NewYork - part 3

When i was younger I had a history book, that had an old black and white picture of a parade in New York. Our teacher would always read the text out loud and me getting bored with how slow the reading was, would flip through the pages and day dream. Growing up in a small town in Sweden, that picture had a huge impact on me and I remember thinking how marvelous such a place must be where there are so many people and everyone is happy. I've seen many pictures of parades in New York since then and I've always had the feeling that New Yorkers love their parades. For the second year in a row we managed to time our visit to New York with the pride parade. A lucky coincidence that ment we were in for great party as the whole of Manhattan gathers to celebrate the simple idea, that love no matter what form it takes is something we all should be free to explore, express and enjoy.

Our day started early since we took an early night the night before. Again we picked up some coffee at the Bagel smith and started walking towards Bedford ave. Our goal was to visit the Brooklyn Flea Market. It was such a great, besutiful day to casually walk through Williamsburg. Bedford ave is the heart of Williamsburg and cram packed with trendy, cosy coffeeshops and restaurants. We arrived at the market to realize it was hand craft only. Something that mostly gives me shivers down my spine. Didn't really matter though cause the main reason to go down there was to view the Manhattan skyline from across the river. We threw a lazy eye on some of the various hand crafted items at sale, but decided we were more interested in getting some breakfast. We chose a quiet little polish cafe on Bedford ave, which seemed fitting since the area around there is an old polish area.

Mikael texted us and said he was on the way so we hooked up before leaving for the pride parade. Our strategy was to take the train to 8th ave to avoid being caught on the wrong side of the parade. Since we were so close to Chelsea market, Mikael and M ran in to grab a coffee at Ninth street espresso reknowned for their great tasting coffee. Myself I was stoked to get my hands on my first Starbucks coffee. Not because it's the best coffee in the world cause it most definetly is not. But because it makes me so nostalgic. After filling up on caffeine we walked down towards The Village to find us a spot to see the parade from. By pure luck we found an empty spot by the fence in a perfect corner. Some guys across the street had a party on the second floor and as soon as the dykes-on-bikes, who mark the beginning of the parade arrived, started firing of these confetti fire crackers that sprayed the street below with glittering confetti. When the parade passed by people cheered in a way that made it clear that New York is proud of all it's citizens. One of the highlights for me was that my childhood idol Cyndi Lauper was in the parade. Pretty cool.

Every parade needs an after parade drink. We hooked up with a friend of Mikael and headed to the first pub available for some pints in the sun. Mikaels frien tipped us about a great restaurant down the street called The Meatball Shop. We were pretty hungry by now so we decided to try it out. We said goodbye to Mikaels friend and grabbed a table inside. Their menu system is kinda fun and smart where you mark with a magic marker on the menu what type of meatballs, type of sauce and sideorders you want. Me and M had the veggie balls on a garden salad. I went for the parmesan cream sauce and M had the marinara sauce. It was excellent. We shared a pitcher of their specialty Bitches Brew which is fruit punch mixed with pale lager. It was surprisingly good.

After eating we took off to a The Sky Room. A roof top bar also recommended by Mikaels friend. It was quite a walk which was nice after stuffing ourselves with meatballs. The view was pretty fabolous but we needed to get back to Brooklyn to get ready for a night on town. A few cold ones later we found ourselves on the subway back home. This time we only took a short nap and met up with Mikael again at a place down the street from us called Union Pool. My favorite bar so far located in an old swimming pool supply store made into a bar. It has a really spacy outdoor patio with a taco truck. From there we went back to the city for some serious pride partying. I'm not gonna share the details of our night on town, only that it lasted til bout six in the morning. But thats what you gotta expect on a night out in New York.

 

Now I gotta get ready for our last night in New York. Hopefully I will post something else when we've landed in Tampa. Still a few days in New York that havent manage to get up here yet. See ya all soon!

 

New York - part 2

What a difference a day makes! Or in this case a night and a handful of nonprescription drugs. True to my habit i woke up early and decided to get out for some coffee while M was sleeping. It is an extraordinary event to wake up for the first time in a new place and explore your surroundings for the first time. We had deliberatily chosen to stay in Brooklyn over Manhattan this time since we wanted to explore what's beyond Bedford avenue. This day, the neighbourhood presented itself in it's finest outfit - a radiant sun. I started walkin at random in a kind of search pattern, expanding the area from Conselyea street and in an outwards going circle, looking for that so important first cup of joe. My first thought was to find a Starbucks. I know there are issues with multicorporations as such but they serve a decent cup of coffee, which according to my high scandinavian coffe standards is hard to find in the U.S. Stabucks also provides free wifi and they also have clean, free-to-use toilets which make them lifesavers in areas like Manhattan.

My first impressions of Brooklyn this early saturday morning were that it is definetly nothing like Manhattan. In manhattan every thing is at your fingertips while in Brooklyn you have to look a little further. Not necessarily a bad thing. After awhile i gave up on finding a Starbucks in the nearby area and chose a place on Metropolitan ave called Bagel smith. I got myself a black iced coffe due to the heat and M's standard skim milk latte and headed back home to get ready for some serious shopping. First stop was Manhattan. The L train drops us off right at union square which seemed perfect for starting the day. There's a huge Forever 21 right there which is like a cheap alternative to H&M. We shopped away for awhile and decided to have breakfast. Convenient for us Whole Foods is located just next door so we made quite a bargain in a city where cheap healthy meals are not easily found. They have an amazing variety of packed ready-to-eat items and a sallad buffet to die for, although a bit more pricy. We enjoyed our breakfast in the sun on the stairs of union square.

From this location we headed towards Broadway for the well planned shopping. A horrible place on earth but every major chain has a store on it. Before joining the consumer driven crowd we took a short stop at Strands book store. Located on Broadway on 12th this is by far the best used book store I've been to. I stop here everytime in New York and I always find something good for my growing collection on Americana. Shopping was a timeful task but thanks to M's exact planning and shopping skills it wasn't to bad.

Every successful shopping day requires after shopping cocktails. We headed to another favorite from last year on Spring street, Sweet and Vicious. Mikael met up with us there and we worked ourself through a few rounds of their signature drink, a frozen margarita served in a glass jar. As a bartender I shold probably frown upon such drinks made by chemical induced mixers but it goes down so smooth. Next phase of the day will be referred to as slightly-drunk-shopping-spree. For some reason a few coktails really help with my shopping decisions. Only drawback is that I ended up buying two left foot flip flops from Converse.

After this some bar hopping accured with the goal to get us back to Brooklyn. For some reason there always seemed to be another bar in the way that needed our attention. As pure professionals in the industry we took it upon ourselves to sample them all. The day finally ended at Kelloggs diner back in Brooklyn. It was an early night since we were still struggling with jet lag. No worries though. We've made up for it by now. More on that next time!

 

New York - Part 1

The Manhattan skyline, sharp as if carved out by razor by the hand of some divine architect. It stuns us as always as we hold on for our lives in a yellow cab hurling like a bullet between the lanes as it's driver casually flips through the contacts in his cell phone while randomly giving the finger to drivers who does'nt meet his standards of driving. We're in for an adventure for sure.

Inshallah - if god is willing, is one of the few arabic expressions i recognize from our drivers constant chattering with people unknown to us. And apparently god favored him this day since we pulled up safely in Brooklyn on the corner of union and metropolitan. Euphoric from part still being alive and part from finally arriving in the great city of New York we started walking towards our home for the next few days. A friend of ours had recommended us to try out a website called airbnb where people can rent out their rooms for a much lower rate than any hotels or hostels. We had decided on a room in the italian area of Williamsburg and we were greeted there by our friendly hostess Susana. Susana served us homemade lemonade while giving us a quick rundown of the area before she blasted of in a hurry.

We are staying in a room in the cellar which is nice and cool considering the heatwave in the city right now. We also have access to a beautiful backyard garden/patio and share a bathroom with Susana. Anyways, after unloading our stuff we rendezvoued with my co-worker from back home who had been staying here a few weeks on a quest for some kinda self fullfillment I guess. I have no idea what he had been up to but it must have worked since he was beaming with happiness. We took of together aiming for an old favorite, the Surf bar. They serve a majestic towering frozen mojito, and since we were all melting away it seemed the perfect remedy!

After a few drinks we needed to freshen up a bit before headin out for the night. Mikael my co-worker joined while we changed in to something that at least made us look a little less like jetlagged zombies. As soon as we came indoors the sky just opened up and poured down it's wrath on Brooklyn. Showers like these are normal during heatwaves and they carry some mighty fearful thunder and lightning. We decided to sit tight for a short while since these storms how awesome they ever are usually just last about twenty minutes. We curled up on the porch with Susanas dog Bonzo who decided despite his obvious fear of thunder found it safer in the arms of strangers.

After pour comes shine and sbout twenty minutes or so later we found ourselves strolling down familiar roads and alleys. Mikael now having stayed in Brooklyn three weeks already led us with newfound confidence towards our common goal, a noodle house. I went for a noodle ramen with golden fried tofu. I might have underestimated the impact of inflight meals on the human stomach but for some reason I thought it was a great idea to quite generously add hot chili sauce to my soup. Food was excellent but after awhile i felt kinda funny and had trouble finishing my beer. Nevertheless as a true trooper I pushed on with my gang to the island of fun, Manhattan.

We started of with a sports gaybar somewhere mid-Manhattan. Rum and ginger ale seemed a perfect antidote to my increasing pain. Place was packed and a little intense for someone who just got off an eight hour flight. We decided to push on down to a more quiet bar in the village area. However by now i was feeling much like a Cony island freak being force fed a fiery blade. I decided to call it quits and M being a perfect gentlewoman assisted me back to our room. I assure you it was a great first night though and since I'm posting this I am very much alive and in good health. We're a few days ahead of this story right now but you who have followed this before know that I update when there is time, and right now I'm getting ready for another adventure. As the famous saying goes, to be continued....

 

 

Road trip 2012 via iPad 3

OK. Leaving in two days time for our next road trip. Testing out the blogsy app for iPad which I'm hoping to use for the blog during the trip. Super stoked that we are finally going and I hope you will follow us along the way! The map shows a rough idea of how we will be driving, but first a short stop in New York.

 

 

Travel stories: San Francisco - A love at first sight!

How do you describe your first love? How can you put words to such an eluding memory? Maybe that's why I waited so long to write this but I think it's about time to give my homage to "the city by the bay". San Francisco was the beginning to our love affair with the U.S. Both me and M had been in the U.S before but never together. In 2006 we made the decision to move in together to be able to save the money for a vacation. I can't remember any more how it happend to be that the choice fell upon America, but I'm glad it did. San Francisco was the first stop on our very first road trip. And it would have an huge impact on our future!

In fact we have been in San Francisco twice by know as we went back in 2010 for our drive up the west coast, however in this post I will focus on the first visit in 2007 and leave the latter for another day. Our flight to S.F was a small disaster with both our flights missing out on our vegetarian meals and comping us with gin & tonics. The result was two very confused Swedes in a rather dreamlike mode collecting their bags at San Francisco airport. We were trying to figure out where to go when we and another group of tourist were approached by a taxi driver saying he could get us all to our hotels for only 5 dollars each. We thought sweet and headed out with the driver expecting some kind of shady minivan, but it turned out it was a stretch! What better start? We arrived to our hostel in downtown S.F with Billy Idol blasting in the speakers!

We stayed at St. Paul hotel which has changed it's name now to Hotel North Beach. I cant vouch for it since I don't know if it's good anymore, for us it was perfect as travelers on a budget. Shared bathrooms but spacy rooms and TV if that's important to you. Location wise it was perfect close to the financial district and chinatown. There could be a point to stay further north close to Haight / Ashbury but it does not really matter that much cause it's so easy to get round either by bus or plain walking. We woke up bright and early with a little help from the jet lag and decided we wanted to get breakfast in a cafe my sister told me about, The pork store cafe. It also gave us a first glimpse of this new world for us. It was intoxicating to walk up market street before the shops opened with all these impressions to take in. Everything from street cleaners, to business people and the homeless warming up after a cold night outside coming to life in a symphony of noise, none of to which our european minds where accustomed to.

We had our breakfast at the famous Pork store cafe which you can read more about here and then just went exploring. Nowadays I call San Francisco the "New York of the west coast" a pretty bold statement you might think considering the size of it's neighbour L.A. But in L.A you need a car to get anywhere, there is no real city center and it's hard to know where you should go. S.F has everything in walking distance with distinct areas like mission, Little italy and so on. And all in perfect grids so it's easy to find, just like a smaller Manhattan. So maybe it would be more correct to say it's like the Manhattan of the west coast. Anyways we walked all the way back down from Haight street through random streets and ended up in chinatown and later at the seafront down by fisherman's wharf. Now the city is built on pretty steep hills so you better have the stamina for it if you are gonna walk, otherwise take one of the many buses or cable cars. Plus side of walking is that you get to see so much of that beautiful architecture that the city is so famous for.

Fisherman's wharf is a tourist trap in every sense possible and both me and M hate it. I understand it could be fun for kids but otherwise it's just packed with tourists and tacky shops. There are a couple of reasons to go down here though. One is you can get a good glimpse of Alcatraz from here(and also catch the tour boats that go there) and the others are the hundred or so sea lions that are always(?) here sun bathing. It's hard not to laugh when you hear them all chatting away at the same time. They sound like a mix between a dog and a cartoon car horn. If you are lucky you might even spot the guy that makes money by hiding behind a tree branch and scaring people!

That night we hit a few bars in the area close to our hotel. A blessing in disguise that night is that M lost her wallet at the above bar. As soon as we realized we legged it back there and it was still sitting right under the table. To calm our nerves we bought some 40 oz bottles and spent the rest of the night relaxing in our room. As you can see this is before my deep affection for micro brewed ales instead of generic watered down lager!

We got up early next morning at got breakfast in nearby Little Italy, named so for it's huge influence by Italian immigrants. It was kind of chilly so we got some matching souvenir shirts in chinatown before heading down to the boat for this days main attraction, Alcatraz. The weather in S.F can literally change in a few minutes from hot to cold so it's good to come prepared. The boat ride out to Alcatraz was really exciting and it looked really threatening appearing in the mist. It's not hard do understand that this was the place that broke down the most famous gangster of all time, Al Capone.

The tour of Alcatraz that we took is an Audio tour consisting of that everyone gets fitted with an MP3 player with chapters corresponding to certain numbers through out the tour. You can pause, skip and replay anytime you want and I found it brilliant. A collection of actors and people with real live experience of the prison tell it's fascinating story, including a native american occupation of the island and a prison rebellion ending with the help of marine veterans from ww2 called in to assist. If there is anything you must do in San Francisco this would be it.

After Alcatraz the sun showed itself again and I'm really happy that it waited til after the Alcatraz tour since the weather really helped to frame it's history. Now began a marathon of sightseeing. i don't know if it was that we were on a constant high of happiness exploring this brand new world but we just kept going! First we made it up to Haight/Ashbury which was the mecca of the hippie-movement. It still shows some reminders of this era even though it is a lot more commercial nowadays. This is the place to go vintage shopping for a bargain. It also has a lot of great bars. We continued down to Castro which is the gay area nicknamed "the gayest four corners of the earth". I already several times expressed my love for these areas throughout America cause they tend to be the most tolerant and Castro is certainly no exception. We pushed on through down to Mission which is the hispanic area of S.F. Everywhere you can find great murals depicting everyday life for the population here.

Being the last day we found the last strength and pushed all the way back up to Golden gate park & The Japanese tea garden which is a beautiful Japanese styled garden complete with ponds full of golden carps. After that we took the long walk to Lombard street, the famous crooked street seen in so many movies. As you might guess we were knackered after this and crashed in the hotel getting ready for what lay ahead.

Next morning we said our good bye to this new love of ours and made a promise to be back someday. We picked up our chrysler convertible at the rental shop and off we went. I was still trying to figure out how to drive in a foreign country when all the sudden we found ourselves approaching the historic landmark Golden Gate Bridge. To fulfill the cliche we had a cd with the song California by The Phantom Planet. We blasted it on max volume and I was filled with euphoria. Ahead of us lay the open road and the overwhelming sense of freedom evoked in us the passion that has had us coming back ever since. I dare you all to come experience it yourselves. It might just change your lives!