Category: USA

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Daniele Visit to NJ

The last part of Daniele’s visit was almost two weeks staying around NJ. Last time we did not spend much time here and I wanted him to see more if we might move here someday.

Wednesday.

Our redeye from San Diego got in to Philadelphia Wednesday morning. This day was just meant to be a recovery and unpacking. I also planned to help my mom prepare for Thanksgiving. I committed Daniele and myself to making the now traditional “leaf cookies”. My mom was cooking for my dad’s whole extended family which can be anywhere from 40 to 60 people, and since many don’t reply to her invite she is normally cooking for almost that wide of a range. She makes all the traditional turkey fair with stuffing and cranberry, as well as sides including yams, mashed potatoes, her own hand-made bread, and two salads. She also makes Italian dishes: baked stuffed shells and meat balls. We start with a large antipasto course served from when the first guest arrives until we serve dinner, as well as the usual chips and dips and all sorts or drinks.


(Leaf cookies from last year, I don’t know if I took a picture this year)


(Daniele with the antipasto we served Thursday)

My mother starts way in advance planning and preparing, but as you can imagine she is very busy the day before cooking what can be prepared in advance (most of it). So imagine what it was like when our power went out on Wednesday afternoon. And then stayed out.

Our power was out for hours, despite there being no storm or any sign of what would cause an outage. Eventually I convinced my dad to make some calls. What if it doesn’t come back? No one else can do Thanksgiving on such short notice, and if we don’t host it, all this food will go bad. He called up a buddy of his who had just bought a brand new generator (he had been one of those effected by the outages during the October snow storm and hurricanes that came through NJ this Fall). My parents went to pick it up late, when the friend got back home. They got back around 11pm and our power came back on at midnight. All that for nothing, but better safe than no Thanksgiving!

Thursday.

Daniele and I had waited to tell anyone about our engagement until today when we planed to tell everyone together. Daniele was meeting most of my family for the first time today, so it seemed nicer to do it this way rather than me tell everyone alone that I plan on marrying that guy I’ve been dating that they still haven’t met. Also we could tell everyone at once and then everyone knows, rather than gradually all finding out from the grape vines. We were basically using the holiday for an old fashion engagement party. The revealing happy news and celebrating together type, rather than the having a party to celebrate another party type.

I told my grandmother first because I knew she would be annoyed at being kept in the dark this long, I could at least give her that. She was all excited. As family members arrived I hung around by the door and introduced Daniele to them as my fiance. Also I was wearing my ring for the first time to a family event. But I guess Grandma was expecting it more or is just generally more quick on the uptake than my Aunts and Uncles because they just gave a “nice to meet you” and moved on to the food. No one noticed anything until dessert when my Aunt Morreen finally noticed the sparkle and the gig was up. The news quickly spread throughout the house and the congratulations followed. Apparently my grandma had been dieing all day that no one was noticing and kept trying to prod her other two children into looking at me better. Special mention for Vivian, my cousin Marc’s fiancee, who actually did notice and asked Marc if I was engaged earlier in the night and was told no. I feel a little bad about not letting Marc in on it, especially since he told me before he proposed (actually he told everyone he knew), but I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t tell his sister, who would tell her mom, would would tell her sisters, and so forth.

My Aunt Linda pulls a double hitter on Turkey Day, eating first with us then dessert with our cousins on my mom’s side. I told her to let that side of the family all know so now everyone found out today.


(My mom with the turkey)


(These guys are adorable)


(You can’t see there is actually much more on the buffet table to the right)

Friday.

Daniele and I planned to do some Black Friday shopping, but we weren’t very serious about it. We woke up at a reasonable hour and went to the Garden State Plaza where the door busters were all over and only other casual shoppers like us lingered. The sales were not anything impressive, maybe early in the morning they were. I’m going to take the hipster approach here and say Black Friday just isn’t as good since it became mainstream.

We had been invited to dinner at my Aunt Terry’s house. I was really hoping we would have a chance to also see my mom’s side of the family, and they were all coming over my Aunt’s for a Turkey Day leftover dinner and to wish my cousin Donnie, Uncle Greg, Uncle Harry, and Aunt Linda all happy birthday.


(4-way birthday)

Dinner was really great. It was a little less hectic than the day before (or even other holidays with this side). I also think Daniele fell in better with the Italian relatives.

Saturday.

Saturday we had what my family calls “Second Thanksgiving”. (Didn’t we just do that yesterday? No, didn’t count.) Second Thanksgiving my Uncle Larry cooks another whole Thanksgiving dinner, this time for closer to ten of us, and we celebrate my Aunt Linda’s birthday. Unlike the first time around, this is a sit down meal served in courses. While my mother puts everything on buffet trays and lets people take what they want; my uncle, on the other hand, fills your plate over and over again; then asks– don’t you want seconds? I used to be saved by skipping the actual turkey, then he started making a bigger pasta course; a few times he has made me my own pizza. Then we have dessert where often there are as many pies as people.

I end up eating more at Second Thanksgiving than actual Thanksgiving. Luckily my Uncle Larry is a very good cook, especially when making recipes he’s made before.


(Look at the perfect meringue!)

Sunday.

While we were having dinner Saturday we were getting text message updates about my cousin Corrine, who had been due to deliver her baby. She gave birth to a baby girl, Cella, that night.

Sunday morning Daniele, my mom, and I went to the hospital to visit the proud new parents and little girl. While we were there Lori, Tim, and Kayla came by as well as my Aunt Linda. It’s always nice to see them. Corrine was so cute, not only did she text us all announcing her own labor, she had favors she handed out to all of us baby visitors. Amazing!


(Sisters)

That afternoon Daniele and I met up with Lisa. We went to Cheeburger Cheeburger, which is one of Lisa’s favorites and I knew Daniele would love the “American” food.

After we went back to her and Brian’s place and played some kinect. I had actually never played one. It was really fun!

Monday.

We went to the Spruce Run Reservoir, very close to my parent’s house, to show off some of the natural beauty here in NJ. It’s a nice park with paths, a big lake/reservoir, camp and picnic sites. Plus there are always a lot of deer running around.


(Daniele and Kait in Spruce Run State Park)


(Spruce Run State Park, Union Township, New Jersey)

In the evening we went to Verona to join in on Marc and Vivian’s regular poker game. My other cousins John and Robby and my Uncle Rob were there too. It was a good time. Daniele liked Verona, so that’s a bonus.

Tuesday.

We spend all day Tuesday doing work research for Daniele. He has a masters degree in Emergency Care and 6 years experience and an ER Nurse. I had truly believed that as an experienced Emergency Room Nurse, one of the most in demand jobs in the US, he would be able to get a Working Visa. Apparently I was completely wrong.

Following my Aunt’s advice, we concentrated on the larger medical centers. I called various people in HR and ER Nursing departments. The nurses typically didn’t answer, the HR women were some of the hugest bitches I have ever talked to in my 26 years. The nicest women I talked to told me straight up that they used to issue working visas, but they are not right now and she doesn’t know if that will change. The most horrible and cruel women I spoke to throughout the day was a human resources employee in the Nursing Department of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. This is a very large hospital. To quote them, “[w]ith more than 800 physicians, 3,200 employees and 150 volunteers, the Medical Center has over 300,000 outpatient visits and 25,000 admissions annually”. I asked her if she could tell me anything about the process of foreign trained nurses coming to work at Beth Israel and she insisted there were none. I pressed this because it seems downright impossible that such a large employer could fill its workforce 100% with natural born US citizens. Maybe in a land-locked state, but NJ is rather diverse. Personally, I have never had a job where I have not worked with some foreign born and/or trained coworkers since I was an assistant dance teacher in high school at a single instructor studio. This woman insisted she had never met a nurse who was foreign, and was not nice about it. Is that consistent with anyone’s anecdotal experience? I’ve found *most* nurses I encounter are foreign.

Based on these calls, it seems Daniele can not work in the US without being a citizen, so it seems we can not live here until we are married and have started that process. There have been a few suggestions that we get “married” quickly now and have the wedding we want later. I hate this idea and think it is contrary to what a wedding should symbolize– the celebration of the beginning of a marriage, rather than a big party where two people justify putting themselves in debt and demanding to be the center of attention. If we were already married, that is really all we would doing (and it would be much harder for me to justify the attention I expect that day *grin*). The mere fact that this seems like a viable option reflects poorly on the state of American marriage and citizenship.

Wednesday.

Today they lit the Rockafeller Christmas Tree. Daniele and I went into the city to check it out. We first went to Rockefeller Center to check out the stage and tree. There wasn’t anything going on, so we went to do other things.


(Stage for the tree lighting show)

We did some midtown Christmas time stuff, like the Macy’s window displays and the tree in Bryant Park.


(I made this in a Macy’s window!)


(Daniele in front of the Bryant Park NYC Christmas Tree)


(Macy’s Christmas window display)


(Daniele in Times Square)

Daniele wanted to check out this neighborhood in Brooklyn, Bensonhurst. It has a very dense population of Italians. I didn’t believe it would be anything special, lit any Italian neighborhood. But in fact there was a lot of Italian writing and people speaking Italian that seemed to have been born there.

We got back to the Rockafeller area only an hour before the show was supposed to start. However we did have the slight advantage of having scouted out the area in the morning. The police had set up those barriers to control pedestrian traffic. They corralled us considerably around the square and forced us to enter from another side. Unfortunately they were either just messing with the tourists or genuinely not talking to each other because one cop forced us all one way, across a street. Then the cop there just said “I don’t know why they are sending you all here, you have to go that way”, that way was back around and though the line a second time. We did it again, and then it was pretty open and we filled in shoulder to shoulder with the other spectators. Thank goodness they were all really nice and joking about being squished in there. Sometimes when people are pushing me I just can’t stand it, but everyone was nice. Packing in tight, but not trying to push ahead of each other. We were about 15 feet from the corner of one of the buildings on the square. That building blocked our view of the stage, that would have been facing us if we were just a little more ahead. We could hear the music and there was a big screen across from us where we could see the show. So we just watched the show on a screen anyway, but it was an experience. When the show was over we were able to get into the square and take some pictures. There were people waiting to get in that had been much worse off than us. Over all the whole experience was much better than I imagined.


(Kait and Daniele in front of NY Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree just after it was lit)

Worth noting, the crowd was probably a bit smaller because Justin Beiber wasn’t there. He was supposed to perform live, however the president ended up being in NYC that day. And apparently the city can’t handle both Obama and the Beibs on the same day. The Obama traffic made it impossible for Beiber to logistically make his performance, so he prerecorded it. Better for us!


(Kait and Daniele in front of NY Christmas decorations)

Thursday.

We hit up another park near my parent’s, the Round Valley Recreation Area. This one is a bit bigger, but I actually like Spruce Run better. We did some of the hikes and enjoyed the views before moving on.


(Round Valley Reservoir, Lebanon, NJ)

In the afternoon we walked around Somerville. It’s a really cute town with restaurants and shops on the main street and Victorian houses going off of it. They have a train station, too. If I was going to live in the burbs, this would be a good choice.


(Somerville, NJ)

Friday.

When Daniele first arrived and we walked around Hoboken and Jersey City he really wanted to see Liberty State Park, the park in Jersey City opposite Liberty Island. Unfortunately we quickly realized that was unrealistic for the time we had and made plans to come back this week when we had more time.

Later had the even better idea to take bikes with us. This turned out to be very smart because Liberty State Park is actually pretty big.

We packed some sandwiches, wrapped up with layers (it was a cold day) and drove into the park.

The park has nice paths for pedestrians or bikes. We rode through all of it, saw New York City, Lady Liberty (her back side), and some of the other attractions. There was even a couple taking wedding photos.


(Daniele in Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ)


(Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ)


(View of NYC from Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ)


(Views of Jersey City, New York City, and Statue of Liberty from Liberty State Park)


(View of Statue of Liberty from Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ)


(View of New York City from Jersey City)

Saturday.

Saturday we all went to the birthday party my cousin Michelle threw for her daughter.

Sunday.

This was our last full day. Daniele had wanted to see Easton, the first town over the Pennsylvania border. He seems to like PA. Ehh. We walked around there, it was kinda sad and desolate. A lot of empty stores. We went through Phillipsburg on our way back to New Jersey.

We also made plans to have dinner and catch up with Fabienne, who had visited us in Italy in the summer.

Monday.

Daniele flew back to Rome. I would see him again in January.

Photos from the NJ part of Daniele’s visit are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111108DanieleVisit

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San Diego with Daniele

Daniele and I finished our California Coast Trip with four days in San Diego. He had been here before for a two week nursing exchange, but I never had. We were here Saturday November 18 through Tuesday the 21st.

Saturday.

We arrived in San Diego pretty early, our first stop was Mission Beach. It started to rain a little bit, but we walked around and enjoyed the views anyway. There were women setting up support tents for one of those big breast cancer walks, but we didn’t see any runners/walkers yet.


(Mission Beach with some rain)

Our next stop was Sunset Cliffs, which are very pretty! At this point the rain stopped, but we found the ladies in pink walking and running for breast cancer awareness. I of course think that is amazing, but disturbances make Daniele a bit nervous.


(Kait at Mission Cliffs. Can you tell I woke up early?)

Next we went to Cabrillo National Park were we saw the Cabrillo National Monument, a beautiful view of the city and a light house.


(Daniele and Kait by the Cabrillo National Monument with downtown San Diego in the background)

At this point we could go to our hotel, which was right by Old Town, so we went there. Old Town San Diego is both a neighborhood and a State Park. It commemorates the early days of the town of San Diego and includes many 19th century buildings. We started off with lunch at Casa da Guadalajara, which I thought was pretty good, Daniele thought it was a bit touristy. We walked through the mini-town and some open buildings. Including Casa De Estudillo, where it seemed to be some type of special day and there were people in period costume, many doing hand crafts, like spinning yarn.


(Girls dancing “Baile Folklorico” in Old Town)



(Women spinning yarn in Casa De Estudillo in Old Town)

In the afternoon we went to the Gas lamp district. We saw Market, Broadway, and the Waterfront where there were old ships and there was a sailboat race going on, America’s Cup World Series it seemed. We hit up a happy hour special at a place called Current for dinner, it was really delicious.


(The Maritime Museum of San Diego)

Sunday.

We gave all of Sunday for seeing Balboa Park. We knew there were free Ranger tours, but they changed the time to later in the day, so after we checked up on that we saw a bit on our own first. We saw the Lilly Pond (reflecting pool), the Botanical Building, The Moreton Bay Fig Tree (really, really, huge old fig tree), the Zoro Garden, an open market in the SD Theater, and the Butterfly Garden.


(Lily Pond in Balboa Park)



(Lilly Pond and Botanical Building in Balboa Park)



(In the Botanical Building in Balboa Park)



(Moreton Bay Fig tree in Balboa Park. Planted in 1914, it now has a girth of 42 feet, a height of 80 feet and a canopy of 145 feet.)



(Butterfly Garden in Balboa Park)

After we saw all of that, Daniele wanted to skip the Ranger tour, but I’m so glad we didn’t! We saw so much more, and what we covered again, we actually learned about this time. Our ranger was the best possible guide for the park, not only did he know the park inside and out, it was his life, he cared so much about these plants and buildings that it made every thing he said interesting.

He told us a little about the history of the Old Globe Theater. It was built in 1934 as a copy of the one in Chicago, which in turn was a copy of the Old Globe in London. He also pointed out the more interesting a rare plants as we walked around (I’ll save most of them for Picasa). He told us that most of the creatures swimming in the Lilly Pond, including the dozen or so turtles I saw, are not supposed to be there and are all dumped pets. Besides some of the places we had already been, we also saw the Alcazar Garden, which had an English Garden design, and the Japanese Friendship Garden, which is undergoing heavy expansion at the moment.


(Coffee Plant in Botanical Building in Balboa Park)



(Alcazar Garden in Balboa Park)



(Japanese Friendship Garden)

Most of the buildings in Balboa Park were quickly constructed for the two World Expos held in San Diego in 1915 and 1935. These Expos were almost like World Fairs and hoped to attract some of the attendees of the larger Fairs. Some of the buildings are lovely originals. Many more were build at the time to be temporary buildings and ended up beings used way past their intended longevity. At some point the city had to carefully renovate what are now historic buildings, that were made from materials never meant to last. The project is now almost done and looks great.


(California Tower, Museum of Man, and and Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park)



(Daniele on El Prado in Balboa Park)

After our Ranger Tour we wondered around the park a little more. We first found the “International Cottages” which are a series of little houses each representing a different nation. Lucky for us, on Sundays they all open their doors and offer regional goodies; we didn’t even need lunch! After we went to the 1935 Cactus Garden, which was really cool! Balboa Park has like the world’s biggest cactus collection (don’t quote me on that! I think the ranger might have said it). We also went to the Rose Garden-Inez Grant Parker Memorial, which I think would be a very nice place to stay and read or have a picnic lunch. We found the Desert Garden after that . I’m not sure why this is different from the Cactus Garden, but I liked it better. At this point we had seen all the gardens we wanted to see, but as we were leaving we heard some organ music playing so we headed to the Spreckles Organ Pavilion (the Ranger told us a little about it earlier) and sat in on a few numbers. The ranger had also told us that all the Museums in the park are free today. Opening hours overlapped with daylight hours and it wasn’t exactly what we were looking to do, but it was too good to pass up so we hit up the SD Museum of Art real quick before they closed. Probably too quickly, because I don’t remember much of it.


(House of Pacific Relations / International Cottages in Balboa Park)



(Inside the House of Ireland in the House of Pacific Relations / International Cottages in Balboa Park)



(1935 Cactus Garden in Balboa Park)



(Rose Garden-Inez Grant Parker Memorial in Balboa Park.)



(Kait in the Desert Garden in Balboa Park)

Monday.

Daniele really, really wanted to go to Tijuana. He pointed out how close it was. I wasn’t exactly thrilled, heard Tijuana was kinda a dump, but I had never been to Mexico. I’ve been to Canada, Italy, the City of the Vatican, Spain, France, Great Britain, Switzerland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Austria, Germany, and Costa Rica; but never Mexico. Who doesn’t want to cross a boarder and add one to their nation count when it’s just 15 minutes away? He had already been to Mexico on a vacation a few years ago, so I don’t know why he wanted it so bad. I generally get my way whenever I want it, so I try to give Daniele little things. So we went to Mexico.

It was in fact a very short drive down. Even the large boarder control on the highway between San Diego and Tijuana just waves you in when you go south. As soon as we crossed the boarder and for miles after, we saw the traffic the other way to come back to the United States. Being optimistic (and delusional) we figured people must live in Tijuana, where it is cheaper, and work in SD, where there is more money, and we are looking at morning rush hour traffic that will clear up.

Also as soon as we crossed the boarder, my phone stopped working. That is when I started to be unhappy. Trusting Daniele to navigate lasted for about 90 seconds before I accepted roaming charges. Then we didn’t even know where we were going, but we found something like the historic center and I found another car with CA license plates to park behind. But then, wtf?! There are three men swinging hammers on the sidewalk outside my window. Is this a thing? It takes me a minute before realizing they are just bored shoe cobblers. But we need to pay the parking meter, I don’t have any pesos! This was so incredibly poorly planned. Just because we are 15 minutes from the US doesn’t mean anything. This isn’t Europe for goodness sake!

The parking meter, and everyone we met that day took US Dollars, so at least there was that.

Daniele and I walked around the area. We didn’t see any other Americans and we only spoke Italian, both to each other and to any Mexicans we met, who if asked we said we were Italian. Speaking Italian to native Spanish speakers is how we got around Costa Rica it actually works pretty good for getting a basic point across.

The people we passed were staring at us/me so much I felt incredibly uncomfortable. This was worse when we went away from the more crowded main square area or when I took out my big ol’ “I’m not from around here” DSLR camera.

We did a decent little walk. We started by Parque Teniente Guerrero, walked to the biggest church we saw at Benito Juarez y/o Segunda & Av C. This area was pretty crowded. We walked down Santiago Arguello, where there were lots of restaurants, each with a guy outside desperately trying to get us to eat there. We crossed over a pretty dry river bed, where you could see gypsies (are they still gypsies if they are Mexican?) camping out on the river bed from the bridge. On the other side of the river the town felt even worse. Things were newer over here, but cheaper, and abandoned. Like maybe the city had expanded quickly or undergone a gentrification project that didn’t have the underlying economy to support it. I don’t know enough this city to say.


(Church in Tijuana, Mexico at Benito Juarez y/o Segunda & Av C)



(Men trying to get us to eat at their restaurants on Santiago Arguello Tijuana, Mexico)



(Gypsies living on the dry river bed.)



(Across the River)

At this point I fully made up my mind that I didn’t like it here and I wanted to go back to the United States. We had lunch at a place that probably would not have met health codes in the US, but that’s what Daniele likes– more rustic somehow implies better, more authentic food.

We then found the car and headed back. Only this time we couldn’t just drive through. We waited for hours in the line to reenter the US. On the highway, between cars, people weave about trying to sell everything you can imagine. Everything. Water bottles, churros, Statues of the Holy Virgin, blankets, ice cream, you name it. Some of them have freaking huge carts that are almost impossible not to hit while avoiding the children juggling for tips on your other side.

When we finally reached the end, the man at boarder control, who I couldn’t tell if he was representing the US or Mexico just asked me all these weird questions about if I liked Tijuana/Mexico and I would consider leaving Daniele. It was completely random and a bit inappropriate. Definitely wasting the time of everyone in line behind me.

With what was left of our day we went to Imperial Beach and them Coronado Island (the little island in the center of San Diego).


(Imperial Beach)



(Daniele and Kait in front of downtown San Diego on Coronado Island)

That evening we met up with my cousin David who lives out here. I got to be the second family member after his mom, to see his apartment. Then we got some pizza at a pretty good place. In his neighborhood. He lives up in Northpark (north of the park), it’s a hip area with lots of bars and restaurants.

He also filled me in on why we were one only “gringos” in Tijuana. What is more common knowledge if you live close to the boarder (or are just better informed than I am) is that the US’s drug war in Columbia has driven a lot of drug traffic to Mexico. It is a poor country with the drug business one of the few ways to make a living, making it very dangerous. I had heard about problems with kidnapping in Mexico years ago, but not recently. And when I expressed concern earlier to Daniele, his view was that these would not be problems right by the boarder. Dave let us know we were both wrong, it is still a huge problem, and ESPECIALLY near the boarder. He used to go to Tijuana to see a doctor if he needed (between insurance providers), but now no one does that anymore, it’s just not worth it.

Tuesday.

We wanted to go to either the Zoo or Sea World while we were in San Diego. I was leaning towards the Zoo since I know the one here is so famous, Daniele wanted Sea World since as he said “we have a Zoo in Rome”. I won since the prices for the Zoo or Safari Park are $42 each, while Sea World is $73 each. We chose the regular Zoo over the Safari Park because the Safari is like 40 minutes North and we were flying out this same night.

It was a great choice in the end because the San Diego Zoo is AMAZING! Even Daniele loved it. Besides the fact that it is huge, the climate allows them to keep basically any type of animal. It was mostly families, but we were not the only grownups there without kids. However being there without kids we were able to get there at opening, see every last exhibit, and just have time to take the sky tram to the end and back before they were shoeing everyone out the doors for closing. I loved it so much! I took a million pictures, 137 of which are online, separate from the rest of my SD photos because I know not everyone is into that.


(OK, just one picture! I can’t resist! The rest are here.)

My cousin Dave was able to meet up with us again for an earlier dinner before we had to get to the airport. We had some yummy west coast Thai food one last time before I said good bye to my cousin and California. Then we got on our redeye full of good memories and Happy Thanksgiving wishes from Dave for the rest of the family.

All of the pictures I took in San Diego and Tijuana are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111118CACoastSD

The pictures from the San Diego Zoo are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111121CACoastSDZoo

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CA Coast Trip with Daniele

Daniele and I drove from San Francisco to San Diego. Along the way we stopped at Purisma Redwoods, Morgan Hill, Santa Maria, Santa Barbra, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Hollywood, LA, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, Lagoona Beach, Oceanside, and finally landed in San Diego (which I’ll save for next time).

Monday.

Having just left San Francisco and picked up our rental car and headed South. Our first stop was to see some big trees. Chris had recommended Purisma Redwood park to us, which was perfect. It was more wild than Muir Woods, we didn’t see anyone else while we were there though it was pretty early. Also not too far out of our way driving South; we would hve lost way too much time trying to hit up Muir Woods. We were able to drive pretty far in, though I never saw a parking lot so we did it “Italian style” and just left the car on the side of the road by the trail head. The trail we did was a nice loop, like an hour or so, good start to a long day of driving!


(Daniele hugging a tree in Purisima Creek Redwoods)

The objective was to drive to Santa Barbra today and arrive not too late. We decided to take the Pacific Coast Highway / Route 1 despite this goal because it is more scenic and more of an experience. The PCH takes much, much longer than the 101. My friend Nick, who used to live in LA and knows the PCH pretty well, told us a few cool places to check out, unfortunately it was dark by the time we got to any of them.


(California coast along Route 1)

We stopped in Morgan Hill for lunch at a little Mexican place called “Jesus” that was pretty good and amazingly cheep. Later on we stopped in Santa Maria for dinner at a Thai place. We ordered our food spicy. When it comes out, the man who presumably prepared it and would seem to be the father of the hostess/waitress brings it to us. I wish I had a photo of this wrinkly, hunched-back, long-haired, one-eyed old Thai man. He made me the best Thai food I have ever had. Unfortunately, I could hardly eat it because every bite was like eating fire, but I kept going because it was that good!

We eventually made it to our hotel in Santa Barbra.

Tuesday.

We had a nice breakfast at the hotel and went off to explore the town. Santa Barbra is really cute! Main Street is lined with stores and there is also the waterfront and the pier.


(Main Street in Santa Barbra)

After that we headed toward LA. We stopped first in Santa Monica and had some Mexican (again) for lunch. Then we went to Venice Beach, which I really liked. I had never been there but it’s so famous and it really is just like it is on TV. There were tons of people on bikes and skateboards. There was “Muscle Beach” and volleyball courts. There were a bunch of medical marijuana vendors saying “the doctor is in” as we passed – that I don’t remember from any movie. There was a full mix of teenagers and families, tourists and people who live there. We were there for sunset, too, which was nice; though everything (except the pot vendors) shut down pretty quick after dark.


(Venice Beach at Sunset)

Wednesday.

In the morning we walked around Hollywood, saw the stars, etc. Then we took the subway to Civic Center to see downtown. We went to Chinatown, had some sushi in Little Tokyo, saw City Hall, the Police Headquarters, even bought some fruit at the Central Market.


(There were only a few star’s that I recognized, but it was exciting when I did)

Thursday.

First thing we went to Beachwood Ave to take a few photos of the Hollywood sign. Then we drove to Manhatten Beach for a quick stop and then Redondo Beach after where we walked around a little.


(Hollywood Sign!)

In the evening we went to Long Beach were we walked around downtown and the waterfront. Later we met a Couchsurfing friend of Daniele’s and we went to the 2nd Street / Venice area. There we saw beautiful waterfront houses and ate very yummy Lebanese food.


(Downtown Long Beach)



(Samin, Kait, and Daniele in Naples, Long Beach)

Friday.

We left LA in the morning to continue South. Our first stop was Lagoona Beach, which has these beautiful beach front parks that we walked through. Also a cute downtown; we stopped for a snack at an impressive bakery.


(Lagoona Beach)

We stayed the afternoon and night in Oceanside. Daniele picked this this town because it has the longest wooden pier on the west coast. We walked around the town, ate in a cute little diner, and visited their library. In Italy you have to be a member to enter the libraries, so I showed off to Daniele how anyone can come in and use our American libraries, read the books, use the bathrooms. We actually did read a little bit, he was impressed. This was our last stop before heading to San Diego, which I’ll leave for next time.


(View of Oceanside from its famous pier)

I have even more pictures from this part of our trip here, like this picture of a Pelican https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111114CACoastSoCal

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San Francisco with Daniele

Daniele and I started our California trip off in San Francisco. We flew in Thursday, November 10 and stayed until Monday the 14th. My friends Chris and Lori very graciously offered for us to stay with them.

Thursday.

We were running four hours late from Philadelphia, so we didn’t get to anything I had wanted when we arrived. We ended up dropping our stuff with Chris and going with him to meet Lori and a Italian / Canadian friend of theirs, who happens to be fluent in Italian. So that worked out nice. We had some drinks at Cigar Bar and then went to China Town for dinner. Daniele really liked China Town.

Friday.

I wanted to get all the “touristy” stuff I know all my friends are sick of over with on Friday while they would be working. My first choice for breakfast had a line around the building, so we ran over to my old neighborhood, Lower Haight and went to Kate’s Kitchen. That was delicious of course! Then we took the N train over to the Ferry Building. We passed by Occupy SF, they had a nice showing. Later we would see people in tents in L.A. and Daniele asked if they were protesters. I wasn’t 100% sure, but I think they were just people living in tents. Anyway. We walked though the Ferry Building before hopping on the F train to Peir 39. There we did all the usual tourist stuff, the shops, seals, waterfront, Ghiradelli Square. After we went to North Beach. Daniele was excited about North Beach, but we didn’t see that much because the on and off light rain we had been having all day got pretty serious here.

(Sea Lions on Pier 39)

We stopped at Chris and Lori’s for dry socks and to change up between day and night clothes. Then we met up with two of my favorite people, Marc and Jeani for a happy hour and Jenkins Brew House. It was a pretty cool place; they always know the cool places. After that we met an old work friend Steve and his new girlfriend for dinner at Farmer Browns. I had wanted to bring Daniele to a Soul Food restaurant for a long time as an example of a type of “American” cuisine and my attempt in NYC had been a terrible failure. After all that, he was not very impressed. It was probably over hyped. He liked my friends, though.

Saturday.

This day my plan was to cover on foot some real neighborhoods of San Francisco. We managed to cover Mission, Castro, both sides of Haight, and Hayes Valley. Needless to say, my calves were getting pretty sore at this point.

We started in the Mission. Part of the reason for that was I wanted to bring him to a place that serves Blue Bottle Coffee (since he is Italian and therefore an expert on coffee). I really like Blue Bottle and wanted to get some while in SF and I wanted to get some for him to show him Americans make good coffee. Four Barrel is one of the few cafes I know that serves it, so we went there. It was a Saturday morning in SF, so of course there was a line from the cash register to the door. In Italy there are no lines; people just crowd by the registrar or barista and yell their order. I’m not sure he had ever seen such a thing and he put up quite a fuss. But I held my ground. I said I was going to wait in this line and he could do whatever the f* he wanted, minus continue to make a scene. Five minutes later all the people in front of us had been served and we had delicious coffees and donuts. There was a little confusion as Daniele apparently wanted an American style coffee (opposed to espresso) and accidentally ordered and “Americano”, an espresso drink with hot water added made popular in Italy by American Gis from WWII. But everything was delicious. After we walked around aimlessly in the Mission area. Lastly checking out Dolores Park.

From the park we easily wondered into the Castro. We just walked up Castro Street and absorbed the ambiance. From there we went up to Buena Vista Park, and then Upper Haight. We did a quick circle through Upper Haight and hit up Alamo Square on the way down to Lower Haight. Daniele was not very impressed by the painted ladies and found it much more interesting why so many people were taking pictures of these four houses. Daniele was really anxious that we had been on the west coast for almost 48 hours and still had not eaten Mexican food. So we stopped at one of my old favorites, the Little Chiwawa on Divisadero and Page. They have some yummy unusual flavors like a plantain and cheese that I got. After that we walked through my old neighborhoods, Lower Haight, we had seen it a little at breakfast the day before, then continued to Hayes Valley. There we got dessert: macarons from Miette that we enjoyed in the little park in Hayes Valley along with some people watching.


(Kait and Daniele in front of the Painted Ladies of Alamo Square)

After that we regrouped before heading to Marc and Jeani’s. They had moved to a new apartment since I had left and it’s beautiful! I had organized a dinner of my old San Francisco friends tonight and we met here first for some wine and cheese. I also got to meet Simon, Michelle and Billy’s beautiful little baby boy! He’s a fast mover though, all my pictures of him came out blurry. But such a good baby! He played around, let anyone hold him, and during dinner just sat quiet; you could forget he was there if he wasn’t so cute. From Marc and Jeani’s we went to Kan Zaman, one of my favorite places: delicious hummus, babganush, falafel, and other yummy things, also belly dancing, and there used to be hooka but apparently SF started cracking down on hooka bars because it’s considered “smoking”. The belly dancer gave me a lesson. So that video exists. Chris, Jenna, Daniele, and I had another round at Mangolia after, too. It was so nice seeing all my friends again!!!


(Michelle and the amazing Simon!)

Sunday.

Our last full day in SF Daniele and I rented bicycles to go around Golden Gate Park. The best rentals I found were from Sports Basement in the Presidio. That worked out great because it is near Ella’s, a great breakfast place. It’s also very close to the Golden Gate Bridge, so we did that as soon as we got our bikes. We just went halfway and took some pictures. We didn’t want to lose too much time since the real objective was the park. We also had to ride through some of the Presidio Park and some hilly streets between the bridge and the park. I have been to Golden Gate park 100 times, but never saw the things we did this day. We went and saw the Bison, the Chinese Pavilion, the Dutch Windmill, and a little of Ocean Beach. In between we grabbed a quick lunch at a vegan place in the Richmond, which was OK. As it started getting dark we started heading back to return the bikes. By the time we made it there we were riding under under-construction overpasses in the dark. Neither Daniele nor the guy at Sports Basement when I asked if there was a different way out seemed to think this was sketchy. But it was. It was very sketchy. Daniele and I wanted to take Chris and Lori out to dinner to thank them for hosting us, but Lori was still not back from LA, so the three of us went to The Front Porch. The food was pretty tasty and it was the first time I had warm breaded goat cheese balls in a salad, which I guess is a thing now. Highly recommended.


(Daniele on his rented bike in front of the Golden Gate Bridge)


(The Bison of Golden Gate Park)



(The Chinese Pavilion in Golden Gate Park)

Monday.

Monday morning we left pretty early to pick up our rental car and start our drive down the coast. I’ll leave that story for next time.

Photos from the San Francisco part of our CA Coast trip are here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111110CACoastSF

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Daniele Visit


(View of New York City from New Jersey)

Daniele was able to visit from November 8 to December 5. We spent Thanksgiving together and took a trip out to California.

He flew into JFK. I told him I couldn’t get him from that airport so we met in Hoboken Station. It was perfect because we got to have dinner and walk around Hoboken (where I would like to live eventually). The next day we walked around downtown Jersey City (next town over) and the waterfront up to Liberty State Park. We saw how big the park was and decided to save that for another day. Around noon we took the light rail back to Hoboken and walked all over there including the waterfront and parks. Also had some yummy Thai food. I grabbed some open-in-the-winter Rita’s before we took the train to western NJ.

The next day we flew out of Philly for San Francisco. We were really early and our flight was four hours delayed because of fog. Eventually we made it out and had great adventures in California.

NJ and NY Pictures from Daniele’s visit:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111108DanieleVisit

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New Orleans Part Two

Continuing the trip, Saturday we started off with breakfast at a diner right across from our hotel, Daisy Dukes. The food was typical diner breakfast, but what really made it great was the bottomless bloodymarys. The first one was good, but the next two I didn’t enjoy as much. You can only enjoy so much bloodymary. They were thick with horseradish (I guess) and I don’t like chewing my drinks. I had to skip this part, but their presentation is very fancy, it comes with a crayfish hanging off the side.


Bottomless bloodymarys

After breakfast we went to ask the hotel concierge about some things to do. My aunt wanted to see St Roch’s Cemetery because it has a room of relics. The concierge made it clear this was not in an area we should be going. So we went with our next choice and she called the shuttle for Mardi Gras World.

Mardi Gras World was one of my favorite things we did. They pick you up and bring you back in a shuttle bus because it is out by the Superdome. This company makes 75% of the floats for Mardi Gras and they run tours showing you the history, how it is all made, the culture of the different krews, even give out some king cake. A lot of their stuff they reshape and reuse following years and some things have to be made from scratch. They have about 10 full-time artists that do it all. We saw them Papier-mâché-ing and painting during the tour.


Us dressed up at Mardi Gras World



Our tour guide at Mardi Gras World



Mardi Gras World

On our way back we asked the shuttle guy about dropping us at St Roch’s Cemetery. Once again we were told not to go there. Not a “you sure you want to go there? It’s not very safe.” a straight forward “you can’t go there, unless you want to become a permanent resident.” We were dropped off instead at the River Walk where there is a nice little park and mall. We had a drink in the park and then went in the mall were there is a Food and Beverage museum. We stopped in a tourist center were we met a women named Cher. She set us up with a tour the next night and lots of coupons, and a cab driver she said she trusts to bring her daughter around that we could ask to bring us to St Roch.

Southern Food & Beverage Museum

Our very first night at the free concert we were given a flier for a parade, so we wanted to be sure to catch it. Plus our Mardi Gras shuttle driver assured us it was a nice area (and he was right) and how to best get there. From the River Walk it was easy to take the street car to Esplanade Ave. I found a restaurant called Three Muses with live Jazz music on Frenchman St, along the parade route. So we enjoyed a delicious dinner until the parade came by. Then ran out to watch it. Then ducked back in for dessert and the next set. It was a beautiful night and this was a really cool area. So we walked around a little bit, figuring we would wander back to the street car. But before we knew it we had walked half way home, so we did the second half too. We stopped at a cool Halloween themed bar along the way and chatted with the bartender. He had this camera hack I want to try where you use a screw to run a string from your camera’s tripod mount to the ground, then use tension with your foot to keep it steady. A bit later we walked by Houses of Blues, which looked cool and wondered to the back “Voodoo Garden”. We ordered drinks and when we tried to pay were told it was an open bar for the private party. As we were explaining we were strangers, who had just wondered in from the street, and the bartender was unsure what to do, a man on the other side of the bar said it was no problem, he would cover our drinks. Turns out we had crashed some sort of Warner Brothers Records party. Oops!


From the Parade

Sunday.

Sunday was our big day to see St Roch’s Cemetery. We had breakfast at the hotel to be sure we were ready on time. Or recommended cabbie and protector, Irvin met us at our hotel and we took off. He first brought us by the lower 9th, the area hit the worse by Katrina. You can clearly see here how the ground is below sea level. Everything in this area was destroyed. The only remains of original houses are ruins. Thousands of people died. We saw the houses Brad Pitt built for his “Make it Right”. They are all on stilts, using all the top energy efficiency technologies, so they will be more affordable to maintain. Brad Pitt did all of that right out of his pocket. What used to be a full neighborhood, now the only standing houses he built. He came down right after the storm, like many other people did, but when he heard that the government had no plan to do anything for these people he just did it himself.


Some of the Make it Right houses built by Brad Pit



What was once a house

After that we headed to St. Roch’s Cemetery. This cemetery was similar in style to St Louis Cemetery. Irvin said the gravel topped graves were ones that still had vacancies, the ones with a cement top were at full capacity. My mom actually picked some bones off one more turned up looking grave, but we were pretty sure they were animal bones. A few of the graves showed damage / displacement from the flooding that had still not been repaired. Unfortunately the church with the relic room was closed for renovations, but we could at least peak through the window.


St. Rochs Cemetery



My mother, the grave digger



The relics we could see of St. Roch’s Cemetery

Irvin dropped us off back by the French Market. It was like any street market with all kinds of vendors selling souvenirs to jewelry to t-shirts. I bought a wax seal from an actual french guy (living here 10 years) who had a nice both with all kinds of paper goods. We worked our way through the market then to Johnny’s Po Boy which was fine but did not live up to the hype everyone had given it, possibly because of the crowds in the center for the game that day.


Our cabbie and protector, Irvin

In the evening we went to Old Absinth House where we had a round of Nouvelle-Orléans Absinthe Supérieure. That got us ready for the ghost tour we were taking that night. The ghost tour was pretty good, our guide was Eugenia and we stopped at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar. We had dinner that night at the Gumbo House, it is actually really hard to find places to get dinner later at night.


The Absinthe House Frappe

Monday.

We started off Monday with breakfast at Cafe on the Corner. We were booked to take a plantation tour all day, but we stopped by Whixnits Gallery quick that morning to see an old friend of my aunt’s.

We did a tour of two old plantation houses. The first was Laura, a Creole plantation house. All the stories they have are from what they found archaeologically in the structure and from the memoirs of the last owner, Laura. It had a really rich history of being passed through generations in their family. The business was run by the smartest member of the family, male or female. They had strong french connections. Some men in the family went to school in France. One of the women who ran it married a Frenchmen, inherited his land back in France, and made the family even richer by importing wine. They had a large amount of slaves. Louisianan in the plantation era had ^relatively liberal slave laws and the population was 10% white, 80% slave, and another 10% free-people-of-color. Whether a colored child was free or slave depended on his mother, if his mother was free so was the child, if the mother was slave he was property of the mother’s owner. Laura’s great great grandmother bought herself 30 slave women and five men, and waited, soon they had one of the largest slave registries on the Mississippi. A generation later, her son is now running the plantation, a son she always said didn’t beat the slaves enough. One day he buys back a mother and son who were going to be separated after his mother had sold them to keep them together. That woman asks to stay on after all slaves are freed as a paid worker. The next generation is Laura, and she can’t stomach anything about plantation life. When her father dies she sells for very little and in the newspaper article about it she describes this colored family as part of her family.


Laura Plantation

Next we went to Oak Alley Plantation. This was the sight of several movies and TV shows including Interview with a Vampire. The plantation was build here to take advantage of two rows of existing Oak trees.


Oak Alley Plantation

One of the last things we did was each get a Gin Ramos Fizz at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. It was recommended to us by a bartender at lafitte’s blacksmith shop bar, and I’m glad we did it. One of my most memorable and delicious cocktails.


Gin Ramos Fizz at the Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel

Tuesday.

Out last day in NOLA was Tuesday. The day before my mom had found an ad for a breakfast place, Red Gravy that had cannoli pancakes and was run by “the little Italian girl from New Jersey” so we had to go there. Asking the server about her it turns out she was actually the chef. Also both the other tables by us were from NJ. We made friends with them and we all, including the chef Roseann, compared notes on where we were from.


Cannoli pancakes

We only had a little time to kill after that, so we got some drinks and had them by the Marriott pool, which was actually a nice way to spend our last hour. Then finally we packed up our final things and met up with Irvin who was driving us to the airport. Since he knew we liked cemeteries, he brought us by one on our way. This was one for all the people who don’t have anyone to claim them. Maybe half the tombstones were real, the rest were handmade from cement or anything people had. The graves were squared off with wood or cement or different materials; one had PVC pipe. Many of the graves here seemed fresh. It was such a contrast to the marble mausoleums just down the street. Very strange.

On a much sadder note, we found out that morning that my Aunt Linda’s best friend Karen died in the early morning. Years ago she had a stomach bypass and had more or less been on borrowed time ever since. Recently it had become too much for her liver and she was going fast. She was a great engineer, but she never worked after that surgery. She was a really amazing one-of-a-kind person and it’s hard to believe she’s gone.

The rest of my photos from this trip are in my New Orleans album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111019NewOrleans

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New Orleans Part One

This week my mom, Aunt Linda, and I are spending in New Orleans. The three of us have taken a few trips together, but none recently, so we thought we were due.

Wednesday.

We left Wednesday 10/19. It is a three-hour flight, so we didn’t get in until the afternoon. We had wanted to stay in a more boutique-y hotel for a more authentic experience. However, thanks to the incompetence of hotels.com we are staying in one of the tall tower hotels. We were worried about it since it had all gone down the night before and we had not had any other choice, but it was not nearly as bad as it could have been. The hotel was nice, naturally, it was a well known chain. Plus we had a really nice view from a corner room high up facing the river. On our way in my mom and aunt noticed that there are liqueur stores on every corner (they are good at noticing that). So once we got settled they grabbed some wine, four loko, and junk food snacks that we enjoyed before venturing out. Our taxi driver from the airport, Eric or ‘Big E’, had told us that these months there are free concerts in Lafayette Park on Wednesdays at 5 PM. So we headed there first. The concert was fun. The jazz music was good. There were craft venders, too. A charity was selling tickets you could by drinks with and we found a guy who was giving very generous pours. Just before the concert ended we went to dinner at Capdeville very close to there, which worked out great because we only had to wait maybe 10 minutes and just after we were seated the place was packed. We split jalapeno cheddar corn fritters and a bowl of truffle mac and cheese then each got our own grilled cheese and tomato and artichoke soup. Everything was really, really good!


The view from our hotel room



Free concert in Lafayette Park

Thursday.

We passed a breakfast place the evening before (I hadn’t looked up any a head of time thinking we had it included). So we went there the next morning. The Red Slipper, named after the Dorothy like feeling of coming home after Katrina.

After we went to the water front to take a ride on the Steamboat Natchez. My great-great-aunt had always wanted to take a river boat ride down the Mississippi, so we did this in memory of her, and toasted her. The boat gave a nice view as we went down the river and they gave a narration of what we were passing. They are the last steam powered boat on the Mississippi, and they let us walk through the engine room and take pictures.


Paddle wheel on the Steamboat Natchez



How a Steam Engine Works



Downtown New Orleans from the Steamboat Natchez

The port is close to Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, so we walked around there after the cruse and saw the church. There were lots of street performers, of all sorts. We stopped in a museum that was an old apartment. It was set up in period furnishings with information on its history. Also a french artist had arranged it and written these strange, colorful stories to go along with the rooms. It’s hard to explain and I can’t remember the name of it. We were getting hungry then so we went into Central Grocery, an Italian grocery story famous for muffaletta sandwiches. We eventually found ourselves wondering down Royal St. until it seemed we reached the end of the interesting area, then we hoped over a block and walked back on Bourbon St where we stopped in a few places.


St. Louis Cathedral



St. Louis Cathedral



In a museum that is a historical house, set up with period furnishings that tell this strange story written by a French artist

Friday.

Friday morning I ran out and got us breakfast sandwiches and grits from FredRicks Deli. Then we waked down Royal St, which is full of cool shops mostly art and antique stores. We went to the Voo Doo Museum which gave a history of voo doo as well as had altars set up of all sorts of voo doo paraphernalia. People add to the altars as well. After we went to St. Louis 1 Cemetery. This is one of the older and nicer cemeteries in NO. It has what is believed to be the grave of Marie Laveau though no one is sure where she is buried. There was also a large Italian mausoleum where all the early Sicilian immigrants would have been buried.


From the Voo Doo Museum



St. Louis 1 Cemetery – Believed grave of Marie Laveau

In the afternoon we went over to the Garden District. The Garden District is the other side of NO. After the Louisianan Purchase, when Americans started moving into NO, they didn’t get along with the French-speaking current residents. So, they built their own town on the other side of NO. This part of town has a very different feel from the French Quarter; less curly iron balconies and more Victorian-looking wood. We had lunch at Parasols, a neat pub were you open a trap door to the bar to give your drink order. http://www.yelp.com/biz/parasols-restaurant-and-bar-new-orleans]. After we took there trolly back and grabbed some dessert at PJs Coffee.


House in the Garden District

The rest of my New Orleans photos are in this album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20111019NewOrleans

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LBI

Last week my family took our annual vacation to Long Beach Island, New Jersey. My dad’s oldest brother, Bill has a house there and we have gone every summer my entire life. We choose this week because it was right after I came back from Italy, but it worked out well because we love LBI off season. Not all the restaurants and stores are open, especially in the middle of the week, but it is so much more quiet and peaceful. Not to mention you are allowed to being dogs on the beach and go on the bird sanctuary at the end of the island. We spent nine days down there, reading, knitting, taking the sun, and eating way too much of my Uncle Larry’s heavy cooking.

(Entrance to the beach)


(Sunset on the bay)


(The bird sanctuary on LBI)

The rest of my pictures from Long Beach Island:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20110918LBI#

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Home for May

I made a trip home to New Jersey from May 4th through June 7th. It was motivated mostly by my cousin Corrine asking me to be in her wedding on May 7th. Luckily May is one of those months full of family parties, so I got to see lots of people while I was back.

Corrine and Anthony’s wedding was beautiful. Corrine’s daughter, from her first marriage, Celina was just precious as a flower girl. Anthony is first generation Italian, so the food (and especially the dessert) was amazing!

My cousin Mike and Bonnie baptized their second daughter Keira. My Uncle Bill was in from Alaska and able to do the ceremony.

My cousin Brian graduated from Boston University with a collection of degrees and honors and is off to a really sweet job at Duke now. He is going to bike down there.

I had a fun New York day with my godmother. She is a Tony judge, so we hit up both “Sister Act” and “How to Succeed in Business with out Really Trying” on a Wednesday. They were both really good. I thought Daniel Radcliffe was great in “How to Succeed in Business”. We also hit up this Gelateria in midtown near the park, Grom. They ship their good stuff in daily from Italy! Daniele’s mother had seen a special on them and told me to check them out while I was home.

My parents and I also opened up my Uncle Bill’s LBI house. We stayed a few days but the weather was not very good so we headed back home. My friend Fabienne stopped by, so did my Aunt Linda and Connie.

Now it is back to Italy for the summer. I wish I had made it up to Boston, but there was so much going on in NJ I never found the time. Ciao USA!

Pictures from Corrine and Anthony’s Wedding:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20110507CorrineAndAnthonySWedding#

Pictures from NY fun day with Aunt Linda, Keira’s Baptism, and Brian’s Cake
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20110603KeiraBaptismAndNJ