Albuquerque, part I.

Arrived in Albuquerque in a very sunny Thursday afternoon. Call it Schadenfraude, but knowing that it was raining cats and dogs in NYC made me happier to be in the sun. Sorry my NYC loves! Nothing personal!

Anyway, we drove to 20 Carrots Cafe.

There was only a customer there, an older woman that kept saying in Spanglish that she was from Bogotá, Colombia, and judging by her commentaries, she was not very fond of people from Mexican descent. The owner, who might've been of Mexican descent, was a lady probably in her late 50's that just kept agreeing.

I wasn't too hungry, so I got a cup of pinto beans soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. Simple, yet delicious.

The best part, though, came when I stopped by the bathroom before leaving. The original owner of 20 Carrots (Christie Brinkley's brother, nash) had commitioned a painting or something. The thing was bizzare, but awesome. There was a beach scene, with a Scotsman in a kilt playing the bagpipes, walking on water. On the other side Jesus was actually walking on water. It was just too much.

Before leaving, stopped by the news stand next door to buy a postcard for Brichelle. The self-help section:

Somnio's Cafe

Thursday in Austin! My body hasn't been cooperating, and sleep: not so good the past couple of nights But I worked and worked hard, as I'm wont to do, in this case until 8pm. I learned something though, while working at the Austin History Center. Wanna know what it is? I'll show you!

You're thinking "pretty" right? Or interesting? Let me give you a close up.

Yup, you read that right. That there is a little exhibition from the Texas Barbed Wire Collectors Association. The little signs under the different types of barb wire detail the name of the creator, the name of the wire specifically and when it was patented, as well as who donated it. But most importantly, you didn't know there was a Texas Barbed Wire Collectors Association, did ya? Because you thought there was only one barb wire and that is barb wire! It's okay. I didn't either. Thank you, Austin History Center!


In any case after work Matt, Natalia, Ben, Virginia and I put ourselves in the hands of Bill, Matt's friend, who suggested we'd go to Somnio's Cafe. And so we did.

Little tiny place. Since it had been raining and the tables in the yard were wet we stayed inside. Appetizers all around! Enter the Spicy Shitake Pan Fried Dumplings.

And Sweet Potato Fries

People, let me tell you two things I love: Sweet potato fries, and dumplings. These made my belly sing. Since Somnio's is BYOB we brought along some local blonde ale.

And it was much better than the Bootlegger Brown Ale that they drank at the other side of the table. Finally, my entree was the Spicy Singapore Vermicelli Bowl, with Tofu. That consisted of stir-fried carrots, onions, egg ribbons, vermicelli, green onions, cilantro, and a yellow curry sauce. (YUM coconut milk!)

My puny camera does not make that meal justice.

After all of that I requested to be rolled over to my room and skipped the rest of the evening's plans. Yup, I went to bed at around 10:45 pm. Deal with it people! Listening may be an act of love, but it is also draining. Friday Pride starts in Austin, and if it weren't for some plans I have in NYC I would be changing my flight so that I could see their Parade on Saturday Night. In the meantime - to listen some more.

Working Saturday

Saturday in Green Bay was very, very good: had to get up early to be at work by 8:30, but this worked out okay – one set of participants cancelled, giving us an hour to relax at 10, and then the last set of participants showed up an hour and a half earlier, which actually worked very well – they were ready and prepped to go into the recording room by noon and that translated into us being finished with our workday by 1pm. Score!

The weather wasn’t great but it was getting sunnier by the second. We decided to go for lunch before heading out to explore Green Bay. Our choice this time? Kavarna, a vegetarian café in downtown Green Bay. All of their selections looked awesome and the place was packed when we got there – always a good sign. I ordered a cup of tomato, “chorizo” and parsley soup, and a bean burger with onions, lettuce, tomato, garlic cream cheese in a soft bagel.

On the way out we got cookies. Mine was white macademia. We ate our cookies while walking around the downtown district. Not a very busy area by any standards, but very cute with stores like “Hat-Cetera” and “Sassy girl.”

We got in the car and headed north to Door County, specifically to Cave Point Park. We hiked along Lake Michigan for a couple of hours, stepping mostly on eroded rocks, but once in a while finding strips of sand completely covered with thousands of small shells.

At one point we ran into a seagull that didn’t like us very much, but we stayed clear of his rock and it helped the situation. At one point we stopped to sun bathe a bit and enjoy the sound of water lapping on rock, of the seagulls calling to each other, of the nearby trees dancing with the wind. The lake looked like the sea – there seemed to not be an end – and the water had various colors, depending on how deep the bed was, going from extremely clear to light green to green blue, to deep blue. I can only imagine what it looks like in the middle of summer.

After the 45 minutes drive back to Green Bay we struggled to find what to eat – the Italian restaurant our contact had recommended was closed. The Thai place we found online was also closed. Finally we settled on a Mexican Restaurant (I know, after that whole week of Mexican at Brownsville,) but at least this one was open and came highly recommended by yelp users and what not.

I had the two “mini” ground beef burritos. These babies were drenched in melted Mexican cheese and really weren’t much more than ground beef in a flour tortilla with lettuce and cilantro and tomato on top. I was very disappointed. However, it was all fixed when I stole one of Matt’s corn tortilla, and made myself a ground beef taco. And THAT was delish. We were stuffed.

The night ended with the Mets beating the Yankees 4 to 3, and with the voice of my Cariño. Oh yeah.

Let's go for lunch

Lunch hour arrived and since it's such a short trip we decided not to brown bag it. We drove down from our recording location to Z Harvest. Since time was of the essence we got our meals to go.

I had a nutty salad in a bed of greens with feta cheese, tomatoes, onions drenched in a light balsamic vinagreitte. I also had the perfect sized cup of chicken tortellini soup, with sprinkled cheese on top and a stick of seasoned bread.

It was delicious. It also made it very hard to go back to work – all I wanted to do was take a nap afterwards. If someone tells you that listening is not hard work, they don’t know what they are talking about, at all.

Ich bin ein Berliner!

So I had to take vacation days or I would lose them, and my friend says "I'll be in Berlin for Easter weekend," and I answered with "I want to be in Berlin for Easter weekend!" And so I was. 

We had a blast. We both arrived on April 1st and the first order of business was to get us something yummy to eat. Enter Vietnamese Food restauran Hoai Nam, a couple of blocks from our apartment.

The atmosphere was very nice and they helpfully had the menu in English and German. I began the meal with vegetarian dumplings, kimchi, and Saigon beer. 

The main course consisted of Tofu Noodles with coconut milk:

It was a great way to begin our visit!!

The next day we went on a walking tour of mostly East Berlin. We saw all the big attractions: Checkpoint Charlie, the Berliner Dom, Museum Island, the TV Tower, a bit of Berlin Wall that's still left, Hitler's Bunker, the new memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe, the German memorial for the victims of War and Tyranny, the Royal Opera House, Bebelplatz and the memorial to the book burning that happened there in 1933. Awesome, and exhausting... some pictures: 

After all that walking we were starving! First we took a break at a small café and had a bit of a snack

We did go drinking, which was great and fun. The beer was cheap and of EXCELLENT quality. There are no pictures of debauchery available, however ;-)

The next morning though, we took our time waking up and had brunch at around noon. We had to search but found a little brunch place, practically empty. I had the Chorizo and sweet pepper omelet

The omelet was good, but it made me feel a little queasy later. More sightseeing happened, in the meantime - the weather was perfect and we rode U-Bahns and S-Bahns all over the place. We ended Saturday night by watching the movie "Precious" with German subtitles - yeah, we like to keep it light and sweet during vacation. 

Sunday also had a slow start, but in a good sense. Museums were visited, we went up to the TV Tower observatory (not as cool as the Empire State Building, but who's comparing?) and also up to the Berliner Dom roof and had great looks of the city. We didn't make it too far into West Berlin, unfortunately, but I guess that means we'll have to go back. We finished our visit to Berlin by having a delicious meal at a Vegetarian restaurant in Kreuzberg. Some awesome Rose wine and a stuffed aubergine in a bed of a tomato sauce:

The next day I headed back to the States, via London. I made a quick stop at the Brittish Museum.

I made what I believe was a brilliant attempt to actually at the very least walk through the entire museum, which consists of three levels and what seems like countless exhibitions. I failed miserably.

To cheer myself up, I walked to the West End and attempted to find a good show. I ran into Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with Sanaa Lathan and Phyllicia Rashad. I got super excited. 

But then I find out that the show is sold out for the night. Bum-mer. I keep walking and almost inmediately I run into another theater, where Dirty Dancing (Yes, based on the movie) was playing. I figure, what the hell, right? I liked the adaptation of Legally Blonde to the Stage (actually one of my favorite musicals, say what you will,) and the show's been open for years by now, there's no way it would be open for long if it wasn't good. So I got whipped out my student ID (yes, it is expired, but the Brits didn't seem to care) and purchased me a 20 Pound seat, which was on first mezz, second row center. What luck, right? 

Before the show I walked around - I found at least three different Thai food restaurants, but this is the one I chose

Thai Square was a GREAT choice. I let the waiter know I had a Show to make and she brought out my Tofu Pad Thai inmediately

It was one of the best Tofu Pad Thai's I've ever tasted. The Tofu had a wonderful scald to it, the noodles had a good consistency, the sauce made me very happy. YUM to the MY. 

Quickly though, as I was cutting it close, I ran to The Aldwych Theater thinking that as soon as Dirty Dancing was over I would skip over to the Stage Door on the other theater and get to say hi to the actors of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

Dirty Dancing... What... a waste of my time and money. They included EVERY SCENE of the movie. Even though it made the entire thing run choppily and made scenes sometimes less than a minute long. What that means is that it took longer for the actors and the stage to set up for a scene than it got them to actually say the lines. The dancing was not properly Dirty, I'll say that too - severely dissappointed in that respect. AND they added scenes to the whole deal: A bit about Neil the grandson going freedom riding and Baby and her mother having more a rapport, as well as showing Baby's mom and pop talking to each other a bit more. Unnecesary scenes for the movie and certainly unnecesary for the show. These people really needed to get the important scenes together, combined some of the scenes to make the flow better, and they seriously needed to choose a Johnny that had a bit more experience with modern dancing and not a completely ballet trained dancer. The guy was horrible. 

The only saving grace of the show was the actress that played Baby's sister. Now, she did almost a carbon copy of what the movie actress did - but it was a good choice. Singing during the talent show and her way of dancing: perfect. What upset me is that the entire theater went crazy when Johnny did his "Nobody puts baby in a corner" bit, which came out rushed and quickly, and done badly. They started cheering and SINGING ALONG AND OUTLOUD when the "I've had the time of my life" number came on, as if: a)they had never seen the movie, and b)as if the actors were any good. Really, I cannot possibly explain how angry I was at my having spent money on this. And then, to boot, by the time I was out, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had been long over, and there was not even a slight chance to say "hey" to Mrs. Cosby. Feh. 

Regardless, I enjoyed the walk back to my hostel, and I had good chamomile tea before bedtime. The next day I checked out early and decided that my last meal in London before heading to the States would be what they call "The full English."

This protein-and-grease fest consists of buttered toast, fried bacon, fried egg, fried sausage, and beans. Topped it with a cup of coffee and off the Airport I went. I felt a little queasy there for a second, but it was well worth it. I'm pretty sure that on this mini vacation I put on all the weight I lost in the month of March. Huzzah.