Travel Doodles

Mid Sept through to mid Oct I was away on vacation in Honkas (Hong Kong), the States (USA) and a bit'o Toronto. I'd never been to Canada or America before, so it was a really exciting and special trip for me - AMERICA IS AWESOME!!

While away I kept a travel journal which included the odd sketch/drawing which I'd like to share. When I got home I did cheat, and chucked them into Photoshop for a bit of dirrrrrty-dirty rough colour (it certainly isn't a good colour job, but it makes my doodles a little more interesting I think).

Stop #1: Honkas (Hong Kong) to visit my friend Nelly. You can buy a large can of beer in a 7-Eleven in Hong Kong for about a dollar and then drink it in public! Insane! And a novelty that was throughly enjoyed more then once.

2. Stop #2: San Francisco. Our first night in town we met two very helpful and enthusiastic gentlemen from Vancouver, who were also on vacation - but via cruise ship. They wrote a "shopping list" of suggestions to places we should try while in San Fran. Helpful and yet overwhelming all at once! Ben's thought bubble: "Tee hee! My mouth is so dry" is a reference to the air in San Fran smelling distinctly of marijuana... and oddly; Air Freshener.

Stop #3: Portland Oregon. There are a lot of hipsters and cafes in Portland. I happen to think that Portland is truly AWESOME! Why is Portland so awesome? They have real coffee, craft breweries, great food and food trucks, lots of ahhmazing art, there are street names that inspired some of the names of characters in The Simpsons (FACT!), The Goonies, Portlandia, second hand book stores, Powells Book Store, comics, music.

Stop #5 NYC/Brooklyn. (I've skipped the 4th stop, Toronto Canada, because I didn't have a drawing for that). Williamsberg, a suburb of Brooklyn is a unique area made predominantly of two very specific and distinctive communities; Hipsters and Hasidic Jewish people.  

Stop #6: Chicago. On the way to Chicago leaving from NYC LaGuardia airport the airline, Delta, lost our luggage - and this was after we'd paid $25 per bag (so losing our luggage wasn't actually free as I wrote above). I really don't understand the purpose of airport security at LaGuardia airport, I think it's really incompetent. I went through THREE points of security for a domestic flight where my passport and BOARDING PASS was scrutinized THREE TIMES, but not once did security pick up that I was in the wrong terminal... so WTF were they looking for on my boarding pass!!! (idiots!)

We eventually got our bags back.

So as you can see from the above, it was an eventful, colourful and interesting vacation. While these illustrations are not my best/neatest pieces of work, I still really like them for the way they will forever immortalise this holiday.