Bostonian Encounter

Follow the Red Brick Road!

The end of our time in New York is unfortunately getting nearer. So, we are maximizing our time here to see as many sights as possible. As I am posting this, we just came back from a weekend in Washington DC but more about that later! I am (again) behind on posting our adventures in the United States. So the next days, I promise to post a lot of updates on our recent outings, starting with Boston in late February – a 4 hour bus ride away from our apartment (thanks to Megabus, the ride was free!).


We picked a bad day to leave New York, right in the middle of a huge snow storm. Our bus was the last to leave Manhattan. When we arrived in Boston, there was no sign of snow but we got another unpleasant welcome gift: a big windy rainstorm. I literally almost blew away because of the strong wind. To compensate for the bad weather, we indulged with a nice lobster dinner at Atlantic Fish Company followed by Boston cream pie. Hey, when in RomeBoston….!

The next day, the weather gods were smiling upon us and offered us one half day of blue, sunny skies. We grabbed the opportunity to walk the Freedom Trail, following a red brick line passing the historic sites of Boston. The trail gave us a really nice overview of Boston, which felt very European to us. 4 hours, and lots of pictures later, we finished the 4 kilometer trail, hungry for some more seafood. A lobster roll at Legal Seafoods stilled our craving. In the afternoon, we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum (definitely worth a visit!) and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

On Sunday, we left the city center to explore the John F Kennedy museum. Now, this may sound like an old stuffy museum, but this is what we love about America. They may have less years of history than Europe, but they do know how to make a museum interesting! Jack Bauer ("24", remember) would feel right at home in the exhibits replicating the White House. We also saw Kennedy’s notes for his famous speeches (“Ich bin ein Berliner” and “Don’t ask what your country can do for you…”). We finished our Boston weekend in Cambridge to see the Harvard University campus – quite impressing. We also stopped by one of the other Harvard institutions, Mr Bartley’s Burger Cottage. Mr. Bartley himself was outside to take our orders for a nice big juicy burger and onion rings (the menu had quite original titles - you can read them here) while Mrs. Bartley accompanied us to our seats. Nice way to end our Boston trip!

Tigers Before Spring

A Colorful Celebration

Spring arrived in New York this week (up to 20° C!) although it feels like just yesterday we were celebrating New Year. Oh wait, that was actually just one month ago.

On February 14, 2010, the Chinese celebrated the new Year of the Tiger. When you live in New York, you don't need to travel around the world to experience that celebration up close. We hadn't visited Chinatown before (I know, after more than one year in New York - can you believe how busy we are?) but in hindsight, I think we made the right call to wait until Chinese New Year to wander through this particular Manhattan neighborhood.

February 14th was one of those typical cold but beautiful New York winter days - sunny with a crisp blue sky, a perfect day for a new year's celebration. Unlike us silly Western people, who spent the night on cold Times Square waiting for countdown, the Chinese celebrate new year during the day. Confetti and dragons colored Chinatown red, a beautiful sight! Every Chinese bought confetti cannons which resulted into an explosion of color in the streets (much safer than our fireworks tradition btw).



After our Chinese new year celebration, we accidentally walked into Little Italy, which is right next to Chinatown. Since our stomachs couldn't handle Chinese food that day (after a night out celebrating Anti-Valentine's Day but that's another story), we decided to try one of New York's pizza institutions: Lombardi's. As with most famous restaurants in New York, we had to wait (40 minutes)... but then again, the crowd was there for a reason. The pizza's were indeed very good (approved by some of our Italian friends btw, so they should know good pizza!). Pizza on Chinese New Year, maybe we should start a new tradition?

Our First Appearance on US Television

Insert Applause Here

In January, we finally succeeded in one of mankind’s ultimate goals: appear on television. Well, “appear” might not be the appropriate word unless you interpret it as starring in the audience of a television show with a very slight possibility to be recognized either in the audience or on the audio tape.

A lot of television shows, mostly talk shows, are taped in New York City. Most of the time I avoid (public) cameras, but I made an exception for the Rachael Ray Show (a talk/cooking show) and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (a late night comedy show). These television shows allow us, non famous people, to be in the audience and experience the exciting life of television show hosts up close. Lights, Camera, Music!

In practice, this means that you apply months in advance whereby a lucky few get tickets for a show. The day of the show, you have to show up hours in advance, stand in line and hope you make it in. The shows are always overbooked, so the people in the back of the line might be waiting in vain (which happened to me twice!). Then you go through a metal detector and security stricter than your average Baghdad – New York flight. Once inside, they make you wait some more – in a small room, of course – and finally, you are led into the studio where they make you… wait some more. One advice: dress appropriately. In addition to the instructions you get by e-mail (no busy patterns, no ripped jeans or other inappropriate clothes, etc.), they should warn you that the studio is ice cold. Which makes sense, you don’t want to see sweaty television hosts and guests because of all the studio lights shining in their face. Before the show starts, a stand-up comedian is brought in to get the audience “warmed up” (oh, the irony, got it?) and practice your smiling, clapping, laughing, and the like. And then finally, the show starts.

The shows I went to were pretty entertaining, each in their own way. At the Rachael Ray Show, we saw some cooking, some style advice, someone famous from the Oprah show (whom I didn’t recognize) and a makeover of the Jersey Shore female cast (* see my footnote below). Best of all, the show gave everyone in the audience a lot of freebies, amongst which, two pairs of really nice shoes. The audience didn’t need to fake a smile for the camera when they gave those away… although the three lonely men in the audience (probably dragged there by their girlfriends) seemed less excited about the free leggings and shoes. Behind the screens, they made us fill in a tax form; since our gifts were worth more than $400, we will need to pay taxes on the value of the gifts (when I discovered this annoying little fact, I also changed my plan to win the US lottery - I'll wait for the European one). Talking about a taxing experience, the show was really exhausting – we spent about three hours in the studio during which we had to smile/clap every 3 minutes!

(*) Jersey Shore: an infamous reality television show aired on MTV showing the lives of Guidos and Guidettes (Italian-Americans from New Jersey) who spend most of their time on (i) grooming themselves with fake spray tans, a lot of hairspray and skimpy clothes and (ii) trying to attract the opposite sex. The Jersey Shore cast (with nicknames like Snooki, JWoww, Mike The Situation, …) is insanely popular in the US. First, they were just laughed at but now they are becoming the next hype. For some unknown, unearthly reason, they have even been invited to some fashion shows during NYC Fashion Week. *gasp*

The other show, The Daily Show, was completely different – a funny take on current (mostly political) news. Jon Stewart is a famous comedian (a la Jay Leno but better) and I must say, I didn’t think he would be that good in improvising. Surprisingly, Jon Stewart himself took the honor to warm up the audience before the show with a Q&A session, which turned out to be a really good stand-up comedian show. The show itself was over in a second… of course, when you watch it on television it seems to last forever taking into account the commercial breaks every 5 minutes.

I don’t think I actually made it to the silver screen in either show, unless maybe the back of my head on the Rachael Ray Show… but hey, you have to start somewhere! Before you know it, I’m going to casting calls for the next big reality show, Belgian Invasion, about Belgians trying to make it in American showbiz!