My boyfriend and I have taken a liking to exploring cities on Turtle Island. We are saving for a bigger trip - we're thinking a Euro-holiday - but we needed something to get us through the winter months. Last week, we toyed with the idea of going to New York on Monday, booked on Thursday, and were on a train through the Adirondacks on Friday.
We settled into our hotel (the Hilton in the Financial District), which had a view of the re-building of the World Trade Centre.
We knew we only had 2 days, and I don't think we could have squeezed more into our first day if we tried: breakfast in Time Square; a three hour jaunt through the Met (which, as it turns out, wasn't enough); dessert for lunch on 5th Avenue; Columbia University; shopping in SoHo; and pizza for dinner at Lombardi's, one of five spots vying for the best pizza in NYC.
We got to the hotel by 9, plopped down on the luxe bed, and couldn't get up.
The next day we, once again, were on the train to Time Square. We saw a hockey game in the legendary Madison Square Garden. Then, we figured we would fit in one more museum. Can you guess which one? The National Museum of the American Indian.
Although their main exhibit, Infinity of Nations, was cool (above), I preferred the modern art works of Carl Beam. So much so that I excitedly skipped over to the next room when I saw a sneak peek, inadvertently skipping the Woodlands--which, apparently, means me--section. And, as long as I'm being honest, I held a bit of a grudge after not finding "Algonquin" amongst the names of tribes surrounding the Infinity of Nations sign. An afternoon at Century 21, resulting in a DVF sweater and Tory Burch blouse, capped off a great day.
(I'll now skip over the part where we ended up at TGI Friday's for dinner, eating crappy expensive food, and getting depressed while adding up all the money we'd spent. Ooops, there it is.)
While NYC was a lot of fun (I can't wait to go to MoMA and back to Century 21), of all the cities we've visited, our hearts are still in Boston...
Confession time: I love me a good magical world. When I was younger, I devoured Harry Potter, eagerly awaiting each new release, and Lord of the Rings. Over the past year, I've fallen in love with authors who tell a seemingly real life story and inject it with a hint of mysticism: Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
The Hunger Games trilogy, while not quite magic, was definitely out of this world. The back cover reviews from Stephen King and Stephanie Meyer piqued my interest. Although I've never read the Twilight Saga, the movies are, admittedly, a guilty pleasure of mine.
Imagine my surprise when I crack the cover of The Hunger Games to find that it is more a story about our people than Twilight ever was, even with its depiction of the Quileute nation (or, more accurately, in spite of...). Skin colour is scarcely mentioned in the novels, except in reference to the crazy Capitol-ites who dye their skin green and blue. Instead, the Hunger Games is a story of oppression, bravery, love, war, innocence, healing, and hunting.
I fervently flipped through the pages, gasping every now and again as R.J. demanded, "What did Katniss do now?" I suggest you pick up the books and learn for yourself!
Now, as with so many great books, I can only hope the filmmakers get it right...
