Hey internet. I’m in Ottawa for a fancy women’s convention thing. I drove up this morning with my coworker / manager K and have spent much of the day in the car watching the rain and listening to country music.
Funnily enough, our booth is a few booths down from the See Puerto Rico group, which is essentially my favorite place in the entire universe and also major competition for Place-Where-I-Live.
Anyways, we stopped in a charming little town right outside of the Thousand Islands for lunch and now I’m jotting down a few lines before we foray into the city for dinner (also shopping).
3. Ottawa is the fourth cleanest city out of 300 major cities ranked around the world – at least according to Forbes.
4. Nearly half the population is under the age of 35 – making it one of the youngest cities in the country.
Written by Cassandra Leave a comment Posted in About Me, All	Tagged with canada, convention, ottawa, puerto rico, tourism, travel
I’m super not into this today, internet. I’m tired after a long, wonderful day. I went on a splendid hike with Barney Stinson through the local nature preserve and we probably did about 5 miles of up and down and around. So I’m going to bed.
Written by Cassandra Leave a comment Posted in About Me	Tagged with gifs, hnw cassandra, puerto rico, vacation
Madre and I took an amazing little journey to Vieques today, which is this tiny little island off the coast of Puerto Rico. It was, in a word, surreal.
We got there by flying in this teechy little plane that I got to ride shotgun in – I took some amazing aerials that are interspersed all over this blog.
It was one of the craziest experiences I’ve ever had. Let me preface by saying that I’ve always sort of had this desire in the back of my head to learn how to fly a plane. I don’t quite know how I picture this happening. I guess if I was in the right place at the right time with enough money kind of thing, you know? Like learning to scuda dive or drive a motorcycle or operate heavy machinery or make a souffle. One of those things.
Let me tell you right now that that desire has been throughly renewed. Refreshened. Fuelled. Whatever the word.
I got into this tiny plane next to this guy who drove a plane like he was watching T.V. and eating at the same time. Have you ever watched someone who really knows what they are doing on makeup? It’s like there are all these different brushes and pads and cremes and colors and consistencies flying around and the girl looks like she could do it with her eyes closed riding a motorcycle and still look good. It was like that. The dude taxied out with his arm half out the window like a truck driver and then starting flicking this and turning that and pushing the other thing, and then Whiz Bang Pop we were driving down the runway and the ground just sort of fell away.
And yeah, I know everyone who has ever been in a plane has watched the ground kind of disappear, but this was a different thing entirely, watching it from right in front of you and all you see is sky and the nose of the plane swaying all over the place. Have you ever driven a car through a bad wind and you can feel the air pushing against you and you have to steer into it? Like that, but from every direction.
Oh, and speaking of steering, this little eight seater had a GPS in it that i could almost swear is the same one I have in my car, but instead of the car it’s a cutesy little airplane, and instead of freaking out about going over water, it’s nonchalant.
Honestly (predictably) landing was the worst part. Taking off was like whoosh yey!! Coming down was like NO. NO NO NO. NOT LIKE THIS.
In sum, probably everyone I know should now do everything in their power to prevent me from ever being in a situation where I could conceivably learn to fly a plane, because I already drive a car and that’s dangerous enough for everyone else involved.
P.S. – This has nothing to do with anything, but happy birthday to the most perfect man alive aka David Tennant aka Ten aka Casanova aka probably not my future husband but everyone needs dreams.
Oh internet. How I’ve missed you and your fickle nature. Missed you so much, in fact, im doing exactly what I told you I didn’t want to do- I’m writing this from the beach, book waylaid, beer in hand. Of course, by the time y’all read this I’ll have been back in dreary, cold, wherever I live for a few days, but thus is the power of time travel.
I’m starting to convince myself I could happily move here for a month or two. Not forever, just long enough to bury my toes in the sand and forget about the real world for a while. Mammia Mia and I ate at our favorite little Italian place the other day, Il Bacaro, and watched people drift in and out of their adorable little apartment complex with their dogs. It was lovely. And the fact that the all-male staff were very accommodating with the bread and the wine certainly helped. Sidenote – what is it about Italian restarants and their men and their big doe eyes that gets me everytime? I just want to sit in the window with a glass of red wine and a bowl of homemade pasta and an Italian man. That’s all I want out of life. Well, and maybe something chocolate for dessert. And a puppy. And a million dollars.
Anyways. Me. Beach. The humid air. The softly lapping waves. The cold beer. Its all very Hemmingway. My ex-boyfriend Dali (speaking of Italians) would be proud. It was his birthday just the other day, by the by. Many happy returns.
If I could wax romantic for a moment (which is something I very rarely deign to do) let me just say how much I love the ocean. I read a line in Lev Grossman’s The Magicians just the other day, which of course I can no longer find, but it was something about the comforting stability of a place with water. But like, better. You get it.
Hey internet. I know, I know, it’s Yoga Tuesday. But I’m just really not in a yoga mood. So I’m continuing the Puerto Rico party.
Puerto Rico is a place that defies convention or explanation. It has cities built into the sides of craggy mountains and citadels perch on the edge of the sea. You can explore a lush rainforest by day and be back in time to change for dinner at an exclusive club. There are mangroves you can kayak into at night where the water lights up underneath your vessel like you’re Peter frakin’ Pan. All of this and you can still drive from one end of the place to the other in an easy afternoon.
If you told me about this place and I hadn’t already been here three times, I’d have said it was the fictional setting from a C.S. Lewis novel.
If the U.S. is a Norman Rockwell painting, Puerto Rico saw the painting, thought ‘Fuck it’, stripped off the canvas, blended it up with rum, and made a daiquiri with it.
I’m staying at this crazy hotel called La Concha where it’s far easier to just assume that everyone you see is famous or rich or fabulous in some way. Seriously. Three years ago, I ran into J.Lo and Marc Anthony and Jennifer Hudson (not all at the same time, but still). Last year Johnny Depp was there. This year, knowing my luck, Marc Summers is probably my next door neighbour. Mi familia and I went up the elevator last night with a model and a photographer who were definitely about to breech a clause of their contracts.
So I’m surrounded with all this poshness and wealth and exclusivity, and I can walk down the street and see homeless people next to a run down pub next to the Ritz next to a condemned building. We walked down a boardwalk to a meager little group of kioskos the other day, followed by stray dogs, and passed by a photoshoot with a car that Barney Stinson identified as a Lamborghini Murcielago.