New Haven is my kind of town.

Posted on March 28, 2014 by borysSNORC

Took our time driving up to New Haven today, via the dirty ugly smelly New Jersey Turnpike again. I tell you something for nothing – that must be one of the more expensive bits of toll road that I’ve had the misfortune to need to use… it cost us $2.05 when we got off the Pennsylvannia Turnpike, $11.80 for using the New Jersey Turnpike, $13.10 for the George Washington Bridge and then another $1.25 when we got off somewhere else, I don’t know I lost track!

Still, glad we were going North, because the traffic going South was totally cactus! We made an unexpected stop at the PEZ factory as we made our way through Connecticut for a place to stretch our legs, but that is a whole other post as it is full of silly photos and stuff.

Anyway, we made it to New Haven just after lunch time and decided to go check out the B&B first up. We had booked to stay at The Farnam Guest House, which is a beautiful quaint old building on the north side of town on Prospect Street.The Farnam Room where we were staying for the night, also another bedroom whose occupants had not yet turned up for the evening, the main parlour and dining rooms were also gorgeous.
So, after we settled in we decided to go take a drive around town before heading to the centre of town to check out the University and the local shopping district. I have to say that I am finding Connecticut is absolutely my kind of town. I love the architecture here, I love the beautiful old houses, the buildings that belong to Yale are all gorgeous, and I can only imagine how lovely the place looks when it is all green with new foliage (I’ve said it everywhere we have been – but the North East REALLY needs more evergreens!), or even better, during the fall when the leaves are al turning. New Haven reminds me a lot of some of the university towns in England, Oxford, Cambridge etc… I am pretty sure that is no mistake. So we went on a bit of a real estate tour, checking out beautiful houses as we drove past 🙂The photos are a bit on the wonky side, but that is what you get for snapping out a moving car window with an iPhone!

After pottering around the suburbs a bit, we went down to the town centre which is is full of gothic style sandstone buildings, and of course, bulk Yale stuff everywhere you turn. My university sells a couple of hoodies, a jumper or two, some umbrellas and maybe a hat, some cufflinks and a compendium… Yale has several stores dedicated to merchandise and you can get Yale and Yale Bulldogs, printed on nearly anything! Even a garden gnome – and you know I totally would have bought one of these silly things home if it weren’t for the stupid airline’s luggage allowance rules. 😉I would have loved for it to be a little less cold, so that I could have done a bit more wandering around taking photos of the buildings, but as it was, it was hard to stay out of the car for more than five minutes together.
After checking out a little bit of pottering around town, we went for a drive to ferret out the Lighthouse, which we were assured is at the aptly named, Lighthouse Point. Only it turns out you can drive for ages around the shoreline in this area and NOT find a public access to the water. We could find the lighthouse in the distance, but it appeared the only place to get anywhere near it was a private, fenced off, boat ramp area. Oh well, a bit more driving round in circles and finding lots of dead end streets confirmed that suspicion. So we head off looking for any access to an area of East Haven beach, and we eventually found the one area that seemed to have parking and access to the beach – mind you, everywhere we looked there were signs up saying ‘No Parking, Residents Only, All Others Will Be Towed’. Enquiries a little bit later revealed that these signs only applied during peak season when the car parks were busy, and it was to make sure that East Haven residents could go park near the beach and keep the tourists out… no shit, it seems that there is so little public access to the beach, that they make it a priority to allocate parking for residents, and bugger the tourists! It makes no sense to me – surely if you live nearby you have some way of getting to the beaches?! But apparently not. Anyway, we parked by the beach by encroaching on a restaurant car park and went out there for… oh, about three minutes. Given it was *mumble mumble* below zero and the winds were apparently around 35MPH, it just was not pleasant at all, no matter how pretty the area was.
It was at about this point that we decided to resume our real estate tour of Connecticut, and keep checking out beautiful houses. The median price in New Haven is approximately $240,000 which sounds awesome if you ask me, even if many of these homes are considerably smaller than what we are used to back home. Obviously many of these houses might have been much more than that, but $240K for a property in East Haven, Connecticut close to beaches and all the amenities of New Haven? I think I have found somewhere I could handle living on the East Coast now – San Francisco being the only place I have found that I would consider living in, on the West Coast. 🙂 After a quick bite to eat (delicious and cheap lobster rolls… why, yes. I am planning on overdosing on all the fresh seafood while we are in New England!), at the Sandpiper restaurant with the handy carpark, we then tootled back the the guesthouse for a warm and toasty night in.

Surprise stop at the PEZ Visitors Centre

Posted on March 27, 2014 by borysSNORC

Not sure why we pulled over at a rest stop and visitors welcome centre when we neither needed a rest nor a welcoming, but we did. And inside were greeted by a display case of PEZ dispensers, of all the bizarro things. Turns out, not 30 mins away and not 5 mins out of our way, was the world famous PEZ factory and visitor centre, and Mr K decided that we HAD to go! In all fairness, a break from driving with these nutters was probably well deserved at this point. So off we went to the PEZ Visitor Centre in Orange, Connecticut! First thing you are greeted by when you step through the door (other than instant diabetes from the smell of the sugar) is a giant Minnie Mouse riding a custom made Chopper hanging from the ceiling, complete with flashing LED lights and fancy paintwork. Apparently the guys from the Custom Choppers TV show were made into PEZ dispensers and in return, they made the PEZ guys this cool motorbike! Wish it was down on the floor so you could see it a bit better, I have a feeling it was quite fancy. Opposite the chopper is the Reception lady who gives you a ticket, on a special PEZ lanyard for the grand price of $5 and a $2 discount towards any gift shop purchase… you can tell they aren’t trying real hard to make money off this thing.Opposite the reception is a Great Wall O’Pez Dispensers! There are 792 of them mounted on the wall in an enormous collection and in amongst these is THE most rare PEZ dispenser of them all, with only one known to exist in the entire world (no idea why there is only one). And it’s in this pic and it’s a yellow base with a green lizard like head and I have no idea what it is or why it is so damn special, but it is! 🙂

Then we went on into to read up on the History of PEZ, and I learned that they were originally from Europe and originally designed as an anti-smoking aid for adults! And I thought that was pretty cool actually, given we now absolutely associate them primarily with children (children and Seinfeld, but it’s a grey area).

There was a bit of a spiel on how they make the PEZ dispenser heads and how they are modelled, and then loads of different ones on display for people to have a look at, so I took some pics of ones I thought The Small Child might like. Mr K was rather taken with these ones, and some that had Stanley Cups on them (I forgot to take a pic of the Maple Leafs Stanley Cup one, I’ll be in trouble now!)And there was even a limited edition rather expensive looking Swarovski Crystal Ladybird PEZ dispenser…
Then we got to see into the factory floor to see how the PEZ machines work and how they make the PEZ dispensers and how the candy is made. This factory pumps out over 12,000,000 pieces of PEZ candy every single day which is a figure that just blew my mind, no doubt because I have just never thought about it before.This last lady is making Mario Mushroom PEZ dispensers,Which look just like this one:

We also found a cool Pikachu one for The Small Child but was unable to find one to buy 🙁 and we were desperately looking to see if they had gotten on the Minecraft bandwagon yet, but alas there was nothing.
Then we discovered that there are huge conventions each year where serious PEZ collectors get together and buy and sell and swap their PEZ dispensers, and they meet up all over the place… that’s no weirder than the National Association of Hungarian Pigeon Fanciers or the Cleveland Hibiscus Club, right?
Then, predictably, it was onto the giftshop where you could buy collectable PEZ dispensers:
Buckets of just PEZ candies in bulk without bothering with a dispenser:There was Halloween themed PEZ dispensers:AND the full set of Presidential PEZ dispensers which we ran into in bits in Washington DC: There was also plenty of PEZ apparel – because apparently there are some people out there whose lives are just not complete without a PEZ hoodie – and I thought this kids t-shirt was kinda cute:I actually enjoyed my little 30 minute break from the highway at the PEZ Visitors Centre, and if all of this sounds like I was surprised, then I guess that is because I was… still, if we had to stop somewhere for a break and a walk around an iconic ‘something’, I am so glad it was the PEZ factory and not America’s Largest Ball of Twine or something!

Philadelphia Freedom

Posted on March 26, 2014 by borysSNORC

Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Philadelphia… word gets more ridiculous the more times you say it (says the girl from the country with places called Woolamaloo and Wangaratta). Started out this morning having a look out the window across the Delaware River to the New Jersey side and admired the snow that was still on the ground from last night’s delightful weather.

Had a bagel smeared with Philadelphia Cream Cheese (made in Illinois, go figure) and a cuppa before deciding to head into the Old City to have a look around at the historic sites, of which there are many, in Philadelphia.

First stop was the Visitors Centre to grab a map and try and work out how to maximise the touristy stuff and minimise the being outdoors stuff, seeing it was blue skies and sunny, but still below zero.

We went from there to check out the Liberty Bell Centre, and even though we were freezing cold, we were in high spirits – until we encountered the security staff there. On the way it, it was ‘No you don’t have to take off your coats, we just need to inspect your bags and see under your coats’… only my cross body bag was on under my coat, and I went to show it to the guy who then insisted I take my coat off in the freezing cold. I looked at him imploringly and said ‘Really?’ and the wanker, looking directly over my head and not addressing me at all said ‘Bags off people, coats can stay on’. So I stop dead and hold up the queue while I disrobe enough to take off my satchel. The least he could do, the VERY least he could do, was look at me while asking me to freeze my tits off to take my jacket and bag off… but apparently that is asking too much. Then Mr K cops an equally powertripping moron of a security officer who he goes to open his bag for, and she tells him ‘Don’t touch the bag’ and goes about opening his bag (all the zips) herself.

I tell you what, first impressions are being formed less and less by Visitors Centre staff, ticket selling staff and actual tour guides (in this case National Park Rangers), and more and more enduring first impressions of American tourism destinations – in this case historically important national monuments – are being formed by SECURITY STAFF. And this pair took our chilly but collective bonhomous countenance, and trampled it underfoot quick smart. We went from convivial and ‘Oh, isn’t the America fuck yeah, so quaint and amusing this morning?’; to being pissed off at our diffident treatment and ‘Fucking hell, we’ve had it up to the eyeballs with the Sepo Bullshit!’, in about 90 seconds flat. Dude, I don’t care if you hate your job, I don’t care if your country can’t be bothered paying you a decent living wage, I don’t care if you are cold standing around doing bullshit security checks on excited tourists all day and are dissatisfied with your life choices – you take a job like this, you are working with the public and with that comes a certain responsibility to treat with them some modicum of civility… such as looking at a person when addressing them!
Grrr. So much for the Liberty Bell. Given I was now thoroughly ticked off, and given there’s no point in arguing with security people because that never goes no where good – I wasn’t much in the mood for reading the information displays, so y’all will have to settle for the Wiki version of what the bell is all about:

“The Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House (now renamed Independence Hall), the bell was commissioned from the London firm of Lester and Pack (today the Whitechapel Bell Foundry) in 1752, and was cast with the lettering (part of Leviticus 25:10) “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” It originally cracked when first rung after arrival in Philadelphia, and was twice recast by local workmen John Pass and John Stow, whose last names appear on the bell. In its early years, the Liberty Bell was used to summon lawmakers to legislative sessions and to alert citizens to public meetings and proclamations.”

So this broken arse bell ends up being really famous and important to the Americans, for allegedly having been rung on Independence Day – July 4, 1776 – even though there’s no way that could have happened due to there being no public proclamations announcing the Independence thing, available until the 8th of July (printing presses were somewhat slower at the time). So the import placed on the bell feels like a bit of a furfy. Oh well, moving right along.

We hightailed it away from the Busted Bell and the arsehole security, and onto the Independence Hall (previously known as the Pennsylvania Sate House), famous for containing the exact assembly hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776, AND the Constitution was signed there too on Sept 17th, 1787… both of the documents we saw at the National Archives back in Washington! This painting was commissioned from an artist named Glanzman in 1986 to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence and features all the dead white dudes who were instrumental in bringing it about, all painted based on representations of them in contemporary portraits.

Independence Hall is a beautiful Georgian Building (I found this vaguely amusing, given they were working hard to get away from British rule and George III, and here they were adopting the predominant architectural fashions of the period most associated with good old George) with a lovely clock tower, a court room, an assembly room, a ballroom upstairs, an office/meeting room also upstairs and the militia storage facility.
With visitors interested in coming to see where the Declaration of Independence starting barely a couple of years after the incident occurred, the place turned to tourist attraction rather quickly and is very much today, as it was then – down to the unfortunately choice in interior paint colours.
Assembly Room, where the documents were actually signed, in the centre is George Washington’s actual office chair: The courtroom:
Desk set, including inkwell, used to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution documents: Upstairs ballroom: Governor’s office and meeting room (that device on the end of the table is a telescope, believed to have once belonged to Mason and Dixon): The militia storage room: Loved the militia room with it’s near row of rifles and paraphernalia.

After we finished our tour of Independence Hall, we wandered around the Old City for a while, there were several gorgeous buildings in the area, many of which have exhibits in them or (like this one), the State Library Building, as was, is awaiting an exhibit on Thomas Jefferson (as a weird co-incidence we noted that an exhibition of Jefferson’s personal writings and journals had just closed up at the Library of Congress in Washington, and wondered if it was coming here…?)

Then we made a weird decision to try and dinky little diner for lunch called Mrs K’s Koffee… to try a Philly cheesesteak sandwhich. Now, mostly you can get these all over the place from Louisiana to New York, so why did we wait to order on in Philadelphia?? You might think it would be the most obvious – when in Philadelphia, etc! But actually it was a West Wing hangover. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), goes a campaigning in Philadelphia and you guessed it – gets told to order the Philly Cheesesteak to make the locals happy, and promptly gets it all over his suit… which is the only reason Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches exist in my weird little mind. It turned out to be a somewhat dubious decision, as it was served with ‘cheese fries’ (even bigger mistake: ‘American cheese, ok?’, ‘Errr… sure.’). And this is what came out for lunch: Thank goodness we didn’t order a sandwich EACH, and had sensibly decided to share. Bea, if you are reading this… I have a feeling this is what Cheese Wiz is like, only hot – don’t go there, just don’t. :S

After lunch we popped over to the Benjamin Franklin Museum, which was a very cool little museum focusing on the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin, from his lack of formal education, to his time working as a printer, to his travels as an ambassador to the French court seeking support in the wars against the English, to his later years as a statesman, author and all round decent guy. It also focused on his keen inventors mind and his involvement in the United States Post Office – he was the first Postmaster General and from what we were told this was the first United States Post Office.
We checked out the bookshops and giftshops around the area and by then (I think it must have been nearly 4pm) we had to call it quits to get out of the cold. One alarming (and absolutely weird) thing I did see today in a gift shop was the USA Boomerang… comes in red, white and blue… and comes in ‘Right Handed’ and ‘South Paw’ versions!

The Ups and Downs of New York City.

Posted on March 25, 2014 by borysSNORC

New York, the cool shit and not so cool shit. Well, we have finished up the New York portion of our trip and have had a huge time hanging out in NYC. There is so much cool shit here…

Upsides of New York.

The MET. Quite simply one of THE best museums I have ever been to… loved the Impressionist galleries, the Medieval armoury and the decorative arts galleries. The building itself is gorgeously impressive and the bookshop? Well, it’s hard to get out of there with your credit card intact! Love it!
The Cloisters. Very cool little Medieval museum that feels a lot like it has been modelled on the Cluny Museum (the Musee de Moyen Age, in Paris which is built in a Medieval convent). The Cloisters holds some of the most beautiful artefacts ever. I finally got to see the Minnastracken casket that I had based my embroidered aummoniere purse on, and had no idea it was so small! It’s a hike uptown to get there, but the Cloisters was worth it.
Top of the Rock. The views from the top of 30 Rock were incredible. We went up in the afternoon and waited around for night views and got the best of both worlds… New York by day and by night. Awesome views.
The MET Opera. Saw an amazing production, La Boheme, at the Lincoln Centre which itself is an incredible venue. Such a beautiful building and even though we were in the third balcony, we had a fantastic view of the stage. Loved it.
Statue of Liberty. Very cool landmark. I always thought it was a bit twee, but after getting to go up in the statue and see out through the crown to the views of Manhattan, I was quite impressed. Add it to your list.
All the Art Deco buildings. So much of New York is built post depression/post war and the facades of all the buildings are very well kept. If you ignore the signage and vehicles at street level, you can imagine things haven’t changed that much.
Times Square. It’s all happening here, so much going on, so many shops, so many restaurants, so many street performers, so much hype and action. Hard to know where to look.
Theatres and other museums. New York seems to have a lot of actual culture available for consumption. I swear you could go to a new museum or a new production or a new exhibition every day for a year.
Everything is open late. All the shops and restaurants seem to be open until all hours. Everyone is out every night and walking around the Midtown area in the middle of the night feels open and safe.
Starbucks. The coffee is apparently ‘drinkable’ as American coffee goes, you can’t knock free wifi, they have cheap yummy bagels which make a quick easy breakfast, you can find one on every second corner and they have totally replaced McDonalds for this travellers preferred place to find clean toilets.
Buses. I like the bus system here (can’t believe I am saying that!). They go pretty much in straight lines – up this Avenue, down that Avenue. Most of the popular routes we wanted to use ran every 10-12 minutes or so, they’re clean and you can see the town a bit while you go.
Street vendor food. Mr K loved the quick and easy hot dogs, pretzels and other yummies available on nearly every corner. You can always tell which ones are the best, they will have line ups for ages, like the Halal Guys up near Carnegie Hall.
Cheap pashmina. Along with food vending carts, there were happily people around selling items of warmth nearly everywhere… beanies, hats, gloves, scarves, pashmina and all good things.
The Waldorf=Astoria. We felt it was a wonderful place to stay and it really added to our New York experience. As it turns out, our friends staying over in Times Square were paying roughly the same (okay, they were actually paying a little bit more) that we were, because I found some great winter discount rates. Hunt hard and you can get a good deal.
The Colbert Report taping. In spite of having to line up for two hours in the cold, and in spite of the whole thing being over and done before you know it… it was a lot of fun.
‘Buzz’ of the street. Mr K really likes the pace of New York, the hustle and bustle, the noise and excitement in the air. But personally, I think that comes at a cost (see below).

But nowhere is Perfect (TM), so there are always plenty of noticeable things that kinda make you go ‘wha?’…

Downsides of New York:

Fat apartment puppies. EVERY dog we saw being walked in the streets and parks was overweight, and some of them were grossly overweight. These poor dogs live in apartments and have no yards and don’t get enough exercise. Was kinda sad and I think a little bit cruel to keep a Siberian Husky in a New York apartment.
The Subway. Ok We had a disagreement over this one. Mr K thinks the Subway is ‘Quick. Fast. Direct, Stops every few blocks. Affordable by the weekly ticket. Goes everywhere. Has unlimited travel for $30/week’. (His tautologies, not mine!) I thought it was disgustingly smelly (can’t imagine how bad that gets in summer), it was noisy and uncomfortable. It was full of homeless people desperately trying to stay warm making a huge statement about the US’s inability or unwillingness to look after its disenfranchised and on top of all that there was unreliable disabled access to platforms. I have trouble with stairs and they were unavoidable, I have no idea how you get around if you are wheelchair bound – it’d be totally fucked. No where near as good as the London Tube for access and I am so glad I never have to go near it again.
The ‘security theatre’. Everywhere you go there is this pretence of security, but it is inconsistent. Bags, belts, electronics, jackets and shoes at airports; Bags, belts and electronics at Statue of Liberty; Bags and electronics only at 30 Rock. Bags, belts and jackets at the Empire State Building; Visual bag check and metal detectors only at museums and Colbert… the whole thing feels like a farce. If there was true problems and true concerns to protect these environments and the people in them, you’d think there would be a standard of security required and you’d see the same level of security measures everywhere. It all feels like the appearance of security is more important than actually securing these spaces. Meh.
“This is for you.” Got pretty fucking sick of this really quick, people pulling you up in the street and saying ‘here take this hat/card/blessing’ and then when you go to walk away, asking you to pay for said item. Worst one we saw – a little Buddhist dud gave Mr K a card with a blessing on it, and the stood there and demanded $20 for him accepting it. Some Buddhist!! Needless to say he got his blessing shoved back where the sun don’t shine… talk about fucking window licking special.
Emergency Service Vehicles. Two things about these 1) You can hear the sirens going 24/7. It is so much part of the landscape in the city, that it becomes background white noise after a while and you don’t even bother to turn around to try and see what is going on; and 2) NO ONE makes way for ambulances and fire trucks on the road. Taxis, private vehicles, buses, no one is moving out of the way for them – I’d hate to be the person dying of a heart attack at the other end, knowing full well that help just ain’t coming because they can’t get through the traffic. So fucked up.
Smokers. So many smokers here, and you really notice them thanks to the close proximity of the Humanity(TM). I also hate when you’re walking along a sidewalk and someone will bust their butt to move around you to walk in front of you and then you get stuck breathing in a truckload of their second hand smoke. You can keep that shit.
Food is expensive everywhere. Some of this impression might be based on the hanging around the ‘touristy’ areas, and the impression might also be attributable to the taxes not being included in prices on menus, and of course the fucking tipping which drives most Aussies nuts.
There’s just too much “America, fuck yeah”. New York overloads on the ‘How fucking awesome are we?’ There is so much flag waving, so much over the top patriotism, and a definitely feeling that saying anything critical of the US could get you stomped on. Enough already, you guys are not the greatest country in the world anymore – ask Aaron Sorkin.
This nonsense that passes for Spring weather. Outside temps of 2C and 3C but feels like -6C or -11C and threatening snow, again! So over it. There were many nights we wanted to just go wander the streets and take in the city, but instead found ourselves taking refuge indoors. If this is Spring, it can piss off.
But the one thing I really dislike in New York was this, Sense of Entitlement, displayed by many New Yorkers. Now this is a big one for me, and it is big enough for me personally, that I feel I could never, ever live here. I don’t know if it is a lack of respect or a failure to recognise what is, and is not appropriate, but there are so many people here who feel it is perfectly within their rights to disturb the people around them, and they have no hesitation in doing so. For example, it is quite common to find yourself walking along with a group of people who seem to be talking so loudly that EVERYONE around them is forced to hear their inane conversations. Then there are people who will walk four abreast on the subway stairs and make no effort to move over to allow people to pass.

There have been some even more special examples of this sort of inability to act privately in public spaces. We were on one train, and two young black guys got on the train, asked people to move out of the standing area near the doors, put on a loud soundtrack and started dancing and doing acrobatics causing a disturbance on the entire carriage and after imposing their impromptu performance on everyone, they walked around with a hat asking for money. Then there is the guy in Time Square, who no doubts thinks he is amusing, calling himself the Work Out Soldier, who walked up to strangers in the street and started yelling at them like a bootcamp instructor, usually kicking off by telling the person he was assailing that they were ‘fat, lazy, obese bastards who should skip a meal’! No shit, this guy was walking up to people saying this stuff. If he had come near me, I would have given him what for.

Another absolutely mind boggling example of a lack of consideration towards others, came in the form of some plonker deciding it would be funny to hit the ‘stop’ button on an escalator at Penn Station, just as hundreds of people were flowing off a crammed platform after the hockey game. Yep, he thought he’d get to the top of the escalator, and prank his friends by making them walk the rest of the way up… never mind the other people already on the escalator, never mind the hundreds of people still stuck down on the platform that were now going to have to take the stairs – fuck you, you inconsiderate little cunt – you’re not funny, you’re not amusing, you’re not witty, you’re just a self entitled little prick who has no regard for others.

These are some of the more extreme examples of what we ran into everyday, and all I can say is there seems to be a pervasive, and frequently displayed, lack of awareness of what private behaviour is appropriate in public spaces, and a complete disregard for the privacy, space and comfort of others.

The Cloisters.

Posted on March 23, 2014 by borysSNORC

Just adding photos for now, will come back and add details and information on the pieces later, when I get a chance.