As I go through my pictures I realise how many of them I forgot. I have photos from Sevilla and Açores to put up. More often than not, these days, I want to close down the blog. Make it private, maybe? This is something I do for me, most of the times. I know I have something to look back to, all my ‘memories’ are up here. The good ones and the bad ones. That’s why I love the blog so much…but it’s just hard to keep it up sometimes. And then there’s a privacy issue that is kind of a bother.
With facebook linking instagram it’s getting harder and harder to keep akane kinomoto away from the me out there. I’ve had a lot of students adding me on instagram — why kids are adding teachers on social media is so mind boggling to me; back in the day, if I saw a teacher outside of school I’d try my very best to avoid him! — and it’s not like I mind that they see my pictures, but it’s like…I cannot get a break! I like to keep things a little separate and it’s becoming harder to do that… I’m hoping that will change with age. Not theirs, mine. I’ll get crankier as years go by, so they will want to avoid me. Right? Right.
Here’s a bit of NYC from our 4th and 5th days in the city.
On the third night, we went to bed with live images of the gun shots to the police force. We woke up the next day and could tell by the news that the next few days were going to be tense. We were caught up in a middle of one of the protests, but managed to quickly get out of the area before the police arrived. That was intense though.
If you ever read one of my posts on trips, you surely know that we like to randomly walk without agenda. And that is most of what we did back in New York. We never really had a plan except to go out and enjoy everything around us. The city is incredibly diverse and nice, and you find something interesting on every corner, but its immensity is also a fact, so walking all of it was a bit daunting. When we go out somewhere, we almost never get on a subway — with the exception of Tokyo, I don’t remember being in a city where we’d take the subway to go anywhere — and in New York we also managed to get by without it by walking the High Line.
This place is called Tacombi and we found it thanks to Jim Gaffigan (I loooooooooove him) who mentioned it in his series. It’s a taco place that served delicious margaritas and, of course, tacos. The place was vibrant and happy and busy, and the food was really really good.
We fell in love with the High Line. We would walk to it nearly everyday just so we could cross 20 blocks or so, going from the Meatpacking district through Chelsea and getting out on 34th street. This 2.33 km pathway was once a railroad that crossed the city on the West side, and it is now a beautiful walkable elevated park that offers gorgeous views of the city and great sites to just sit and relax for a while. You can see more photos on mutelife.com. I really really enjoyed the High Line. It’s one of those places in a foreign city that you adopt as a temporary home, or at least, I do.
By 5pm on the fifth day in NYC, the 10th of July, something happened that made millions jump with joy, including us.
Against all odds, Portugal football team won the playoffs, got to the final and won the European championship. We are European champions! On a foreign land that doesn’t really care much for football, we suffered, I must say. First we agreed to not watch the game — it would just be a waste of nearly two hours, and we only had a few more days in NYC — but we found a bar that was playing the game and stayed there for a while. The bar was way too noisy. And there was a guy there, right next to us, playing the expert in soccer, who apparently knew all about Cristiano Ronaldo and hated him, for some reason, and was so happy when he was injured. Ronaldo couldn’t go on. We decided to leave right then and there. We sat along the bay and listened to the game on the radio. It was nerve wrecking. We were tied. I had to go to the bathroom so we walked to the nearest mall and accidentally found a restaurant that had the game on. It was us against everybody. People were looking at us and sneering. Portugal would never win. We never win anything. And GOAL! and we won. And we shouted and screamed and jumped up and down! We facetimed home. We had to feel nearer somehow: CAMPEÕES! was the first word we heard. It was real! We won. We are the champions. And it felt so freaking amazing — New York felt even better that day. And I’ll leave you with this, just because.
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