And now, a trip across the US
Sunday, September 30, 2007 11:06 AM
Here I am again, on another adventure! This time I am keeping it local, sort of; I am within the United States but far from my home town. Four weeks ago I hoped in a car in California with two of my brothers, John and Daniel, and began our drive to West Virginia. The drive took five days with a few stops. One night was spent by the river and under the stars in Moab, Utah. The next night was spent on a small town in Colorado in front of a rafting company's warehouse; we chose this spot because when we stopped to talk to the guy that worked there about rafting Gore Canyon and where we could spend the night, he told us we could just set up "camp" there. The third day was spent rafting the crazy section of the Colorado River known as Gore Canyon. I fell out near the top of a very nasty rapid, thankfully I got back into the boat immediately because if I hadn't, it would have been an ugly ride! That night we slept at a friend's house in Golden, Colorado. We couldn't go to the home of Coors beer and NOT take the tour! So the next morning we hoped on a tour of the Coors factory; did you know that you get three free beers at the end of the tour? Even better for you beer drinkers, you can go once every day, skip the tour and just get the three free beers. From Golden we drove straight to Fayetteville, West Virginia, only stopping for gas/toilet breaks.
I don't have a whole lot to say about Fayetteville at this time, except that I met some cool people there, went rafting and had a pretty chill couple weeks. When I go back to Bridge Day perhaps I will write more about it. This email was started with the intention to talk about where I am right now, and that is New York City! This is my first time here, I have only been here for 71 hours and have way too many stories to tell in this email :) I want to share a few though, if you want more details and other stories, ask me in person when I see you again.
First of all, I just want to say that while I am not a huge fan of big cities, I could see myself living New York City, for a limited amount of time. The food alone makes that decision, but there is so much more that has made my experience thus far amazing. I will start with the beginning though, instead of going straight into a rant about the food.
I flew into New York City at noon on Thursday, September 20th. Naturally, I am using couchsurfing.com again because I think it is a great resource. My first host (in my six nights here I am sleeping at five different places, longer term hosts were hard to find) was not available until 8pm so I had eight hours to kill on my own. During this time I wondered into a thrift store to kill some time. In said thrift store I met a girl name Aurora who started talking to me because she saw my backpack. Turned out she was from California and was a tourist in NYC as well. After I decided that all I wanted was a book and was therefore done with the thrift store I decided to ask Aurora if she wanted to hang out, I still had three hours before I could meet up with Jordane, my host. The conversation went a little like this:
Hillary- What are you doing later?
Aurora- I going to dinner with some friends and then we're going to a bar around 9ish. You can come along too if you want
H- Oh... well, I have this... thing, at nine... It's called couchsurfing.com--
A- That's what I'm going to!!
Hang on, let me take one step back. For those of you that don't know, couchsuring.com is huge, covers the whole world. To narrow things down a bit, people create groups for various things, interests, location, whatever. The group for New York City has arranged a weekly meeting every Thursday night at a bar. Nothing official, not near everyone even goes, it's just people with something in common getting together for a couple drinks. I looked into the events of NYC before getting here and decided that I would definitely be going to the meeting. That is the "thing" I mentioned to Aurora and that is the bar that she said she was going to, turned out that we are both couchsurfers! What a world!
I'm not going to go into details on the chaos of the happenings with my backpack; not being to get to it and therefore having to borrow clothes from my host and him being ever so thoughtful and buying me a toothbrush while I made my way to his house at 2:30am. I am also not going to go in the awesomeness and craziness of my day and night with Christine because writing it in an email just wouldn't do. What I will mention is the food!
New York has pretty much any kind of food you could want. My biggest expense while there was the food. Sure, I could have gone to Trader Joe's and bought a loaf of bread, some peanut butter and some fruit and been fine. But there was no way I was going to let the opportunity of having such delicious and new choices pass me by. I think I will just talk about all the food I ate while there (for those of you that don't know, I love food!):
9/20 lunch at Bouen Macrobiotic. Vegan soup dish with rice, quite tasty. I would go there again if I lived in NYC or if I visit again.
9/20 dinner at Max Brenner, Chocolate By The Bald Man. Overpriced by far, but pretty good. I ate the roasted chicken with asparagus and potatoes and for dessert I had this chocolate peanut butter crunchy thing. I was a little disappointed with my dessert, especially after tasting the two desserts ordered by the people sitting next to me. I wouldn't go here again, it was good but overpriced and there is better.
9/21 breakfast was a banana from a stand. Lunch was a salad and sliced pineapple from Grand Central Station.
9/21 dinner at Zen Palate. OMG! This place is awesome! I ended up getting food here again because it was that good. The Mango Halo is beyond tasty! Thank you Romeo for introducing this place to me.
9/22 brunch at a little cafe on Havemeyer and N6. We choose this place while trying to find another place but the rain started to pour on us. I ate a sandwich and a drank some coffee. Yes, I drank coffee, but only because it was still raining and I didn't want to just sit there taking up space.
9/22 dinner at the Original Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Yeah, I didn't really eat dinner, I had ice cream instead. Aleks and I each choose two flavors and shared. Pandan, Zen Butter, Ginger and Green Tea. The Zen Butter could take the spot for my favorite ice cream, maybe not quite taking it, but at least tying with 1020 in Santa Cruz, CA. Funny how my favorites are flavors that are only available in select locations :( Oh well, I always have mint chocolate chip to fall back on.
9/22 midnight snack of a toasted raisin bagel with cream cheese in Times Square.
9/23 a very interesting breakfast at David's house. I know I will forget at least one ingredient but here is what I remember being in my bowl: granola, sunflower seeds, one serving of soy yogurt, coconut gel (tiny purplish/clearish cubes), dry shredded coconut, a spoon full of apple butter, a spoon full of cashew butter, half an apple cut up and soy milk. It was delish.
9/23 a picnic in Central Park consisting of bread, smoked cheese, soy cream cheese and an orange. After the picnic we played kickball.
9/23 dinner at Meskerem, an Ethiopian restaurant. We ordered the vegetarian combination, which consisted of six different portions of food with a puree consistency. With these comes a "pancake" for each person. This pancake is similar but really not from the pancakes you eat for breakfast. It is thinner, larger, not quite so fluffy and has a very different flavor. I asked the lady what is in it and she said just teff flour and water. To me, it tasted very much like a good amount of lemon juice was used. I just googled it and found this: "Teff is grown primarily as a cereal crop in Ethiopia where it is ground into flour, fermented for three days then made into enjera, a sourdough type flat bread." at http://chetday.com/teff.html I suppose the fermentation would account for sour flavor that I identified with lemons.
9/24 breakfast was my left over bread and cheese from the picnic, though on one piece of bread I put nutella, compliments of Evan, my host.
9/24 lunch at WasabiLobby with Alanna. Very tasty sushi, oh how I love sushi!
9/24 dinner at Pepperoncino. Food fired pizza of the margherita type.
9/25 breakfast was a bagel from a stand; it didn't even compare to the one I had in Time Square :( Then I purchased four plums for a dollar from another stand. Those had to be the worst tasting fruit I have ever had, or rather the least tasting fruit. Seriously, not flavor at all, the only thing that even began to save them was the slight tartness to the skin. I ate three and threw away the fourth, I just couldn't make myself eat it, and that is really saying something!
9/25 lunch in Chinatown at a Chinese food buffet that many people were eating at so I figure would probably be pretty good. For some reason, even though I know that I don't like Chinese food, I still try to eat it every once in a while and every time I am reminded that really, yes, I do not like Chinese food. I mean, I will drink coffee every once in a while forgetting why I don't drink coffee and then being reminded, but Chinese food, I always know I don't like it, but for some reason I go back again. Anyway, I didn't like it.
9/25 dinner at Sripraphai. This place is suppose to be the best Thai food around, so I was told. A groups of us CSers (couchsurfers) went together. It was alright, but I have definitely had better! Oh how I miss the Thai food of Cameron Park, CA...
9/26 breakfast from the Farmer's Market consisting of a nectarine and a ginger scone.
9/26 lunch from the Zen Palate but eaten in a park. If you haven't been to this restaurant, and you can go, try it! It is delicious!
9/27 zucchini walnut muffin and a cranberry mango muffin for breakfast, one at 5am before going to the beach and one at 9am after the beach.
9/27 lunch at a Caribbean food place; curried goat with some veggies and rice. I had never had goat before, it was... interesting. I like the ox tail way better!
And that is the conclusion of my food sharing topic for New York City.
I only have two more things to say. One is that I went to the Bodies Exhibition and it was really cool http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/ if you want to look into it. I spent two and a half hours in there, would have been three and a half but they had the air conditioning on so high it was very uncomfortable. I asked why it was on so high, if it had to be because of the bodies and he said, no, it's New York, dress in layers.
The other thing I want to say is that I went to the Atlantic Ocean and watched the sunrise. It was awesome, not something you see in California. We had to wake up at 5am to take the subway out to the beach before the sunrise and we made it there just in time.
If you want to see photos of my trip so far go to www.snapfish.com/login use the email address shiroi_2000@yahoo.com and the password: roadtrip
I hope you are all doing well, I will see some of you very soon and the rest, who knows where my path will lead or when. Write back if you want, tell me what is new with you :)
---Hillary
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