Roaming

While I was off traveling around the States in May, I also stopped in Upstate NY for a week to visit friends & family. My first stop was in Rochester where I went to college the 2nd time around. I was only there for a weekend which is a bummer b/c I love it there. I arrived completely exhausted from a red eye flight & spent most of the weekend trying to readjust my sleep schedule. I got to stop by the Lilac Festival for a little while, where I promptly got a nasty sunburn. More importantly I got to spend lots of time with my wonderful friend Erica & her family. Off to Park Ave to eat & later on to eat at some place on East Ave. I forgot how much I kind of adore the whole restaurants & shops inside houses thing. It really brings an atmosphere to Rochester. I wish I had more time for general lazing about there.

Then it was off to stay with my mom for a few days in Little Falls. I only lived there for a couple years when I was younger, so I never really explored around the area that much. I finally walked out to Moss Island & saw the canal Lock up close. We also went up to see the waterfall that was mere blocks from where we used to live that I never knew was even there. If I had only known, I would have spent more time crawling around the woods there. Something I really miss about living in NY is being able to just wander around the woods. There is some beautiful scenery there when it's nice out.

Portland (West Coast)

Right after I left Seattle by train (great deal at $30 btw) I went down to Portland Oregon. My second visit to this town, I love it even more. It has a very warm & welcoming vibe. It's very artsy, very natural, very weird. Like they say, "Keep Portland Weird". Did you know that for any new improvements or projects, the city requires a percentage of the cost be attributed to public art? It's a great idea & really keeps Portland looking interesting.

I wish I had more time to spend here. Three days is hardly enough but I got a great feel for the city. The Metro there has to be praised. It's so awesome! It would be faster for sure to have a car, but the buses, street cars & Max system are amazing. Especially downtown where they are free, all the time. A day pass at $5 is hard to pass up if you are traveling in & out of downtown a lot, which we did. We stayed at the Portland Paramount Hotel which I rather liked and is located in the SW section. It was very close to all Metro, and is located at the top of the South Park Blocks, where there is a small Farmer's Market. Also, to be said about the Metro system is that they are all connected with GPS so you can call or text the number posted at each stop to find out the real time arrival of the next bus or train. Pretty cool!

It rained almost all of our second day there, which unfortunately for us was the day we went to the Hoyt Arboretum & hiked outside in the woods. It was still beautiful & we hiked up to Pittock Mansion, which is an incredible house - take the tour! A lovely volunteer tour guide gave a wonderfully detailed & interesting story of the house, and luckily for my friend & I, gave us pathetic girls a ride home when she saw us on the street in the pouring rain. A downside of it raining that day was not being able to see the views of Mt. Hood & Mt. Saint Helen's. If you ever get the chance to go, go!

July 4, 2011

It's the 4th of July and I am sitting on my couch. How did this happen? With my job, I almost always have to work this holiday, today being no exception. However, I did get out at 4pm & found myself wondering, what to do? Loose plans falling through, here I am longing for days of large fireworks displays over rivers... my most memorable being in Bridgeport CT on a dingy & sitting on 6th St bridge in Pittsburgh. It's been a long time since I've had an amazing Independence Day. Exhausted & knowing I have to work tomorrow at 6am, I think I'll sit on my balcony, have a drink & hope that there are fireworks to the North tonight.

*Postscript (did I really just write that?): The fireworks were really lacking in my neighborhood (I might have seen 2 go off) so I headed on over to Highland Park & visited some friends & watched a bunch of illegal fireworks going off, and saw a huge blazing fire from such out in the distance. Hope no one lost their house tonight!

Last year from Highland Park LA CA:

Seattle

In May I did some traveling and at the time really wanted to write about it. I didn't bring my computer with me, and as fancy as my ipod is these days, I did not want to blog on that thing. So here we are, a month & a half later. The luster of what I was feeling has long since faded, but I'm starting to get back in the writing mood again.

Seattle! A lovely city with a cold industrial undertone, I thoroughly enjoyed walking around here but felt like I surely must be missing something. I did not fall in love with it. We stayed in the downtown area, very close to all the touristy things. We walked everywhere! Everything is pretty easy to get to with the Metro so big plus for that! I love cities where you can hop on the train right out of the airport & a short while later, there are you are in the heart of it. Among our sightseeing adventures were the Spaceneedle, Public Market, Aquarium, a short visit to Bainbridge Island, Snoqualmie Falls & Twede's Cafe (famously known as the setting for Twin Peaks), the original Starbucks, a SciFi/Music Museum and The Fremont Troll.

First things first. We did not take the metro to the Twin Peaks stuff. I can only imagine that might take a thousand hours. Luckily we had a friend living in Seattle who also loves Twin Peaks & geeked out with me a little by bringing us to the falls with "The Great Northern" in the background & to the Twin Peaks diner. There was a pretty awesome wanted poster on a telephone pole outside the diner that I only noticed as we were driving off. Killer Bob wanted by Sheriff Harry S. Truman. Scary!

Walking around Seattle, I had to ask myself... what year is it?

As far as food goes, we ate at a few places besides the Spaceneedle & Twede's - Bang Bang Cafe, Owl 'N Thistle and Streamliner Diner. Eating at the Spaceneedle is pricey, but you get admission to the observation deck included so you might as well go all out if you are going to go there. They were very accommodating to us vegetarians and I ordered way more than I could eat, resulting in a very heavy bill. Yikes! My friend Heather found Bang Bang Cafe online & we decided to check it out. We really liked it & ate there twice, maybe even 3 times in a 3 day period. We also ate at Owl 'N Thistle, an Irish Pub downtown that is pretty cute inside with its library full of law books. The food was okay, nothing to rave about, except we did get beer battered brie, which was pretty awesome. Streamliner Diner, which I keep wanting to call Steamliner since we had to take a ferry to get there, was so good. I had the vegetarian chili which came with a biscuit and it was heavenly.

Seattle has a lot of cute little gems to it. I wish I had one more day to spend there. We took the monorail, which was fun, but basically only goes from the Spaceneedle to Downtown, a one stop ride. We took a ferry to Bainbridge Island b/c it was under $5 round trip, and a boat tour around Seattle cost a ton more than that. We also saw a streetcar driving around, but somehow never managed to get on it. We walked most everywhere, but did take a few buses here & there, which are free in certain areas downtown. Score one for Seattle. From Seattle we took the train down to Portland, which was really comfortable, clean, fast and only $30.

Some more little bits of Seattle:

www.streamlinerdiner.com
www.yelp.com/biz/bang-bang-cafe-seattle
www.owlnthistle.com
www.twedescafe.com

My last day as a 33 year old.

This video is ridiculous, but... yeah.

Midnight in Paris

I really should take the effort to write while the ideas are still fresh in my mind, but oh how time slips away! I went to see Midnight in Paris on Sunday & had all these ideas & thoughts floating around in my head about why I liked it so much & all the little quirks & niches about it that made it so great. Now, I'm not sure if I'll get there, but I'll give it a little try.

I loved this movie. There were so many little moments that make this film great. From the epic shots of Paris & beyond, down to Owen Wilson's watch reading midnight. I spent a couple weeks in Paris a few years ago & just shot after shot in this film brought back feelings of how lovely & beautiful it is & oh I've been there! A true pleasure was seeing a brief scene in my absolute favorite place on Earth - Monet's House & Gardens. It's seriously gorgeous there and had a complete pull on me when I went that it felt like home, so when I saw the little bits of it, my heart skipped a beat. There is a scene at Versailles, and in the background I see this fountain that I adore, Apollon's Fountain. Even though they didn't shoot near it, I saw it there & the thought remains with me how magnificent it is.

I've always really enjoyed the majority of Woody Allen films, but this particularly hits a real point and how it is gone about showing that point to us is pretty creative & fun. People are often nostalgic. People often think the grass is always greener on the other side. Sometimes we need to realize what is worth chasing & what is just a fantasy.

I love the never-ending parade of artists & literary greats. I loved the characters. There are so many funny moments in this film. I found myself wondering about the road Rachel McAdams' character goes down. As she gets closer & closer to the end of the film, I'm left wondering if she was written that way so Owen Wilson's actions are more justified, or if it is only that way to drive home the point about their relationship.

Maybe why I like this one so much is because it takes a page out of The Purple Rose of Cairo, another Allen film I adore. Maybe I too just like escapism.

Tiding me over

I suppose two months of no blogging is pretty bad. I have been a busy girl! The 60 hour work weeks do not help, but I have been out around the country for a bit. More on that later when I'm not so lazy & tired of being on the go. Here's a picture from when I was spending the night at Chicago O'Hare.