White road

well, this morning was disappointing; hardly any snow!! maintenance did clear the paths this morning starting at 5 am, but there wasnt much to clear. salt however was distributed throughout boston per the weatherforecast; lots of snow and lots of cold. yes, it was cold, but instead of snow, we walked on quite a thick layer of salt....

so.. a photo from our holiday. this was somewhere in new mexico, where we drove through some snow. here the entire road was covered! luckily there werent many cars and it wasnt slippery....

Freeze alert

while yesterday it was pretty warm (above 10C for sure), today started out quite cold. predictions are temperatures wont get above 0C (i guess thats 32F). and.... we started this evening with some light snow! 2-3 feet some weathermen say for tomorrow.... so, above another picture of our first snowstorm in the usa, january 2011. we got up and before they could clear the paths we "walked" through the snow at our apartment complex. we literally were in it till our knees! it was so cool!! (and cold!).

today we even got a "freeze alert" from our apartment management (weather forecasts say it will be well below 0C, maybe even -15C some nights this week). we are supposed to keep our thermostat at 60F to prevent freezing of the plumbing. every now and then our apartment gets to 50F (10C, during the night or when we have been away), and well yes, then we switch on the heating. but keeping it permanently on 60F (15C) seems a bit too much for me? i dont think we need that to keep the plumbing from freezing... we are even supposed to let the office know if nighbours are away, so that they can "protect their home". what do they do? they go in and switch on the heating without permission? i think thats a little odd....  well... lets see whats going to happen. we now at least know that management is not responsible for any disaster in our apartment....

Official inauguration

obama took the official oath for his second term in the white house today....

this "election" i saw months ago on some random wall in new york, i believe around chinatown... im surprised by the colors gum apparently can have...
ah, i just looked up their website; a group of people (street artists) placed them at several locations, they were also interviewed by cnn, and at the website you see pictures of the gum elections. the idea behind it is pretty cool: it was a way to stimulate people to vote, AND to have people stick their gum on a piece of removable paper (a face, actually) instead of on the ground where it will be stuck forever...

i went out with my camera today. and when i was ready to take a picture, i realized i forgot to put my memory card back in (in the camera, that is). buuuh. again no pictures this weekend! perhaps this week... snow is in the forecast!

Oooh Elvis...

when we were in las vegas this month (already 2 weeks ago by now!) we went to the famous "welcome to las vegas sign". we missed that last time, so.... it turned out there was a little parking area and signs with rules regarding picture taking etc etc.

as you can see, elvis was there too. at first i thought it was just funny and i tried to take some pictures while he wasnt watching. i was sure he was one of those types that wanted money from you for taking a picture of him/with him. but... as it turned out he was just happy to pose. for anyone! 2 times or so he was about to get into his car (or already inside as you can see here) when people took a picture of him. so.. he just jumped out again and posed. just like that. and then i thought it was a little sad... no? a guy, dressed in one of those weird elvis suit, a pink car, happy to pose for anyone with a camera.... 

Cool car

while on the highway in texas we saw this old and shiny car. as we were in a bit of a traffic jam it was easy to take a picture. but that was also too bad, a it would have been cooler without a car in front.....

all the snow here in boston has vanished! tonight is supposed to be pretty cold though... lets see...

Actual snow...!!

this morning we woke up to some sound. some machine going around outside. as we live in an apartment complex where every little piece of grass is manicured meticulously, we very often wake up to one machine or another (i especially dislike it when they blow the leaves away from 6am in the morning). then tim suddenly said; hey, isnt that the machine for snow removal? as i didnt expect snow, i didnt even bother to get up and look out of the window. until i woke up again and was curious about that machine; the trees are leafless since a while! and wow, there was all this snow!! and it was still snowing! a real layer of snow, with the trees all pretty and such. what a nice surprise!

so, along with my laptop i dragged my camera to work, to take some pictures along the way. this is right out of north station; canal street, which is lined with some pubs and lunchplaces that generally give me a sad feeling. except for the trees in summer... or like this!! from home to the subway we could still walk on a nice layer of snow, but right in boston that had melted away at most places already. and before lunch the trees had lost most of their snow... :( its much too warm! but... i had my nice surprise this morning and it was all white and pretty and since its melting away right now we dont have to deal with the dirty part of snow, when its walked on, and salted and melted a little and frozen again......

so yaayyy!!

Snowy Boston....

nope, this is not a recent photo, but one from our first winter in boston; january 2011. there was sooo much snow! i was just looking at the pictures i took then, and it was even more than i remembered. i enjoyed everything of it; the snowstorms during the night with the wind slamming around our apartment, and the snow just falling, and falling and falling. and me? waking up every so many hours to check "the progress". getting outside in the morning in a perfectly white and silent world... we had several snowstorms 2 years ago, and while people were complaining and saying it was not normal, i thought we would get something similar last year...? but then we didnt, so i hoped it would happen this year....? so far not... but lets see.... tomorrow some snow is expected, but as its not freezing, i guess there will be rain too. but the next night it will be freezing cold.... so... perhaps next week...??! i want to go out and take pictures! right now the weather is actually a bit depressing. its grey and not cold. but not warm either. just grey and boring.... 

above is right outside the public garden in boston; the commonwealth avenue mall, which is lined pretty trees on both sides, and many statues in the middle. i have some photos of those... perhaps i should go find them for another post...

Dutch snow....

this morning it was so warm that it felt like one of the first spring days; it was a bit humid. warm, but not superwarm, yet definitely with the promise that real summer is on its way.... normally you then look around (in boston, at least) and see the marvellous blossom trees all around you, and the grass getting even greener (if thats possible). but today; all grey. leafless trees... and me dressed too warm, as i am expecting winter!! winter! and im not getting it... :) i still have these nice red winter boots that i cannot use as there is no snow... :(

whereas in the netherlands its crazy once again; they have snow!! and far too much of it for what they can handle. trains are not riding, traffic is a mess, etc etc (although ofcourse, many people will still go to work by bike, because thats what real dutch do.... (not me though)). it started today and tomorrow more is expected, if i read the news correctly.... so yes, im a little jealous...

here a picture i took in the netherlands in december 2010, in a cute little city just above amsterdam, haarlem. some kids playing with a piece of ice, as then there was some snow too.... :)

Oooh, shoes!

i just saw the pink shoe, and thought, oh how cute, a shoe store in the middle of nowhere! only while taking the photo i saw that it wasnt quite the shoe store.... but a gentlemens club..... but, in the middle of nowhere! this was somewhere in new mexico. our first impressions of this state were not that good; desolate, many abandoned buildings, and sooo much trash along the road! eventually it got better, and we drove through some really beautiful places...

and yes, this weekend i didnt take a single photo. yesterday we did not do that much. we went to the mall for a bit (oh, how american!); its sales time, and i managed to get a pair of nice boots for just 6 dollars and 50 cents (i still dont know why they were so cheap), and 3 t shirts for 10 dollars. nice! i didnt need any of that, but really liked to get it for almost nothing.... today i did even less. we did goto the gym. i like going to the gym on sunday evening, since its usually completely empty. not today.....  is that really still from new years resolutions..?!

ah well, perhaps next week is better for taking pictures, lets see.....

More holiday!

after 2 days of boston i thought i could show another holiday photo! ;)

this was on dec 31st, when we drive through quite some snow. here we drove through a tiny town; there were just a few houses, it was around 7000 feet, and of the few buildings that were there, several were clearly abandoned. the above looked cool, but also didnt really seem to belong to something anymore... 

in boston its unusually warm for the time of the year, whereas its quite cold in the other part of the country!

i wouldnt mind getting some snow... but well, that doesnt seem to happen anytime soon....

MFA exhibit

currently, the mfa has a nice exhibit featuring photographs by mario testino. its his first us exhibit and shows you, in huge size as you can see here. many celebrities you will have seen before. either in some sort of fashion photoshoot, partying or in just some weird and almost unrecognizable pose. some photos are well known shots, but its cool to see them so huge in a nicely lit museum, instead of in some magazine or CD cover.

we goto the museum of fine arts (MFA) quite often. the place is so terribly big! you can easily spend hours there... but that would be just a bit too much, so its nice to go often and just look at a portion of the museum. cheapos as we are, we are not members of the museum, but we know very well when we can go for free; each first weekend of the month since we store our money at the bank of america, and... each wednesday from 4 o'clock onwards you can visit the museum "by voluntary contribution". they suggest you pay 25 dollars (the current admission price, which is pretty high, i think), but you can pay whatever you want, or nothing at all, and the museum is open till 9.45! so... thats how we came to love this museum; i cant count the times we have been here during the past 2+ years....

Hmmm, coffee?

i like coffee, but not too much of it. i drink mostly tea, and then some coffee. preferably strong, and definitely no milk or sugar. ah, and absolutely no sugared, milky iced coffee. beeeeghhh! but i feel thats what most people around here drink. i mean, they drink it partially, and then they "forget" the cup somewhere.

i think starbucks coffee is expensive, and nothing special (i only like this starbucks, next to the boston city hall, because there is real steam coming out of the kettle! i have never atually been inside..). i do like their lemon pound cake, but i guess its quite full of calories... :) the different "coffees" you can get are endless. one shot espresso, or two. with caramel, without. whole milk, skim milk, 2% milk, soy milk, whipped cream. then there are the flavored coffees; hazelnut (beeehh!!), dark roast, light roast, caffein, no caffein.... etc etc. so many possibilities! i read somewhere that there are some 35000 drinks you can order at starbucks, in theory; ordering coffee is scary just for that reason. what if you dont know what you want? can you really just get a coffee? will they know what you mean if you order that, a coffee...? 

but the most important thing; i dont like drinking from a paper cup. or the plastic thingie they put on top. it tastes so much better when you take some time, sit down and drink from a real coffee cup!
(last time we were in amsterdam i was amazed by the number of starbucks that were suddenly around; dont we already have nice "cafes" where you can get decent coffee...?)

Escaping inmates...

reading this sign on a rather empty road.... is kind of weird!

we didnt see any; i surely looked around whether i saw a scary inmate somewhere, luckily we were allowed to drive 75 miles/hour.... :) there is a novel titled "under the skin" by michel faber that is about someone picking up hitchhikers on an almost daily basis. thats all i knew when i started reading that book... and then i couldnt stop reading! it was so scary, but good at the same time... its one of those books that i read several years ago by now, but still think about every now and then (and definitely when i see or hear about hitchhikers). ooh! we just saw they are making a moving out of it (and there is already one from 1997), coming out this year with scarlett johansson... that might be interesting... (after reading the book, ofcourse).

sorry, still photos from our road trip! didnt take a single picture since we got back to boston....

Some bones

during our road trip we found these bones somewhere in the desert. i think we found them all in texas, and then we just drove around with them in the back of the car (you know, behind the rear window) until we reached las vegas. then we took some pics of them in the desert (as you can see above). and then... we didnt know what to do with them. just leaving them there would be a waste, i thought. but especially the femur in the back was far too huge and heavy to take home (although i thought it was really pretty). besides, i also wondered if you can just take bones in your luggage when flying? i googled and googled, but couldnt find anything on that... the second is a jaw, as you can see, and the first are 3 vertebrae.

well, the next day we packed our luggage, and there was no way the femur would fit. luckily we were in the fancy trump hotel; one wall was devoted to a nice wooden  closet with some glass shelves. there were some artsy things on there, and well... the bone perfectly fitted next to that! so we left it there.... i wonder whether they noticed when making up the room; i hope not, and that it will stay there for a long time... tim did take the jaw (but we dont have glass shelves; when the bag went through xray at the airport nobody asked what it was, so i guess you can take bones with you), and we forgot the vertebrae in the back of the car. luckily it wasnt human... ;)

now i just wonder whether we should call trump to ask if they found the bone..?

My driver

and here he is, my driver! isnt he coooooolllll?! :D

i really enjoyed posting pics to show off all things we saw on our holiday, and enjoyed all the comments, here and on facebook! sometimes i was so tired and the internet so slow, but i really wanted to post something twice a day, hahahahaha.... (tim already sleeping or asking; are you done now??) 

i guess every now and then you will still see some holiday pics...

Back home!

we got up early this morning. had a shared breakfast at denny's (however fancy, no complimentary breakfast at the trump hotel), dropped off the car and spent the rest of the day either waiting or flying.... booooring! :) 

during our flight i calculated how many miles we drove: aproximately 2400!! which is around 3862 kilometres. ofcourse, i should say; tim drove and i took photos (aside from the few miles that i practised on straight empty roads....). we had such a great time!! we saw so many amazing things... while 2 days before we left we still hadnt a clue where to go and what to do. we discovered by just going, and i think that was part of the fun as well. we felt like real explorers... minus the discomfort of unpaved roads and having to sleep outside.. ;) above our rental car, tim kept saying how ugly it was, but i think it was not too bad. winter was an excellent choice for the places we went to, we think; not insanely hot. and aside from dallas (colder than boston when we left) and flagstaff (-18C/ -1F) it was not that cold most of the times.

but... its also good to be home again. homemade food again! homemade bread! and lots of vegetables. we tried to get a decent amount everyday (carrots are a good while driving, but it gets boring after a while), but we didnt manage every day. time for the gym again as well... im looking forward to it. almost... ;)

Lazy day

last night we had dinner at the peppermill lounge in las vegas. we discovered it last time we were in vegas, and liked it, so we just went again... :) although i have never seen such a restaurant in the us before, i think its very american. big booths with pluche seats, a large table, and lots of neonlights everywhere. and the portions? crazy, crazy big. even for american standards. i had a salad and tim a starter; half or so was lunch for today... nice! i had a margarita and tim a gin tonic, hmmmm...

today we didnt do too much, compared to the days before. as i read in the comments, it must be quite a cultureshock... well, yes. but, unexpectly, its a welcome one! we saw so much, we had a natural beauty-overload.... and..  we are staying at the trump hotel, which is so very luxurious, and... we dont have to pay! the room is enormous, and the bathroom is crazy big too, with a huge jacuzzi. the bathrobes are very nice too :) so much luxury (i never saw so many towels in a hotelroom, there are 2 sinks and there is a tv in the huge mirror above it, for whatever reason...), it feels a little weird, and wasteful, but nice at the same time. only thing i dont like is that there is only valetparking, so everytime you need your car they get it for you... thats actually how we got the 2 free nights (and is the reason we are here again); we stayed in this hotel in may last year (through some discount site, ofcourse, its far too expensive for us!), and then the valet made a scratch on our rental car (luckily we had insurance), but the hotel really didnt handle it well while we were here and never admitted that it happened while they handled the car... so eventually they just gave us 2 free nights....

anyways, we did some laps in the fancy outdoor pool, went to the shopping outlet center (booooring), drove to the desert and took numerous pictures, and the day was over again. tomorrow we go back to boston, where its supposed to be quite cold!

Last park....

i think today we visited our last park for this trip. we drove to zion national park, an hour or so from where we stayed for the night. another 25 dollars park fee (just like grand canyon, but you can actually also buy a pass for 80 dollars, which will grant you access for 1 year to all national parks... somehow we didnt do that...). and yet again; it was so pretty! and the scenery was so different once again! to me the mountains looked really delicate, like silk or something; but yet again it was hard to photograph... :) it was great to walk around, however. the weather was perfect too; not hot (as would be in summer), and not cold, as it was very sunny. we needed coats and so on, but we had lunch outside. unfortunately many of the hiking trails were closed (some halfway, so we had to turn around), due ice on the paths.

in 1909 this park was named mukuntuweap national monument, but in 1917 the visiting director renamed it zion, as mukuntuweap was very unpopular (now i just wonder why he named it zion, but im too tired to figure it out tonight).

and now, we both have had a bit of an overload of natural beauty. i didnt know it was possible, but we both have seen so much, that it is actually enough for now... :) and so... this evening we gained another hour as we are in the pacific time zone. to be specific; las vegas, nevada! in the city itself we dont have to fear for natural beauty, thats for sure... ;) we are here to cash in the 2 free nights we still had at the trump hotel... we are in a very fancy room, at the 40th floor, and it might be that tomorrow we will just do nothing.... 

(this evening we went to see django unchained from tarantino. it started out great, showing a lot of the wilderness we saw for ourselves the past days, but somewhere halfway it started to become really weird and bloody and now im still not sure whether i liked it or not. lets sleep on it.... good night!)

Horseshoe bend

close to page we also went to the horseshoe bend, which you can see above. you have to walk a bit through some flat desert, and then suddenly the ground is gone, and deep beneath you is water. water that has shaped out the middle rock, making it look like the water runs in horseshoe form around it. it was very pretty to see, and scary again, the cliff was so abrupt and deep. you really had to be careful, there were small slits, and some of the stones were just a little overhang, that could break off when standing upon it. the only way i dared to look down (and most others with me), was by sitting down. its funny what games your mind play when there is a depth beneath you. i took some pictures with my fisheye as well, the only way you could get the entire thing on the picture; quite cool! once i will post some pictures on flickr or something.....

its very cold here in utah, -11C or something!! we are about to take off for our final destination.....

Taking pictures...

we have taken "picture taking" to an entire new level.. by now we have both so much its almost becoming a frustration! this morning we woke up in page, arizona, where we went to see the antelope canyon (as suggested by our friend from san diego). unprepared tourists as we are, we just drove somewhere (we are pretty sure we went to the upper canyon; there is also a lower canyon, wikipedia tells me), and discovered you cannot "just" goto the canyon; you can only go by guided tours. ours turned out to be 31 dollars per person, but that would be cheaper than the tour in the afternoon they told us. that one would be 46 dollars! (because the lighting was better at that time). we were loaded unto a truck, and were driven to the canyon through the navajo desert (luckily the ride was not too long, as it was very bumpy, driving with high speed through the sand). it was really amazing to see, and almost impossible to photograph, but everyone tried their best, just clicking, and clicking and clicking away..... i tried with my fisheye lens, without it it was even harder, and above you see the result.... but... being there was so much more impressive than the photo shows. these canyons are formed by water flowing through navajo sandstone, due to erosion you get the amazing shapes and curves in the rocks... 

if you look at google for images, you will see a lot of fancy ones from professional photographers, with light beams from openings above. wikipedia just told me that those beams are only visible in summer, when the sun is high up in the sky (so i guess tours are even more expensive then, apparently they range from 30-80 dollars per person! we got a cheap one). the family you see above had brought a tripod, and at every spot they put it down, and jumped all in front of it, like clockwork, hahaahaha.

another set of kids decided to carve their names in the rocks when we got out. it was quickly discovered by one of the tourguides and they had to remove it (dont know how well that worked). i was surprised their parents were not that angry. but even more so that the kids apparently thought this was a normal thing to do.... (moreover, it was posted at the parking lot, and the tourguide had mentioned it, but they had missed both these announcements as their mom upon reading the guidelines later on said; oh, i guess we should have read those rules before you started carving, kids!)

we saw more beautiful things today, but now its time to sleep in yet another nice motel. this time in kanab, utah, just across the state line with arizona.