Stilt house

this morning we got up early and left new orleans. we drove along the shore of the gulf of mexico through mississippi, alabama, and finally arrived in panama city beach, florida. yet another amazing trip. so many impressions it made our heads spin! the scenery changed enormously along the way and it is so much i am afraid i am already forgetting it. ofcourse we took pictures along the way, but today i am particularly disappointed with mine; they really do not show what i saw!! so... tomorrow i should try harder....

it was a beautiful sunny day, and we decided to ignore the "tomtom" system entirely. we drove through the bayou savage national wildlife refuge, which is where i took above photo. houses were all built on stilts (i didnt know that word), which is done mainly to protect the house against flooding. the one above is still in the very early stages of construction, haha! i especially liked the little plane (i think?) in front of it. then we were back in mississippi, but along the shore, and it looked entirely different from what we saw just 2 days ago! many, many fancy hotels and we saw several casinos. the rich like fancy beaches, i learned from that... then the road led us through some small towns and all the towns were equipped with the same sets of shops that are probably all over the us; a retail chain, a home improvement chain, several fast food chains... (many waffle houses in this part of the country). they depicted this nicely in the movie young adult that came out recently, when charlize theron is driving back to her hometown. that could be anywhere in the us....

then we entered florida and drove through pensacola beach on santa rosa island. it seemed as if we had arrived in paradise! white sandy beaches, no jacket needed, driving right along the shore. everything looked so beautiful there... and the white sand was amazing to see (i had never seen that). no strip malls there... just some houses and beach. after 1.5 hours more we arrived at our sleepng place for the night; panama city beach. we are staying in a motel right on the beach, unfortunately we just missed the sunset.. :( but we have a room with a view on the ocean!! 

buuggh, am i tired... tim is sleeping already since 9. he started to complain a little more that i cannot drive, and i should really get my license finally, as driving is really tiring and now he has to do all the work! but... im tired too! and im reading the map.... ! :) 

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!

Canton, Mississippi

this morning, christmas day, we left memphis and drove all across the state of mississippi!! it was very grey out and later during the day we had quite some rain, unfortunately... but it was amazing. while we first drove on the highway, we later left it for the smaller roads, leading us trough small villages and with too many new impressions... im just really amazed about how many houses, small (or larger) shops and gas stations are left abandoned... some already half collapsed, burned down, or otherwise damaged. we saw a lot of trailer parks too, and many houses so small, in the middle of nowhere.... some well-maintained, others surrounded in mess and old rusty cars etc. some poshy houses too, but not too many.

above is the city of canton, where we briefly walked around. isnt it cute? and isnt it like in the movies? (it has been the decor for some movies, just check wikipedia... ) we also stopped in jackson, the state capital, but everything was deserted, on this christmas day.... even many fastfood restaurants were closed... 

now i wish i knew more about this all! i wish i knew all the history, and facts. on wikipedia, i just saw for example that there are only 3 cities in mississippi with more than 50,000 residents, and 60% of all mississippi residents lives below the poverty level....

then we arrived in louisiana, and passed by the beautiful lake pontchartrain, eventually arriving in new orleans! you can defenitely feel that the air is different here, and although still chilly, its a bit warmer than memphis. we went to the french quarter for dinner. unfortunately it was dark already, but i think this area must be beautiful by daylight, we will see tomorrow... :) 

Oooh Elvis!

i think its fascinating how everyone in the world, or so it seems, knows elvis. i know who he was, that he was pretty, and the hair, sideburns and the dancing. and his final years in which he almost seemed like a caricature of himself, with even more hair and sideburns, and the weird tight jumpsuits. i knew it all (how? tv?), yet he was dead before i was even born... 

so, yesterday we went to graceland. that wasnt cheap, 60 dollars entrance! (already an 8 dollar coupon subtracted) and 10 dollars for parking... but for that we spent 3 hours marveling at everything elvis. first parts of his house (which was completely over the top!), then more about his rise to fame, his grave, next to his parents behind his swimming pool, his cars (he had multiple, and had 1 painted in pink and 1 in purple!), how he was despised by the press very early on, and how his performances were not decent (how stupid am i, only then i understood why he was called elvis the pelvis!), many many pictures of him (my goodness was he goodlooking!), his planes (golden seatbelt buckles...). i learned so much more about him, and yet still know so little about his life! they focused on his stardom, and emphasized his cuteness, but barely anything was revealed about his private life (other than how generous he was and how he liked to play and had many motorized toys to drive around graceland, while nowadays its strictly forbidden to walk on the grass, haha). so... yesterday night i spent most of the time reading more about him on wikipedia... haha. also, i am curious now how elvis was perceived in europe. when did he become famous, did my parents like him, etc etc.... :)

after that we drove around memphis a little more and went to the motel where martin luther king was assassinated. its now a museum about civil rights, but unfortunately it was closed as it was christmas eve, im still really frustrated about that! (and spent quite some time reading about that event on... yes, wikpedia..) then we had a beer in beale street, accompanied by some life music. that was nice, but the street was still pretty much deserted (perhaps also because of christmas).

it seemed like 50% of the buildings in memphis are abandoned and collapsing or about to do so, that was a bit tragic to see.... also the area around graceland did not seem to be very good. the only amazing thing was that there, in the middle of nowhere, we went to an aldi supermarket and found stroopwafels!!! probably the most dutch cookie there is! that was a pleasant surprise.. :)

Merry christmas!

merry christmas to everyone!

we toured memphis today and i had so many new impressions... amazing. i also took almost 400 photos just today and cannot choose which one to post! i actually wanted to post one from graceland, and write something about elvis, but right now im just too tired. so, instead, this christmas ball. we were close to the mississippi river in some park. we walked up a hill for a better view, and on top there was a sort of bowl (sorry, i really dont know how to descirbe it in english) of grass (so the hill went down again, as well as up, like a teacup on top of the hill), and in the middle of the teacup was one tree. with one christmas ball hanging on one of its branches. and many underneath it. it was as if we found some hidden treasure, really funny! i guess tim was a bit annoyed, but i was fascinated by the ball's reflections and spent some time trying to picture the tree and myself in them, as you can see above... :)

well, really time for bed now, tomorrow will be a long day, and hopefully along the way i will post more about memphis!

Hello from....

.... memphis! 

above a picture of the most famous stret in memphis; beale street. this is where many black musicians performed in the 1860s, and where elvis presley later used to spend a lot of his time. today, it was pretty empty, but it showed that it now mostly is a tourist destination. i guess we were a little too early for the music to start and people to come, but we wanted to see it while it was still light out. it was sooo cold! that was a little unexpected but well... 

we arrived in memphis this afternoon (after leaving our home around 4.30 this morning, beehhh! we had an extremely long wait (4 hrs!!)  in atlanta where we had to change flights since lovely priceline decided to change our original booking),  then we had a little debate which rental car to choose (i wanted bright red; better for pictures. tim wanted black. we went for the black as red cars are supposedly stopped more often by the police (source; big bang theory), and the tire profile was better according to tire expert tim, moreover the black car has massachusetts license plates; still i would have preffered red...), found our place for the coming 2 nights easily (here you can see pictures, its quite cool, with little notes everywhere and several music instruments you are allowed to use), and then drove and walked around memphis a little. its like in the movies!! my goodness, i wanted to picture it all! we were both sitting in the car mouths wide open. ooh, look here, look at that! there! but, it was rather grey out, so the pics did not turn out that well... maybe tomorrow! then we will visit the house of elvis, among other things....

now we are both exhausted, tim already fell asleep.

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!

Three sisters

posing for their mom, next to the apple store in new york. they were really posing, as you can see. and all so perfectly dressed... too bad i had the wrong lens at my camera when i saw them. it was so awfully crowded also. we went to new york because i wanted to see rockefeller center with the christmas tree and fifth avenue with all the decorations. but it was all so terribly crowded! policemen were guarding the lights and closed off the street with policetape when the lights turned red. complete organized chaos. you could hardly stop to take it all in, or someone would bump into you. ofcourse the real new yorkers also had to show that they were annoyed and clearly sighed and aarghhhed and pushed people aside to show their haste and that they had to go somewhere really important right NOW and all those stupid tourists were very much in their way in their city.... funny... i was glad we had spent the entire morning in the more quiet streets which were in fact more interesting than this area! but! we didnt really see it when it was dark, so perhaps then it would have been more impressing...

American graffiti

we went to spanish harlem to check out the graffiti hall (why not wall?) of fame... part of it you see above. it was one of the first places where graffiti writers could paint legally in new york, from the early 1980s onwards, organized by the school counselor. there were some pretty nice things, although im really not that interested in the tags, how fancy they may be. whats the use if i cannot make out one letter?! its only cool in the face you see above; its entirely composed of tags!! you can see that here, in a detail shot that i put on flickr. im wondering how often these walls change their content... here for example i found some pictures of the wall looking entirely different! im (still) reading a book about american graffiti, and saw pictures of the new york subway trains, entirely covered in graffiti. what a mess (inside and out)! only when they managed to eradicate that, painting on walls became more popular. nowadays, graffiti is a serious crime here, and you can be send to prison for 3 years...

Also NY

new york is not only the crazy times square, rockefeller center or fifth avenue. for a little more quiet, but perhaps less safe neighbourhood you can goto harlem (although depending where you go it can be crowded too)! which is what we did after washington square park. ofcourse most people know the apollo theater in harlem, where for example ella fitzgerald started her career at amateur night. however, we went to spanish harlem (96th - 120th st & fifth/third avenues), which is less well known, and less taken care of than harlem. the buildings are less fancy and the rents not as high as in downtown manhattan. in fact, it has the highest concentration of low income housing projects in the us. they do like to get their hair cut here. the opposite side of the street was lined with barber shops, i think we passed nearly 10 of them!

ah, i am now reading on wikipedia that al pacino was born on 108th street. perhaps in one of the above houses? (dont remember which street we were here, but somewhere around 110th-106th). i somehow liked this row of houses, but it was difficult to get a nice picture of them. we did not go there to check out houses, however. tomorrow a pic of what we went to see there...
here on flickr i posted another view of this row of houses, then it looks quite different, as you see!

Complicated pose

after sitting in the bus for several hours, we walked from chinatown to washington square park in greenwich village. when getting out of the bus, i realized it was a little colder than i expected and dressed for. brrrr. but still, i was defenitely wearing more clothes than the lady above!! i think they were taking pictures for some yoga-advertisement or so... altough to me it did not look that natural...

i just went to my beloved wikipedia for some more info on this park. its very big, and has quite a history! there used to be a native american village nearby, and they also owned this land. until the dutch (bad dutch!) attacked and drove them out. they did more bad stuff, as you can see here. until 1797 it was farmland, and then it became a burial ground (it was not yet part of new york at that time). in 1826 it became the washington military parade ground; a public space where volunteer militia companies responsible for the nation's defense were training. only in 1849 it became a park.... the remains of around 20,000 bodies still below ground....

NY loves.....

.... you not! we saw that once on a t-shirt and found that very funny. probably its true, also. but which tourist would buy that instead of the I love NY?

we went to new york yesterday! just for one day.... i was so curious about the christmas decorations there and... since its still not snowing it was a good opportunity to take the fung wah bus... (i wouldnt do that when its snowing). pfff, up we got at 4.30, just missed the first orange line train (like last time), but arrived at the bus terminal in time. hardly had to wait there, got in the bus, and off we went at 6.15, ofcourse again without a word from the driver. before we knew we stood in chinatown, NY, just before 10.... you can do quite a lot in one day, especially if you dont feel the urge to visit all the touristy places. but thats ofcourse exactly what we did, since i was so curious about christmas at 5th avenue. my goodness, it was soooo awfully crowded there!! (luckily we also went to harlem, but about that in another post). above is at columbus circle. i had seen those stars at several NY blogs already, but really wanted to see them for myself. they change color every so often, from a beautiful purple to red, blue, green, yellow... ofcourse i liked the purple best and ofcourse for whatever reason i dont have a picture of that. arrghhh... but it was so crowded also there and everyone wanted to take pics and the best spot to take pictures (in the middle), was blocked by some fancy lounge-area that you could only enter with a certain type of creditcard. why?!! it was such a disappointment... just a few months ago you could just freely walk around there and sit on some couches, and now it had become some exclusive area around which the poor tourists could walk and take their less-than-perfect pictures.. :)

then we went to have dinner at the same restaurant in chinatown as last time, and at 7 we got in the bus and by 11 we were back in boston. perfect! needless to say, more pictures to follow....

Funny, but...

...why? how did that piano get there? were they planning on burning it? why in this open field? somewhere around boston...

we just got back from the new sherlock holmes movie. very funny too. but... sometimes, i wondered, why? i couldnt follow it sometimes... but well, still funny...

Newbury street

on newbury street (if you click on the link you can see its apparently bostons most enchanting street) you can find hotel chocolate. i thought that was just a hotel named chocolat (perhaps after the book or the film?), and i liked the bike with the flag (and the fancy couple, although i was annoyed by the guy behind the flag, haha). the tire does need some air i see now. but... its not a hotel, its a british chocolatier and cocoa grower, with 55 stores in the united kingdom and 5 stores within the us and the middle east. you can go there for "gourmet" chocolate. sometimes we joke we should start our own shop with "good food", and we will use terms like "artisan, old world, european, organic". with those words we can ask a lot of many for our products, and people buying it will think they are very hip, and special.... maybe we need a bike and a flag as well...

In comparison

this is what "cooking" in the lab looks like... :) this is a very old pic, still from the netherlands. (i think taken in 2007!) the purple-capped bottles contain yeast cells, from which we were purifying a protein (actually working with yeast is not that bad, it smells nice.... like bread.. ). the bad thing was that i was doing this in a room in which it was 4 degrees celsius, to protect the protein. sometimes i would sit there for an hour or so, which was not the most pleasant thing... in the right corner you see a door to the -20 room. luckily no experiments there, but sometimes we would need to go in there to search something, the advantage of that was that 4 degrees suddenly felt very pleasant.
at least when baking a cake you only get fat, not cold... ;)

Christmas cookies

currently, im a little into baking. actually, i always like to make stuff from the oven (thats why i bought a fancy oven in the netherlands, thats not here with me, buuuuhh), but recently im trying a lot of new recipes. i dont know whether fellow scientists agree, but i think cooking is like doing an experiment in the lab. differences being that in the lab you usually do not (or should not) want to touch the stuff you are dealing with, defenitely you dont want to taste it, and more often than not it smells bad. i would even go so far that when it smells good in the lab, you most likely did something wrong. for example, you heated that high-sugar solution a little too long, and it turned into caramel. while that may be a good thing in the kitchen, it for sure isnt in the lab... :) (tim experienced that recently, and didnt touch the autoclave ever since...). other than that, its the same. you mix stuff, you wait a little here and there, you heat or cool, and in the end you have a result thats either good or bad (although bad in the lab not necessarily means you failed, it could mean the result is different from what you expected, while in the kitchen...). what i dont like about recipes for cooking is that they always list the amounts of the ingredients at the top, and in the directions they only mention the ingredients, not how much. in a labprotocol (at least in mine), i never list them all on top, but you just take what you need as you go through the experiment. thats just a minor detail (although it really annoys me a lot!! haha).  just as in the kitchen, you have all the ingredients standing around somewhere (but sometimes you have to go to a colleague to borrow that cup of sugar.... )

just by accident i stumbled upon this amazing cooking website a few weeks ago, and since then i made several of the dishes (mostly the cakes and stuff). its interesting, here in the us they cook by measuring out cups and table- and teaspoons, while back home i was used to measure grams with a scale. so for some of the first recipes i followed here, i converted the cups back to grams. but... working with cups is sooo much easier and faster than measuring everything out on a scale! that took me a little while, i have to admit, since i felt that taking cups and tablespoons was not "very precise" (nor scientific... ). moreover, you cannot just convert cups back to grams, as a cup of sugar is heavier than a cup of butter, for example.

so, i also made the abovepictured cookies, which were really easy to make, and they are soooo pretty!! they look quite like the picture on the site (which is not always the case). oh, and tim likes them a lot.... :)

Urban outfitters

urban outfitters is a very hip store. or so they pretend to be. the young people working there are also very hip. they are so hip that its almost non-hip.... i never dare looking at them let alone speak, as im not sure what will come out of them. will i even be able to understand their language? surely they are not from the same world as i am. moreover, they never give me the feeling im worthy to speak to in the first place, certainly im not as fashionable as they are...  i think i never bought anything, although we go to this shop every now and then. i guess its these uberstyled employees that put me off. if they look like that in these clothes... or perhaps just the price... they also have a lot of stuff for your home, extremely expensive but oooh sooo cute. stuff you really dont need, but would love to have, as it looks soooo cooolll. luckily, a lot of that stuff is either too cool or too expensive, and thus the price will be significantly reduced after a while... thats when we come in, and buy it all. thats why we now have a door-mat that says "home sweet apartment" (marked down from 30 to 2 dollars), and some journal in which i am supposed to make one sketch a day. not that i ever sketch... (marked down from 16 to 2.5 dollars) just to give you an idea of the kind of stuff they sell (and what i think its worth).

anyways... now i saw the abovepictured signs on their windows. "save $$$$ for booze"???! that really was too "snazzy" (just found that word in the dictionary, not sure its correct...) for me, i just couldnt go inside. or does it mean im getting old?

Looking up

at copley square. you see the hancock tower, as well as the ugly church in front of it. to the left are buildings of which i dont know the name.... and i guess another part of the church?

Nice... socks!

today it was pretty chilly! we went to a free photo exhibition and then had quite a walk through boston. along the way we saw some guys in speedos. standing around as if it was the most normal thing to do on a chilly saturday afternoon...

back home i found out it was for the 12th annual santa speedo run where men and women run for charity. in speedos.... and some santa decorations. they raised 250,000 dollars! too bad i missed them running... :( here you can see a video of the event. and here is their website, so that you can join next year, if interested....

Cleaned out

its funny how this morning i read about occupy boston in the dutch news before i saw it on the american... :) they cleaned them out last night more than 24 hours after they were supposed to leave.  in the gym i saw a press conference about it. the square is now really empty... and they are working hard to get it all cleaned up and restored by the end of this week. 47 got arrested. in fact, the police gave them the option to go, if they wanted, without arrest, and so some choose to do so. but 47 remained stubborn and got themselves arrested. how stupid is that? 

anyways.. i also read in the dutch news that occupy boston was one of the biggest movements. dont know whether thats true, but they were one of the few that were allowed to stay longest, and i think where the police really tried to be reasonable with them and gave them more than enough time to leave, so that it wouldnt escalate as happened in some other cities. im curious to see what will happen next. if they really are there to change something, it should not matter that they cannot sleep in a tent in some square anymore, right?