New York City - Day 3

Day 3 - Sunday 5th May

Slept so much better! Slow start to morning but still out before ten, bit chilly! Met a guy trying to sell tickets to the Empire State Building who tried to speak British "street" and then proceeded to inform us that Baltimore is otherwise known as "Bodymore." Quite.

Saw flat iron building, very cool!

Walked about half of the Chelsea High Line, awesome linear park on a derelict elevated railway.

Had an amazing brunch in Greenwich Village, involving Earl Grey and Belgian waffle with yogurt, berries, almonds and honey, at the Bus Stop Cafe.

Explored the Village, starting with the Friends house! 

Lots of bicycle perving and incredibly cute dogs, awesome bookstores (a whole shop dedicated to secondhand cookbooks!) and stationers and chemist, cobbled streets and Washington Mews, finishing up in Washington Square Park.

Got the L line subway to Williamsburg. Found bagels and chai, did some people watching on a bench. Wandered around some quaint shops (the cheese store has loads of English stuff like digestives and black treacle!) then hung out at the park watching people playing a kick ball tournament!

Found a really cool bar for a drink then pan-Asian vegan restaurant for dinner, very tasty! Then subway back to Manhattan.

Went back to hostel for warm clothes and decided it was too early for bed so went to check out Times Square! So crazy!

New York City - Day 2

Day 2 - Saturday 4th May

Got some interrupted sleep, ear plugs were awesome! Shared room with two nice girls who unfortunately left. Went out around nine, got bagels and started seeing the sights around the hostel: Empire State, Chrysler, Grand Central. Ate bagels outside library before going in. Got tickets for Top of the Rock at sunset. Went in Tiffany's! and Bloomingdales, not worth it!

Got lunch from Whole Foods salad bar, and much needed chai. Ate in Central Park, amazing. Nice weather, bit chilly though.

Went to natural history, pretty awesome, Tamzy loved it!

Got more tea and went back to park. Did some relaxation on a rock! Tried to find non- existent carousel! (NB. I have now discovered that the carousel does actually exist!) Then desperate to pee got stuck in The Ramble! Did see Belvedere Castle though.

Made it to The Rock in time for our slot, amazing views of Manhattan in time for sunset. Got cold waiting for complete darkness but so worth it!

Found very late dinner at ramen place near hostel (mochi green tea ice cream!)

New York City - Day 1

Those of you who know me well will already be aware that my absence this month has actually been for a very good reason - my little sister came from the UK to visit me for a whole three weeks! As well as staying with N & I here in Baltimore, we took a couple of awesome trips together which I would like to tell you all about in a series of blog posts. I'm planning to pretty much just cut and paste from the journal I was writing while I was away. We started off in New York on Friday 3rd May, so here goes, enjoy!

Day 1 - Friday 3rd May

Woke up at 6.10 to go to the bathroom and decided to put WiFi on and check email before going back to

sleep, only to end up getting up: Tamzy's flight was delayed for 3.5 hours, meaning she missed her connection and wasn't going to arrive in NYC until 10 pm, five hours late! So I got up to see if I could get a later bus, but in the end decided to get my original bus anyway.

Bus was good but full of French school kids! Listened to lots of music. Stopped at a rest stop in New Jersey so I got an extra state!

First views of new York skyline very surreal! Getting off the bus very overwhelming, so busy with traffic and people! Went to Macy's for restrooms, awful place! Tried to find a recommended food truck but failed so walked back and ended up with salad sat in a little square.

First glimpse

Found hostel easily, friendly staff and nice and clean. Has WiFi! Spending some time chilling before going back out, don't know what to do! Tamzy should be landing soon if on time, but instead I have to wait five hours! Will go to Grand Central to catch bus to airport at 8, but still have three hours to fill...

So I waited an extra 40 or so minutes at the hostel until I knew Tamzy had landed then went out, first to Starbucks for a chai latte, then wandering 5th avenue in circles for a while trying to find the Girl Scouts headquarters. I eventually found it after I stopped looking, typical! Then I wandered past the public library, had some cool views of the Chrysler building, and checked out Grand Central station, which is nowhere near as grand as I expected! Found the airport shuttle stop then went back to a Panera on 5th for pasta and salad. 

Got on the bus for La Guardia around 8.30pm, thinking I'd seen on the website that it took an hour. No way, it took a maximum of 25 minutes, meaning I was here before Tamzy even left Philly. Stoopid!

Tamzy arrived safely, so exciting! We got bus back to city, checked her in to hostel and went downstairs to drink tea and chat about plans. Excited for first proper day tomorrow!

Stay tuned for the next installment!

Spring has finally sprung!

I had such a lovely morning today. The uncomfortable muggy weather of the past few days broke last night to leave us with a beautiful fresh sunny spring day today. But first to share a couple of random tidbits from earlier in the month.

Firstly, I finally got my act together in applying to volunteer for Girl Scouts! Now just waiting to hear if they've found a troop for me to help with!

Then last weekend was one of the few that N has been home recently. We celebrated with sushi :)

So today N is away again, but I got to go to Patterson Park with my favourite little girl and her mummy, which was lovely in the sunshine. We were headed to Fort McHenry but were thwarted by some kind of crazy running people. But I reckon it was fate because we met a lovely fellow Englishwoman when asking if we could meet her dog (you can get away with that kind of behaviour when in the company of a two-year old apparently!), who lives nearby, and we're going to meet up again! Always exciting to meet people from home!

We looked at the pretty flowers:

Fed the ducks:

And played in the playground, before going for pizza. Awesome morning!

Cherry Blossom Festival, Washington DC

I was lucky enough to have a conference in Washington, DC the first week of April, which happened to tie in with the latter end of the famous cherry blossom festival. Before we get to the pretty pictures though, let me share a fuzzy picture of a living legend:

The great James Watson of Watson & Crick fame, as in discoverers of the structure of DNA! I can't even tell you how excited I was to be in the same room as this man, even if he was very very far away!

Which leads me to the other thing: the scale of this conference was like nothing I have ever seen before, just look at the size of one of the plenary lectures, and this room was full! Incredible!

Being not too fond of crowds I skipped the Rally for Medical Research on the Monday and instead went in search of these famous cherry blossoms, and boy, I was not disappointed! There were a lot of people there too, but at least I was free to move around! Now for pretty pictures:

One a penny, two a penny

Yes I know, Easter was weeks ago, I fail at blogging, but I have beautiful images of hot cross buns to share, that I know you don't want to miss out on.

I was alone on Easter weekend, N has been away a lot for work the past month or so; not to mention the fact that neither Good Friday nor Easter Monday are public holidays here! So it could have been a miserable one, but thankfully I was invited to a two-year old's Easter egg hunt, which made the weekend a whole lot more fun!

We went to a place called Cylburn Arboretum, where I'd never been before. It was really lovely, and had a very English country garden feel which was rather nice.

It was the first time the weather was really nice, although still a little too chilly for our posh picnic really. Still very enjoyable though!

And finally some daffodils!

I filled the Sunday by making hot cross buns from Paul Hollywood's "How To Bake". They came out awesome, but went stale incredibly quickly. The one's I froze right away are still awesome though!

I also indulged in some American Easter candy. Peanut butter for the win! Nom nom nom!

Update

So yeah, I was doing pretty well at blogging regularly for a while there, but then we weren't doing anything interesting, other than watching a lot of Bones, so I didn't have anything to say! And then we did so much fun stuff that I didn't have time for blogging. And I keep forgetting to take photos. So here's a (hopefully) brief update of what's been going on in these parts recently. Enjoy!

Anniversary

Early in February N & I quietly celebrated a whole four years together with some sushi :)

Chinese New Year

I made spring rolls, and N made the most amazing sweet & sour pork! Nom nom nom!

Bara brith

I made bara brith for the first time for a lab meeting and it went down sooooooo well. It tasted so good and was incredibly easy to make, definitely making that one again!

Roller derby

Got tickets for the final match of the Baltimore league's tournament (Charm City Roller Girls). Lots of fun! Man those girls can skate!

Craft council show

Spent the following day wandering around the Convention Centre all day at the American Craft Council show which was awesome! I didn't realise how massive it was going to be, but we were there for four hours! I bought a mug and some chopsticks, ever practical...

Welsh day

We celebrated St David's Day a day late this year. We wandered over to Whole Foods and picked up some lamb, leek and daffodils, and even managed to find some Welsh cheese and "dragon" sushi for lunch! N made Welsh cakes, always amazing.

Fancy food box

We decided to treat ourselves by subscribing to a box of Fancy foods! The first one was an awesome assortment of tea, ginger ale, chocolate and, best of all for us, chorizo (among other things)! Amazing!

St Patrick's Day Parade

For some reason the St Patrick's Day parade was held on the 10th of March.... Anyway, it passed right outside the front of our apartment building, so we spent a happy hour in the sunshine (the one warm weekend so far, very lucky!) watching all the bands and flags go by. They still weren't done after an hour though, I have no idea how long it took!

Baby nephew!!!

N's nephew was born ten days ago. I'm an aunty! Or tante, seeing as the baby is Dutch. So exciting!

Zipcar, Girl Scouts, Six Nations

And finally, last Saturday was pretty fun, if a bit busier than I would have liked! I finally put my Zipcard to use and booked a car for a couple of hours to go in search of a Girl Scout cookie sale! I had a nice chat with one of their leaders about how it works out here, and came home with five boxes of cookies to my name! Hopefully I can find a troop to work with soon, I'm starting to get Guiding withdrawal symptoms! Oh, and the driving was fine, passed without incident, despite missing an exit :)

I followed that triumph with a brisk walk over to the Irish pub in Fells Point to watch the deciding match of the Six Nations. What a funny sport! Has anyone else ever thought how much it looks like a bird laying an egg when the ball pops out of the scrum? hehe :) I don't think I've ever actually watched a match before, but it was a lot of fun. And being in that pub I could easily forget I was in the US for an hour or so! I have to admit, I went down there expecting to not care who won, but as soon as the Welsh started thrashing the English with some amazing tries, I couldn't help cheering for the Welsh. To be fair, rugby wasn't even on my radar until I went to Wales, not that I paid much attention to it even then. But it just felt right to support them for some reason. I guess despite being English I have lived the majority of my adult life in Wales, so maybe that's why!

So that brings us up to date I think! If you want me to go into more detail about any of the happenings above just leave me a comment and I'll write a longer post!

What have you been up to lately?