful. Eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, jams, orange juice, everything. I ate. And then ate again. And then I made a plate and brought it back to Isa so she could have breakfast in bed.

We went back to sleep for a few more hours and then woke for lunch (the airline had called the hotel and told us to be back by 2pm for a 4pm departure). Still groggy, a little stinky (they kept our luggage - and even though we had planned to carry everything on, they wouldn't let us take on anything over 6 kilos - that's about 13 lbs - so we couldn't brush our teeth or change our clothes) and completely out of it, we went back to the airport, through security, and found our flight was delayed again.

By this time, we're starting to recognize other people on our flight so we pass the time learning other people's stories - some on honeymoons, some going home, others on ridiculously cool vacations - and playing cards until we finally board again around 5pm.

I thought the flight went pretty fast. I watched three movies and Isa read the Hunger Games (I've since read it too. IT'S AWESOME!!) and before long, we were crossing into a part of the world I've never been:

The Southern Hemisphere!!

That's right, on all my travels, I've never been over the Equator. So I was pretty dang excited about that. And then just a few hours later, we crossed the international date line, and Sunday night turned into Monday night, just like that. We arrived in Fiji around 11pm, but all connecting flights had already left by then, so the airline had to put us up in another hotel (as much as we were excited to stay the night in Fiji, we were not excited about another line for another hotel voucher and then another line through customs). At least we got our bags so we could shower and change and brush our teeth. We woke up in the morning to find this our our balcony:

Not bad, Fiji. Not bad. Isa and I woke up early and went for a walk to see the beautiful countryside. The airline told us to be back at the airport by 7am for an 8am flight, so we couldn't go too far. But we saw enough to know that we definitely want to go back. :)

So 7am came around and the lady at the ticket counter told us that our flight to Brisbane was way overbooked and she asked if we would like to stay in Fiji another night (or maybe even two nights) all expenses paid until we could get on a flight. Oh decisions, decisions. Ultimately we decided that we were already a day late for work in Australia and we shouldn't make them wait any longer. So they put us on a different flight through Sydney, and then continuing on to Brisbane via Qantas Airlines.

But they didn't tell Qantas. So when we got to Sydney, Qantas said they had no record of us, and they wouldn't allow us to fly until they had signed paperwork from Air Pacific. Which we didn't have. They put up enough of a fuss that we missed our flight to Brisbane. Eventually they found us and put us on a later flight.

We finally made it to Brisbane around 5pm and ran onto the train to the Gold Coast. We had no phone, and we hadn't had internet since La Hacienda, so nobody in Australia knew where we were or when we would arrive. So when we finally got to our train stop over an hour later, not only was nobody there to get us, but nobody was even in Surfers Paradise. They were all in Brisbane, and could have easily picked us up from the airport, but we had no way to contact them. :(

So we got on a bus which promised to take us to Surfers. In deed it did, but we didn't know where to get off, so we went straight through Surfers and continued on to the next town down the coast. Our bus driver laughed at us when we told him where we were headed, "You should have gotten off 20 miles ago" but he let us stay on the bus until it made its return trip.

We hopped off and wandered the streets of Surfers Paradise for a little bit until we found our store. One of the employees showed us the way to our apartment. And we made it. 62 hours after getting on the subway to the airport in New York, we arrived at our little apartment in Surfers Paradise, Australia.

Here's a pic of Isa on the beach the next morning:

If you want to see more of that trip (as if reading that ginormous account wasn't enough), feel free to watch it on my youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i9LCxYHUIE

Disney or Bust (and Baby Turtles)

Just thought we'd let you know about what's going on in our lives right now. :)

We rented out our apartment in New York for the Fall semester and we moved to Florida. Yup. No job, no place to stay, no contacts to speak of, and no car. Fun, huh?

It's always been one of Isa's dreams to work at Disney World. So we saved up a little, she took a semester off of school, and we booked a one-way trip to Orlando. We rented a car for a week, got an extended stay hotel, and hoped everything would just work out.

Isa had her character/parade performer audition on Thursday, Aug 19. She did phenomenally well. Of the starting 150+ applicants, she made it all the way to the end (while I waited oh-so-patiently in the hallway for over 3 hours). She had a lot of fun and we're really confident they'll call soon with a position for her.

As for me, I tried to walk right into the casting center and get a job on the spot, but they require all employees go through the online application process. So I'm in their system awaiting an open sales position.

Pray for us, cross your fingers, and send positive thoughts our way that Disney calls back soon. We've returned our rental car to save some money, so now we're stuck in our "resort-esque" apartment complex, killing time by swimming in the pool, walking to Publix for groceries, and watching the Disney Channel.

But before we were stuck without transportation, we took a day-trip over to Cocoa Beach for some fun in the sand. We ran into a nest of some baby turtles hatching. Check it out (you may want to pause the music player first):

10,000 Yoga-ers in Central Park

Isa and I went over to Central Park to participate in the largest Yoga class in the world. More than 10,000 people showed up for the free event, and we were given free yoga mats, smart water, a Choco-Treat from Otarian (it was SOO good!), and a wristband, seen here:


Isa and I were among the first 50 or so people there because I really wanted a free yoga mat so we went early. But pretty soon there were a TON of people there:


The thing started late and when it finally did, the rain put a stop to it less than 5 minutes into the class. We were fine; we had a blast. They had entertainers like Reggie Watts (the warm-up comedian for Conan O'Brien) and World Champion Poetry Slammer Buddy Wakefield and grammy nominee 13 Hands. To be honest, 5 minutes of Yoga and I was already getting tired. :P

Because we were in the front row, we were photographed by a lot of the press (not just us, but we're in their shots of the crowds, you know?) but this is by far my favorite (from tonic.com):


That's right, I'm facing the wrong way. :)

Here's the video I posted on YouTube about the whole thing:

New York City Winters

This is just a quick update to let you all know how the married couple is doing. We're happy and having fun. We went to see an advance screening of Hot Tub Time Machine. It was great! You can watch our review of it by clicking this link:

Hot Tub Time Machine Review!!

We've also been having a lot of fun in the snow. New York has had a few decent snow storms this year. (Have you ever experienced a New York winter? See here.) But anyway, Isa and I go out and play in the snow as often as possible. Here are a few shots:



You can see the rest of the gallery on our facebook profiles.

Also, I've been spending time updating PerfectLittlePlanet.com and the store. I'm trying to make it more user-friendly, but Printroom (the company I'm using for my store) is a little old and dumb.

AND, if you haven't heard, MY BOOK IS DONE!! I've submitted it to a few agents, but until I get it "for real" published, I just went ahead and published it myself. You can get a copy by clicking this link or by searching my last name on Amazon. Either way, it's only $10 for my friends now. Yay! :)

That's all for now. See you again soon.

Send us to Tahiti!!

The contest is in full swing and we're currently in 14th place. We need to be in the top 10 to make it to the next round. You know what that means? Vote!! Once a day, every day until January 4th.

http://tinyurl.com/sendustotahiti

Tell your friends, post it on facebook, tweet it, make a youtube video, whatever. We need your help!

Thanks so much. :) We love you all. <3

Tahiti

We really want to go to Tahiti, and we need your help. We're entering a contest sponsored by Tahiti's tourism board and starting December 15th, we need you to vote for our video.

It's up... Click here and vote for our video!!

Thank you!!

Culebra

Culebra is a little island about halfway to St. Thomas. When we bought our tickets in the morning, they told us that the return ferry was "conditional." Basically, if the weather turned any worse they would cancel the ferry and we'd be stuck on the island for the night, and Isa would miss her flight back to New York the next morning.

We figured it was worth the risk. :)

The ferry ride over was crazy. The people on the top deck were screaming like they were on a roller-coaster. I thought the boat would flip a few times. Way fun.

The island was gorgeous. We went straight to Flamenco Beach, which apparently is rated as one of the best beaches in the world. I beg to differ, but whatever. What do I know about tropical beaches, right? It was pretty, but one of the best, I don't know.



The coolest part of the beach were the abandoned tanks out on the LEFT side of the beach (not the right, as Isa and I found out when we hiked all the way out past the rocks into the bees nests and found no tanks).



At the end of the day, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the water was calmer than a lake, so we had no problem going home:

El Yunque

Yay. Isa came down to visit me. :)

We went out to El Yunque. This is the only tropical rain forest in the US. It was amazing. I've never driven though anything like it before. My favorite part was all the bamboo. I don't think I've ever seen bamboo growing in the wild. It was pretty exciting for me. You know, I'm pretty simple to amuse. :)

We went out and hiked to a waterfall and then continued up (off the trail) along the river. It was fun.


You should watch the video: I swung from a vine over a river just like Tarzan. It was awesome.

Puerto Rico

Woohoo! I love this island! I've only been here a week but it is quickly becoming one of my favorite islands. The people here are great, the energy level is high, and the island is beautiful.

I've been working a lot, but I just went and explored Old San Juan yesterday. I'll post a video on YouTube shortly, but here are some pics to start out with.

This is El Castillo San Felipe del Morro (watch my video about it):



And this is my apartment. Pretty sweet, huh? :)

Caribbealia

Two things really quick here:

1. I'm flying back to the Caribbean on Monday. Just like always, I'm not telling you where yet because my YouTube subscribers read this and I'm not giving any hints yet. (For those of you who don't know, I hold a contest every time I get to a new place and my subscribers get to guess where I'm at and if they win, I send them a free t-shirt). I'm going for work for a month. I'll fly home on March 12th. And then I leave for Italy on the 14th. Fun, huh?

2. I made an application video for Australia's "Best Job in the World." I would be taking care of an island in the Great Barrier Reef for 6 months if I win, which I REALLY want to do, so I would really appreciate you clicking this link and rating 5 stars:

Watch my 60 second application video here.

Thank you so much!! Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!

Snowboarding in New York City

Isa and I went down to the Lower East Side to hang out at Winter Jam 09. This is an annual festival held in NYC (usually in Central Park but for some reason they decided to put it WAY out of the way, although it made for some cool shots for the cameras being right on the river). Red Bull sponsors it and they make a whole bunch of man made snow and build a "Snowscraper," a 9 story tall mini mountain with a sweet jump at the end.


It was a lot of fun. Besides the snowboarders, there was a trampoline show, free sledding/tubing down another little hill, a snowfield for the kids to run around and start snowball wars with random strangers, and free donuts and hot apple cider. MMmmm.

Watch the video here:

NYC Update!

Hey Everybody,

I'm just sitting here in my apartment trying to stay out of the slush and it occurred to me that I never told you about the final decisions regarding our Greece/Turkey trip in March. Well, you know how the news does the New York Minute? Well here's a New York Update in under a minute (as long as you can read faster than me).

We couldn't make Turkey and Greece work. Sad, huh? :*(

So we're going to Italy instead. :) I'm so excited. It will be 7 of us all together. Five from the original Europe trip (five years ago - oh my gosh has it really been that long?) and then two husbands. They're cool too, and we're all really tight, so it'll be a great trip. We'll be spending two weeks there, starting March 15 and going through to the 31st. We start in Milan and go up to Lake Como, then down through Cinque Terre to the Amalfi Coast (Positano, yay!) all the way down to Sicily and back up to Rome. I am so excited to get back to Italy I can't even tell you.

Also, there are several store openings in the works. I'll let you know about them as soon as I know for sure.

And that's all the time we have for today folks, tune in next week for more exciting adventures! :P

Top of the Rock

I don't care if you're a tourist or a local, you need to go to the observation deck at Rockefeller Center. It's called the Top of the Rock and it's amazing. This was my second time up, Isa's first. We went up for sunset tonight. No lines. No waiting. I love New York in January. :)





They also added a very cool room with lights that can sense where you are and they follow you around. Here's a little clip so you get the idea, but you seriously just need to go see it for yourself.