Sunday, October 31, 2010
Up to Brighton
It has been forever - if forever is as far back as January 2009 and our trip to New Zealand and Australia. I admit, I have neglected keeping this up to date. Usually, because I do not have interesting, new photos to put up. I am always saying, "I need to take more pictures!" Here are some pictures from the past year or so. Majority of them are from our trip from Minneapolis to Boston. We will start with some others from before then, though.
I might look very tired in this picture - this is from February 2010. The original plan was to take a very easy, exciting trip home for Sean's Bar Mitzvah. Philadelphia got hit by an enormous snow storm cancelling my flight for three days. I waited stand by at 3:30 AM on Friday morning in Philadelphia. Secured my seat (the last one on the flight!) on the first flight out to Las Vegas Friday morning. Landed at 10:30 AM and had plenty of time before Sean's Bar Mitzvah that night. It was a long trip, but well worth it! We all had a really great time.During my Senior year, my friends and I started two things that were exciting: We fostered a puppy, named Kaya, for the semester. By the end of the semester, she was adopted by a family who really wanted a puppy!
The second big hobby I started was brewing beer. Allison bought me a beer-brewing kit for my birthday in 2009. Brewing was one of my favorite pastimes- we brewed all the beer served at our graduation party! This is Jacob and Me standing next to the beer, called "wort" at this stage, as it ferments. The tubing coming out of the top is so the gases and foam (generated as the yeast reacts with the sugars in the wort) can expand and release out of the bucket.
Loading pictures from graduation would take years, and everyone has seen them in person, so the next batch will be from Allison and my trip across the country!
We started out by flying from Las Vegas to Minneapolis. Allison lived and worked in Minneapolis for a year after she graduated. Over the summer, she stored all of her stuff and her car in a storage unit. After spending a few days visiting friends in Minneapolis, we loaded up the car - full trunk, full back seat and full roof!
You can see Allison just off to the left. If you look closely, you can see that the back seat is completely packed! I had a hard time seeing out the back for the first leg of the trip. But, each time we stopped or rearranged anything, I seemed to get a little better at the packing the car. By the end of the trip, nothing was obstructing the view.
Neither Allison nor I had been to Chicago before. We decided to make this our first stop on the trip. We spent about six hours driving to Chicago. After a long day driving, we pulled up to our bed and breakfast called the Wicker Park Inn in a neighborhood called Wicker Park in Chicago. The neighborhood is transit-accessible to downtown. It's a young, thriving neighborhood with lots of hip stores, trendy restaurants, great bars and a buzzing community. It felt very comfortable and similar to Philadelphia! The only downside - the humidity! Please don't mind the moist faces in the next few pictures.
After a long day of driving, we walked around at night to grab a bite to eat. Maybe you can see how tired (or hungry?) we are.
In downtown Chicago, there is this great sculpture. It is a giant bean! Allison has been wearing this Bean on a necklace since her Bat Mitzvah when she was 13! It was given to her by some family members and she loves it. It was fun to see everyone taking pictures in their reflections.
I was really impressed with downtown Chicago. In the heart of downtown was a great urban park. There were gardens to walk through, great art/sculpture installments, a water-fountain park that tons of families were playing in, and an outdoor performing park for an orchestra. It was designed by Frank Gehry. He is one of my favorite architects. Here is a shot of Allison and me in one of the gardens with the top of the concert hall in the background - it looks like waves of steel coming over the garden.
A close up of the theatre
The address-plate for our bed and breakfast, The Wicker Park Inn.
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This is at a bizarre, but delicious, Greek restaurant run by Eastern Europeans. It was in a neighborhood called Andersonville.
After our stay in Wicker Park, we packed up the car, and began our journey to Cleveland, Ohio. Allison has family living just out side of Cleveland.
In Cleveland, we stayed with Aunt Ester - the matriarch of the Berman family. Ester is 92 years young! She's sharp as a tack, loves to read, knits with the Happy Hookers (who make knitted items for people in need), and keeps track of everyone in the Berman Family.
After Cleveland, we made our way to Binghamton, New York. Binghamton is in upstate New York. Allison's parents met at college in Binghamton. This was their dorm!
After many days, we made it to Brighton! Here is a picture of our house from the outside.
There are 9 units in this house. On the left of the image is a sliver of red - this is the side door that we use to get up to our apartment. On the right, you can see the stairs to the front door. This house was built in the 1890s. We are at the top of a hill in Brighton. At the bottom of the hill is a restaurant called The Stockyards. This steakhouse use to be the location where all the meat was traded coming into Boston. The owners of the cattle head lived at the top of the hill in these Victorian mansions to avoid the stench of the bulls and cows. In the 1940s this house was converted into 9 apartments. Our apartment is one of two on the top/third floor.
This is a shot of the bedroom before we moved any of stuff in. The next series of pictures will show a rise and fall of clutter, moving and unpacking.
It was also humid in Boston - I unpack very seriously. As such, I may get sweaty.
We may be starting to take some shape in the room.
The room is starting to take shape!
Our living room, all furnished!
We've made some minor additions to the picture above - I put my guitars up on the wall to the left of the TV and the right of the door. The view above is the view of our apartment when you walk into the room from the stairs. The door in the far end is to our bedroom.
Another view of our living room
The view immediately above is standing in front of the bed room door (seen two pictures above). If you rotate to the right, you see the window to the kitchen and our shelf for keys, etc. Also, on the left of the shot below, you can see the entrance door to the apartment.
Our kitchen - we found this table and chairs online from a family. We really like it! The window on the left is a frosted glass window that looks into the bathroom - don't worry, you can't see through the class!
Our kitchen - it's bigger than it looks. Or, at least it feels bigger. It may be that we have gotten use to working in it. We manage to cook and prepare our meals here without too much bumping.
Our bathroom - the tub has feet!
Just me cleaning the bathroom - Fred would be proud!
Just some proof that I know how to cook. This is my home made marinara and some egg plant parmasian
Read for the oven! Enjoy!
Allison getting ready in our room, near our desk.
Another meal I made - Butternut Squash soup. From scratch, of course! Garnished with goat cheese, basil and cayenne pepper.
Allison is impressed with my cooking.
Also, I am impressed with myself, of course.
Since moving, Allison and I have been really busy. Allison is busy with school. I am busy with work. I work at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. I really enjoy it. I will try and update next weekend with more pictures and information about my work and what we're up to. I hope you enjoy these pictures!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Winter Trip to New Zealand and Australia
Hello! Below are the pictures from our trip to New Zealand and Australia. I accidentally deleted the photos from the first half of our trip from my camera during the trip. I was pretty upset. Fortunately, Ashlee took a lot of pictures throughout the entire trip. I will do my best to give the basic information for the pictures without being too boring. They won't all be in order of the trip though, I'm only human!
To start, the Celelbrity Mellenium docked at Sydney Harbour
Our first Formal Night- Early on the itinerary, there is usually a formal night where everyone gets to play dress up.
At one of the stops, Allison and I went on a mountain bike trip through a national forest park. These pictures were deleted when I accidentally messed up my camera. But! That same day, Mom, Dad and Ashlee went on an Arctic Adventure - I do not think they knew what they were getting into. They went on vacation to get away from the cold!
How fun does that look? By the way, this stop is Christchurch, New Zealand.
Also in Christchurch, we went on a very long autobus ride that took us to a zoo.
Allison and me being weird? I'm not sure, it was probably just me being weird.
Just a lion, living large.
A Rhino
We had the unique experience of feeding giraffes (from a raise platform!)! When giraffes eat, they wrap their long purple/black tongue around the base of a thing branch and pull away. Their tongue strips the leaves from the branch and leaves the branch fully intact on the tree for future growth.
After the zoo, at the dock, ready to move on to the next stop!
Our last stop in New Zealand was in Dunedin. Dunedin is very far south on the South Island of New Zealand. We didn't expect it to be so cold! Ashlee was pretty chilly!
New Year's Eve in Melbourne, Australia! The gentleman on the left was our dinner bar waiter. He was in charge of all the drinks. By the second night, our beers and drinks were cold and poured by the time we opened the menu!
It appears only the ladies are feeling the excitement of the holiday!
Oh, Dad can get into the spirit, too!
The whole family and our waiter, Joel (in the white) , and the head maitre d'.
Happy New Year!
We also celebrated Allison's 22nd Birthday on New Year's Eve. Our room attendant, Andrew, decorated!
A Birthday and New Year's toast!
A view of the last sunset in 2008 from our room balcony.
The next few pictures are from Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is definitely a city we'd all like to go back to. It was rich in the arts, aboriginal history and natural Australian preservation. It was also just a comfortable, friendly place to be. We even had some great Italian food!
At a wildlife preservation, we were able to see some kangaroos
If you look closely at this one, you can see a baby kangaroo's head peaking out of the mama's pouch
Kangaroos are very territorially, we were able to get 20 yards away from them before they became suspicious.
When they feel threaten, they take off!
This is a bull ant hole. Each of these ants is about an inch in length. The tour guide put a stick in the hole and irritated them. They all flew out and went nuts!
We ran into a lone-Kangaroo, just checking us out.
This is a view of the plains of the national preserve on top of an aboriginal spiritual rock.
Also on top of the rock, we were introduced to the didgeridoo.
The didgeridoo is one of the world's oldest instruments. It is made in northern Australia when termites eat out the middle of a treet trunk. The aboriginal people have been playing the didgeridoo for nearly 70,000 years. Vibrating your lips and speaking into the hollow tree make some incredible noises.
I gave it a shot. Hardly impressive...
We were able to see wild koalas. Koalas are not bears, as is commonly thought. They are marsupials like kangaroos. Koalas are a huge draw for the tourist industry. But, they only sit in trees and sleep. Once a day they climb down trees and walk over to another tree, just to climb back up and sit for another 24 hours. These koalas were perfectly wild and never had physical human contact.
In Sydney, the girls went on a day trip walking tour and the boys went on a bridge climb.
Here's a neat shot Ashlee took of part of the port.
Here is a close shot of the bridge. If you look closely, you can see little dots just to the left of the left most pole in the foreground of the picture. Those dots are people (possibly Dad and me?) climbing the bridge.
Ashlee and Allison in front of the famous Sydney Opera House.
We're all suited up for the bridge climb!
After Sydney, we flew to Cairns in the Northern Territory of Australia. Our first experience was at Hartley's Crocodile and Wild Life Farm.
My mom was convinced that this big boy (the alpha male of the group) was definitely a fake crocodile! But, instead, he was very real, weighing in at nearly 900 pounds. A full grown crocodile can survive in the wild by eating two chickens a year! That's pretty incredible.
This is an aligator. Supposedly, these alligators are friendly to humans. The crocodiles (above) are very dangerous! Our guide said that alligators are fine to swim near and won't cause too much trouble. I'll just take his word for it. You can tell the difference between a crocodile and an alligator by the shape of their heads. Crocodiles have flat, wide heads and mouths. Alligators have long, skinny, triangular heads.
A baby crocodile!
There were also captive koalas here.
This interesting guy is called a cassowary. Cassowaries are extremely aggressive, flightless birds. They look like velociraptors when they run. The flat, mo-hawk looking part of their head is used as a large antennae to receive mating calls from up to 5 miles away.
Here is a spider with an interesting web designed to hit its body from prey. Look behind the white X of web and you'll see the spider!
This shot took about 8 tries. Everyone kept preparing for the picture!
One of the days in Cairns was spent at the Great Barrier Reef. Allison and I went scuba diving for the first time! One of the things to worry about in Australian waters is the jelly fish! We had to wear this full body suits that would protect us from jellyfish stings.
Dinner one of the nights Cairns.
The last signifiant stop of the trip was at Ayers Rock, or Uluru as the indiginous aboriginal people call it. Uluru is in the middle of no where. It is a large rock next in the middle of a flat desert covered in rust colored sand. Here is Uluru from a distance.
We spent an afternoon waiting for the sunset to hit the rock and show its magnificent colors. We all had a good time laughing at this concept, Las Vegas has bigger, prettier rocks and more incredible sunsets! But, it was fun none the less.
There were also thousands and thousands of large flies looking to get into eyes, noses, mouths, ears - everything! We had to wear this nets to limit the annoyance!
Romancing the stone.
A pretty sweet bird.
I didn't realize how neat this picture was until I looked at it on my computer. It is a picture of a Billabong, or a wateringhole, near one of the other rocks near Uluru.
Now, tilt your head to the right. and look at it. I think it looks a lot like a face with a mustache and everything!
And, here is the last sunset shot of the trip.
To start, the Celelbrity Mellenium docked at Sydney Harbour
Our first Formal Night- Early on the itinerary, there is usually a formal night where everyone gets to play dress up.
At one of the stops, Allison and I went on a mountain bike trip through a national forest park. These pictures were deleted when I accidentally messed up my camera. But! That same day, Mom, Dad and Ashlee went on an Arctic Adventure - I do not think they knew what they were getting into. They went on vacation to get away from the cold!
How fun does that look? By the way, this stop is Christchurch, New Zealand.
Also in Christchurch, we went on a very long autobus ride that took us to a zoo.
Allison and me being weird? I'm not sure, it was probably just me being weird.
Just a lion, living large.
A Rhino
We had the unique experience of feeding giraffes (from a raise platform!)! When giraffes eat, they wrap their long purple/black tongue around the base of a thing branch and pull away. Their tongue strips the leaves from the branch and leaves the branch fully intact on the tree for future growth.
After the zoo, at the dock, ready to move on to the next stop!
Our last stop in New Zealand was in Dunedin. Dunedin is very far south on the South Island of New Zealand. We didn't expect it to be so cold! Ashlee was pretty chilly!
New Year's Eve in Melbourne, Australia! The gentleman on the left was our dinner bar waiter. He was in charge of all the drinks. By the second night, our beers and drinks were cold and poured by the time we opened the menu!
It appears only the ladies are feeling the excitement of the holiday!
Oh, Dad can get into the spirit, too!
The whole family and our waiter, Joel (in the white) , and the head maitre d'.
Happy New Year!
We also celebrated Allison's 22nd Birthday on New Year's Eve. Our room attendant, Andrew, decorated!
A Birthday and New Year's toast!
A view of the last sunset in 2008 from our room balcony.
The next few pictures are from Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne is definitely a city we'd all like to go back to. It was rich in the arts, aboriginal history and natural Australian preservation. It was also just a comfortable, friendly place to be. We even had some great Italian food!
At a wildlife preservation, we were able to see some kangaroos
If you look closely at this one, you can see a baby kangaroo's head peaking out of the mama's pouch
Kangaroos are very territorially, we were able to get 20 yards away from them before they became suspicious.
When they feel threaten, they take off!
This is a bull ant hole. Each of these ants is about an inch in length. The tour guide put a stick in the hole and irritated them. They all flew out and went nuts!
We ran into a lone-Kangaroo, just checking us out.
This is a view of the plains of the national preserve on top of an aboriginal spiritual rock.
Also on top of the rock, we were introduced to the didgeridoo.
The didgeridoo is one of the world's oldest instruments. It is made in northern Australia when termites eat out the middle of a treet trunk. The aboriginal people have been playing the didgeridoo for nearly 70,000 years. Vibrating your lips and speaking into the hollow tree make some incredible noises.
I gave it a shot. Hardly impressive...
We were able to see wild koalas. Koalas are not bears, as is commonly thought. They are marsupials like kangaroos. Koalas are a huge draw for the tourist industry. But, they only sit in trees and sleep. Once a day they climb down trees and walk over to another tree, just to climb back up and sit for another 24 hours. These koalas were perfectly wild and never had physical human contact.
In Sydney, the girls went on a day trip walking tour and the boys went on a bridge climb.
Here's a neat shot Ashlee took of part of the port.
Here is a close shot of the bridge. If you look closely, you can see little dots just to the left of the left most pole in the foreground of the picture. Those dots are people (possibly Dad and me?) climbing the bridge.
Ashlee and Allison in front of the famous Sydney Opera House.
We're all suited up for the bridge climb!
After Sydney, we flew to Cairns in the Northern Territory of Australia. Our first experience was at Hartley's Crocodile and Wild Life Farm.
My mom was convinced that this big boy (the alpha male of the group) was definitely a fake crocodile! But, instead, he was very real, weighing in at nearly 900 pounds. A full grown crocodile can survive in the wild by eating two chickens a year! That's pretty incredible.
This is an aligator. Supposedly, these alligators are friendly to humans. The crocodiles (above) are very dangerous! Our guide said that alligators are fine to swim near and won't cause too much trouble. I'll just take his word for it. You can tell the difference between a crocodile and an alligator by the shape of their heads. Crocodiles have flat, wide heads and mouths. Alligators have long, skinny, triangular heads.
A baby crocodile!
There were also captive koalas here.
This interesting guy is called a cassowary. Cassowaries are extremely aggressive, flightless birds. They look like velociraptors when they run. The flat, mo-hawk looking part of their head is used as a large antennae to receive mating calls from up to 5 miles away.
Here is a spider with an interesting web designed to hit its body from prey. Look behind the white X of web and you'll see the spider!
This shot took about 8 tries. Everyone kept preparing for the picture!
One of the days in Cairns was spent at the Great Barrier Reef. Allison and I went scuba diving for the first time! One of the things to worry about in Australian waters is the jelly fish! We had to wear this full body suits that would protect us from jellyfish stings.
Dinner one of the nights Cairns.
The last signifiant stop of the trip was at Ayers Rock, or Uluru as the indiginous aboriginal people call it. Uluru is in the middle of no where. It is a large rock next in the middle of a flat desert covered in rust colored sand. Here is Uluru from a distance.
We spent an afternoon waiting for the sunset to hit the rock and show its magnificent colors. We all had a good time laughing at this concept, Las Vegas has bigger, prettier rocks and more incredible sunsets! But, it was fun none the less.
There were also thousands and thousands of large flies looking to get into eyes, noses, mouths, ears - everything! We had to wear this nets to limit the annoyance!
Romancing the stone.
A pretty sweet bird.
I didn't realize how neat this picture was until I looked at it on my computer. It is a picture of a Billabong, or a wateringhole, near one of the other rocks near Uluru.
Now, tilt your head to the right. and look at it. I think it looks a lot like a face with a mustache and everything!
And, here is the last sunset shot of the trip.
