Most of my trips to NY is to see family.  But I manage to squeeze in my interests as well.  This time, I focused on -

1 – the High Line

2 – Red Hook Brooklyn

3 – NJ rail terminals

4 – riding the Brooklyn El

some more photos at my flicker NY set

Apart from the cemetaries and architectures, here are some of the things I really liked -

– the street cars – especially the St Charles Street car is so awesome.  You can just ride it and enjoy the Garden District “hood” that it drives through.

– our favorite coffee house is Croissant D’or located at the edge of the Quarter.

– the street musicians are all really talented and a step above any you see in other cities.

last but not least, this is my favorite building in French Quarter -

During my stay, I took the Katrina tour where a bus driver who is a survivor took us all over the city effected by the hurricane.  He told us stories about individual accounts, what happened that day and what people had to go through.  We dove by Lake Pontchartrain, Gentilly, New Orleans East, and the 9th ward.  The proceeds from the tour will be donated  for rebuilding the city.

You can’t go wrong with food out here.  Where ever you go, the dishes were all incredible.  But if you are not a big meat eater, or if you can’t live without brown rice (like myself) it can be a little harsh.

on my last night, we went to eat at the gumbo shop, and went to the Preservation hall to listen to their Jazz band.  It felt like we time traveled back their days.

love these houses!

we went to both St Louis Cemetery #1 and Lafayette Cemetery in the Garden District.

Parades, beads, parades, beads.. Parades been going on everyday.  A lot of them ended on the street by our hotel.  And every night, the city does a great job cleaning the streets.  We later found out that Mardi Gras is a lot deeper than partying on Bourbon St and collecting beads.  At the Louisiana State Museum, they have a very comprehensive exhibit on history of Mardi Gras and krewes.  On Fat Tuesday, I headed to the Boubon Street awards to see the people in awesome, some outrageous costumes.  I also saw the Rex parade which is the oldest krewes that’s been around since 1872.

I was really looking forwards to seeing the bayou.  But the day we went out to the swamp, it was in the 40s and even colder out on the water and I didn’t get to go.

Duncan is holding the tour guide’s pet gator.  She was very soft.  We learned a lot about alligators on the boat.

I think what makes a scene so southern is their trees and the combination of it with the architecture.

Spanish moss on wicked oak trees.  so cool

very rare Arroyo – when a river actually looks like a river!

at Laguna beach

unfortunately overcast, but a picture perfect family shot at Disneyland

panoramas from our day trip to Trona.

Fun day on the LA river tour by the Friends of LA river.  The history behind the river and the city was interesting, but best of all, I enjoyed the access to places most people just drive by.

The water level was exceptionally high.

Arroyo Seco meets LA river

A little abstract photo – guess where?

– early flight from the brand new Terminal 5 at JFK

– we are on mars..

New York changed a lot since back in the days we lived there.  Ave. A, B, C used to be a place you’d never come back alive if you wandered in by mistake.  Now it’s such a sought after area where the studios costs a million.  The meat packing area on the lower West is also the hippest place to be. You see a lot of fancy mom’ pushing baby carts in shadey areas.  In the morning, it’s not just commuters in business suits, but also kids going to school that crowds the streets.  I used to rush through smelly Penn station but now it’s like a happy indoor mall.  Grand Central Station has a market place on top of the dining concourse.  I remember Zaro’s bakery being the only cool stop where you can get things like chocolate covered crossants on your way home.

I miss living in the east coast.  and especially the seasons. That includes snow and below 0 degrees weather.  I had 3 layers of clothing,  and 2 layers of winter jackets on at all times.  But that’s part of the experience.  I won’t complain being back in the 80F weather in LA.

South Street Seaport

– view from Brooklyn Industrial Area

– central park

snow “storm” hits the east coast.

Staten Island – wanted to spend more time here and get closer, but I dare not step in to the marsh to find dead bodies, nor become one..

Abandoned farm colony in Staten Island

coney island during off season. I like the desolate surreal feal to it.

Main purpose of this trip was to see the new addition to the family -

and attend Matthew’s birthday

Some scenes from northern NJ

ringwood manor

woods from the backyard

this was around Iowa. looks cold

flying into JFK in golden hour

It was foggy all day.  At the Pasadena city hall fisrt thing in the morning to take care of some biz..

the floats for the Rose Parade starts lining up late the night before.  As we do every year, we walked out to check them out .

On New Years day, we just watch the parade on TV since it gets pretty mad out there.

we escaped to Death Valley for our Christmas holiday this year.
The feeling you experience being at such a grand and magnificent landscape can not be described in words, nor photos.  Here are just a few until I upload them to flickr or something.

Before entering the park, we stopped by several ghost towns.  First one is Pearsonville.  I saw it on the roadside during our previous road trip to Lone Pine.  kinda scary if you were alone, but another family was stopping by to check out the diner  that they used to stop by on the way to mammoth.

stepped inside where the tables and counters were covered in tumble weeds.

Keeler still has some people living there with smoke coming from the chimney of a house.  It is a small town just on the edge of Owen Lake (dried).  What do people do here for a living?

We entered Death Valley from the west on 190. We drove over several 4000+ft peaks and flat valleys to get to Stovepipe Wells and the sand dune area.

At Bad water, -282 ft sea level.

Don’t have to go to New Zealand to see the landscapes from Lord of the Rings.

Other stops include Natural Bridge, Devil’s golf course, Golden Canyon, and Artist Pallet.  Some roads were closed due to the snow.  We will have to make another trip to go to the places we had to skip this time around.

We drove over another 4000ft peak and over to Nevada to visit another ghost town called Rhyolite.  This place was very surreal.  Not only the remains of the town, but with the Grapevine mountains and the Funeral mountains, felt like the “back” side of the world.

We drove home through the panamint valley and through Trona which is a town I would like to revisit.

Check out Duncan’s post for more photos

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