San Francisco, California

It's about time that we write about our Spring break that we spent in the oh so sunny and flourishing San Francisco! 8 Days was a very decent amount of time to get an overall look of the city and the surrounding areas.

We had a local guide there, a guy that is doing the same thing there as I’m doing in NYC. So first he recommended us to sleep in a hostel called Green Tortoise (pronounced in the most amazing way, I still don’t know how to say it). We felt cozy about this hostel because they wrote on their webpage that they have a free sauna. And what a sauna! Basically this was a hostel built in an old building that had all the bathrooms on the corridor. So was the sauna: you just opened a door and there it was, a wood-covered room with a window and that was it. It was a “dry” sauna, which means you can’t poor any water or beer or any liquid on the stove. You just sit on the bench and wait for the room to get hot. Oh boy, never been to that kind of a sauna before but after all my prejudices, it got hot in there and I almost felt like in a sauna.

That was a curiosity about the first hostel we stayed in. Otherwise the hostel had a very San Francisco like feeling in it: the staff gave us tips where to eat vegetarian food, where to legally smoke inside, where we can find the closest liquor store… As if we needed all that information. In any case we just had a different kind of feeling of the city from the moment we entered it. As the days went by, the feeling grew stronger with all the visits to the hippie or gay neighborhoods or to the Berkeley University campus, where the students were very loud and visible even on a regular school day.

As in NY, there are many neighborhoods with inhabitants, new or old immigrants, of a certain country. There are neighborhoods like Chinatown, Japantown or Russian hill. It seemed to me that the Chinatown there has two sides: one for the tourists with all the souvenirs and clean sidewalks. The other side was for the locals that do their shopping in Chinese. So when you e.g. order some cheap and delicious Dim Sum, it can be a surprise what you have inside the dough. But that’s part of the adventure, isn’t it?

We did all the “must do’s” in the city, like walked across the Golden Gate Bridge (unlike other tourists, we kept on walking until the small town called Sausalito from where we came back to the city by ferry). We also ate the sourdough bread that serves as a plate for a soup. We walked on the top of a hill where the Coit Tower is located. That and many other places give a really beautiful view to this city of hills. One can see a magnificent view from the Marriot hotel’s (55 4^th street) bar on the 39^th floor.

One thing that we didn’t manage to do was to visit the Alcatraz jail on the island. The attraction is so popular that it’s recommended to buy the tickets in advance by Internet. Instead we saw the sea lions on the Pier 39…

Well we could have chosen to go see the prison, but we preferred hiking: on one morning very early we hopped on a bus that took us to Marin city from where we had a plan to go further and find Muir woods, the protected forest where you can see one of the eldest redwood forest. We ended up in Mill Valley, a small village with a bookstore and a post office. When we asked for advice how to get by walking to the Muir Woods, the locals rolled their eyes and told us that even with a car it takes a very long time and we can’t walk there. That was until we met a really nice and helpful woman in a bookstore. She knew that there’s a path called Dipsea that will take us to the forest. She warned us that it might be difficult to find the path but she sold us a map and wished us good luck.

I must say it didn’t take too much time and effort to get to Muir Woods. It was a very pleasant walk, rising up stairs and the hills, then going down on a forest path. We arrived to the almost magical Muir Woods and just stared at the old giant trees.

But that wasn’t all of it. We continued our hiking until we reached the Pacific Ocean and put our toes in the freezing water at the Stinson Beach.

We did one more trip away from the city: we took a ferry to Vallejo city, from where it was supposed to be very easy to go to Napa Valle winery area. Well it wasn’t so simple, but the eagerly helping tourist guide in Vallejo showed us the way to the bus stop from where we could get to Napa. After having arrived to the city we had two hours to taste wines. So the first thing to do was go to the Tourist information, get tips where to go and also get a couple of half priced wine tasting coupons. We managed to try two places, and those regional wines were just so delicious that we were more than happy about that adventurous trip of the last day in California.

There would be more stories about the neighborhoods like the Haight, Mission or the financial district, but I guess this will do for now. I’ll let L. tell about Berkeley. But one thing is sure: the Spring Break gave us a whole lot of energy with all its sun and adventures. Now the a bit less than three months here will be easily managed.:)

E.

Bronx Zoo

Our Valentine's day turned to be quite animal. We hopped on the train number 2 and travelled until East Tremont Ave/West Farms Square and walked a bit to get to the Bronx Zoo gate. Winter had made many of the animals go inside and out of reach but we still saw plenty. Like for example the tree kangaroos, who stayed in the tropical "Jungle World" space.

Seeing these little creatures play around brought some memories to E. When she was a kid, her favorite, a very touching movie told a story of an otter (Eurasian or European, I don't know). The otter's Latin name is Lutra lutra, isn't that just wonderfully onomatopoetic? Anyway, she discovered that this playful, water-living animal is probably her favorite of all.


There was also a tapir. But as you may notice from the atmosphere of the photo, it seemed lonely. Or bored. Or maybe it was only resting. There's always the moral problem of visiting the zoos: is it really necessary to gather those animals here where they don't belong just for us to look at and bother them?

At least many of them get to be in a group, like these ebony langurs which were very concentrated in each other.


The black panther looked very royal. But wait a minute, aren't there two panthers resting in this picture?


The Hog-nosed (also known as Pig-nosed) turtle was pretty much worth of it's name.

As we got out from the tropical jungle imitation, we found the most photogenic animals. The Californian sea lions were to be fed, and they tried to catch our attention. It wasn't difficult since they were living in a pool in the middle of the park ad they came showing themselves on the boarder of the pool. Pretty characteristic animals, wouldn't you say?



He's the big guy in the pool.

Oh there was some monkeyface audience as well...


When the feeders came, the sea lions had to do a bunch of tricks. Like getting the frisbee and bringing it back. Fish for the price. Almost every time they got their bodies up there easily.


Just could you give me some more fish?


The tiger was beautiful. But one of the animals that didn't make the impression of a happy animal, going around the same path in it's cage.


The same with the Polar bear. It seemed that its lunchtime was approaching, which maybe gives an explination why walk from door to door.


The little monkeys seemed ok, though. This cotton-top tamarin was one of the only monkeys we could capture in a picture since we didn't want to use flash while taking the pictures. The monkeys were running and jumping and playing with each other.


As the last but not the least of this series, here's a picture of an animal that looks so proud. The snow leopard, one of the animals that probably didn't mind the chilly circumstances.

A few Manhattan’s peculiarities:

• In the subway: You should not be surprise by seeing an eighty years old lady, a few months old baby in his stroller or a teenager in a school uniform in the train at 2AM. The evident difference in the statistic of passengers according to the moment of the day known from other cites do not apply to NYC subway. At any time during the day and night you can meet there as well young and old, busy and bored, hurrying up to work or coming back from parties. It’s a real population focus of the “city that newer sleeps”, of course apart from those who use only cabs or private chauffeurs. My favorite observation in the tube is a mass use of the I-pods or other similar items. Always at least half of my co-passengers (not only the youngest ones) entertain themselves with games, music, videos release be their gadgets. The funny thing is that usually they start to swing or even move according to rhythm delivered by their earphones. So in one wagon you can have a quite big group of people, each of them swaying in own rhythm, and unconsciously reacting all-together to the motion of the train. Sometimes it truly looks like a well designed choreography. And it offers my preferred game of guessing who is listening to what.
• It is rare to notice drunken people on the streets. They are of course but they don’t stand out. By walking around it’s hard to say where are the parting spots – the groups of tired party-goers are not very visible, even in Greenwich Village or East Village. Well, maybe beside of the cabs’ concentration near the hottest places.
• The same is with the smokers. The cigarettes are not as exposed as in stores in Europe; it’s the candies that you can find by the cash box. It’s so rarely that I notice the cigarettes smoke on the street that usually it takes me a while to recognize it form the canalization, the garbage, the traffic or the other people smells. And even there is a ban for smoking in the restaurants and the pubs; there are no smoking groups by the doors; even though it’s not so cold here.

L.

The Snow Day

We had belived that now there will be only the spring. We had remarqued the firsts buds and the yellow blossom of forsythia. And then, one day, it had come. It started during the night. When we woke up there was this strange calmness and silence in the air. When we opened the curtains everything was covered by the thick sheet of a white. And this white was still comming down in its fairytale motion.

When I got out with the camera I heard the female voice from the white car: hi sweety! why wouldn't you take a photo of my big ass taking this big white ass out from the snow, ha?

It become sure that our way to Columbia campus that day will be a bit different...
At the campus we dicovered that snow in NYC means not only fun but also a disaster. The mayor of the city announced "The Snow Day" and closed all the public institutions, including schools, universites, libraries and so on. And everyone got a day off because of the snow...Unfortunately the snow started to melt so quickly... The white tourned in to the usually, and that was the real disaster...