Small city

there is boston, seen from a hill between the 2 cemeteries behind our apartment. its nice to walk up there. too bad that whole place is covered in shattered beer bottles... :( last time we were there it was even worse than before.

boston is not that big, actually. if i dared biking there you can easily get around the entire city. but well, there are still no bike lanes everywhere, although there are significantly more than when we arrived here 3 years ago....

Great weekend...

i wish i indeed was writing to tell you this has been a great, busy weekend and there was no time to update the blog; but... me and tim are both sick. buhuhuhuhuhuh. we didnt leave the apartment today and when we did yesterday for some groceries (but it turned out we both didnt want to eat for most of yesterday and today) we felt even more miserable. 

this is from last weekend when we had a nice hike somewhere not too far from our house. the skyline is the one of boston. 

now its time to go back to bed again... :(

Orange line

this is the train i take everyday to get into boston. bostons skyline you can see in the background!

it is a few stations after the one i get on, where they store all the orange trains that are not in use.... you walk above them when you leave this particular station (you can see the reflection of the glass, unfortunately).

its so hot here! usually im ok with it, but at this very moment... beeehhh.. maybe its also my hote computer, and we were using the oven quite a bit this evening (making dinner, baking bread, etc etc). but as usual, i get cold just a few minutes after we turn on the airconditioning....

good night!

That's Manhattan!

as we saw it last month. the tip of manhattan with battery park. the tallest building, not yet finished, is the freedom tower that is being built at the site of where the twin towers stood.

my computer is slower than ever today (i didnt think it was possible, but now i know... :((( ), so perhaps tomorrow i will tell you from where i shot this pic!

From afar...

... you can still faintly see the boston skyline! just compare it to this picture...
above we were in gloucester, rockport, or somewhere in between.

Boston skyline

boston is visible from many smaller towns... above, for example, we were in lynn, some 11 miles from boston. we hiked a bit in lynn woods, and this photo i took from a tower we climbed. as it was such a clear day, we could see pretty far!

NOLA skyline

couldnt choose which picture to post! something from the colorful french quarter? the less touristy and less well off neighborhood around it? the sculpture garden? canal street? (i really liked that street) a cemetery? (they are really different from the ones i know) the mississippi river? with or without a boat? so... i choose the skyline of new orleans (NO) in louisiana (LA) as seen from algiers point. as you can see it was rather misty, and this lasted the entire day, so i dont really know what the skyline of NOLA looks like...

new orleans really feels different from memphis, and i liked it better. it was definitely more lively, and there was more to see. the houses more colorful and cute. and palm trees! those make a difference too, and i really think they can make any place look more friendly... the air felt much warmer here too, it really felt tropical and humid. unfortunately it was not the best day; it was raining on and off, and the entire day there was a dense fog. that made for some nice pictures though. this morning we were about to take the ferry to algiers point by foot, but just before departure they told us it would not be coming back until the fog was less dense... (you could really see nothing ahead of you). we thus went off again and instead drove around new orleans a bit, and finally drove to algiers point ourselves. that was much nicer as we explored the area a little more. then i snapped the above pic and we were just in time to take the ferry back, for 1 dollar (free when by foot). the mist above the mississippi river was so beautiful! and it was interesting that it got really cold when we went through it. a boat next to us completely disappeared and then appeared again... cool!

i think i will post more pictures later, on my flickr account. i guess when we are back, since now there is no time... :) but there is so much i would like to show!

Bye boston!

tomorrow morning (painfully early) we leave boston.... and will return after new year!! 

above a picture of the boston skyline. those knowing boston will recognize certain landmarks, like the prudential, and the harvard stadium... this pic was taken after the first snow of the season, on the last day of october (if i remember correctly), from the tower on the mount auburn cemetery in cambridge. everyone visiting boston should visit that cemetery; its really beautiful! and everyone living here should visit it at least once during autumn and during spring.. :) i myself didnt know of its existence, until someone asked me whether i had been there already, and after living here for almost a year i hadnt heard of it.... what a shame!

it was founded in 1831, and supposedly america's first garden cemetery, with "classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain". wikipedia also tells me that cemetery is derived from the greek, meaning "a sleeping place". well, anyways, time for bed now. alarm goes off in 4 hours...

tomorrow i hope to post a pic from our first destination!

Birthday weekend

it was my birthday this weekend. and therefore, tim and me went to new york! tim booked a very fancy hotel, next to the wtc-site. or now, rather, the 9/11 memorial. our room was on the 42nd floor, with many huge windows, giving us an amazing view in 2 directions (we were on a corner, so more windows!). it was really beautiful.... yes, i went up on rockefeller center, and the empire state building, but this was a totally different experience. seeing manhattan during the day, at night, in the early morning, during sunrise. waking up during the night and seeing this incredible view.... really cool (too bad there was this enormous flatscreen blocking some of the view.. :).

to my left you see the tower that will replace the twin towers. if i understood correctly, they are now halfway with it.

more tomorrow!

Bye bye!

above my sister and i, in front of the boston skyline. this was during the first weekend she was here. i had read in some magazine about a great lunchroom/restaurant, so went there to have lunch. it was a teeny tiny place, with a lot of people working in the small kitchen; pupuseria mama blanca. the food was good and sooo cheap, and the waitress so cute! it wasnt a place i would normally goto, but i was glad we did! yum yum mexican food. after that we walked a bit through the neighborhood, and discovered this nice view of boston we hadnt seen before. after that we had a walk through the nearby marina, which was great too, as there were a lot of huge and interesting/beautiful artworks... surely i will post some pics of that sometime...

yesterday my sister left for the netherlands again. too bad i had to work most of the time, and too bad the weather wasnt that great most of the times, especially compared to holland right now (but the last days were good!), but we did goto new york... and we had dinners at a lot of restaurants... once again; we do not usually go out to dinner that often! i do need to visit the gym a bit more now....

and isnt it funny; when we were young, people sometimes asked whether we were twins, which i always hated, since i am TWO (!!) years older than her.. :) but now we dont look as if we could be twins anymore, i think....

Boston skyline (2)

this time from an industrial area around the red line's andrew station. wherever you are, you can always recognize the hancock tower (to the right), and prudential to the left...

ah, and there is a cherry picker/lifts..., which was the reason for me to pick this photo... :) here you can see only one, but there were actully many, many stored there.

im quite busy currently.. so its hard to find time to do my blog and/or check others.... :((