Wanderlust: New York

1/6/07

New Year's weekend at Boston, New York and the Nutmeg state I

Flew to Boston Thursday (Dec 28, 06) for a short trip to Hemmant and Navin's. Arrived at Boston, did not even wait to unpack, drove straight to Navin and Annie's place at Connecticut. Many thanks to her excellent burritos, I was no longer feeling famished - waiting 4 hours for a connecting flight to Boston with delays at o'hare can do that to you.

If we had left it to Hemmant, it would have been a permanent diet of lemon curd and indian relish on bread. To his credit, they actually tasted great, we pretty much emptied his Trader Joe's condiments by Monday. Never saw Navin attempt anything at the kitchen, probably best that he didn't.

Pic 1: Hemmant, Annie's place, somewhere in Connecticut between Boston and NY

We rented out 'Napolean Dynamite' and 'Little Miss Sunshine' from blockbuster. I liked both the movies, have always been a big fan of 'Napolean Dynamite', but it wasn't a big hit with anyone else other than me.

New York: Drove to New York on Friday. At the risk of stating the obvious - New York, a multi-cultural city continously re-inventing itself, a city in high adrenaline, a city that makes you feel as though you are part of something big. Too much has been said already about New York, so I have added very little commentary.

On the road to Manhattan, just by the Hudson river, we saw a couple of planes etching out 'Who will she choose?' How hard is that?

Pic 2: Sky Graffitti, New York

Pic 3: Skyscraper, Manhattan, New York

Below is the Fuller building - more famously known as the Flatiron building.

When I was schooling in India, I used to frequent the library by my parent's house - the Swami Vivekananda library, RK Mutt, Mylapore, Madras. A particular favorite used to be this huge photograph book on Skyscrapers. One of the best photos in that book was a classic one of the Fuller building in New York you see below; of course that picture was much better, showing the building at it's center edge, with the mid-height perspective, with the bulding splitting the street into two. I have always wanted to see this building since. So, this trip was a realisation of a dream of sorts for me.

Pic 4: Fuller building, or famously the Flatiron building, Broadway st, New York (Office of Daiy Bugle in movie - Spiderman I,II)

Pic 5: Navin, Annie at Madison Square park, New York

Pic 6: View of Empire State from Madison Square park, New York

Pic 7: Washington Square Park, New York

Pic 8: Chess shop, New York

Pic 9: Trinity church, near Wall Street, New York

Pic 10: Beautiful Christmas tree at NYSE, Wall street, New York

Pic 11: Statue - George Washington, Wall Street, New York

Could not get a moment off from other tourists to take a proper picture of the 'Raging Bull' - a symbol synonymous with the NYSE. For some reason, tourists were molesting the bull like crazy, climbing it, tring to tame it, bring it down, and more outrageously, many among the female tourists holding on to the bull's balls!!

Pic 12: Highly molested 'Raging Bull', Symbol of Wall Street, New York

Pic 13: Statue of Liberty, New York

Pic 14: Hemmant, blurry skyscrapers, New York

New Year's weekend at Boston, New York and the Nutmeg state II

Grand Central terminal altered my view on train stations. Normally my vision of a busy train station is a depressingly crowded place with hordes of impatient people. While it has it's fair share of crowds (the largest train station in the world in terms of platforms), the shops that line it and the random artists that perform in there make it a welcome change. We saw a dancer doing Billy Jean and a violinist performing Beethoven's spring.

Pic 1a: Grand Cental Terminal, New York

Pic 1b: Grand Cental Terminal, New York

Pic 2: Time Square, New York

Pic 3: Annie, Hemmant and Navin, Time Square, New York

Drove back to Annie's place Friday late night, dropped her off and then made to Boston to Hemmant's place.

Saturday was a 'stay-at-home' day. Cooked some vegetarian fare, couldn't exercise my inner carnivore, Navin being a vegetarian. Tried three dishes - dondakaya veypudu, cabbage potato curry and koduguddu pulusu, goults will know exactly what I am talking about. At the risk of sounding boastful, must say it turned out pretty decent. Thanks mom for the training and recipes.

Played 'Age of Empires' the whole day after lunch. B.T.W, we are pretty geeky about this game, would play this for hours. We have tried more recent versions of the game and others, but this one is a particular nostalgic favorite. We used to network to play this game. What with our cries of 'Kill him da', 'Get him' interspersed with the 'Aiyo Aiyo' of the priests and the 'dishum dishum' of the helipolis, I thought we would bring Hemmant's neighbors down on a not so friendly visit.

Pic 4: Swans, Reservoir by Hemmant's place. Boston

Annie joined us Sunday morning. Took a walk by the reservoir by Hemmant's place. The swans above were showing off quite a bit, mooning us off to at times, okay, maybe they were just looking for fishes.

Took the 'T' to Harvard university, had lunch there.

Pic 5: Exhalted gates to Harvard, so to speak

Pic 6: Memorial Hall, Harvard U

Took the T back to Boston Commons to start off the New Year's celebration kick-off there. The city organised these events called the 'First Night' celebrations, you can get into these fun events with just a 15$ badge. After a round of 'Patron' tequila (my fav) in a local pub that wasn't taken particularly apreciated and a Absolut Screwdriver later, we headed to the fireworks and dinner. Vijay joined us for a brief time.

Pic 7: Boston Commons

The First night activities were fun, watched an African drums band performance that turned a bit too didactic for my liking, a Jamaican band that was just great, an extempore Improv that was really quick-witted and part of a film festival. Navin tells me later the movie we watched was 'Curse of the Golden Flower' - really dramatic Chinese action/drama movie.