Goodbye East Coast

Six months ago I relocated to upstate New York for work. It was my first time living on the east coast, and I didn’t really know what to expect. The whole experience ended up being a great adventure, and I’m thankful I had the opportunity to come out here. All things must come to an end though - in a few days I will be returning to California. It’s sort of a bittersweet goodbye. I’m glad to be going home and spending time with family and friends that I haven’t seen in awhile, but at the same time there are definitely things I’ll miss about my life these past six months, so this post is dedicated to all those nice things that I will miss about upstate NY when I leave:

Abundant Nature - The first thing one notices when getting off the plane is how many trees there are around here. Everything is green (except in the winter when it’s covered in snow), a nice contrast to California where all the vegetation has long since dried up. My apartment building was literally next to a small forest, providing plenty of great places to run. Parks and hiking trails are everywhere, and you actually see more nature than people on the trails due to the lower population density. 

Saratoga Springs - I really liked this city. Just ten minutes from my apartment and thirty minutes north of Albany, downtown Saratoga Springs has the charming atmosphere of an artsy cultural center without the suffocating crowds of the bigger cities. Restaurants here were great, I never had a bad meal here. And there would often be fun events going on in town, from the horse races in the summer to the huge New Years Eve celebration at the end of the year. 

Proximity to Major Cities - My location was a convenient three hour drive away from several big cities, including NYC and Boston. I definitely took advantage of the location to go on multiple weekends trips to these major destinations. 

Traffic (or lack thereof) - When bad morning traffic means being stuck at the roundabout for an extra two minutes, you know you have it good. I’m definitely going to miss not having to plan my day around traffic patterns.

Overall, I enjoyed my time out on the east coast. I met/reconnected with some amazing people, went on incredible adventures, and learned what it means to live in a place with weather. It’s time to head home now, but I sincerely hope I’ll be able to come back here someday.

Vacationing on the Cheap (Free) in Washington DC

The last stop we made on our winter break trip was the DC area. We spent some of our time there visiting and hanging out with M’s relatives, but we also had an opportunity to do some sightseeing. The great thing about Washington DC is how much you can see without ever paying an admission fee. All the Smithsonian museums and the monuments on the National Mall are free to visit, a pleasant change from the high prices of NYC.

Washington Monument on the National Mall

One of the Smithsonian institutions we visited was the National Zoological Park. It was a decent sized zoo, and the abnormally warm weather at the end of December meant that we actually saw a lot of animals out and about. We made sure to visit the panda exhibit because that was the whole point of visiting, and I was pretty impressed with their setup. We were able to see three different pandas, each with their own large habitat. It was amusing to see that despite the separation their behavior was largely the same - beeline towards food, snatch it up, then turn away from the throngs of tourists and start munching.

Panda at the National Zoo

Another big one we visited was the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The exhibits were pretty nice, but it would have been nicer if we weren’t tripping over strollers every few steps. It’s one of the more family/kid oriented museums, so I guess it tends to be more crowded with families. We found some relative peace and quiet in the Special Exhibits section, which actually turned out to be our favorite exhibit in the museum. They were displaying some of the winning photos of a nature photography competition, and the photos were nothing short of breathtaking. We spent a good hour or so just walking around, looking at all the photos, before going back to the regular exhibits.

The special photography exhibit at the Museum of Natural History

We also made a brief stop at the National Portrait Gallery in downtown. It ended up being a lot bigger than we expected, and I would definitely recommend more than the one hour we had to look around. The building is divided into two halves - the actual portrait gallery section, and the more traditional art museum. We spent the bulk of our time in the portrait gallery, where the installations ranged from portrait paintings of historical figures to modern day photographs of the important people of today. I found the modern photos to be interesting, maybe because it’s not typical of what you would find in other museums. The top floor was dedicated to modern art, and also contained a lot of unique pieces worth seeing.

Modern art at the Portrait Gallery

The last museum we visited was the National Air and Space Museum. We ended up going to the one next to the Dulles airport instead of the one on the National Mall because apparently the Dulles one is bigger and has more actual planes. I can believe it - the museum was huge, with literally hundreds of planes and spacecraft on display. Some of the highlights included a full size blackbird and the space shuttle Discovery. The tour we joined ended up being a bit long - about 2 hours - but contained great information and hit on all the highlights and more.

Lots of planes at the Air and Space Museum

Next time I visit the DC area, I definitely want to explore some of the other Smithsonian museums. There are nineteen Smithsonian museums total, and I’ve only seen four so far (in recent memory), so there’s still much more to see. If possible, I’d also like to tour some of the federal government buildings. Many, such as the White House, can only be entered by securing reservations in advance. But for the price of $0, it’s something that shouldn’t be missed.

Reliving the Revolution in Philadelphia

As the original capital of the United States, many noteworthy historical events happened in Philadelphia in the early years of the nation. A lot of important sites are now housed within the Independence National Historical Park, a collection of buildings and grounds spanning much of the old town district. 

Liberty Bell 

We spent a few days in Philly last week, and since we only had one real full day in the city, we decided to loosely follow the 1-day itinerary featured in my AAA guidebook. We started the day by heading over to the Independence Visitor Center right at 8:30 when it opened. There, we watched a slightly corny intro video because nothing else was open yet. After the video finished, we headed next door to the Liberty Bell Center. There was a mini museum there detailing the history of the bell, and then at the end of the hall the famed bell itself. It was a nice little exhibit that didn’t take much more than half an hour.

Independence Hall

The bell center exit was almost right next to our next stop, Independence Hall. We jumped on one of the free half hour tours of the building, and got to see the old meeting rooms and offices of all three branches of government. The tour deposited us behind the building, in a little square with access to various other buildings. One of the other buildings was Congress Hall where we took another guided tour, this time of the old House and Senate chambers.

Cheesesteak from Ishkabibble's

By this time we were getting hungry so we went to get lunch at, of course, a Philly cheesesteak place. After lunch we headed over to the opposite side of the park to see the National Constitution Center, a large museum dedicated to all aspects of the Constitution. I was a little skeptical at first about how you could make an entire museum about one document, but there were actually a lot of great exhibits there. The main attraction was a live dramatic narration of the founding, followed by a huge exhibit talking about the nation’s history and how different events led to various amendments to the Constitution. 

National Constitution Center

After visiting the Constitution Center we walked around the old town a bit, looking at Christ Church and the Betsy Ross House from the outside (they closed early for Christmas eve so we couldn’t actually go inside). We also took a stroll down Elfreth’s Alley, a cute little street that has retained the old 18th century style of architecture. By this time everything was closing, so we went and had a nice sushi dinner at Morimoto’s, the product of a former Iron Chef contestant, and then went for a walk around the Penn’s Landing waterfront to see the nice holiday decorations.

Sushi at Morimoto

View of the waterfront

Philadelphia may be somewhat overshadowed by NYC in terms of sheer number of attractions, but it’s still a big city with a rich culture and lots to see. I hope to make it back someday to explore it more thoroughly.