Miami beach

the last day of 2012 2011 (!!) we went to miami beach and swam in the ocean! it was so pretty and blue, and very sunny and warm... i never swam in the ocean in december!! i also never swam in the ocean in/around boston, not even in summer as the water does not look as attractive as it did here... (actually it looks rather dirty).

these 3 pretty ladies were lying close to us, and i could not resist taking a picture... :) after that we walked around on ocean drive lined with art deco houses/hotels/clubs, it looked fancy and pretty. it was so crowded! (and many, many german people, i noticed). in the evening we dressed up and went by publi transport back to the city, for new year's eve. public transport in downtown miami is free! it was called the "metromover" and was without an operator, so you could sit in the front and have an amazing view of miami (too bad we didnt do it during the day). we were stupid to arrive too early, at 8 we were downtown... we walked around a bit and saw the urban jungle. it was as interesting as the tour through the everglades, with all the dressed up people, and the women with impossibly high heels (i noticed that women are much more dressed up here anyways than in boston. in boston it seems everyone goes in pyjamas to the mall, here they walked around in stiletto-heels and short skirts). it was great people watching, but around 10 we had enough... and... boring as we are... we just went back to the hotel... and had champagne in the jacuzzi.. which proved to be difficult too; it was far too hot to sit in that thing until midnight!! hahaha. we missed all the fireworks in miami, but thats ok with me..

First sunset

of 2012 we saw on key west, the southernmost point of the usa! quite a drive from miami, but it was worth it... :) ofcourse, in reality it was so much better... 

i liked the pelicans, you see 2 above. there are so many exotic birds around here, i like that so much! unfortunately i did not see any flamingos.... :( buuuuh. 

now we are both completely exhausted. holidays are quite tiring! ;) 

as i missed some posts last year (i did not do 365), i will post some more from the holiday later on. now its time for bed.

From Miami...

happy 2012!!!! (the skyline seen from a very posh neighborhood...)

it is hot here, and very sunny! i got a little sunburn yesterday at the beach... amazing, on dec 31st...

later more about the last day of 2011, today one more day of exploring...

Airboat tour

yesterday when driving from fort myers to miami we went on an hourlong airboat tour in the swamps of the everglades! above you see such a boat. it is a flat-bottomed boat propelled in a forward direction by a propeller, using a lot of gasoline... (i think). it was marvelous!! we went through tunnels of trees... saw 2 alligators; one lying somewhere in the mud and one swimming in the water (i found that a bit scary.. but one of the tour guides suddenly just grabbed it and pulled the enormous animal out of the water, yuk). and they were feeding him marshmallows! (writing that down im wondering whether he was real.. ?). sometimes the boat went really fast, and we were just going over branches of trees etc... yup, i was afraid, but still it was fun, and especially just beautiful... i took some pictures but they are not that good... you really have to see and experience that yourselves!! like on tv.. haha...only i didnt know those boats are very noisy because of the propellor.... 

it was very touristy, however. along the highway there were many, many of such airboat tours. perhaps if you look from the air you see a big black cloud coming from the swamps... not very ecofriendly. at the entrance you could also hold a baby alligator. the guy almost forced him into my arms, but he quickly understood i was really not into that. i thought that was a bit sad, everytime that animal was put into another set of hands, everyone wanted to feel it, and the guy was constantly touching its eyes to show how funny it looks when he closes them.. they should leave that part out! aside from all these "complaints" it was really amazing to see a little bit of the everglades like that.... :)

Alligator safety

as you can see, there were some warning notes, but quite ahead of the plastic fence, i was surprised about that too. we actually were just driving, and then we saw many, many people with cameras hanging over some ditch... so we turned the car and then we saw allll those alligators lying around there! it was a little weird. and indeed, i was wondering about the warnings... but they came a little later. here we were actually standing on some bridge, and the alligators were below, as you can see...

we also did a tour (im looking for a pic now, but they are a bit disappointing), and the guide told us that during summer (i think?), anyways, when the waters are high in the everglades (now they are low, brownish and stinky, and then they are clear and you could drink it, he said), the alligators move much more, are much active, and they also cross the highway (the one we drove on!!!), so you see some dead ones along the road, that had been hit by cars... :(

unfortunately, the info center was just closing when we were here.

Up close

this is quite a crappy picture, but its to show you how close we were to alligators!! can you believe it? i couldnt.... i only saw those in the zoo!! today we drove from fort myers to miami, through the everglades. the weather was perfect, around 24 degrees celsius, and it was all very impressive. the trees, all the different birds, and then the alligators!! at this point just the plastic was seperating us from 3 alligators that were just lying around. haha, they were actually quite boring, just lying in the sun, not moving an inch...

tomorrow i will post another picture... 

just realized that tomorrow is already the last day of 2011! the past week i kind of lost track of what day of the week and what date it is...

Retirement destination

again did not know what photo to show for today. i was looking for one pic to show it all, but ofcourse that one doesnt exist! we woke up in this fancy hotel in tampa and went straight for the pool again. we were a bit slow this morning (also, we switched back to "our" time again, so we basically lost the hour we gained when arriving in memphis), but we didnt have to drive that far today. we first looked around in tampa a bit. it looked nice! and: it was sooo sunny! no jacket needed, the temperature was perfect. tampa seemed quite a modern city, we went through it quite randomly, without a proper tourist guide or whatever (we did see an ice skating rink! haha... in a city where it last snowed in 1977) then we drove to st. petersburg, a city located on a peninsula between tampa bay and the gulf of mexico. there we went to the dali museum, which was in a very special building (photos later..). i really liked to see so much of his work, and to see that his early work is so different from what (i guess) most people (including me) know. really beautfiful, weird paintings and funny titles. unfortunately it was extremely crowded in the museum... grrr... but we managed to see it all, and from up close (so much detail!). then it was already 4 and we still had to drive to our next stop. i suddenly realized we missed sunsets on the beach for the past 2 days, so today we really had to... the sun was amazingly red while setting and we tried to get to the beach... that turned out to be difficult! right at sunset we drove trough al place where all the beaches were private! we found a house for sale and after all the abandoned places we have seen we assumed it would be empty, but.. while running through their garden... we saw the owners sitting outside... oops. we drove a little further and found a bare piece of land surrounded by "no tresspassing" signs. well, it as our last opportunity to see the sun setting into the sea! so we went.. it was beautiful but the sun had gone down already...  buuuuhh.. :(

ah well... now we are in fort myers. in yet another fancy motel! it has a huge pool, with real lanes for real swimming.... jeejjj! so thats what we did immediately after arrival. 

ah, and now i entirely forgot about the pic i posted; thats right behind the dali museum, in st. petersburg. you can see how sunny it is! i just read on wikipedia that this city is also named "god's waiting room", because so many people go here for their retirement (either american or otherwise). the other nickname is "sunshine city", since it is sunny here for 360 days a year... you choose which one you like best!

Abandoned places

during our holiday we already saw sooo many abandoned places.... unbelievable. entire motels, hotels, houses, cars, trucks, you name it. this morning we drove by the above place, it had 3 of this kind of cars, and 2 relatively new cars, all abandoned. the shops (and houses?) had still a lot of stuff in it, perhaps just everything (by looking through the window), and were abandoned too. just so weird! why? i keep wondering. is it the because this country is so huge, and has so much space, that you can just leave behind what you dont like/want anymore, and start anew somewhere else? is it because of money? someone bought it but then something happened, not being able to use it and its just forgotten? nobody wanted to buy it and over time it became worthless?

this morning we got up early again.. it was very sunny and we had a run in panama city beach! something i surely never imagined i would do... then breakfast at the waffle house (we saw so many along the way yesterday, we were curious). the waitress was so nice and the food was good and cheap, yumyum. such a breakfastplace you defenitely cannot find in the netherlands, where they keep filling up your coffee, and where you can share one plate if you like... then we had a long drive ahead of us again. we drove to tampa! the route was beautiful again. different from yesterday. we drove through many forests... and now we are in a very, very fancy hotel. it was only 90 dollars and when planning this trip i thought it would be nice to have a hotel after the airbnb home and 2 motels (but the motels were not bad at all). we got warm chocolate cookies upon arrival, and there is a gym (we went. sitting in the car is not good for us, we eat too much!!), and a heated outdoor pool (we swam) and a toooo hot outdoor whirlpool (how fancy!! but the champaign we had in the room.. :) ). and now its time for bed. tired again...

here i uploaded some more pics of our trip, from memphis and new orleans..

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....