NYC Part 2!

On to the next part of my trip! Brooklyn day! Though I spent most of my time in Manhattan, I did get down to Brooklyn a few times! One of the first places I went was to this pizza place called Di Fara's pizza! One of my friends down at medical school told me that it was absolutely the best pizza in NYC. He told me some of the other famous spots... but that the lines were long and this place was by far better. I did have pizza a few other places and from what I can tell, he was absolutely right. 

Upon reflection, I should've gotten two slices. It was so tasty! Very thin, garlic-bread-tasting crust. It was amazing. I may not want to live in NYC permanently ever, but the food there is fantastic.

Next we decided to go to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens! The place is actually attached to the Brooklyn Museum, but already I needed a break from the (overly) massive museums. Going into the gardens was like stepping out of NYC! So green and open!

Definitely a beautiful spot! My friend and I greatly enjoyed just walked around and checking out the gardens. Nice to get a bit of space in the crowded city!

Then we decided to go to the Brooklyn bridge and walk across it. This is a view from the Brooklyn bridge, looking on another bridge and I believe lower Manhattan.

The Brooklyn bridge! It's actually a really nice place to visit because there are walking and biking paths separate from where the cars are driving.

Of course we were rewarded for our long walk down and back on the bridge by some fabulous restaurants a friend of mine from the area had recommended! Most notably was an ice cream shop on the Brooklyn side, a few blocks away from the bridge. They only had five flavors I think, but chocolate  chocolate-chip? Amazing!

We did have a bit more planned for the day, but it was getting dark so we decided to just enjoy the view and then head home for the evening.

The next day I was back in Manhattan, this time to visit the Museum of Modern Art! I wasn't sold on visiting this one, partially because I'm never really sure what "modern" entails and some of the modern art I see... seems like kind of a stretch... but I'm so glad I went! They had the incredibly famous "The Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh, my very favorite artist!

Van Gogh is just one of the most interesting people to me. He was unquestionably brilliant. It was amazing to me that he basically never sold a painting in his lifetime. 

One of the other artist's work I was happy to see was Jose Orozco's! Orozco was a famous muralist who painted a big and relatively famous mural at Pomona College!

The view from the MOMA:

Later that day I headed down towards the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan to check out this restaurant called S'Mac that a friend recommended. The only thing on the menu is macaroni and cheese, but of almost every time!

I decided to try and cajun macaroni and cheese with sausage and spices and green peppers and onions and it was out of this world amazing!

While I was in the area, I also decided to check out this park called the "High Line." It's a converted (former) elevated railway that has been made into an elevated walkway spanning several blocks in lower Manhattan.

From the walkway I was treated to one of my favorite pieces of art in the city!

The High Line was a really nice park, another place you can step outside the super crowded NYC streets!

And of course, what trip to Manhattan would be complete without a trip to Central Park! This picture is from another day, but such a nice place! My friend and I rented bikes for a few hours and biked around the entire park! It's surprisingly large, according to the guy at the bike shop, it's about 6 miles around on the bike path.

Right outside of Central Park is the Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka another massive museum you can't possibly get through in one day). I really enjoyed some of the exhibits in this museum--particularly the ancient Egyptian art.

While I was in the city, I had an opportunity to go to a comedy club with the friend I was staying with! We went to this place called "the Stand" where we had the opportunity to see Amanda Seales perform a comedy set called "It's Complicated," which was just her (and the audience's) commentary on relationships, losing love, and being open to a new relationship. I didn't get all of the references, but I definitely had a good time with lots of laughs!

And that's it for this post! Look for more NYC pics soon! :)

PS. Only two days until my new semester starts! Just took a look at my schedule... 8 hours of class MW&F this week. Should be busy as a bee soon!

NYC Part 1!

Hello, lovely readers! The next few posts are going to be a bit different from normal... they're going to cover the two week trip to NYC that I just returned from! I decided to go largely on a whim! I had always wanted to visit NYC but the right opportunity hadn't presented itself. But looking at tickets from my island, I found it would be quite a bit cheaper to fly to NYC than home plus I wouldn't have the hassle of having to spend the night somewhere, shaving a bit more money off the top. Of course NYC is expensive (and definitely was rough on the wallet) but hey, you only live once! So I decided to go! Admittedly, the couple of weeks before my trip I was growing increasingly nervous about it and actually thinking about ducking out and just going home... but I'm so glad I didn't! NYC is a great place! I wouldn't necessarily want to live there permanently, but what a place to see! 

I spent most of my time in the city with a friend from college. I crashed at her apartment and the majority of things I did in the city we did together. One of the first things we did was just to help me get my bearings a little bit and so to downtown Manhattan we went! We of course visited the super famous Times Square! This is where the big New Year's bash is every year! This day it was surprisingly not crowded (must've been quite early still, it seems like most things in the city aren't up and running until 10 or 11!), but normally it was quite jammed with people!

And of course, Broadway was right there! I was actually really surprised about Broadway. I kind of figured all the theaters would be lined up on the actual street, one after the next all down the road. Not even close! Many of the theaters aren't even on that street! The two musicals I was lucky enough to go see, "Once" and "Phantom of the Opera," were actually both on neighboring roads. It seems kind of strange to me that they say you are "seeing a show on Broadway" or someone "made it to Broadway" when the theaters aren't even there! Maybe the older or more original ones were, but it still seems pretty crazy to me! But Broadway was of course amazing. Other than seeing some friends, seeing a couple shows was definitely my favorite part of the trip. Such amazing talent! More of that later, I'm going to try and keep this kind of sequential!

There is definitely an assortment of different things to see around the Times Square/Broadway area in Manhattan. I actually never went into this place, I think it was a bar and restaurant, but I just loved the sign. :)

The Shake Shack was one place near Times Square that had been recommended to me! Famous for their burgers, fries, and milkshakes, I thought we had an In-N-Out type situation on our hands! Like everything in NYC, we had to wait in line a bit to go in, but it was so worth it! I had missed American food so much! I definitely got a little spoiled, eating out the majority of the time for two weeks. Even fast food was a treat though, so yummy!

My favorite was definitely the milkshake-- chocolate! There isn't much in the way of (affordable) ice cream on the island, so I definitely took advantage of the options in the city!

Looking back on my pictures, it seems I spent quite a few days in Manhattan! The next few pictures are from a bit later in my trip, but they are also from Manhattan so I decided to include them here! (I think despite my best intentions, this may get a little bit unorganized! I do have over 300 pictures though, so there's only so much I can do!)

First, the Natural History museum! I had heard a lot about this museum from numerous friends from the city area so it was of course one of the first I wanted to check out! I guess to a certain extent I didn't know what to expect to see.... "natural history" is of course a pretty broad term. The museum was famous for dinosaur bones and that was definitely one of my favorite exhibits (more pictures from that in a later post, I'm going to try and keep this kind of chronological in terms of my pictures). They did have a lot of different things though including an exhibit on human origins, a sea-life and whale exhibit, different geology and space exhibits, and numerous cultural exhibits which admittedly seemed more like art or culture museum stuff but was cool nonetheless!

And they had giant, ancient turtle remains! Turtles! My favorite! Though these things were quite giant. I had a really great time at the museum, though I was definitely frustrated by how big it was and how after a few hours I couldn't appreciate everything as much as I wanted to. But never fear! I actually went back with my cousin when she came to visit me and had a chance to check out my favorite exhibits again.

Heading to lower Manhattan then, one of the things that I wanted to do was check out the 9/11 Memorial and the new WTC1 or Freedom Tower. All politics aside, since that is really not the purpose of this post, 9/11 was just such a critical event in our world that even my life will always be divided into pre-9/11 and post-9/11. So much changed that day for US citizens and for people around the world.

This is the new tower. It is 1,776 feet tall and is the tallest building in the United States, the third tallest in the world. I actually think it's a beautiful building, and for me it was so nice because I could see it anywhere from the city which was quite helpful in orienting myself. It was a bit interesting how you have to visit the memorial, which is near the base of the building. You have to go get passes (and go through security pretty much like an airport, no photos allowed of that of course) and then walk to the memorial. Admission was a suggested donation (which I did not pay; I find that highly questionable. It feels too much like profiting off of massive destruction and all of those people's lives), and then you could head to the complex. They are building a mall right at the base which I find pretty interesting too,  but the memorial itself is definitely eerie. As it probably should be.

The monument takes the form of two deep pools where the bases of the old towers were. There are two levels, the inner one drops so deep that you can't see the bottom. For me, it kind of created the effect of drowning in sorrow, bottomless. I'm not sure what the architect thought, but that's what I was thinking when I was there. Surprisingly, the sculpture was actually quite similar to one that was at my college which was unexpected. Both my friend and I thought so, very strange to me; I don't believe it was the same or a related architect (based off a preliminary search). It was interesting to me how many people were there. US citizens, business-people walking by, and tons of foreign tourists as well.

To continue the day, we headed to the very lowest tip of Manhattan to Battery Park where we got on the Staten Island ferry! We decided to not actually go up into the Statue because apparently it's quite expensive and the lines so long, but we did take the ferry to go see the statue and surrounding area between Manhattan and Staten Island.

We got a great view of lower Manhattan! You can see the WTC1 again, the tallest building towards the left side of the picture.

We also passed by Ellis Island! I really wanted to visit; I'm pretty sure I have relatives who have signed the book there, but unfortunately it was still closed for repairs and renovations following Hurricane Sandy. I didn't realize it was so close to NYC though, definitely cool to see, even from a distance!

Then of course we got to Lady Liberty herself! It was kind of funny when we were going by the Statue-- it was smaller than I expected! It always looks so huge in pictures, and I mean it really is, but compared to the Empire State building or WTC1 it's so tiny! It was still pretty awesome to see though! I'm not sure I could've gotten a more all-American vacation in!

I'm going to stop this post here, but I'll get to the next one shortly! :)

Baby Turtles!

Hello dear readers! I know it has been far too long, but admittedly I have been quite busy with that medical school thing. But can you believe it? I only have one more semester on island, and I will hopefully be relocating closer to home! There are definitely things I will miss on the island (some details of which are contained in this post), but I can't even begin to describe my excitement about being home! But, more on that later! This post is to tell you a little bit about when I got to see baby leatherback turtles hatch and crawl to the ocean!

First things first! I have always been interested in seeing this happen, but it is quite tricky to schedule as they hatch at night and of course on variable days but this time I got lucky! I had intended to go a few weeks earlier when my parents had been visiting but the right opportunity hadn't come about. But a few days before this trip, a friend mentioned some other people had seen the baby turtles and it was the peak season to see them! So we booked a ride and called this beach resort where the nests were located and we schedule a trip! The place we went to see the turtles was called Rosalie Bay. It was clear on the other side of the island and about an hour and a half drive each way. A very, very long hour and a half over bumpy roads and in some place, gravel they liked to refer to as a road. I took a few motion sickness tabs so I got through it, but admittedly I wasn't feeling too great afterwards. But boy was it worth it! The beach was facing the Atlantic side and it was just beautiful around sunset.

Black sand and big waves! I wished I had brought my swimsuit, though I guess they do say swimming on this side is a bit dangerous. Definitely beautiful though. I went to the beach with a few friends, and we enjoyed walking up and down in the shallows a bit before turtle-time!

And then it was time! So, to give you a little background information, the organization that oversaw this operation is a type of conservancy group that finds leatherback nests in developed areas and moves them to this protective beach. Now I'm not entirely sure about that... obviously I think they should be protected but admittedly I'm not sure if this is the best way, but it is really cool that the scientists protect the nests from dogs and cars and record how many are hatching. They are very particular in how they move the nests, making sure they are the proper depth, the proper temperature, that kind of thing! On this day one of the nests was about due to hatch after a 70 day growing period.

And hatch they did! The first nest that we looked in unfortunately only had broken shells and dead baby turtles. The scientists weren't really sure what happened there, but they did take careful count of how many eggs were there, how many looked developed, that kind of thing. The second nest though...

Baby leatherback turtles! Ultimately there were about 30 baby turtles (from a total of about 100 eggs which, according to the researchers there, was a little better than average in terms of a normal amount of hatching). They were just the cutest little things! Turtles are absolutely my favorite (largely because I've been lucky to see them in a few different places in the world and learn all about them... plus, they can find their way back to the beach they were born on because of the magnetism of the sand, isn't that incredible?!), and this was just such a once in a lifetime experience!

We did get to hold the little fellers, they were just so cute! Almost as soon as they were out of the eggs they were raring to go! Already using their little flippers to "swim" through the sand!

After appeasing the paparazzi, it was time for the turtles to head to the ocean! We had to turn off our cameras to check out the running to the water. The turtles are actually guided by the light reflecting off the water so of course it had to be perfectly dark to not distract them. All of them made it (no worries about getting harassed by seagulls with us there!) and hopefully began their very long lives in the ocean. :)

I had the most wonderful day (even with the car ride) spending some time with friends on a great beach and seeing the little turtles. It isn't always easy living on the island, but it does have its incredible moments. I'm so lucky to have had this opportunity, and I won't soon forget it!

I will write more again soon! Next post: my trip to NYC!