self-taught lessons for urban survival
To celebrate J’s new job, we decided to cross another item off of our bucket list and jet to Seattle. We lived like kings for 2.5 days in the Emerald City, eating whenever we were hungry (often) and pretty much walking everywhere in between. It rained for most of the time we were there, but on our last day we were lucky enough to get some blue sky and sun.
This winter I went home to California for two straight weeks. Like the obsessive planner that I am, I made a Google doc spreadsheet to make sure that my holiday time was optimally maximized for seeing family and friends, eating incredible food, and restoring my body from the brutal end-of-year work dump.
Thus continues my once-monthly updating streak, but since I’m on a crazy productivity kick this week, here goes!
We flew into Las Vegas and stayed a couple of days before driving to the Grand Canyon. We stayed at the Yavapai Lodge, which was lovely and oh-so-convenient. Let me tell you, the Grand Canyon is better than you can imagine. Going into this trip I assumed I was more or less prepared. After all, I have seen so. many. images of the Grand Canyon — desktop wallpapers, inspirational posters, travel brochures, the works. Still, nothing can capture the full experience of standing at ground level (albeit at a pretty high elevation) and looking a mile down a sheer drop. My brain still cannot wrap itself around the magnitude of what I saw.
p.s. Thanks J for making this gif!
With a week to go before I started working, I decided to make the most of my final free weekdays. AX agreed to accompany me on any adventures since he is also trying to live up his days as a freelancing photographer. Since he has a car, this of course meant that we would be getting out of the city. We finally settled on Jones Beach, a place we had both heard good things about but had never been to.
One of my biggest struggles and subject of constant obsession is to think of new ways to convince my Manhattan-dwelling friends to visit me in Queens. Sure, it’s no 15-minute ride to my apartment but it’s not like I live in another state. But I do get it. Manhattan offers so many diversions. When I was in college I’m pretty sure I only made it off of the island a handful of times in four years. When you live in Manhattan you just don’t get why anyone would want to be anywhere else. You’re wearing “city blinders.”
A lover of all things whale, I knew that I had to check out the Whales: Giants of the Deep exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. I could not miss out on this. LK and I made plans to meet up at noon over the weekend, hoping that it would be early enough to avoid the rush of post-lunch, sugar-high kiddies. I arrived a little early, but as I came out of the subway I received at text from LK informing me that she was running late.