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  • Memory: Summer Vacation

    I may as well speak about the memories of the summer vacation. I was starting to write up stuff about this year’s vacation but then a flood of memories came back and I thought I should document them for my grandkids who are reading this one day.

    They were long days in the car. I remember my sister and I not getting along too well sometimes and also remember suggesting (or at least having thoughts of) installing a cardboard wall between the two of us in the backseat! I remember sleeping a lot because I would get motion sickness a lot. Ugh, the Gravol! I remember that’s what knocked me out usually…that icky yellow pasty stuff you had to swallow so it killed off motion sickness.

    Most vacations consisted of heading to Toronto for awhile to visit Aunt Dinah and Uncle Richard and also heading to Gaspe to visit Aunt Lana and Uncle Tony. I must admit that I never really cared for Gaspe when I was a kid but now I have learned to appreciate it. Perhaps it is because when you are a kid, you pretty well are stuck in a place and can only have so much leverage as to what you can do. This involved hanging out with my cousin Rocky who I didn’t see eye to eye with while growing up. 😉 I guess we were from two different worlds. We are fine nowadays but you know how kids are when they don’t get along. I also remember going across the street to swim a lot in some lady’s pool. There was also a convenience store down the road that we must have gone to quite a bit for the odd things (like candy). I remember Pal-o-Mine chocolate bars which we couldn’t get in Ontario but was a staple Quebec item.

    I have random scattered memories of Gaspe – Aunt Lana doing the laundry in some machine that came out in the kitchen, lobster dinners, my birthdays usually being held there (as it was the time of the year), playing Nintendo in the later years and people wondering why I loved the video games so much instead of going outdoors, a bat flying around in the house one time, the Snorkels wallpaper in Jason’s bedroom, going over to Charles’ place across the street and seeing his Coleco-Vision video game system before I even knew what video games were, the hyenas (scratch that…they were coyotes. After hearing a phone message from my Dad laughing at the fact that I had written hyenas, I realized that I racking my brain this afternoon searching for the word…I thought hyenas was the wrong word but then thought it must have been it…clearly I was wrong!) crying down from the mountains and one time attacking the dog from what I remember, going to visit Aunt Eunice and Uncle Hally – I feel that when you are a kid you don’t really appreciate these meetings with older people because everyone just talks about older stuff but now I appreciate the memories of visiting these people. I always remember Uncle Hally sitting in his recliner and Maureen and I hanging out in the sun porch reading something (Archie comics perhaps?). I also remember visiting Great GrandDad’s place and thinking it was the oldest house in the world. I never understood why someone would want to live in something like that. I also have this vague memory of Maureen going up to see Great-Grandad and he was in his underwear putting his pants on. At least I think that’s what happened? Someone can refresh my memory on that one.

    Toronto was always a marvel for me as I loved the city. I remember going to the Bridlewood Mall with Nanny (or Mom?) a lot. I also remember when I got older Dad would bring me to Toys R Us or some comic shops. Visiting Aunt Dinah was always a treat (it still is!) as she always offered me something to eat. I remember not really hanging out with my cousins as they were older than me. It’s funny when you get older that there is a bridge which is gapped. Now I see Rick at least once a year at Winterlude and I have a newfound friendship with Troy which has grown over the years of playing guitar and more recently, realizing that we are into a lot of the same things in life.

    I also remember going to Burlington to visit my other Nanny and I always remember her bringing us to a movie. From what I can recall, it was always a Disney flick of sorts. I also remember her old apartment which had this hardwood floor which came apart in little pieces near the balcony and I would spend time taking this section apart and putting it back together. I can only imagine if someone was doing that at my house right now!

    Clearly this post isn’t meant for everyone but it’s more of a documentation of my memories of a time and place long gone but still very vivid in my mind. When I lose my memory in years to come, at least I’ll have this as a documentation.

    iplaying: Tarantula – The Smashing Pumpkins (Zeitgeist)

  • Follow-up: WiFi in Campgrounds

    As a follow-up to this posting: http://palmer.grumpster.com/2007/07/agree-or-disagree-wifi-in-campgrounds.html

    I can now weigh in on the wifi in campgrounds debate. I brought my laptop with me during our trip a few weeks ago. I’ll speak more on the point of having a laptop on a trip (excellent idea!) in my writeup of the actual trip, but in terms of having it on the campground, I don’t think it’s a bad idea.

    In fact, I didn’t even use the WiFi (costs $2 for 24 hours in some places, which is a fine price if you have to connect to the Net for some reason), but I did watch some episodes of Jekyll in the comfort of our tent. All in all, I think that if someone wants to surf the Net or check their email during their holidays, then that’s their own thing (while I must admit it’s a little strange that you would want to go camping just to surf the net!). But it’s a great tool if you need to map out the next leg of your journey or get in touch with work for something major.

  • Review: The Time Travelers Wife

    Considering I had an entire day to myself upon returning home from my trip (and Katie talking about how great the ending of the book was) I decided to set myself down and finish The Time Travelers Wife.

    Other than reading some books for school (by the way, got a B+ in my Comm class this summer. Not too shabby.), I don’t get a chance to read too much outside of my staple Star Wars books and (recently) some old school sci-fi and biographies.

    So when I was on Pajiba and they recommended this book, I asked around and found out that Eric and Annie had a copy and they loved it (and they graciously lent it to me during my holidays).

    The story revolves around Henry who is a time traveler. But not in the Delorean type of way, but in a way where he has a genetic disorder which can have him time travel at a given moment (usually when he gets stressed out over something) and then he shows up in another time, naked (clothing can’t go through time, you didn’t know that?!). So he has to deal with the consequences of this random time traveling – sometimes he has to steal clothes and money, sometimes he gets into fights because of this, etc.

    Meanwhile, the entire book is really a love story as he meets Clare at six years old, but he has to form a relationship with her at this age as she will become his wife in the future. So, imagine yourself meeting your partner when they are six, and you are forty and you have to form a relationship with them. Meanwhile, you time travel on a moment’s notice so you don’t really control this thing.

    In the end, the story jumps between the present-day Clare/Henry – where Clare actually meets Henry in present time and tells him how he travels back in time to meet her and then it jumps back and forwards in time to show us their meetings.

    The characters are charismatic and believable. I felt that I could relate to a lot of the characters – whether it be their everyday mannerisms, or the crazy conversations about nothing they would have. The writing is uber-modern…it felt strange reading a modern book as it was explicit in language as well as descriptions of their sexual acts in some parts of the book. This is why I would have to put the caveat that I don’t know if Nanny would care for this book.

    What can I say about the book on a whole? It blew me away. I was engrossed in this like I am with a Harry Potter novel (yes, yes, I do enjoy a good Harry Potter book). At some points in my vacation I just wanted to pull the car over to keep reading. The relationship of Henry and Clare grew together in an awkward way (which happens when one of you time travel) but the love they had…heck, I’ll admit it. I’m a romantic at heart so this story hit me. It was an amazing story of their good times, their bad, the craziness surrounding time travel…well written novel and the references of the time periods (the music at the time, the restaurants in the Chicago area, BEAUTIFUL!) made this novel exceptional.

    Watch out for the film with Rachel McAdams coming sometime next year.

    Highly recommended. Really, it is.

  • Breaking Rock News


    I have a new love in my life.

    http://www.takamine.com/?fa=detail&mid=741&sid=526

  • Day 17 – The End

    The morning came way too early and I hopped out of bed and went to get the car from the parking garage. They weren’t too impressed that I didn’t call ahead the night before to let them know that I was coming in around 5:30 to pick up the car, but no worries, I go there, paid the bill and picked up the car.

    We packed up the car and hit the road. It definitely wasn’t hard to get out of the city into New Jersey. After asking Vero to navigate, I let Vero sleep for awhile as I knew I would want to catch some shut-eye eventually. We stopped for breakfast at one point and kept driving.

    Along the way I decided that I would purchase the Takamine guitar in Syracuse, NY. I had checked if there was a Guitar Center in Syracuse and sure enough there was. So when I got closer to Syracuse, I pulled off to the side of the road, broke out the trusty laptop and found directions to Guitar Center. Vero was clearly excited that I was going to bite the bullet. Hey, I had to! I wanted my grandmother’s gift money to go towards something special…not just paying down debt.

    I walked in there like I owned the place, picked up the guitar, went to town playing and surprised the gentleman working there by saying “Yes, I’m interested in buying this guitar today.” when he asked if I needed any help. 😉

    In the end, I got an excellent deal on the guitar and case after indicating the price Chazz was going to give me down in Boston. We had to search for an appropriate case as the guitar is a jumbo body (something I’ve fell in love with ever since the purchase of my Epiphone). I don’t really care for the case personally, but it’s what’s inside that counts!

    We headed for the border, had no problems crossing it (read: no one confiscated any meat products!) and headed towards the nearest truck stop for a bite to eat. Along the way we passed 1000 Islands which looked amazing and I mentally noted that we should go visit it sometime.

    We hit familiar highways along the 401 and I let Vero drive the rest of the way and I awoke when we hit Ottawa. I dropped Vero off, headed home, and unpacked the car and just sat there regaling in my memories of the past 17 days.

    There you have it. Nearly three weeks on the road. One of the better trips I’ve been on. I enjoyed camping along the way as it was cheap and I am cheap. Frugal may be the better term.

    I am very glad that traveling with Vero turned out well. I really did wonder if I would get on her nerves along the trip but we seem to complement each other well on travels.

    I changed a lot of my ways of traveling and just had various destinations in mind with a very relaxed time line to follow. I found I actually enjoyed it more and plan to do more trips like it. You have a little more freedom when you can just head somewhere and say “You know what? I’m having a great time here, let’s just stay!”

    New York City was definitely an amazing opportunity for the both of us and we enjoyed it immensely. I would return again just to explore the city. I enjoy exploring more than hitting up tourist attractions at this point in my life…but I try and have a balance as I’m sure the tourist attractions became attractions for a reason.

    That being said, I’m writing this entry a month after we got back and it seems like so long ago. However, the next year will be action packed as we already have a trip to the Dominican Republic, British Columbia, and potentially Gaspe planned. Yikes! Start saving that money!

  • Day 16 – The Final Vacation Day

    We awoke and grabbed some bagels from down the street and brought them back to the apartment to eat. We starting later in the travel day but this wasn’t a big deal. We are on vacation!

    We hopped on the subway (which was hell for awhile because for some reason the ticket machine never took Miguels’ credit card!) and headed towards Brooklyn Bridge. After a few people offering us help to find the entrance, we finally climbed the stairs to the famous Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge is pretty neat in that you don’t walk along side with the traffic, you walk on platforms ABOVE the traffic on the bridge! It was pretty cool to see the engineering that went into making this bridge. It’s also a sight to see Manhattan from the middle of the bridge, very reminscient of the ferry ride to Ellis Island.

    After crossing the bridge, we made our way down to a wharf to buy some ice cream and wait for the Water Taxi back to the other side. When the Water Taxi arrived, it was a quick trip across to Manhattan and we continued our trek towards Greenwich Village and little Italy in search of a list of stores Miguel wished to check out.

    Let’s back the story up for a moment to speak of how the day before, I was in H&M and spied a great brown corduroy jacket but decided not to pick it up yet as I had the entire city to explore.

    Well, considering it was the last day and I hadn’t found anything, I decided to seek out an H&M to pick up this jacket. We first went to the Vice Store (which was closed up) and then we went somewhere else to look at vintage clothing (which was ridiculously overpriced) and we hit upon an amazing, AMAZING clothing store called Uniqlo (sp?). Miguel was saying this store was from Japan and is just starting to make it big in North America. They had some amazing clothing items and I was really interested in a jacket they had a slew of t-shirts they had. I find I’m getting back into a t-shirt craze I had years ago. I can pinpoint my clothing line for the past decade: t-shirts, then button up shirts, then golf shirts, now the circle is complete and I’m going back to t-shirts.

    In the end, I was screwed out of all clothing options because they had NO large or even medium sizes in ANY of the t-shirts I wanted (I gave them four choices!) and no good size on the jacket I was looking at. I was pretty miffed. I ended up picking up this sweet t-shirt designed by Yoshitaka Amano (of Final Fantasy fame) but felt kind of silly doing so as Miguel had also picked up the same shirt. However, I justified it considering it was THE ONLY CLOTHING ITEM IN MY SIZE! I still can’t get over the fact that they were out of medium and large sizes in all the things I chose. This became the running joke of the day. Strike One for Palmer.

    We then stumbled upon H&M and we went in looking for my jacket but it turned out to be some store with no mens section! What the heck? Strike Two for Palmer.

    At this point, we just kept traveling around the area, eventually stumbling upon Little Italy. I was getting concerned for Vero at this point as she was looking like she was going to pass out and we figured she had dehydration (which wasn’t uncalled for considering the hot weather and the amount of walking we were doing). However, I guess when someone is dehydrated, they aren’t too thirsty so she wasn’t accepting any of our water. I must admit that I just let her be during this portion of the trip as she was getting pissed off at the amount of attention she was getting. 😉

    We stopped into a pub for a drink and headed towards the Virgin Megastore in search for some Pumpkins vinyl. Vero ended up looking like she was going to pass out any second so we got her some drinks from the corner store but she didn’t really feel like drinking them. We were all pretty concerned for her and knew we had to go take a break fast!

    On the way to the Virgin Megastore, we stumbled upon a clothing market of up and coming fashion designers. We spied some excellent t-shirts. I really wanted one of this great collection of animals playing in a band. I thought it was amazing, but lo and behold, the clothing Gods were against me and they DIDN’T HAVE MY SIZE!!! Strike Three for the Palmer. So mad!

    Katie and Miguel went ahead to Katz’ Restaurant for a pastrami sandwich while Vero picked out a few shirts to buy. They are pretty cool. I ended up mixing up the directions BADLY to get to this pastrami shop. Essentially I walked all the way to the area of the shop, thought I had gone the wrong way so walked a bunch of blocks backwards before realizing that we were in the right spot before! We were both not impressed with my navigation ability at that point. When we got there we sat down to find out that Miguel had paid $16 for this pastrami sandwich! (actually, I asked Katie how much it was and she wrote back the following: “I know it was $14.95, because I PAID!) Ludicrous! They are just cashing in on their fame (they were in the film “When Harry Met Sally”). I vowed not to buy a sandwich of such extraordinary prices so we hung out for awhile (the place reminds me of Nate’s in Ottawa) and then headed out to the Virgin Megastore.

    I couldn’t find the Pumpkins vinyl but managed to grab an Arcade Fire album and then we were heading towards dinner when Miguel pointed out this great comic book shop called Forbidden Planet. It was pretty intense inside and I managed to grab a few other Fables graphic novels (as I had read a few on the trip and loved them) as well as the Making of Star Wars book which I had my eye on all the time on the trip as I would save $30 buying it in the States vs. Canada. Vero even noticed I got a student discount if I showed my student card! Bonus.

    We went to an Asian tapas restaurant for dinner. Tapas (as far as I was explained) is where you order dishes which are shared amongst your table. The restaurant was very cool inside – had a good vibe and good lighting inside. I liked the décor on the walls. I also enjoyed the fact that this was the first time I had ever gone to a BYOB restaurant! I went in there with my six pack, they put it in the fridge and got me another bottle whenever I wished! Turns out they they didn’t have their liquor license at the time so this was the other option. I found that odd as I had always assumed having a liquor license allowed you to have liquor on the premises, not just sell it. Either way, the drinks were great (Samuel Adams!), the food was amazing and we all had a great time. Especially when they threw out some random rap song which had a booming “SAY HELLO TO ALL THE NIGGAAAASSS IN DA HOUSE!” or something to that effect. All the tables looked at each other and started laughing. What the heck? Who is controlling the music back there?!

    Vero was feeling in top shape after a great dinner and we split up from Katie and Miguel to once again try and find Marvel Comics (I found the correct address this time around). Unfortunately for us, we STILL could not find Marvel Headquarters and I was pretty upset. Vero is a dear and cheered me up by taking pictures in front of a random building which we made-believe was Marvel Comics Headquarters. We walked over to Times Square which never ceases to amaze me. It was 11:30 at night and the signs light up the area like it’s the middle of the day. PLUS, it was this late on a Sunday night and the streets are still packed with people!

    We took the subway home, gave our spare tickets to some people, went into the apartment and got ready for bed. It was going to be an early morning…we went to bed around midnight and had to wake up around 5AM as Katie and Miguel were leaving on a plane in the morning. Ouch.

  • Day 15 – Celeb Sightings

    The best thing about staying at Katie’s manager’s place was that he gave us a list of things to do to authenticate our New York experience. We awoke and headed out into another sweltering day (why does the heat wave come at the END of the summer?!) and went to a bagel shop down the street and went across the street to pick up some lox (which I never knew was a form of fish) and some cream cheese for our bagel. We then walked to Central Park to sit and eat our breakfast. I thoroughly enjoyed the lox on the bagel although Vero wasn’t really a fan of the smoked fish.

    Central Park turned out to be a highlight of the trip as this place is huge! There was really too much to explore in one visit so we just picked some highlights and traipsed through the Park. I would love to have a park like this down the street from me as they have some great bicycle and walking paths. You have to really pay attention to the traffic lights in the park though because if you jaywalk you may cut off a cyclist going full tilt and they will crash!

    I was personally looking forward to seeing Strawberry Fields, the section of the park dedicated to John Lennon. When we arrived there I realized that it was just that – a section of the park. I was expecting some strawberry plants or something. There was a nice emblem in the sidewalk which said Imagine.

    We also had our first celebrity sighting! We were walking by this woman holding two children in her arms and I looked at her while she passed…the brown hair, the huge sunglasses, the big lips…BIG LIPS! We did a double take as she walked by us and realized it was Angelina Jolie! Miguel was disappointed he missed it completely as he was looking elsewhere. That was a pretty cool event. The picture here is from some celebrity sighting website we found the day after.


    I was surprised not to see many vendors as Claude had told me they were all over Central Park. There were a few near the exit of the park but they didn’t have much in terms of merchandise.

    We started going down 5th Avenue in the heat and didn’t see too much at all until we spied FAO Schwartz. I had never really heard of this toy store, but apparently it’s featured in the film “Big” with Tom Hanks where he plays a giant piano (by stepping on the keys). It was a neat toy store and Miguel and I posed with some life size Darth Vader and Chewbacca LEGO statues! That was very cool. We also got a demonstration of the life-size piano which was neat. The most memorable experience of the store was the extreme air conditioning in the store which was a reprieve from the outside elements.

    We then went to Sak’s – a giant department store which was alright. Katie was in search for a dress for a wedding she was going to so I just explored around for a bit but mainly sat down for awhile and relaxed as we had been walking a lot. Sak’s is pretty cool for the fact that it’s a dozen floors of departments, mainly fashion from what I could see. It’s worth paying a visit but I don’t know if I would buy much there (read: expensive!)

    We then hooked over to Madison Avenue and kept walking down the street. In the back of my mind, I was keeping a watch on the area we were heading because I was in search of the Marvel Comics headquarters. When I was a kid, I always said I wanted to visit New York to see where the mighty Marvels work.

    We ended up at the Empire State Building but it was a 45 minute wait so we decided against going up into it. There is always next time! We then went away from the main strip to find Marvel Comics but I must have written down the address wrong! We could not find it at all which disappointed me as I led us astray for a few blocks in search of the building.

    We headed back towards downtown and the crowds of people were starting to pick up as we got closer to Times Square. THIS was what we were waiting for! We traveled through a rougher looking neighbourhood where merchant booths were set up all along the sidewalk. I remember one guy yelling “Get this stuff before the cops come!” I picked up a few souvenirs and when we hit Times Square, it was a little overwhelming.

    Thousands of people in the area and billboards lighting up every product imaginable! There were tons of musicals to find along Broadway and I now understood the term for Off Broadway (as in, some theaters are off the Broadway Street). At this point, we had all had enough from traveling for the day. Miguel and Katie headed home in a cab while Vero and I decided to head to the theater which had the musical Rent to see if we could get tickets.

    There was a big commotion at the Rent theater as there was someone outside signing autographs. I guess Rent fans are quite fanatic! We went to the ticket booth and we had the option of picking up some cheaper tickets for $55 each, or we could wait for an hour, put our names into a lottery to get access to the $20 seats for the first row of the house! While I must admit this was an extremely enticing offer, I convinced Vero that it would be best if we just paid the extra cash and go home and rest awhile before the musical, instead of waiting until an hour later, then some time later to find out if we won or not. This is an amazing deal though and I would recommend it to anyone in the future.

    We hoofed it home on the subway, relaxed for a short bit of time with some bread, cheese and wine while Vero ironed out my clothes to make me look good! It was the least I could do as we were heading out for a night on the town in New York City with the greatest looking girl there! We arranged to meet up with Katie and Miguel after the musical and headed downtown. I was pretty hot in my jeans and long sleeve shirt, but it wasn’t unbearable.

    We got to the theater and found our seats to the extreme left of the stage on the floor level. From our view, we couldn’t see a small portion of the left stage but this was fine as most of the action happened in the centre. We managed to sneak over a few seats closer to the center as some people didn’t show up.

    Surprisingly, Vero saw a friend of hers from Ottawa sitting a few rows in front of us! We called out his name and was surprised to see us there (as we were to see him!) He had said he was up for the weekend to see this musical and was surprised to hear we got our tickets that day as he had his own for months. Small world.

    Rent was a pretty good musical. I am not used to musicals…I realized it takes a lot of focus to listen to the words that they are singing as this is the entire dialogue! I realized that when I listen to music, I listen more to the music rather than the lyrics! They had an actual band up on stage in the corner which was great and they had a very dynamic cast. Essentially, Rent is a modern musical which deals with people being evicted from their apartment and their struggle to stay there. Other stories weave around with dealing with AIDS and drug addiction and rock n’ roll. I must admit that reading the Wikipedia entry on it the next morning made the story a lot cleare for me!

    I found it odd that every time the main character Mark came onto the stage, the crowd would go wild! I thought that maybe this was just part of the regular show…it wasn’t until I looked on Wikipedia that I found out that the actor who was on stage was Anthony Rapp (of Dazed and Confused fame…well, really, he’s probably more famous for being in Rent) who was in the original production in the early 90s! He was back for a six week stint after being away from the musical for quite a few years. I was very glad to hear that we took part in a piece of Rent history. I also realized that this must have been the actor outside signing autographs for the fans in the early afternoon.

    After the musical, Vero and I phoned Katie and Miguel and found out that they were heading back to the apartment as Katie had forgotten her license and they were unable to get into the club we were planning to meet at after the musical. We headed back home and waited for them (while grabbing an excellent slice of pizza around the corner!). When we went upstairs, we sat down for a bit with a glass of wine and decided to not go back out for the night. We had had our share of excitement for the day and were excited to get some rest. We stayed up for a few hours having some wine and watching TV before hitting the sack.

  • Day 13 – New York, New York!

    The final stretch. We’re heading towards New York City! An amazing feeling was coming over me on the trip up to the city. I mean, this is NEW YORK CITY that we were going to!

    We drove from Boston to New York City in the morning as we wanted to get there to do some tourist stuff before Katie and Miguel came into town in the evening. On my drive in, I realized that I must have become acclimatized to big cities…I had imagined that New York City would be huge and something that would make my jaw drop, but in the end, a city is a city. They still had buildings the same size and the traffic was the same. It’s a strange feeling to describe…years ago I would have been in awe during the whole trip, but now I see the little differences each city has and not just the grand scale of it.

    We ended up in gridlock when driving through the highway through the Bronx. This was not a good start to our day. It was FREAKING HOT when we got to the city also. Say goodbye to the cool days and nights along the East Coast! I think it was 40 degrees with the humidity.

    We finally ended up in Manhattan at a parking garage I had found a few blocks away from where we were staying. We are staying at Katie’s manager’s apartment (which he still owns, but lives in Toronto). It was an amazing opportunity to stay in Manhattan and I am sending out a big thank you to him for letting us stay there! The parking garage was my best bet for staying in the city all weekend long and in the end, it only cost me $120 to spend the weekend there. While I could argue the finer points of charging me for an entire day of Monday when I left at 5AM, I figured the money was well worth it.

    After ditching the vehicle, we headed to the subway to go out to the Statue of Liberty. I’m glad we picked up that handy guide book for $2 at that flea market in Moncton because it had a bunch of maps within it. The subway was uneventful (other than this amazing person who came in with jeans with cargo pockets on it. It was like a scene from Vice Magazine’s Dos & Don‘ts.) and we arrived in the sweltering heat to get in line for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

    We got in line and went through the metal detectors before boarding the ferry. This ferry was a rocking from the waves! We had to hold onto something while walking down the hallways to make sure we didn’t crash into a wall! We managed to get a great seat on the top and when we pulled out there was an amazing sight of the Manhattan skyline. Pretty sweet if you ask me.

    Approaching the Statue, we realized that it was smaller than we both imagined. I was imagining something as large as a skyscraper and it wasn’t nearly as large. The photos we took don’t really explain our perspective, but we so kind of disappointed…to the point where when the ferry was letting people off, we decided to just keep going to Ellis Island. We didn’t have tickets to get into the Statue anyhow so I didn’t see much sense in walking up to it.

    Ellis Island is where all the immigrants landed when coming to the States from parts unknown. This was home to the immigration centre and from there they hopped on a boat to the city of New York. It was pretty amazing to walk through the building and imagine tens of thousands of people lining up to get a chance to come into North America. We went up to the second level which was home to the original lineups of people and the hall was vast. There were pictures of it full of people and luggage and I couldn’t get over the amount of people. There was a jar of jellybeans somewhere which indicated it was the equivalent number of people who were processed in the highest processing date in their career – over 10,000 people. 10,000 people?! I don’t think a team of a hundred could process 10,000 emails in one day, let alone actual people speaking in strange tongues!

    We walked around a museum of old rooms with artifacts which told the story of Ellis Island – how you were marked on your coat if they suspected anything physically/mentally wrong with you, how translators were on hand to try to figure out what language you were speaking to help you answer some questions. The translators would have to just speak all the languages they knew until the immigrant recognized a word!

    There were three levels of the complex and we spent our time in the second level and decided it was too much to go to the others. We had already spent two hours there and it was time to catch the ferry back to the mainland. I stood in line to get an ice cream for the both of us (which was melting fast by the time I got it to Vero in the ferry lineup!) but the funniest thing happened while I was waiting in line.

    This boy was walking away with his hot dog and this seagull made a dive for it, scared the bejeezus out of the kid and made way with his wiener and sat on top of a wall! Then a bunch of employees of Ellis Island who were taking a break on a picnic table started yelling at this seagull – “Jared, dang it, leave those kids alone!” “Oh, Jared’s done it again!” “Jared, when you going to learn?!”. I was having a good laugh considering this bird must be notorious for these attacks. One of the employees came to the counter and said “Jared did it again! Give this kid a hot dog, will you?”

    After getting back to the mainland, we grabbed a slice of pizza which didn’t live up to my New York City pizza standards, toured around the downtown area, saw Wall Street, the former site of the World Trade Center, a giant bull statue (I have no idea what the significance was). We then headed back home as it was getting late and we had to meet up with Katie and Miguel.

    We had great timing as we got there five minutes before Katie and Miguel arrived by taxi. We grabbed stuff from my car (which was strange as the car was not locked inside this parking garage. This freaked me out a little but I suppose the place is secure (aka, secure like the parking garage in Ferris Buehler!). We checked out the great pad we were staying in and relaxed a bit before heading out for dinner at a great Italian restaurant which was recommended by Katie’s manager. I enjoyed the Italian restaurant thoroughly as it was a small place with some great atmosphere and tons of action going on with the waiters scurrying around and taunting each other. After an excellent bottle of wine and a great meal, we grabbed a few bottles of wine, toured the area, went to a pub for a few more beers and headed home for the night in anticipation for the next big day. Miguel did introduce us to the great show of Flight of The Conchords on HBO however. This was an amazing show and I ended up falling in love with it in the coming weeks from downloading the first season.

    At this point in the trip to New York City, we noticed that there really wasn’t that many people in the city. I was imagining being overwhelmed and bumping into people constantly but this was not the case. Perhaps everyone was away for the weekend?

    Yes, that is me with Spider-man.

  • Day 12 – Witches and Italians

    While waiting for Vero to shower, I packed up the car and sat near the water and just took it all in. I think I’ve pretty well decided that I will move to the sea when I’m ready to retire. The water is amazing and mesmerizing at the same time. I just sat there, read a book and enjoyed the cool breeze hitting me.

    Salem was calling our name in the morning and we went to the tourist center, grabbed some maps and sat for half an hour to watch a documentary on Salem. We thought it was a good film but were very disappointed that they didn’t have any burning witches! Near the end of the film, we descended into laughing fits after voicing our own commentary about witches after each of the narrator’s comments. Example: Salem is a land of beauty and marvels. Then we would add “OF WITCHES!!!”. Ha ha…you had to be there. After the film, we got a photo taken of us in full-on witch garb! This photography shop dresses you up in costumes and then gives you different props to use while they take 20 photos. Then you can go choose which ones you would like to print out. Considering it cost a pretty penny, we decided on getting only one printed out which Vero has now at her place. It was fun to do and I would recommend it to anyone who wants a hilarious memento of their trip to Salem.

    Vero also picked up a great shirt which had the outline of a witch on a broom and says “Salem, Massachusetts – A Witchin’ Good Time”. She scored that for a measly $5.

    We headed out to tour around and went to the Witch Dungeon Museum which included a recreation of an actual witch trial and a tour of a mock dungeon. Supposedly there was an actual dungeon discovered 50 years ago but heritage sites weren’t a big thing back then and it was destroyed. All that was left is a piece of wood which hangs in this fake dungeon. The dungeon shows us the size of the cells and how the prisoners (the witches!!!) were imprisoned there (or burned! Burn the witch!). It was an alright tour, but I liked the recreation of the witch trial more (which were from actual transcripts). They also had posters around the room which explained the history of how the hanging of witches came about. It was pretty crazy. Essentially, if someone said you were a witch, chances are you would be hung with no questions asked. This ended when someone declared the Governor’s wife to be a witch and the Governor stopped the whole ordeal. But by that time, a slew of so-called witches had been hung (or burned?).

    We then headed to a spell-casting seminar which had only Vero and I as participants. We both thought this was a great seminar as it had an honest to goodness witch teaching us to cast a spell. I doubt my spell will come to light as I think I was yelling out the wrong word! Woops! Maybe somewhere out there someone will have a curse on their heads instead! Anyhow, the spell caster was amazing and she had a great room with a smoke machine. We were really into it. I can see my Dad going to one of these events and thinking it was the lamest things he has ever seen. 😉

    At that point, it was around 1PM so we decided we had seen enough of Salem and headed towards Boston.

    I love Boston. I fell in love with it a few years ago when we went to visit Pam. We had the craziest snowstorm the weekend we visited so I was excited to see the town in its summer splendor. After parking underground, we started walking around the city core and headed towards the Cheers replica bar. We checked out a few buildings for their architecture and before hitting up Cheers, we saw this amazing group of dancers from Brooklyn who were entertaining the crowd. My favourite comment from them was “Alright, now you know we’re looking for some money from you. All we ask is that you take out your wallet, take out $5-$10, and then give us the wallet.” Ha ha. Turns out that this is a common joke amongst these dance troupes as I heard the same thing in New York City a few days later!

    We walked to the Cheers replica bar which was a good time for a rest. Of course, I ordered a Samuel Adams beer. I thought it was neat that the bar looks exactly like it does in the TV show. The area surrounding it doesn’t look exactly the same but that doesn’t make it any less exciting. Vero ordered an iced tea and realized that in the States, they don’t put any sugar in it! I had forgotten that from our last time down in the US.

    After Cheers, we decided to follow the Freedom Trail which is a red line which takes you on a tour of Boston through all the historical hot spots. I thought this was an amazing tourist attraction and would recommend it to Ottawa. It was so easy to follow a red line around the town. I don’t think Vero was too impressed with Boston in the end, but I think it had to do with the fact that I just kept walking and walking and walking and we didn’t get much of a break along the Freedom Trail. If anyone wishes to do the trail, give yourself the day and not a few hours. We ended up at the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) which is the oldest commissioned ship which is still afloat in the world! It was quite the site and I was disappointed to find out that we had just missed the time limit to board the ship for a tour. However, I can’t be too disappointed as I know that I’ll be back in Boston again one day.

    After realizing that we were both tired of touring around, we headed back towards the car. Along the way, we stumbled upon a giant BBQ which is recounted in this original entry:

    —–

    I’m just putting these photos up for placeholders really since I don’t have much time to dedicate to updating this thing. However, tonight we are taking it easy in a motel instead of camping – mainly because my ROAD ATLAS SUCKS and it’s only shows major routes and couldn’t show us the actual road to the park it was showing in the middle of nowhere.

    That being said, today was one of the highlights of the trip for me as it brought back memories of traveling Europe. We stumbled upon an Italian festival where there was a giant BBQ going on. Upon asking one of the locals, he said the St. Anthony’s Festival was running all weekend long but the neighbourhood always holds a free BBQ the day before it starts and he invited us to have some of it. We felt honoured and grabbed a burger and hot dog (before realizing that the entire neighbourhood was waiting for the Italian sausages to come out!).

    This is where the magic lies…not in tourist attractions on a map, but in exploring the city for yourselves and stumbling upon goodness.

    Tomorrow brings us into New York City to meet up with Katie and Miguel for the last leg of our trip. This was essentially what spearheaded this trip to the East Coast…it’s been quite an adventure and I will document it all properly in the previous posts in the future. For now, enjoy the few photos I’ve sent along, revel in the fact that Vero and I are fine and well, and enjoy the rest of your summer.

    I suppose I should look up directions on how to navigate around NYC. I have a feeling this may be a giant obstacle awaiting me. Just call me David.

    —-

    After getting to the car, we navigated out of the city in search of a campground which didn’t happen so we decided to get a hotel room for the night. It’s kind of disappointing to go from paying $20 a night for a campsite to $130 for a hotel room for the night. However, we were tired, we were cranky and we realized that it would do us some good to just relax for the night before hitting NYC. The receptionist was hilarious as he had been working a 24 hour shift and was just spewing out hilarities left and right. I enjoyed the bathtub as I had a slew of bugbites on my legs and sat in there with a beer for awhile. Life was good! The room also had wireless Internet which helped me map out how to get to NYC the next day. I also realized that if you are ever in search of a WiFi connection, it may be a good idea to just pull into a hotel parking lot as they would probably have a connection around!

    Overall the trip to Boston was alright, but after only spending a few hours there and just walking all day long, I realize that it wasn’t as fun as it was the first time around when we took our time to tour around. I will remember this for next time – it’s better to take your time and tour instead of rushing everything.

  • Day 11 – Entering Witch Country

    After we arose from slumber, we packed up everything and headed to Wal-Mart for some supplies. I didn’t notice much difference with the Wal-Marts in the States, although they had some good deals on movies and music. We also managed to find the Leaving Las Vegas film that Vero supposedly appeared in (read the Quebec City entry for that reference.)

    Hitting the road, we traveled down the barren (read: in the middle of the forest) 95 highway for a few hours. Of course, Vero slept a little more. She makes a good point when she notices that I like to listen to my music in the morning rather than talking with someone. That’s just the way I am. There was nothing special with the highway…much like the New Brunswick highways – not much else other than a strip of concrete through woods.

    Around lunchtime we stumbled upon the town of Bangor which I swore was mentioned by Carole as a place to drop in for some outlet mall shopping. With that in mind, we hit the city centre and along the way, went into Indigo where I got my Canadian dollar’s worth in books. I had meant to order a bunch through Amazon a few months back but I figured I may as well stock up while I was there. As a matter of comparison, a paperback novel I bought was $7.99 USD instead of $11.99 CDN. The book market is atrocious for their exchange rates and I think I’ll start driving down to the States whenever I want to stock up. I ended up picking up a few Star Wars novels, the new Dune novel (!!!) and a few graphic novels of the comic book called Fables (which is amazing. It has characters from fantasy living in New York in secrecy. Like Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, the Three Little Pigs…)

    We then headed to the downtown core which looked pretty bleak. We didn’t even bother getting out of the car as we realized that maybe we had the wrong town for the outlet malls. In the end, we stocked up on some much needed groceries (after the bologna incident) and we stumbled upon an amazing salad bar inside the store! We filled up our trays and had a great little lunch along the water at some picnic tables. Let us not forget the amazing barrel of pickles I stumbled upon! I picked a huge pickle up and am proud to say that it was so big that it took me three separate days to munch on it before I had to throw the rest out! That is what I like to call the big pickle. 😉

    After checking in with work on my laptop (which was disappointing as I found out that work would not let me go away on an assignment to another Branch and I had to make a decision as to whether or not I would leave my Branch), we hit the road again towards Boston.

    Because I’m writing this entry a month after the trip, I can’t recall some aspects. I’m pretty sure the trip to Boston was fraught full of TOLL BOOTHS! I’ve never witnessed a toll booth and the first one wasn’t a big deal.

    What was a big deal was the fact that there were numerous toll booths along the way! I thought they would just charge you once to get onto the highway, but NO!!! They charge you on your way out of the highway also! I thought this was unfair. I figure we must have hit 10 toll booths in total along the way. I wasn’t too impressed and in the future will think about taking some extra time and taking a secondary highway. Can someone please explain me the reasoning behind an entry and an exit for a toll booth?

    Once we were nearing Boston, I knew that we would want to find a campground which wouldn’t be found within the city itself, so we spied a campground on our map and headed off road towards it. After not seeing any signs, we stopped into a gas station to ask and they didn’t really know of one but there MAY be one down a certain highway. The directions they gave us were confusing and we ended up traveling through a slew of small towns along the way.

    Along the way, fate intervened and we drove by Guitar Center. Now, along the way on this trip, I had decided to look at getting a new six-string acoustic/electric guitar with some money that my Grandmother had given me for my birthday. I knew that we had gone to this amazing store outside of Boston the last time we were there and I had planned to hunt for it on the laptop as soon as we got to the campground. Like I said, fate played a hand and had me driving right by the exact store! We pulled in and I spent a good hour testing out a bunch of Takamine guitars. I fell in love with one of them and talked with the gentleman in charge…Chazz. Awesome name for an awesome guy! Chazz understood my predicament of getting across the border with it and we tried to figure out if it was worth it to buy it in the States or not. He did try to help by bringing down the price significantly but it still wouldn’t have helped if I had to pay the duty on the instrument. I remember the next few hours as a pain in the ass as I sat out in the car with my laptop and looked at prices in Canada and laws on duty charges when crossing the border. Vero must have been annoyed from waiting all that time but she was very supportive in my decision in not buying the guitar at that time. Ah well. I thanked Chazz and we hit the road to find the camp site.

    It was getting late at night (due to my impromptu visit to Guitar Center) and we were still having a hard time finding the campsite. We ended up in Salem, Massachusetts which was odd as I had been thinking of bringing Vero to it but thought it would be too far from Boston. Clearly my sense of distance isn’t that good as it’s not far at all! I started telling Vero how Salem is famous for burning/hanging witches back in the day and this got her pretty excited.

    We ended up at some boardwalk which was pretty cool. It was along the beach and it was the main hangout for teenagers. It would have been cool to have one of those when we grew up. It was a boardwalk full of confection stands, arcade game rooms and billiards. It was like it was from a film from the 50s. We ended up asking someone where we could find a campsite and they though it may be around the bend so we hopped back in our vehicle with hopes to find a spot before the sun went down.

    We ended up at a campsite along the water which was a bonus. The old gentleman handling the park was VERY nice to us and gave us tips as to where we should go in Salem and in Boston the next day. The campground was definitely overpriced though and I think it is because it may have been a municipal campground. I think the grounds cost us $30USD for the night. We were going to camp at one spot but decided against it as there were kids partying near there so we ended up in a dark corner of the woods where we must have been next to a pond because the frogs kept me up all night long! I didn’t have the best sleep that night, but I can’t complain too much as it was less expensive than a hotel room.

    The gentleman gave us directions to a grocery store which headed for to get some food for supper (this is around 8PM). Our trip to Salem began very eerily with all the folklore of witches and whanot and our drive there was creepy. We pulled into the parking lot of this supposed ‘grocery store’ and were getting looks from the locals who were out having a good time in the neighbourhood. We walked into this ‘grocery store’ to find out it was a small convenience store which had nothing for us to eat. It was kind of freaky as the shelves were pretty well empty. We hightailed it out of there and decided that it would be best to just tour the town and grab a bite to eat.

    I parked the car and we witnessed a ghost-walking tour around the town which we would have enjoyed to go on, but we arrived too late. Consulting the handy-dandy map the old gentleman at the campsite gave us, we started walking around downtown until we found a small diner.

    This was probably the highlight of my trip as I sat down, ordered a Samuel Adams (best beer ever!), and a chicken Parmesan meal with spaghetti which was only $4!) Incroyable! How can you get a meal for under $5 nowadays? It was filling! I was having a great time at this little pub/diner and it put my spirits up for our trek through the haunted town of Salem.

    After our meal, we walked around a bit and were mesmerized by the creepy feeling we got from the town. They really play up the Hallowe’en angle and everywhere you walk has witches, goblins, you name it. At one point there was a giant wall and Vero wanted to see what was on the other side and she was so excited to find the scariest locale one could find – the cemetery! We went around the corner to the entrance and skulked around the tombstones (which was actually not allowed after dark) and caught the tail end of the ghost tour and got a bit of history of the town before the end of the tour.

    Satisfied with Salem, we headed back to the campsite so that we could get a good night’s sleep before spending the next day in Salem. We were on a trip with no destination so we figured if we had a great time in Salem, so be it and we could check out Boston some other time.