This multicultural city

Today, I went to the Brooklyn Public Library to apply for "ID NYC," a government program where you get a New York ID card (it's different from a drivers license) and can use it to get benefits all around the city just for being a local. If you have the card, you can apply for free membership to some pretty awesome institutions, including the Natural History Museum, the Bronx Zoo, and BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music, which is nearby us and always has cool live music and indie movies).

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about it. And I still enjoy being reminded of how freaking multicultural and awesomely diverse the city is. You can request someone who speaks your language to to interview you for the card, and these are all of the languages the brochure comes in: 

That is all for today. Sometimes you're really awesome, NYC!  

Sunday morning

Overheard in Prospect Park

Woman to her dog: "This way! Don't be an idiot!"

And a very happy Labor Day

Yesterday, Ari and I booked it out of the house at 9am to catch the first ferry to Governor's Island. Only...we missed the ferry by about three minutes. Sad face.

So we hung out in Brooklyn Bridge Park for a while and goofed around on the wacky benches/installation art.

Then we caught the 11am ferry and tried Citi Bikes for the first time! Citi Bikes are the bike share program that's been in NYC for about two years now. I've never used it because:
1. It seemed complicated to figure out how to use it.
2. I am terrified of biking in most parts of the city, especially Manhattan.

But Governor's Island seemed like a good place to try it out. To rent bikes from the rental shop there, it was minimum $15 for two hours. But a Citi Bike rental (I found out) is $9.95 for an all day pass; you just have to return the bike after 30 minutes each use. Since the island is only 2.2 miles around, we could easily bike the whole thing in about 20 minutes at a leisurely pace.

Best action shot I could get of Ari and Lady Liberty herself. 

After biking around the island once, we returned the bikes and walked around the Pedestrian Only areas. There are lots of cool hammocks, but unfortunately, they are all located in direct sunlight (not a lot of tall trees on the island), so we lay in one for about 10 seconds before realizing we were not feeling relaxed at all. 

Then we looked at some of the art installations. I think a favorite of mine was this one, made out of old umbrellas, camera tripods, hub caps, and care tires. 

Awkward shot from a low angle--a little unflattering

After working up enough of an appetite, we got lunch from some of the vendors. Ari got vegetarian roti, and I got veggie tacos and horchata. Then, the best part: Blue Marble ice cream! I got Mexican chocolate, and Ari got strawberry.

We then took the bikes out for another spin--racing each other a bit, and trying to take some of the inner roads that we hadn't seen yet. The island is pretty small, so we still only used the bikes for about 20 minutes before returning them.

We caught the 1pm ferry back to Brooklyn, and got off to realize that we could either take the bus back to the subway, or try the Citi Bikes again, which were located right next to the ferry. We decided to bike to Atlantic Terminal, and it was actually pretty fun! A little scary to be biking in a bigger city (we still had no helmets), but we mostly took side routes that had a clear bike lane, and reached Atlantic Terminal much faster than if we had waited for a bus. Citi Bikes for the win!

A wedding in the woods

Well, it's the day after Labor Day. Summer is over (I guess). If I had to remember one thing about this summer, it would have to be: Cammy's wedding!! Not only because she is my best friend since I was eight, but also because it was just a really good time in general.

I flew in to Fort Collins on Tuesday to basically get a chance to hang out with Cammy before all the official wedding stuff started, and to also help out as best as I could (i.e. not much, because I am not good at cooking or driving). But I did taste test a lot!

Cammy and her mom hanging out in the kitchen. We spent about 80% of our time in the kitchen, preparing food and gift bags and eating. 

Quality time with the huskies, Kita (all white) and Kanuk. 

Oh, did I mention Cammy and Erik also bought a house? About a month before their wedding? It is amazing. It has four bedrooms! It has four levels! It has a GIANT KITCHEN (see above photo). Kind of a crazy experience coming from our tiny Brooklyn apartment. 

After two days of prep (Cammy and Erik made all of the food and prepared all the drinks themselves, except for the meal on the night of the wedding, which was catered), we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park with a caravan of three cars stuffed with drinks, homemade ice cream sandwiches, and all manner of wedding supplies. 

This is my warped picture of Cammy driving up to the mountains with all of the STUFF. 

We checked into the Sunshine Mountain Lodge on Thursday afternoon (Cammy and Erik had rented the whole place), and we set up stuff for the majority of the guests arriving on Friday and staying through Sunday. Everyone had their own adorable cabin (ours was dog themed and had a somewhat creepy poster of dogs doing yoga above the bed). As a side note, I realized on this trip that this setup was basically as close to camping as I'm willing to get these days.

On Friday, Ari and I went for a morning hike with Cammy's dad and his wife Kathy in Rocky Mountain National Park. I'd done this hike before with Cammy, and it is pretty awesome. If you do the whole trail, you get to see four lakes in approximately 4 miles. We went about halfway, and saw three of the lakes.

We saw lots of elk! Apparently it's "rutting season"?

Ari strikes a heroic pose. 

By the time we came back from the hike, most of the people had made it into the lodge -- there were 30 people total. For dinner, we had delicious falafel and tahini makings.

Santiago and Sarah (Cammy's roommate from college), her brother Doug, Rob (another college friend) and Ari

Cammy's plate (made of biodegradable palm leaf!)

Cammy in her adorable vintage dress

After eating, everyone just kind of hung out (and many people got very drunk, I'm not going to lie. We were at 8,000 feet, so it was difficult to judge how much alcohol would have an effect.) Let's just say the night ended with Amanda (Cammy's sister) "teaching" some of us the moves to Michael Jackson's Thriller and then Ari playing guitar while people called out requests.

The next day was the day of the wedding! We didn't have to do too much until noon, when it was time to prep all the girly stuff for Cammy. Sarah did Cammy's hair and makeup, and I painted her toenails (and otherwise just hung out in the room with Shea, Cammy's cousin, and the sole teenager at the wedding). 

Sipping champagne in the newly-converted "beauty parlor" (We just brought in a mirror)

Cammy, all done up with her bouquet of herbs, right before she walked to meet Erik for the first look. Le sigh. So pretty. 

 I don't actually have any photos from the ceremony (too busy crying and/or giving a speech), but let me tell you, was it pretty! It was at the top of a hill behind the lodge, surrounded by aspens.

Enjoying a cocktail after the ceremony

After the ceremony, we had a couple hours for cocktails and corn hole, a game I did not play but enjoyed observing. Cammy and Erik were the reigning champions of the game!

Action shot of Cammy playing corn hole in her wedding dress. 

For the catered wedding dinner, we had two kinds of tamales, in addition to really delicious beans and rice and salad. Then for dessert, mini chocolate and strawberry cheesecakes, in lieu of wedding cake. By that point, I couldn't even eat dessert. But by the end of the night, I DID partake in s'mores, which we roasted around a campfire while Cammy's mom played folk songs on guitar. We finally got to bed around midnight, and only because we had to get up at 7am the next morning to catch the flight back to New York.

It was a wonderful, emotional weekend. I'm so lucky I got to be there for it--but more importantly, I'm lucky to have Cammy as a best friend. Here's to many more future celebrations we'll have together!

A quick trip to Philadelphia

So, school starts in earnest this week (my full schedule doesn't kick in till Thursday, thankfully), so I gotta get these posts up asap! 

First off: Philadelphia! Ari and I took a mid-week trip to the city of brotherly love from August 19 - 20th. I had hotel points from a credit card I'd signed up for, so we decided to spend a night in the city that I'd only been to briefly before (I visited mainly the historical part with Michelle and Liz back in spring 2014). I wanted to see the cool parts that I'd heard about, plus I'd heard good things about the vegetarian restaurant there, called Vedge. So we booked a night at the Holiday Inn Express, which is literally a 3-minute walk from Vedge. And despite originally planning to take Amtrak there like the old-world travellers we wanted to pretend to be, we discovered that Megabus tickets were literally 1/20 of the price ($100 vs. $5!!). So we caught a Megabus at 9:30am and got to Philly by 11:30am. 

Once we got dropped off in the city center, we walked directly to Reading Terminal Market to grab some lunch. We got there during peak lunch hour, which was a little overwhelming. But we managed to get a decent veggie burger and cheesy scalloped potatoes at Hunger Burger, and find a spot to sit down among all the crowded tables. 

Waiting for our food. Notice the large amount of people. 

After that, we did a combination of two self-guided mural tours that I heard about from Hannah, my friend from high school who currently lives in Philadelphia (but who was sadly out of town when we visited). Important note: the majority of what we did in Philly was a suggestion from Hannah. Thanks, Hannah! 

The murals were pretty cool to visit because they are all over the city, thanks to an initiative started in the 80s as an anti-graffiti strategy, and continuing today as the MuralArts Program. Apparently this program has painted more than 2,000 murals all over the city since 1984. 

On the day we visited, it was a sunny 90 degrees with about 80% humidity, but we actually had a really good time exploring the city through finding these murals. Some of the murals had basically no background information, while others had a phone number you could call to hear a recorded message about the painting.

This mural was one of the wackier ones. We didn't get any background info on this one, but I liked how colorful it was. 

We had to take a break after about an hour and half of trekking in the sun, and stopped in Chinatown to get some boba tea. (The people behind Ari look warped because this is a panoramic shot.) 

This mural was painted near an animal shelter; each animal painted on this wall depicts an actual rescue animal that was adopted. To finance the mural, pet owners entered a lottery to have their pet painted into the mural. 

We came upon this adorable street (there were actually many like it, this was just the first one we saw) called Quince Street. I wanted to live in this ivy-covered house. I made myself feel better about the situation by telling myself that the house's owners probably don't have very good air conditioning in the summer. And it's probably really drafty in the winter. So yeah. Not that great. 

After walking all around the city for about 4 hours, we finally checked into our hotel (we were just carrying backpacks) and took a refreshing shower and a quick nap before going out again for a cocktail before dinner. Our reservation wasn't until 9:30pm, so we didn't have to rush. 

We also grabbed a snack at about 5pm -- we went to this awesome Israeli hummus place called Dizengoff (Ari wholeheartedly approved of their pita bread) and then we went across the street to get a grapefruit brûlée donut at Federal Donuts.  

After resting up, we walked to a pop up garden which was pretty cool, although a little heavy on the bougie-hipster vibe. The idea is that this organization turns vacant lots into beer gardens for the summer. 

I had a very sweet honey-flavored cocktail (too sweet--I couldn't finish it.). I think Ari had a mojito. You can see a beautiful, rusty tub thing behind us, as proof that this was a hip spot. 

Then we went to Vedge! Where everything tasted pretty darn good. But my favorite part HAD to be the cocktail called "Effie, Brace Yourself." For those of you that may not be up to date on your Mrs. Doubtfire trivia (I just watched it with my students last May), that is one of the funniest lines from the film. And it was indeed a very bracing cocktail! 

Ari models his awesome drink. 

My picture of the food is not very photogenic, but I'll post it anyway, just to give people an idea. We had stuffed avocado for the appetizer (not pictured), a ratatouille squash thing (in the middle), spicy grilled tofu (on the left), fingerling fries (on the right), and for dessert we had rutabaga fondue (which was DELICIOUS and obviously tasted better than it sounds).

The next day, we had to catch a bus back to NYC at 2pm, so we had to plan how we wanted to spend the majority of the morning. I'd already been to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but it was supposed to be likely thunderstorms, so we decided to take a risk and and spend the $20 each to visit the Barnes Foundation. According to the website, it's "the greatest private collection of post-impressionist and early-modern art." I looked at that description and thought, "Well, Ari and I were just in Paris where we saw a ton of that art period at the Musee D'Orsay. Do we really need to see more of it?" Turns out, we did! The value of the experience was more in the way the art was displayed than in the art itself. Barnes (the collector) arranged all of the art according to his tastes and preferences, and he did it in a very unique and quirky way. Artists from totally different time periods and parts of the world are hung next to each other, and it is all kind of packed together, so that you walk into a fairly small room and aren't really sure which of the thirty paintings to look at first. I recommend taking a look at the website if you want to get an idea what it's like, since they don't allow any photos to be taken inside. 

After we had spent a couple hours at the museum, we had just enough time to grab lunch and then head to the bus station. As luck would have it, Pizzeria Vetri (another Hannah rec!) was literally right across the street from the Foundation. We dashed over there and ordered an eggplant and stracciatella pizza. And it did not disappoint. As Ari remarked on the bus ride home, the bread products were really the highlight of our trip to Philadelphia. 

All in all, a wonderful 36-hour (or less, actually) trip to a city that's only an hour and a half away. We left Philly thinking we should do that more often--both visit Philly and travel to destinations that are convenient and easy to explore on foot. Next on the list: maybe Hoboken? 

Hope to see you next time, little guy!