One of the good things about being jet lagged and waking up at 6 in the morning is getting to see the sunrise over the San Francisco bay.
Back in San Francisco for a two weeks trip. We’re waiting for friends from Romania to join us and together we’ll take a trip to Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, and a tiny bit of Los Angeles thrown in on the way back. A tight schedule to say the least. But as long as I get to travel I’m not complaining, even if it’s travel to places I’ve been before.
San Francisco, my city by the bay. It still feels like home even though I don’t live here anymore. As soon as I step out of the airplane I feel a familiar smell, a mixture of salty waters and probably the smell of some local plants. I have a big confession to make, I didn’t like San Francisco at first. I didn’t like it for what it wasn’t, if that makes any sense, specifically, it wasn’t New York, the city were I dreamed to be living back when I was a graduate student at Rutgers, in New Jersey. But Cris got a job offer in California and instead of New York, we moved to San Francisco. The city was too quiet and subdued for my taste (compared to New York that is) and because I was adding another 2500 miles (4000 kilometers) between me and Romania I had a feeling of being at the end of the world. I’ve heard my American friends saying that San Francisco looks European but to me it looked alien and unfamiliar. The city where it never snows, where there’s an ocean but you can’t swim in it. Where August is cold and foggy and palm trees grow next to fir trees. The city with the highest percentage of same sex households in US. Also, on a sadder note, the city with the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city. As I started work a week after moving to California, I didn’t have a lot of time to explore the city. I just started living there and discovered it little by little. And thinking about this a year or so later, I realized I’ve been feeling at home in San Francisco for some time. Come to think of it, it did happen like the song said, I left my heart in San Francisco! 
According to the San Francisco page on wikipedia, tourism is the backbone of the city’s economy. No wonder, since San Francisco has been frequently portrayed in music, film and books. The city has some tourist attractions that are checked out by all visitors, but in my opinion what makes gives this city its reputation and make it one of the most romantic looking cities in the world is the landscape. The steep, famous San Francisco streets, the ocean, the bay, the rolling fog. The hills and its location between the bay and the Pacific ocean give out an awesome view from almost anywhere in the city.
Cris has been scolding me lately for letting this blog die. To be honest I had the intention of writing more about the trip to Paris and about a September trip to Vienna but I got entirely caught up in a new project which has kept me busy. In a way, this project was born from my trip to Paris so it is Paris’ fault that I kept away for so long. I’m kidding, of course, but here comes the story of what kept me away for such a long time. While I was preparing for the trip to Paris I discovered a nice blog by the name of Paris Daily Photo. Its author Eric, who recommends himself as a “friendly Parisian”, is posting an image of Paris a day with a small commentary. Extending my search I found out that there is a whole bunch of daily city photoblogs, some still up to date, some already closed after being in use for a few years. This is how I got the idea of creating one for Bucharest, the city where I was born and where I currently live. My declared goal was (and is) to post a daily photo taken in Bucharest accompanied by a small commentary related to the photo. I shared this idea with a few friends and was asked by some if I think anyone will be interested. I certainly hoped that some people will be interested. If not, the worst case scenario was that I will get to know my city better And so a new blog was born: Bucharest Daily Photo. So far I kept at it for more than two months and I have about 50 visitors a day to each version (English and Romanian) of the blog. This activity takes a lot of my time because it turns out that it’s not easy to come up with a new photo and a commentary every day. But at the moment I’m having fun with it and I really enjoy it so I don’t mind the work.
At the beginning of July I went to Paris for a six days vacation. I’ve been to Paris two times before, in the summer of 1999 and in December 2004, not counting the 7 hours I spent there last summer on a layover, when Cris and I were flying from San Francisco to Bucharest. We took the RER to St. Michel, downed some coffee (myself) and beer (Cris) and strolled through the Luxembourg Gardens before returning to Charles de Gaulle airport to catch the flight to Bucharest. In a way Paris was my first trip, the one that opened me to the world of travel. It was in the summer of 1999 when we were already studying in New Jersey at Rutgers University. You could argue that I was already traveling outside of Romania but the truth is that we used to spend all of our vacations in Romania so all I knew of the world was New Jersey, Bucharest and back. That prompted me to ask Cris in the summer of 1999 to go and see other places and I proposed that we go to Paris. It took me a long time to convince him but I eventually did and he agreed to go with the condition that I take care of visas and planning – back in 1999 Romanians needed a visa to travel to France. Passports in hand I went to the French consulate in NY and applied for a visa. Everyone told me I’m not going to get the visa but I didn’t see a reason why I won’t get it. I was in a PhD program in US, I thought that was sufficient evidence that I don’t plan to stay in France illegaly. We got the visa and I took care of the rest of the planning: plane tickets, hotel. It was probably my most researched trip – for months I read about Paris on the Internet, what to see, where to go, what to do. At some point I got tired. Everyone was raving about how great, how marvelous, how charming it is. Give me a break! I said to myself; it’s only a city, how great can it be? I arrived in Paris and I was caught into exploring the city and didn’t think about this at all. A few days later while I was drinking coffe at a small cafe on a side street I realized that I’m already caught in its charm. I love Paris. It’s great and marvelous and charming and I just love it. Paris is for me the quintessential Western European city, the glory of the French and European civilizations. It has everything I want in a city, architecturally, gastronomically, artistically & socially. It’s full of life and culture. In my three trips there I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. There are still dozens of places I’ve yet to discover. Whatever makes you happy in the end, and that’s what this city does for me. I’ll never tire of going to Paris, a city I could easily go back to endlessly, roaming around, revisiting the Notre Dame and the Louvre, looking in windows, going into cafes, tasting the food, laughing at the miniscule rooms and feeling at home because it feels so familiar.
A few Paris images:
Notre Dame church:
Eiffel Tower:
Coffee time:
Place des Vosges:
Paris skyline:
Louvre Museum:
Skyline with Eiffel Tower
Cote d’agneau:
Champs Elysee:
River Seine:
Parisian cafe:
I’m back in Bucharest, as you probably guessed. I didn’t get to write about the last 5 days of the New York trip. This “write as you go” experiment gave me a good perspective about what it means to be a travel blog writer. I wanted to post daily but found out that it was difficult. The time it took me to write, correct and post the text was significant, especially considering the fact that I had to do it in two languages. It was also the first time that I travelled carrying a notebook in my bag. Over the course of the day I tried to make notes of everything I saw and did. In the beginning it was a bit of a nuisance to write down everything I found noteworthy but I got the hang of it quickly. And it proved to be very useful. I think I will continue to keep a diary when I travel.
I spent the whole month of June in Bucharest except for a few days at the beginning of the month when I went to the Romanian seaside, more precisely to Năvodari. The occasion was the invitation from a good friend to accompany her to the “Catamarans National Championship” at Marina Surf. It was sunny and we had good weather for the entire five days we were there. I had a great time, my only regret being that the water was too cold for swimming. I think I’m starting to like these “lie in the sun” type of vacations which I didn’t care for before.
Marina Surf beach, Năvodari:
Trying to escape the sun:
The catamarans are ready for the ride:
On Your Marks, Get Set, Ready, Go:
The winners:
Day Five. Another day, another museum. This time, to make Cris happy, I picked the National Museum of Natural History. First we took a short stroll through the southern part of Central Park. We passed by the pond – I wonder what happens to the ducks in winter? (This was my attempt of a literary joke) – by some baseball fields full of activity, and finally by the Strawberry Fields and John Lennon memorial. The museum was pretty crowded, given that it was a Sunday. Cris got upset when he found out that the IMAX theater was closed. He was looking forward to seeing a movie at IMAX. Instead, we got tickets for the Cosmic Collision, which turned out to be a 20 minutes movie narrated by Robert Redford with some nice special effects. It showed the importance of cosmic collisions and I learned a few new things (about solar wind and how Earth is protected by it by the magnetic field generated by its iron core). After the show we spent most of our time in the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Exiting the big silver globe that is the Planetarium you can descend via a spiral platform that traces the history of the universe. From the Rose Center for Earth and Space we went up to the fourth floor to see the dinosaur halls. Huge dinosaur skeletons dwarfed everything in the room. We left at the closing time regretting that we didn’t have more time to look around. If I were to live in NY I’d probably come here more often.
My morning bagel:
The Central Park Pond:
John Lennon Memorial in Central Park:
Museum of National History, entrance hall:
Rose Center for Earth and Space, Museum of National History:
My diet was too severe:
One of the dinosaur halls:
Dinosaur hall:
Dinner:
The Globe at the Trump Tower, Columbus Circle:
Day Four. I said on my previous posts that I won’t do anything too touristic on this trip but as I passed by the Rockefeller Plaza on our 5th Avenue stroll I noticed a booth with the following sign “Top of the Deck – Tickets for the Observation Deck” and I couldn’t help myself, I convinced everyone to go up on the Rockefeller Center. I was surprised that I didn’t know about climbing the tower before, but I read in the LP Guide that the observation deck was closed for almost two decades from 1986 to 2005. We moved to the West Coast at the end of 2000 so the deck was still closed at that time. After paying $20/person (ouch), going through different security checks and watching a short movie about the center, we were ushered into an elevator and told to look up. As the elevator started a movie was projected its ceiling, showing different images from the history of New York and after a short ride we arrived on the 67th floor. The views from up there were amazing and we got a pretty nice look at the Empire State Building and the Central Park while the Crysler Building was partially obscured by another building. We spent about half an hour there taking pictures and listening to the French tourists. Based on our observation half of the tourists in NY at this moment in time were speaking French. Who knows, maybe they were French Canadians but I think they were French taking advantage of the weak dollar.
Afterwards we sat down at the Rink Cafe for drinks and snacks. While trying to find our way out of the building to the cafe we passed by many stores inside the Rockefeller Center including a shoeshine store where believe it or not, there were people in line waiting to get a shoe shine. Didn’t see that one before. After the break we walked by the NY City Library through Bryant Park to Times Square, this time at daylight. It was as crazy as at nighttime. Every three meters or so someone was advertising something or trying to sell you some kind of tour. We were pretty tired by that time so we decided to go see a movie and we picked Star Trek which was just opening in theatres. Cris and I are old Star Trek fans, we have seen all the series (even half of Enterprise) and most of the previous Star Trek movies. This one is a prequel, happening before the start of The Original Series and showing how Spock and Kirk met. I really liked the movie, I thought the actors were well chosen and they had a good chemistry together. It made lots of references to the series, as a gift to the fans, it had good special effects, lots of action and a decent script. I hope it does well at the box office so we can see them again in a sequel.
Oueensboro Bridge:
Fifth Avenue:
Also on Fifth Avenue:
Rockefeller Plaza:
View of Central Park from the top of Rockefeller Center:
Midtown Manhattan seen from the top of Rockefeller Center:
Empire State Building:
The entrance to the Rockefeller Center:
Bryant Park:
Times Square:
The line for the TKTS ticket booth in Times Square:
Times Square:
