elis' travel journal: August 2006

Thursday, August 31, 2006

3 Days To Go

SOME MORE PICS FROM MY LAST WEEK...

me and the O'Connor family

(this was tonight, we had a family dinner with the grandparents and Aunt Kristin)

me and Ryan....isn't his face just cute?

me feeding Brady...something I did daily for 2 months ; )

Ashley and the teddybears I gave her when I came here (they are sacred! she goes to bed with them every night)

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

~ P h i l a d e l p h i a ~

Sunday, August 27

Yesterday, on our day off, Michaela and I spent time in the largest city of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, "the city of brotherly love"...

Although the weather wasn't that nice anymore yesterday- it was raining in the morning and the sky showed us its greyest grey ever- the day turned out to be okay (at least not too hot) for a city trip in the end and we enjoyed our time there a lot by making a little sight seeing tour by bus and strolling through some parts of the city.
As we didn't really know a lot about "Philly" before we got there, we didn't have any special plans about what to do or where to go, and just went by a tourist info folder we got. So we got to see the, said to be quite famous, Liberty Bell, the Love Park, the City Hall, walked in Walnut and Chestnut Street (shops, cafes, arts, etc.) and went shopping again... Well, I have to admit the shopping and eating part were not Philadelphia-like in particular (H&M, Mc Donald's...lol) but still very nice!

All in all, I have to say that the city is really likeable, the size is okay, and we noticed that there is a lot of "green" and that it is a quite tourist friendly place - providing lots of public maps and guides and a very cheap tour bus (4 $ for the whole day, to hop on/off at 20 different stops). What's more, I got the feeling that the Philly people are indeed friendly and helpful above average....Okay, only about 10 people took part in my critical survey, but I really felt they mean it. E.g. a very polite policeman concerned about us finding the right way back to our car, some hyper friendly and jolly bus drivers (not grumpy as usual), talkative photographers, random persons trying to help us find our way around etc. Maybe they are just seriously trying to live up to their motto about brotherly love??? Although I am wondering how they can stick to that... but hey, we're in the land of opportunity! (hmm, more appropriate in german in fact... > Land der unbegrenzten moeglichkeiten)

However, I don't really feel like I have to go back to that place too soon, not that I will miss anything! :-) But it was great to see it once... will have to watch the movie "Philadelphia" again now...

P.S.: no catastrophes this time - no breakdowns, no getting lost, etc...(except for the tour bus breakdown, lol) but we found the way and everything went smoothly ;-)

. . .and here are the pics:

rainy day....

city impressions

they even got maps on the garbage bins! very nice : ) ..."staendige begleiter": chinese tourists :-P

me in front of the City Hall

"Phlash" - the tour bus we took

posing in front of Love Park......Hard Rock Cafe

some famous building maybe ......and I pic I like very much...romantic, isn't it?

cute door...

benjamin franklin bridge...if i'm not wrong

look how "sozial" they are!!! and a perfect uncanny side street!

poor horses! ......and the Liberty Bell

they have flags of all the countries along one street!!! The sign even says "Oesterreich"

can you believe that - our tour bus broke down!!! I think our influence on vehicles is not the best.... ;-)

a nice church....and the "new style": had bought that hat some minutes ago!

what do you think?

Philly by night

GOOD BYE, LOVING CITY!

Saturday, August 26, 2006

2 Months in New Jersey

Buenos Dias!!

I arrived here exactly 8 weeks ago today....that means tomorrow the 9th and last week begins...this is sad and also quite good! In some way I am really looking forward to go home again, see everyone again... :-)

Today we just stayed at home and had a lot of playtime with the kids, which made the day long and exhausting again... Ryan, the 3-year-old, seems to stop taking his after lunch naps, so he was a bit grumpy today and not easy to handle...but at least that made him go to bed earlier in the evening... ;-)

Yesterday in the evening Kathleen and I went to Thompson Park with the three kids, which they liked very much. It was especially funny cause nobody else was there besides us, so we didn't have to worry about loosing sight of the kids and they could play with everything they wanted...

Here are some pics of today:

Thursday, August 24, 2006

H A P P Y....B I R T H D A Y....T O....Y O U

It's my brother's 23rd birthday today - Alles Gute und have a nice day!!!
und brav feiern...

Bradley Beach / New York City

Yesterday, on one of our last days off here, we decided to seize the 24 hours we had as good as possible ;-)

So we left the house shortly after 9 in the morning and went to Bradley Beach to enjoy the sun and the ocean until noon. And in fact it was really a great idea to go there earlier (usually we've always been there in the afternoon) cause it is just like a totally different "beach experience" at that time!!! Almost no people there - so that you can lie down wherever you want to, and you feel like you're in an oasis in the middle of all the sand next to the sea... besides, it's not so hot yet and there is a nice breeze in the air... So we just lay there for about three hours, listened to music and read a magazine while we got tanned... why can't every day be like that, huh?

At about 1.30 we ended the beach session and took a train right from Bradley Beach to NY Penn Station to have a nice afternoon and evening strolling through "the city", how we call it here ;-)
The time we had there was great, we strolled through Chinatown and Little Italy, which is in fact right next to each other, almost merging! It was such an interesting experience to see these districts, although, I've seen Chinatown in San Francisco before and it's of course almost the same. But it's still funny to see this little country in a city, you feel like you are in China indeed!
All the signs are in Chinese, you see mainly Chinese people running around and the markets and stores are all too Chinese - they've got all thei imported food and stuff from China and do everything in the original way, or at least it really seems like.
Little Italy wasn't that "authentic" as far as we could judge that, but it just doesn't feel like being in Italy when you're surrounded by all these typical American buildings...for Italy, you would just need a different aarchitecture. But still the atmosphere is uite exciting, so many little Italian-style restaurants and lots of tourists. In fact, we ate in one of these restaurants, called "La Mela" (the apple) and I can say it was really worth the money (wasn't even expensive!) - we had the best Pasta nd salad ever! YUMMY! I swear, it was heavenly.... If you ever wind up being hungry in little Italy, please go there and you'll never forget about it!

After this first-class culinary experience, we headed to the next subway station but got stuck in one of these cute little chinese shops, where we just found so many nice souvenirs and gifts that we had to stay for about one hour and shop shop shop. Hey, they close down in some days and everything was 50% off... We couldn't help! When we had spent everything we got (almost), we decided to also have a look at Greenwich Village (famous for nice cafes, bars, museums, etc) but when we arrived there we realized we would have had to walk for some blocks but didn't have enough time for that anymore. So we went back to Penn Station, where we had a short visit at our "Stamm-" Mc Donald's in the city (seriously! we went there every time we've been to the city!!) to get some ice cream and fruits and took the 9 o'clock train back to Bradley Beach where our Convertible was waiting for us.

Another very nice day came to an end! :-)

Here are the pics...

the sky was soooo beautiful that day! .....that's in Bradley Beach