Entries Tagged 'Travels' ↓

Our first visit to Texas was to the city of Austin where the Sencha conference was being held that The Mister was presenting at. I was prepared for stinking hot weather but to be honest it wasn’t too bad – I think with it being autumn the heat wasn’t too muggy and really only got really hot in the afternoon (really hot = almost 30 degrees C).

Austin was a strange kind of city – the only city I’ve been to in America where there were barely any shops – never even saw a Walgreens or Macy’s or Dunkin’ Donuts. Just a FedEx (which had amazing long opening hours), a few boutique clothing stalls and drive through banks! We were staying and based in the downtown area, I think when the city wasn’t working in air conditioned office blocks with underground parking or going to drive through banks, they were shopping at air conditioned malls with underground parking.

The one thing the city did have a lot of was bars and barbecue and restaurants – mostly along Sixth Street but generally throughout the downtown area. The roads and sidewalks were hot and sticky and smooth from being melted in the summer – looked and smelled disgusting like a perpetual night after a huge street party – each time I got back to the beautiful marbled hotel lobby I was embarrassed by the sticky squelching my shoes made traipsing sticky dumpster dribble and god knows what from the streets I’d just walked along! The streets were really wide too – I guess people in that town mostly drive everywhere to escape the heat so in general the town seemed quite sleepy because everything was in doors or underground. Every now and then you’d come upon a steaming parking lot with some food trailers in it or see great mirrored sky-scrapers shooting up in to the sky.

Their state Capitol building is pretty majestic – pinkish during the day and white at night.

Found a few great coffee places, more on that in other posts, but otherwise not a lot to do other than hang around the conference. One night we did go and watch the bats that live under one of the bridges across the river come out at sunset and swarm around before flying off into the night.

Couple of interesting things out the window of the plane as we flew over Texas for our first visit to that State.

Jet streams are black! Well, they look black. Always so striking and white when you’re looking up from the ground.

Fields below are full of round circles. Why is that? Something to do with irrigation machines I’m sure but those circles are mighty big!

Someone asked us for a top 10 to do in New York – The Mister came up with this amazing list of a dozen things in a few minutes – just had to share it. It’s a great list.

• Shake Shack in Madison Square Park
• Wine & dine at Eataly
• Broadway show (at least one – and do one near Times Square since you obviously need to go there as well)
• Sit in Central Park and people watch (make sure you visit the Bethesda Fountain and maybe row a boat on the pond)
• Go to a Yankees game (Mets suck)
• Go up Rockefeller Center (you’ll want to do the Empire State but the Rock is cheaper and gives you views of Central Park and a view of the Empire State)
• Go on the Staten Island Ferry (it’s free – takes you past the Statue of Liberty and gives you great views of the Financial District)
• Visit Ground Zero – make sure you book for the memorial site – you can’t just go there (I believe it’s free to book)
• Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (and then have dinner at Henry’s End in Brooklyn Heights)
• Walk the Highline (in Chelsea) and then visit Chelsea Market for a coffee (Ninth Street Espresso is amazing)
• Do a Circle Line boat tour around the whole island (not just a half tour – get the full Manhattan experience)
• Shop (5th Ave, Tiffanys, Macys, Bloomingdales etc)

Oh, better post a nice memory of New York while I’m at it (July 2010)

Yesterday we had a great day of mostly drinking coffee and sitting in parks people watching – this is one of the busiest cities in the world yet we seem to find plenty of time to relax, sitting on park benches and taking an hour to travel from one coffee spot to another. I know we’re essentially on vacation for a few days, but we did a fair amount of sitting on park benches when we lived here as well.

First stop after brunch with Cousin Grant in Tribeca was Saturdays Surf – great to see the place hadn’t changed much although the plants out the back had grown heaps. We drank our coffee and watched a hairy caterpillar scurry around for a while (video here!).

Spent a couple of hours eating a sandwich and watching people wander along The Mall in Central Park. We still haven’t seen The Mall in fall colors but I took another photo from the same spot as ones last year to add to the collection – you can see them all here tagged The Mall.

Then it was back to Shake Shack in Madison Square Park for burgers, fries and a shake. Man the burgers tasted better than I remember. I was so great being back there sitting under the lights with bits of acorn falling on your head from squirrels in the trees above snacking.

We visited Eataly afterwards – it’s Mario Batali’s Italian indoor market that was being built when we lived here last year. The place is huge and has every Italian food and ingredient you can think of – a pasta section, cheese section, gelato section … wines, fish, fresh pasta, coffee, chocolates, sweets, books, desserts, meats, pizza and lots of restaurants or standing bar places where you can get food to eat.

There’s a ‘vegetable butcher’ too – after you’ve selected your vegetables you just give them to him and he’ll wash and chop or prepare them any style you want – 3 pounds of carrots julienned please … we got a small tub of gelato and sat in the window looking out at the Flat Iron building for a while.

Can’t describe what it’s like being back in New York. It feels like home. It’s hot, but not as muggy as it was last year. We’re staying with Cousin Grant at his new apartment in Tribeca (all controlled by iPads – cool). We actually feel quite a bit more comfortable here than in San Francisco – probably because of the familiarity and not so many homeless people. It is a strange time being here over the weekend of memorials in remembrance of the 9/11 attacks 10 years ago on Sunday. There’s an NYPD checkpoint just near the apartment watching the nearby entrance to the Holland Tunnel as they manage incoming threats of car bombs. It’s kind of surreal.

We’re really close to RBC for our morning coffee but couldn’t resist the temptation of Chelsea Market and Ninth Street Espresso for our first visit to an old stomping ground this morning.

We spent most of the time wandering around Williamsburg – visited the New York chapter of Blue Bottle Coffee and wandered around the shops before it got too hot.

This afternoon we hung out on the High Line until some sultry but harried interns in ridiculous heels being put to work on a Tommy Hilfiger shoot came and took our chairs away to be part of their production.

The Mister is off in a Very Important Government Building somewhere attending a meeting and I’m working out of the new wave of offices, a coffee shop (well, except for a 5 minute break to write this).

We’ve been in the States for 40 days now and in California have never seen the rain – last night we arrived here in a torrential downpour with a rather nerve wracking taxi ride on flooded slidey freeways beneath a wicked electrical storm into the city. And it’s so hot and muggy! I’m without a singlet today!

I’d done some coffee research before we left so from the hotel this morning we found an excellent coffee shop for breakfast then in between bursts of rain under an umbrella each we wandered down The Mall taking another look at the Capitol and Washington Monument before I left The Mister at his meeting and walked passed the White House to get to this cafe I’m in now.

(The President must be home based on the snipers on the roof – rather unnerving to look through the camera view finder to see a sniper’s telescope honed in on you … they could probably even see I didn’t have a singlet on … I felt quite violated!!)

Last time we were here it was for Christmas in 2007 when it was much colder and definitely not as green and lush as it is now – snaps from 2007 visit to Jefferson & Washington monuments and the Capitol.

Just had our last weekend in Blenheim for a while, complete with a tearful farewell – those guys might live in a different town but we’re definitely a close foursome (speaking on the adults dynamic of course!)

The Mister is still the favourite with Aidan and in fact The Mister was requested at several nappy changing times much to his horror … Dean made up some story suitable to get him out of it! Aidan wanted to help on the computer, and have The Mister help him with his painting. He looks very grown up with his short hair now.

Meanwhile, The Mister was interested in playing favourites elsewhere – desperate to get Butterball Brown to sit on his knee he sidled into him while he was asleep on a chair and got a ‘cuddle’ as he calls it – don’t think the cat had much choice really but made it look like it was his idea!

We got to have most of the day in San Francisco before we left this time so Bev and Dan took us to a cafe in the East Bay that a friend of theirs had opened. It’s in the RockRidge/Oakland area, practically under the freeway and just down from a BART station.

It was a great corner spot but the poor barista was run off her feet – the cafe was reasonably busy and she’d run out of cups and saucers so was washing and making coffee at the same time.

The coffee was good, nice strength, although Bev and Dan commented it was quite strong – I think they normally drink lattes and we insisted they try cappuccinos.

One very cool thing they had in the cafe seeing as it was near a BART station was a screen with a feed of approaching trains and times – direction and time until the train arrived in the station. Very useful!

BiCa Coffee House, 5701 College Ave, Oakland, CA 94618 @bicacoffeehouse

Walking around San Francisco yesterday we spent our first day this trip in the shopping area. I noticed that if I picked up crocheting again at least if it doesn’t work out with Xero here I could have something to fill my time – this is one of several women sitting on the sidewalk crocheting animal head hats!!

San Francisco Bay Bridge – you make my heart skip a beat – such a majestic structure and in a series of amazing coincidences we have an apartment to live in for the next year at least where we will get to look out at you every day!

That’s right folks – the unexpected happened and providing we check out on paper we’ve been accepted for an apartment in San Francisco! Much much earlier than we thought but just too good to pass up

• When we were last here we walked around in the area south of Market St and took a couple of photos of buildings we thought might be cool to live in to remind us to check them out when we were here in August apartment hunting.
• On our tour of apartments with the broker during the week, without knowing it she brought us to one of the apartment buildings we’d taken a photo of.
• The apartment had orange(ish) walls and a gorgeous view of the Bay Bridge.
• We met the owner and without paperwork passed inspection so for now all the scary stories are not true – she’s taken us on as tenants without money or fingerprints and with a long lead time until the lease (obviously until we sign it could all fall through!)
• The owner’s favourite colour is orange

Now it *does* feel real. When we come back in August we’ll have somewhere to live. Can’t believe it.