Santa Monica

today we (or actually, sylvia, since i cant drive!) drove to los angeles!! we went to the getty museum, which was beautiful.... and so huge... and of course my pics were disappointing...

after that wedrove on to santa monica, where there were lots and lots of shops, street performers, and at the end of all that the endless sandy beach, as you can see above.... 

then hollywood which was so different from what i imagined. somehow it looked a little sad... all not as fancy and glamorous as i had thought... but so cool to be there!

and now im tired and not at all in the mood to write or refer to wikipedia... :) good night!

Palm trees

palm trees are everywhere in san diego! literally everywhere and everything seems to look better because of them, even parking lots, or so i think...  according to wikipedia, palm trees are a popular symbol for the tropics and vacations. for me, palm trees were something from cartoons, and it was only when i went to a conference in spain that i saw palm trees in reality, and realized that they are not only in cartoons.... (stupid, huh).

but now im tired.... so good night!

Im in......

when i arrived last night it was dark already, all i could see were palm trees everywhere.... because i am in ... san diego!! i never went to this side of the us of a, while my friend sylvia lives there. while she has visited us already twice in boston, we never got to visit her so far!

but finally.... here i am, on the couch in her apartment! today we went to a photography museum, and had a walk through the park, and then a veeerrrrryyyyy long walk at the beach. so pretty! and a lot of people were enjoying the sun and the water.....  many people on bikes... isnt he gorgeous.. ? :D all like in the movies, but better!! ah, and tim just said this guy reminded him of the one we saw in texas, you can see him here... hihihihihihi.

my, it looks so different here, compared to boston, let alone the netherlands... hahahaha.

Me toooo!!!

this is at newark international airport.... the view from my window onto new york city, which was not my final destination... yup, i decided not to stay at home either and went somewhere... perhaps today you see where i went! ;)

Glass ceiling

my dear friend wikipedia tells me that the glass ceiling refers to "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements." i do not necessarily think that this only applies to women, so i am happy to read that the next wiki sentence tells me that it can also refer to men.

glass ceilings can be pretty too; above you see part of a glass ceiling. its in the MFA, and belongs to the chihuly exhibit i wrote about before, we then could not get in. i actually then saw it a few weeks later, but today i went with someone who had not yet seen it. when we got to the museum i saw lots, and lots of people, that formed a line, extending from the entrance up to the sidewalk onto the back of the museum... whoops. yup, it was free entrance night today, but more importantly, the last week of the chihuly exhibit. and no, being there around 6.45 was too late to get to the exhibit, even though the museum closes at 9.45. the MFA people were smart; they were offering us the option to skip the line and get in immediately.... if.... you become a member of the museum for 75 dollars. some people did... :) we (like many others) just left when it became clear we really had no chance to get in, and had a delicious dinner instead! here you can see some more pictures. it was hard to take pics, as it was rather dark there, and the sculptures so big!

Flying home

well... i dropped tim at the airport today; hes going home to the netherlands to visit his grandmother, and then on to france to visit his parents. im staying in the us, enjoying the weather!! but its weird to suddenly be alone, or rather, without tim, after more than a year always being together..

Fashionable bostonians

GQ, which stands for gentlemen's quarterly, is a magazine apparently the male equivalent of vogue (oh, am i glad that wikipedia is there to literally explain me everything! how else would i have known what on earth GQ mag is!). they did a poll, which made boston the worst dressed city of america, which in turn was so shocking, that it was on the cover of the free newspaper, cnn, and on the (local?) news. i found back that article and just had to copy what they write about boston style: "Boston is like America's Bad-Taste Storm Sewer: all the worst fashion ideas from across the country flow there, stagnate, and putrefy. To be fair, it's hard to be a fashion capital when half of your population is made up of undergraduate hoodie monsters, including those unfortunate coeds who don't realize that leggings-as-pants were supposed to be paired with tops large enough to conceal their cameltoes." and this: "For the more proletarian-minded, there are the modest little burgs of Cambridge and Somerville, where everyone dresses like the proprietor of his or her very own meth lab." eh....?

well.. what can i add other than the picture above... the socks might be some sort of fashion statement, but after that it only gets worse, and where did he get that hat or whatever you call it?

Mountain angels

on sunday we finally went to mount washington in new hampshire! i had been wanting to go there since a while now, but it is quite far (3 hrs by car). so, we got up early, and arrived down at the mountain around 11.30. it is 6,288 ft, or 1912 m high, the highest peak in this part of the us, and famous for dangerously erratic weather (wikipedia). the weather was perfect, sunny with only a few clouds. i had put on my most sporty outfit and my ugly running shoes. yep, we would walk up that mountain; a 4,4 mile hike! i decided to take tims camera bag taking all the lenses we have, and tim carried a backpack with food, water, extra jackets etc. the first part was fun and all. the path so rocky, but very doable. halfway, or rather, what we thought was halfway, we had lunch. unfortunately, we could not find the place where we supposedly could fill our waterbottle. not so nice, as we would have drank less.... soon after that, the path became more rocky, and considerably steeper. but still, doable. up, up, up we went. getting more and more tired. but the views were beautiful and the weather nice. and we saw so many people, also rather old people, so why wouldnt we be able to do this? at some point, while we thought we were really almost there, we drank all the water! and the path was getting more and more difficult. at some point, there were only rocks, and it was really steep. and i was tired, and we got  past the treeline and we were up so high and the sun was shining and i never did something like this before.... i was getting nasty with tim.... and why did i bring that stupid camera bag?!!

luckily, our fist mountain angel arrived! you can see her here. she was training and had an extra bottle of water, entirely for us!! that was great, and we got some courage again.... then we climbed up rock after rock for another 45 minutes, before we finally reached the summit. we took all the required pictures, including this one. in total, it took us nearly 5.5 hours!! all the while, i was telling tim that i was not going to walk back that path again... however... taking the train or shuttlebus back down would be 45 dollars per person!! we did not even bring that much money! lucky us, once again, we could drive down with a family that visited the mountain for the first time with their kids, 20 years after they had visited it together for the first time.... what would we be doing in 20 years?

so, we had a great day, but certainly it would have been less nice without these people that helped us out! thank you, once again!

more photos of our adventure? here!

Bike lane

in some parts of boston and cambridge you have separate bike lanes. as above; the green lane is for bikes... in the netherlands, almost everywhere you have separate bike lanes. being used to that, i really do not feel comfortable biking here, especially in combination with the shitty roads (so many big holes you have to avoid, while at the same time avoiding big cars!), and big cars that are not used to tiny bikes...

as i said so often before; i really miss taking my bike and going somewhere quickly...

American emptiness

this was last week, in new hampshire. it felt like we were driving through a movie set. everything so empty, here and there a house, a lone shop, just like in the movies. only the men with guns were missing.. but we did see a gun shop (i ofcourse thought it was a gum shop, at first..).

Happy family

looks cute, no?
at the frog pond, once again, in the boston common.
im not so much in a writing mood, these days.... perhaps next week again!

Yellow fan

the MBTA recently painted the fans in the subwaysystem yellow. when i first saw them, i found them really funny. sooo big! and would they really cool down the stations? soon i got used to them, until we had a visitor who showed me her pictures and said she tried to picture those big fans, as they looked so funny. only then i remembered that i once found them funny as well... :)

Big bag

what a big bag for such a ittle girl!

someone once told me that everything that while going through life you put all experiences into a bag that you will carry with you onto the next experience, and sometimes you get something out of the bag thats useful for another experience. 

i guess now i should say something deep too, but... hmm... im rather empty! i guess its all stuffed too deeply in my bag...

Bridge closed

if there is no bridge.... then apparently you need to fly..! 

above you see a hang glider being pulled into the air by a plane.... later the hang glider will be released and eventually will fly/float/whatever back to the ground. so tim went to do some of that. or rather, he was on a field with 2 instructors and had put on such fake wings and was running like crazy and sometimes he would get into the air a little. i just wondered; if we were meant to fly, wouldnt we have just gotten some wings?! but tim liked it a lot.....

here some pictures of him in action! :)

Almost collapsing

i saw this old barn about to collapse, somewhere in new hampshire.... i took so many pictures but all do not show how interesting it looked! perhaps if i could reconstruct a 3d image of all the pictures i took... :) here you can see some more pics.

now im soooo tired! thats because we had to get up real early this morning; tim dragged me to new hampshire at 6.30 in the morning. for his new hobby (nope, not for some sort of nice surprise for me... ;) ).... while he was out playing, i got to walk around and invetigated this barn. perhaps i will show you more about his new hobby tomorrow.. good night!

Do not...

the church finally changed their sign (this was their previous one). i actually thought it said dont initiate instead of imitate. perhaps i should let them know that i think initiate in this respect is better than imitate. if you only imitate, does it really come from you? in the case of evil that would perhaps be better, but when being good......

sad, sad things, so many sad things happen every day.......

but! we had a good day, it was hot, but not as hot as yesterday. i went to the gym and afterwards to the pool, then some shopping, and i did NOT buy those green shoes i liked.... (i have more than enough shoes), but i did buy a new shirt (it was on sale!). and just now i painted my fingernails bright orange and my toenails screaming pink. i think it looks nice, but i know tim does not like it.... :D (and i used the word "but" 5 times as my english vocabulaire is so limited....)

Boston's great!

this evening we saw a movie at the hatch shell, as you can see above! next to the charles river, boston organizes free friday flicks starting in june until august. the movie starts at sunset, today that was at 8.14, and thus every week the movie will start a little earlier, funny, no? we got some pizza, sat on some scrubs (tim brought them from work, we fogot to bring a blanket like real americans), enjoyed free salads and beverages... and finally a movie. this time it was despicable me, an animated film. i liked it so much!

on wednesday's you can go to the hatch shell as well, then to enjoy some classical music, as i posted last year. in the meantime, it was really, really hot today. at some point the temperature was 39.5 degrees celsius, or 103 F. the only day it was hotter here in boston was on july 4th, 1911, when it was 104 F. when stepping outside for lunch today, i had the feeling i stepped into a hair dryer, as it was very windy, somehow i liked it! anyways.. authorities take the heat very serious, you can goto "cooling centers" in the city, and i now know that the MBTA has distributed 66 extra fans throughout the subway stations, where it can be real hot. as such, the total number of fans is 276. just so you know! :) here you can read it all.

Ice cream...

or just anything cold.... as it is soooo hot!! and tomorrow even hotter; 38 degrees celsius (100 fahrenheit). but i only notice it during the short stretch from home to subway and back as everywhere else the airconditioners are working at full speed... wearing an extra jacket at work to keep warm! isnt that weird....

just read on wikipedia that in the persian empire, 500 BC, something like ice cream was already served. when it was hot, people would pour grape juice concentrate over snow and eat this as a treat.  either snow would be saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers or taken from fresh snow that still remained at the top of the mountains by the summer... want to read more about ice cream? go here; then i goto sleep now... good night!

Heat advisory

so, its hot in boston, well over 30 degrees celsius, and friday its predicted to be over 35..... the mayor has therefore spread a heat advisory... :"The City’s cooling centers will be open and pools will operate with extended hours, until 9 PM, for residents who want to cool off.  The Parks Department also operates 50 water spray features at parks throughout the City."

what are cooling centers?! and is it allowed to enjoy the water sprays if you are an adult without kid? above another photo of the frog pond... :) note the 2 photographers in the front; they were there without children! but i presume they just wanted to catch the rainbow, like me...

but remember; you cannot get too hot; dont take off all your clothes and take a swim in the charles river, you will get handcuffed (while naked), as you can see here. however... i recently read it is legal for women to go topless! at least this is the case in new york: "The state's highest court established long ago that women have the same right as men to appear topless in public" if you feel the urge, august 21 you can participate in the national us go-topless day...

Playing sports

this was sunday, at the real american party! some badminton in the garden...

i just like the fisheye lens so much!

every evening i think about going to the gym in the morning, but in the morning i really do not see one reason to actualy go there. tim has much more discipline, and does go... perhaps i will too, tomorrow, since i spent yet another evening sleeping on the couch...