Travel
I'm sitting at a terminal in Ontario airport. I had to pay for wi-fi, but I have some time to kill. I arrived at 9am and from curb to terminal, it only took 10 minutes. I was really surprised at the speed and ease of the procedure; I was expecting a total nightmare at check-in. I haven't flown in 8 years and I have never flown by myself, so this is something that is very new to me.
After eating breakfast I went to have a beer: I'm still very much uneasy about traveling, despite the ease at check in this morning (BTW Applebee's has a miserable beer selection). Last night I was very, very, very worried about the trip, especially since I was unable to communicate with Garrett. It was very strange, but it's a good thing that my travel anxiety induced paranoia was immaterial. Garrett put me at ease and yes, Jenni - I am on my way.
I talked online with Jeof and Zach about visiting them in New York. I let them know that I am coming to see them and not the city; I don't want to place undue pressure on them to become tourguides. There is, however, one thing I cannot miss: MOMA. The Museum of Modern Art's current exhibition is Dada, which I just found out this morning looking on the MOMA wedbsite. I just wanted to go to MOMA for their Duchamp collection, but now there's no way I can miss out. I want to go to the Guggenheim, but only to see the building...
Round trip busfare from Philadelphia to New York is $20 - a bargain as far as I'm concerned. After that it's two subway rides to Asoria, Queens to visit Jeof and Zach.
I'll be boarding the 737 in a few minutes. I'll update my travel blog as comments to this post, and keep an eye open for flickr updates.
P.S. Brian Eno really had a clear vision when he conceived "Music for Airports." It really works...
posted by sausagequeen @ 10:38 AM
12 Comments:
The first flight was rather painless, and the shitty alcohol certainly helped. I napped a little bit and played some Sudoku.
I am sitting in Houston Intercontinental airport. I have never been to Texas and don't forsee any other reason for me to ever be here.
At this airport, it's very clear which boys are Texans - they all look the same: well worn baseball caps with ragged, over-bent brims attop strongly framed athletic bodies. They walk with a swagger that suggests a firm confidence in the longstanding sodomy laws of Texas.
I need another nap.
Hahaha, Texas. I don't think I'll ever have a reason to be there, either.
Personally, I rather enjoy air travel, especially when the plane isn't full. I don't mind the security check that much, and people can be interesting.
Also, I actually find it less stressful than other forms of travel when alone because at least I can't get onto the wrong plane. I always worry by train that I'm on the worng one unless I'm with someone else who knows I'm not.
Yeh, plane travel turned out to be not so bad. The security check was not at all bad, I don't know what the big deal is.
Last night I took the train to Garrett's area, which is Universit City. We hung out in Garrett's apartment with his friend Aaron, and an Australian exchange student that Garrett had just met. He had been in the country for about a day at that point.
Today I am going to explore Philly on my own while Garrett is at work.
You flew domestically out of a small airport midweek. If you were flying internationally out of LAX or something on a weekend, security would have been hell.
And, generally they're unpredictable. Some days are worse than others.
Personally I'm all for rail travel (if you have the time). Eating dinner and watching the sunset inside a climate controlled car is most enjoyable.
When I have the money to afford first class (or perhpas when I can drink myself to bliss), I'm sure my opinions will change.
I'm all for rail travel too. It's my preferred way to go, but time was kind of an issue this tume. If I had more time I would have taken a train to Chicago, visited my friend Shadia, then move on to Philly.
Today I went out on the town by myself. Garrett slept in a very long time because he had to take care of some things for a friend early in the morning. He went to work at 5.
First I walked an hour to go to a vegan restaurant Garrett recommended to me. I had some great food followed up by some amazing vegan ice cream. It was a real treat. I walked around a bit more to get a feel for the city's layout, and I happened upon the historical section of the city. I did the dorky thing and took tours of the historical buildings in Independence Square.
Pennsylvania has some funny liquor laws. Last night on our way back from the train station, we passed 7-11. Garrett asked me if I wanted anything. "Not really. Do you want to buy some alcohol?" "This is Pennsylvania, we buy our liquor in liquor stores, which are now all closed." I didn't ask for more of an explanation, but there was no alcohol in the 7-11.
Tonight while I was walking around I went into a wine/spirits store. No beer, overpriced wine. I figured that I could get what I needed at Trader Joe's, so I went there. No alcohol there! When I was paying for the food, I asked the checkout girl why there was no alcohol there. "Oh, you're not from around here." "Nope. California." "Me too... Pennsylvania has some really strict liquor laws and I'm really not sure why."
-It's very difficult to get a liquor license in the state
-Liquor stores are all state controlled and close early
-Wine and liquor can be sold in the same location, but beer must be sold seperately
All of the TJ's perishable stuff is manufactured by different companies than the west coast. This hummus is the worst I've ever had...
Tomorrow we're going to Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has something special on the first Friday of every month. Saturday we're going to temple, then I'm off to New York.
It's raining.
The rain kind of interfered with my plans for the day (urban metropolis solo exploration day two). The first thing I did was go to the subway station to buy a day pass. The subway is interesting. It's also super fast; what would take one an hour to walk takes only ten minutes. I had to go to Kinko's and use a computer to print out my bus tickets to/from New York. Then I got back on the Subway to go to the other side of town to hunt down a Belgian pub.
The Eulogy Tavern is amazing. In some ways, it's better than Luck Baldwin's pub in Pasadena. The fish and chips are superior - they are Hoegaarden beer battered and the fries are perfect. I haven't had fries like this in a very, very long time - a friend of my mother was a very continental, cosmopolitan Flemish woman that taught me the secret to Belgian fries. The beer selection is astounding... Basically, Eulogy Tavern is everything you'd expect from a Belgian owned Belgian tavern.
I took the subway again into the Center City area of Philly to find a corner shop recommended to me by the Trader Joe's checkout girl. The beer selection there was overwhelming. I walked away satisfied.
My beer voyages are chronicled photographically on my flickr site.
I didn't go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art mostly because of the rain. Okay, so I was drunk... I got back to Garrett's place to put the beer in the fridge and decided that I needed to nap instead of going out by myself in the rain. The thought of it wasn't that daunting, but the nap just sounded so good - and it was.
I haven't yet been able to spend any real quality time with Garrett. He has to work and there's no way around it - they just couldn't/wouldn't give him the time off, and it probably would have been a bad idea for him to do that anyway. There's still plenty of time here, thankfully. Next week we're going to take a train up to Chestnut Hill, a Philly suburb, to check out Chestnut Hill Coffee, founded last year by transplanted Seattle coffee legend john Hornall. It should be quite a treat to get some top notch espresso after being without coffee all this time.
I'm in Astoria, Queens, New York, New York right now. Getting here was no small feat.
It continued to rain in Philly; Garrett and I decided not to go to temple today because of this. Garrett's temple, the oldest reform temple in the US, is on the other side of town: two subway rides and a whole lot of walking away.
I took a subway and walked to Chinatown. I got soaked even though it wasn't raining so much. The bus ride was very pleasant despite the traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike. New Jersey is a very beautiful, green state. It doesn't even smell bad.
After we traversed the Holland Tunnel there was torrential downpour. That was quite a site in still crowded Manhattan. We arrived at Penn Station and I very quickly got out and started to run. The wind blew my hat up and away - I almost lost it but I was able to climb halfway up a fence and snatch it out of a crevice. Yes, so I was running the wrong way - towards Chelsea (like a gay moth to a pink lightbulb) instead of Times Square. The rain stunned me, and I was soaked. I realized Times Square was nowhere in sight so I ducked into the nearest subway station. I knew that the '1' subway would take me to Times Square and from there I could catch the 'N' or 'W' subway to Astoria. I figured out that I had ran two subway stops in the wrong direction.
Passing through the Times Square subway station was really something. It's a huge maze and everyone seems to know where they are going. The sights and sounds are just short of overwhelming. There was a Peruvian band busking in an Alcove, as electrified as they would ever need to be. I found my way to where the 'N' line heads north. Along the way I had the temptation, at least three times, to ask someone "what language are you speaking?" So many cultures crammed so close together; this really is the city of Horatio Alger's American dream.
I got a little lost between the el station (the trains get elevated somewhere around 36th) and Jeof and Zach's apartment. Because of this, I got even more soaked. When I arrived it was damp, squishy hugs - then I changed into some dryer clothes and left the clothes from my bag out to dry.
We stayed in for the evening because I was just shellshocked. We ordered some AWESOME thai food; Jeof thought it was funny that I coached him on ordering for me, but there was very good reason:
"You have to say 'spicy... Thai spicy."
"Spicy Thai spicy."
"No no no... 'spicy... THAAII spicy.' Spicy like a Thai person would eat it. Trust me. They won't think you're serious otherwise."
When he ordered:
"...and the D1, spicy... Thai spicy."
"Oh!... are you sure??"
"Yes, Thai spicy."
It was perfect; it had the right mouth heat and plenty of body heat. My nose ran, my eyes were glazed, and I was warm all over. I felt like I had just finished circuit training. We had some wine, then some "Oreos Double Delight mint 'n'creme" cookies (amazing) and watched the second season of The Office.
Zach notified me that admission to MOMA is $20. I told him that I'd still really like to go, but I don't want to oblige him and Jeof to pay that kind of admission because of me. I'm still going, and they're going to hang out in Central Park if it's not raining (there's no rain in the forecast - I should be able to bring my camera out).
So far, New York is overwhelming. That's not necessarily a bad thing - it just goes on and on and on and I've never experienced anything like it.
By the way, Jeof and Zach are moving soon because their apartment was recently broken into (both of their laptops were stolen). They are moving to Roosevelt island, which is between Queens and Manhattan. It formerly housed a mental institution and a prison. Jeof an Zach will be inhabiting a portion of the former mental institution. Among the methods of getting onto the island, cable tram (like at the fair) is one of them.
New York City ist mein Lieblingsplatz
Weil die Leute, die ich da kenne, die sind ein wahrer Schatz
New York is an amazing city. I only saw scrapings of it, but it all made sense to me after the initial shock wore off.
Today was such a beautiful day; it was cool, partly cloudy, and breezy and not very humid. It was perfect weather to see a brand new place.
We left the apartment around 11:30 am. The hot water in the apartment gets turned off in the afternoon, but today I guess the landlord turned it off early. I haven't taken a cold shower since high school.
We took the subway to Jeof's office in the Financial District so I could keep my bag there and not have to carry it around all over the place. Then we went to lunch at a brewery restaurant in Seaport and looked around a bit. It was too crazy to make it to Battery Park, but Zach kept insisting that we'll keep it for another time, or better yet, when I move there. He's very insistent that I move there. He should work for the NY tourism board because he's very good on selling the city.
The next stop was MOMA. We happened upon a street fair on the way, but didn't really stop for anything.
MOMA is the most museum-like museum I have ever been to. By that I mean it was packed with tons of things to see and more people than I have ever seen in a museum. The Dada exhibit was housed on the 6th floor, where a lot of pieces were crammed into a small exhibition space. The exhibit was very crowded so the most one could do was hover around the pieces. That was fine and it didn't detract so much from the enjoyability of the exhibit. We took a break and had coffee at the MOMA cafe.
It felt like we were done with MOMA for the day, but we wanted to keep going to get our money's worth. This ended up being a great idea. The fourth floor houses some great works - among them Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg (ironically, right next to each other - they were lovers at one point but had a falling out sometime in the 1960's). The quintessential Johns pieces were up and a few notable Rauschenberg pieces were up; most importantly, though, Bed was on display. It's amazing and seeing it was probably the highlight of MOMA for me. I bought the Dada exhibit book for myself and something else not for myself.
After MOMA we lounged around Central Park for a bit. Neat place.
We headed back down to the Financial District to pick up my stuff, then we headed up to Times Square because apparently, you can't visit New York City for the first time without seeing Times Square. It was about what I imagined, and I guess I could have done without, but I don't regret going.
That was it for the trip. A short and sweet fun filled day. My bus left at 8:30 and I was on my way back to Philly.
New York is an amazing city. The sights, the smells, the sounds... everything is as it should be. It's one hulking metropolis that just keeps keeping on.
It was cleaner than how people say it is (what I saw, anyway), the subways were great, the people were nice, and there's always something to do.
Hanging out with Jeof and Zach was really great and I'm glad I visited them. Even if I had to go to Hoboken, it would have been a great trip because I was among great company.
I need to figure out when I am going next. Spring break? Who's coming with me?
p.s. Photos are up on flickr and facebook. I don't add photos of people on flickr and I don't see a point in adding faceless photos on facebook, so the photos go in two places.
I will go as soon as I can find airfare, and someone can come with me...Kevin and I were talking about doing Pride some year that we can make it, and I won't be able to afford it by Spring Break anyway...
Unfortunately, while both of my SFO/ACV flights had the potetntial for a slip up that would have prompted the airline to give me a free ticket to anywhere in the 48 states, neither ended up doing to.
Today was such a treat. I made my way to Chestnut Hill Coffee Co. Seattle coffee legend John Hornall opened shop there last year. I'm not going to rewrite the review I wrote, so you can just see it here:
http://www.coffeegeek.com/forums/worldregional/useast/254247
Also check out my flickr for photos.
After I came back I went once again to Eulogy Tavern and spent way too much money on beer and a meal.
What a day... overloaded with gustatory delight.
I spent another day at Chestnut Hill Coffee Co. It was amazing, and John Hornall let me play behind the bar and pull some shots.
I updated my coffee blog, so if you want to read about my time at CHCC you should go there because I'm not going to paste it here.
I'm flying out of here at 5pm tomorrow.
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