Spring Break: Brattleboro, VT!

This year, I didn't actually get a spring break, because Columbia and Pace University's breaks didn't line up for the first time in three years (boo). Even so, I got a couple of three-day weekends, and Ari happened to get a random gig in Vermont playing a private ski club, so we decided to make a mini vacation out of it, continuing our tradition of spending spring break in a colder place than New York City.

We booked a hotel (Holiday Inn Express, baby!) in Brattleboro, and spent most of our free time exploring the cute main street area. Our first night we had dinner at a restaurant called Duo, which was pretty good.

My cocktail was called "The Cloud" and Ari's was called "The Mountaineer." 

The next morning, we went hiking in Madame Sherri Forest, which has a pretty cool namesake. Our bartender from the night before had actually recommended it, when we asked about what we should do in the area. 

Madame Sherri was actually French, and she was a costumer for the Ziegfeld Follies who retired up in the woods of New Hampshire and reportedly threw wild parties. The remnants of her house are still there.

Ari and I just saw the movie The Witch, and this reminded us of that setting. Creepy. 

Indian Pond

Remnants of Madame Sherri's "castle." 

We only had the early part of the afternoon free, and then we had to drive to The Hermitage Club for Ari to do rehearsal for the show that evening. The club was so swanky! Hardly anyone was there because it was such a warm winter, so there was barely any snow to ski in. 

View out the window while waiting for the band to finish rehearsing. 

The highlight of the night was definitely the free dinner that we got before the show (I got to eat it too, even though I wasn't part of the band). It was a full menu with appetizers, mains, side dishes, and dessert. I got lobster mac n cheese (I couldn't resist). Ari had salmon with roasted mushrooms and onion rings. 

I got a s'mores sundae which was AMAZING. 

 

Then they did the gig! It was a cabaret act with four musicians and a singer. A good show, but sadly not so many people in attendance, again because it just wasn't great skiing weather to begin with. 

I was amused by the cliched antler chandeliers. 

The next morning, we went for another quicker hike in Fort Dummer State Park. It had a nice view of the Connecticut River.

Our last activity in Brattleboro was a visit to Hermit Thrush Brewery, which makes mostly sour IPAs. Ari and I are not really fans of that type of beer, but these were actually REALLY good. 

Before we drove back to New York, we stopped in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts to visit Ari's cousin Rosa, her husband Dominic, and their baby, Rocco. 

Rocco was adorable and let me read him a couple books. 

And then we drove back to the city! A good three-day spring break! 

Stuck at the airport

Supposed to be in LA right about now, but our plane had electrical problems (?) and had to make an emergency landing in Chicago. A meal voucher compelled me to buy dinner at the only place in the terminal (other than Starbucks): McDonald's! 

Yaaay fish filet and a chicken salad that I will pick the chicken out of. 

Staten Island

I've officially been to all five boroughs -- we finally made a special trip to Staten Island last Friday to see what all the buzz was about (there was/is no buzz; I don't really know why I wanted to visit Staten Island).

First, we took the free ferry from downtown Manhattan to the Island, hopped on an SIR (Staten Island Railroad) train, and walked to the Alice Austen House, which was recommended by my friend Sarah because of its cool subject (Alice Austen was one of the first "prolific" female photographers) and the location of the house. Pretty great views of the Hudson and Manhattan. 

Then, we walked 20 minutes through not-so-amazing suburbs to a Sri Lankan neighborhood.

Most of the area we walked through looked like this.

We went to this restaurant Ari had read about the NY Times a couple of years ago, called Lakruwana. It was really good! But the decor was a little over the top (I don't think my photos quite capture it); it felt almost like I was eating lunch at a themed restaurant at Disneyland.

The house special: rice cooked with turmeric (?) eggplant, caramelized onions, a fried egg, tempeh (?) cubes, and cashews. And then a noodle dish with curry you could pour over it.

After eating lunch, we made the mistake of thinking that the 20-minute walk to Flagship Brewery would be enough time to make space in our stomachs for some beer. It wasn't enough time.

We ordered two tasting flights, which were really fun to sip, but we...just couldn't get close to finishing the beers. We were too stuffed. But it was a cool brewery!

After giving up on the beer, we waddled back to the Ferry Terminal and took the ferry home. And I took an obligatory picture of the Statue of Liberty. I couldn't resist! 

Thanks, Staten Island. You were...ok, I guess. I don't feel like we need to hang out together again anytime soon. No hard feelings!

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!