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Museum of Natural History

Today Gabo took me over to Brooklyn, he dropped me by the 18th ave, where I took the subway to Manhattan. At Lafayette Broadway came a power outage, and the train stuck. Fortunately we were in a station. So I decided not to wait and walked all through the east village and then took another subway up to the west side where I visited the Museum of Natural History. This is one of the most amazing museums I have ever been. It covers tribe traditions from all over the World, including Natives, Mesopotamia tribes, Siberia, Africa, Inca and many more. Besides that I saw the exhibition of meteoroids which hit the Earth. Fossils of dinosaurs, a huge stuffed whale, and many other interesting stuff. I spent there more than 4 hours. After that I walked all around the West Side. In the evening I met Tomi, Josephine, and David for dinner on the 58th street in an excellent restaurant.
Tomorrow is just a half day, not enough to get in Manhattan, so I stay here. I leave around 6pm from JFK to Milan, and back home to Tel Aviv.
Pictures will come. Really. I promise.

Central Park, Metropolitan Museum, MoMA and much more

The day before yesterday in the morning I took the Long Island Rail to Penn station. There I took the subway to Harlem. Not that I wanted to get there, but it just skipped on most stations, so I had to take another train back to 72nd street West side. There I saw the building in which John Lennon lived, and where he was murdered. Just opposite the house in Central Park I was the "Strawberry fields" and all other John Lennon related things and good atmosphere with guitars and singers. From there I walked up inside Central Park to the Belvedere Castle, from where I could see the most beutyful view of the whole park. Later on I visited the Metropolitan Museum, which was much bigger than I estimated. I think it requires a month or so to explore it, so I scanned some exhibitions in 2 hours. Then I met Tomi and Alexandra and we ate some cakes in Demo - a Wiener cafe. There was the huge Apple store just opposite the cafe, so there was no choice, I went there to see with about another 300 people in the same time. Then the Sony shop at 54th was the dessert.

Yesterday I visited the Intrepid, the huge aircraft carrier which parks on the Hudson river at 46th street. That was a great experience. I went all around the huge ship, up to the captain's deck, and down to the hangars. On the deck I saw many aircraft of which the carrier could take one hundred. Interesting film is shown in the theater about the history of the ship which served in the Second World War, and Vietnam as well. In the afternoon I went around Broadway, walked from 86th street all the way down to the Village. Bea came to meet me at 7, and we went to Caroline's comedy. The guy on the stage began with good jokes about Jews, and other people in New York, and then went over to some more sensitive stuff. After talking about the sensitive stuff 5-10 minutes he suddenly asked a girl sitting in the audience about her age. Guess what the answer was? 16! So he became very embarrassed, confused and switched to different topics. But this thing actually has ruined his show. But altogether it was funny.

Today I visited the Museum of Modern Art on the 54th street. That was a little too complex to me to understand this kind of modern art. But I enjoyed very much the exhibition on interior design as well as the museum shop at the end.

I also succeeded to buy pants, a pair of shoes and one t-shirt. Great success.
Tomorrow is my last whole day in the city. I hope to visit Guggenheim Museum and/or Fritz Collection and/or Natural History. I'll see how much I can do in one day.
I enjoy New York very very much. Pictures will be uploaded sometime. Please don't ask about this, please. Good?

Baltimore, DC, New York

Finally posting. Yesterday Mark, Alina, Yonatan and myself visited the Baltimore Aquarium. This is one of the biggest aquariums of the World. Excellent dolphin show, big sharks, and many other funny creatures. The exhibition of the jelly fishes was the most interesting. We walked all around the inner harbor of Baltimore, ate sushi creating some ecological imbalance in the sea.
Today Alina helped me in some shopping, I bought two shirts, and I finally know what is my size! I am however still completely unable to buy jeans or dockers, I am a complete misfit. Alina dropped me at a bus station in Reston. The bus took me to Falls Church where I took the metro to DC. In DC dropped my backpack in a locker, and went for a walk next to the Capitol Hill. Then I saw the Postal Museum, which was the closest museum to Union station. This was very interesting. Another non-boring museum, you know, one of those few. It introduced the history of the US Post and mail services. A very special point of view on the American history.
At 4 I took the Amtrak to New York Penn Station, where Gabor picked me up, and we went to the 42nd Street tower bar, up on the 48th floor. This is a restaurant which turns around in 360 degrees in one hour. So we saw Manhattan at night all around. On the napkins there was the map of the important buildings on the view illustrated, so we could identify most of them. Too late now for pictures. But they'll come.

Washington DC and Reston

On Friday morning I checked out really early from the hostel on 11th street in New York. I walked in the chilly morning to 4th West subway station with my backpack and trolley. It was still dark, late night pub visitors were spread out making their way home. I took the A train to Penn Station 34th street and took a train at 7:17 to Washington DC. The ride took three and a half hours, well, this is the disadvantage of the cheapest ticket. We run over Philadelphia and Baltimore before arriving to DC. DC's Union station is one of the most wonderful stations I have seen.



As you can see I began taking shots. I met Mark and Alina who picked me up at the station. We went to a walk in DC parks. We saw the monument of the second world war, and climbed up to George Washington Memorial.




Today we have visited the Air and Space museum. There are actually two of these. One in DC itself and the other is next to Washington Dulles airport. We went to the second one where the Enterprise space shuttle is exhibited. I sat in a simulator which simulates the Enterprise liftoff and landing. That was amazing. Now heavy rain outside, and the evening is yet to come!

Washington square

It's the second evening when when I put the final chord on my day with some guitar music. All kind of spontaneous players sitting all around the square with the big marble arch on the side and an illuminated fountain in the middle. People just start playing something and then others come to join them for singing, drumming or playing another guitar. Others just walk by, and stay for one song or two. While playing and singing it's really hard to think about that the square once served for public executions. [for clarity: I didn't play. I just sat there and enjoyed how others played.]
Today I explored Queens with a friend of mine who lives there. He took me to Kew Gardens, Jamaica Hills and many other neighborhoods of Queens where the Jews rule. In some places there is a majority of Jewish shops, restaurants and residents. Then came back, ate a huge lobster on 6th avenue, and hung out in the village in some bars with live music. This is to compensate the kosher part of the day ;-)
Tomorrow I'll be off to Mark and Alina in Reston, VA for the weekend. Keep tuned!

Ray's pizza and others.

I must inform the reader with great disappointment that the famous Ray's Pizza 6th avenue corner 11th street doesn't rock at all. It's a big big slice of pizza with tons of oil on it. I really don't understand why is that so famous.
Anyway. To the point.
Yesterday evening I was hanging out quite a bit. I began in a Cuban Restaurant in the east Village where I wanted to order:
- Excuse me, Sir, what is a paella del choriros?
- It's just like paella de vormachinez but a little more spicy.
- Which is?
- Oh. sorry. vormachinez is with crullos and fartios, you know sir, fish!
(Oh, fish I know that!)
- Ok, that will be fine.

That was a fantastic paella. Rice with kinds of fish. Tons of primiadilez and kelisavertos in it ;-) or something similar. Next place was a live music bar, in a basement of a building. Good music, much fun. Then the Fat Cat also with live music.
Today I went to "track and trails", a sports shop in the downtown. I finally bought a couple of things: a small backpack, a raincoat, and fast-dry pants.
I ate lunch at Balthazar on Spring street, quite close to Broadway corner. That was a fantastic place. If you don't like gourmet food, turn to the next paragraph. Entree: Oysters: 6 fresh oysters samples: 3 from the West- and 3 from the East-coast. All of different types. Then I ate a huge beef steak fillet made medium-rare which tasted awesome. That was really delicious. Dessert I choose Pavlova with warm berries. That was the best Pavlova ever in my life, including all New Zealand and Australia. Fantastic.
After having eaten all these I went to Wall Street's museum of American Finance. All about stock-, bond- and commodities exchange, their history. The dollar, notes and interesting facts about them. This is one of the few non-boring museums which I rarely see.
Later on I walked all the way up to Chinatown and Little Italy. Chinatown is just like Hong Kong, Chinese occasionally tempered by a little bit of English. Amazing markets selling unknown fruits, and all Chinese stuff. Just one street ahead I crossed to the other side and found myself in Little Italy, where the best Italian restaurants are located.