Author: katiemayor

Wild Five: Best Summer Reads (By Women)

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Get these delicious literary treats in front of your eyeballs! Whether you’re enjoying summer in Sydney, are having a coastal adventure elsewhere, live in one of those places like Mexico or California which never have a proper winter, or are bunkered down in the chilly months wanting some armchair escapism this is for you. OK, not all these books are set in summer, but they are great for holiday reading, and even better, they are all written by wonderful women who are masters of their writerly craft. This isn’t intended as a lengthy book review column as there are plenty of great sites for book reviews (I recommend The Millions, The New Yorker and The Guardian for starters), more just a pointer towards some of the books I have adored of late. I have always had a strong passion for reading though, and started my career in the book industry (and still work on book-related things here and there). I worked in bookstores and was a bookstore manager at 23 (at the airport of course, …

Wild Spin of the Web {6}

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Stunning global hotel openings, Moroccan dreams, a beatnik institution, a West Aus detour and surfing in the arctic. This is Wild Spin of the Web {6}. TASTE – the Last Great Beatnik Cafe San Francisco is a literary lovers dream. What – me? Literary lover? Totally. I’ve visited a lot of the sites here, the Beat Museum, City Lights Books, the house that Armistead Maupin set Barbary Lane on in his Tales of the City Series, Jack Kerouac’s house, Vesuvio Cafe and I even took a saunter past the wonderful Cafe Trieste, featured in this article on Messy Nessy, a blog worth your time if you like travel and curiosities. It was a joy to read about more of the history behind this beatnik institution, and indeed behind the literary scene of San Francisco. STAY – l’Hôtel El Fenn This is basically all my Moroccan hotel dreams coming true. The photography by Garance Dore on Atelier Dore is just as beautiful as the destination she depicts. I really need to get to Morocco soon. But …

Sydney Weekend Getaway: Ettalong

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Determined to explore more of Sydney and surrounds by water, we escaped the city for the Central Coast by ferry from Palm Beach. A rather beautiful way to spend a sunny summer birthday weekend. First stop was The Boathouse at Palm Beach, but as is typical, we didn’t really leave enough time, so just had a little squizz, found non-metered parking (outside The Boathouse Home), and walked over the hill and down to the ferry wharf, knowing we would dine as soon as we docked on the other side. The ferry trip only takes around 25 minutes from Palm Beach Wharf and is done through FantaSea Cruising. You can get your ticket on board. We were blessed with a stunning day so the water passage of this trip was just one big tempting swim land. Sitting inside was never considered. We sat on the back lower deck and jumped up often to hang over the rails and watch as the ferry went past bush-covered land and little inlets. It felt miles away from Sydney. It was sizzlingly …

Hawaii Cool: Surfjack Hotel, Waikiki

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Aloha bitches! What if I told you there’s a renovated hipster hotel in Waikiki with 1960s surfer vibes, a killer restaurant by one of the hot names in the Hawaii food scene, and that it’s reasonably priced – oh, and just a couple of blocks from the beach?! Nobody told me any of that, but when trawling online through all the hotels available in Honolulu, I was left feeling pretty uninspired. It was all flashy chain hotels (apart from the glorious Royal Hawaiian Hotel in which we were to spend our first night) or places that looked like they lacked character, especially for the hefty price tags. So to not only discover this relatively new and stylin’ hotel The Surfjack, but discover that it had the name of one of my favourite songs emblazoned on the bottom of the swimming pool, it was definitely a no brainer for me. We arrived here for the last few days of our honeymoon, just fresh from 5 nights in Kauai. Having only spent one night in Honolulu on …

Wild Spin of the Web {5}

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From Mexico City to Nova Scotia, and Arizona to China – it’s time we took another little flitter (I made that up) across the web to see what adventure goodness we can find… TRAVEL – When I was 21, I spent a year in Canada. I was on my way to New York City on September 11, 2001. Yup. We were in Toronto and heading via Niagara Falls to NYC when the World Trade Buildings were hit, which saw us get stranded (poor us) in Canada for 3 weeks. I should tell that story here in more detail at some stage, but what happened was we were left to travel more of the East Coast of Canada than planned. We went as far as Newfoundland via a road-trip on the Cabot Trail. I was delighted to see the beautiful blog This is the Place I Was Telling You About do a piece on the Cabot Trail of Nova Scotia, which stretches up to Cape Breton. Check out their beautiful photos HERE. STAY – So, friends, …