Ever since I visited my friend Chris in Philly two summers ago, I have been wanting to go again with Dan in tow. This past weekend, we finally decided to take a day trip to the City of Brotherly Love for some record store shopping (for him) and sweet eating (for her)."I haven't been to Pennsylvania since I single-handedly delivered the state for Obama," Dan said, referring to when he campaigned in Allentown for what was it? two weekends? I don't think this statement is true.Taking the MegaBus cost us $25 round-trip for the 2-hour trip to Philly for the two of us...meanwhile, thanks to the recent NJ Transit rate hike, it costs us $52 to take a 1-hour train to my hometown. Go figure. Wanting to get most of the day, I made us take the 6 am bus, which got us there waaay too early. It was raining and everything was closed. Until the city woke up, we ducked into the Reading Terminal Market for a hearty breakfast and some food sightseeing at all the cool butchers, bakeries and specialty shops.After buying Dan a poncho, we walked in the drizzle through some of the historic district though we weren't in the mood to do anything too cultural.
Dan has a thing for Ben Franklin. He calls him his B-F-F. (Ben Franklin Forever). Here's Dan posing by one of his many statues, and we threw pennies on his grave.
We hit up four record stores during our trip (Dan got seven records!), including Philadelphia Record Exchange, pictured here.
Even though Dan says he is completely over New York City, anytime we visit any other city in the United States that isn't New York*, Dan always shrugs his shoulders and says, "This city is a complete whatever" and complains the entire time how dead it is. Philadelphia was no exception. Well, except for this street. Dan has decided he wants to live on this street, which looks like a Parisian alleyway.*Can you guess, besides for NYC, what other American city is not a "complete whatever" or "totally dead," according to Dan?"
Similar to my last trip, we checked out the mosaic art of Isaiah Zagar. We walked through the Italian Market, ate some sandwiches, and we bought some cookies from the famous Isgro bakery, which was closed the last time I was in town.
But the best part of the trip, hands down was the gelato. The last time I visited Philly, Chris took me to Capogiro, and I remember thinking it was pretty good. Good enough that I wanted to come again. But this time, it was out of this world. The flavor combo I got was peach, chocolate-hazelnut and pistachio. Peach is not a flavor I normally gravitate towards, but the guy behind the counter recommended it, and it was surprisingly the best of the three. I have been to Italy and Argentina and had some pretty good gelato in my life, but this tops all of it. I was so sad when I reached the bottom of the cup.
To work off all that ice cream, we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to hit the stairs, Rocky-style.
Burn, baby, burn!
I did it!
We thought it was funny that it seems like everyone goes to the museum just to pose by this statue and run up the stairs. Does anyone know if the art is any good? We ran out of time, so we never found out.
Some of you know this already but my friend Adam wrote, directed and produced his own movie. It's called Hello Lonesome and it is the story of six people who are a bit lonely in their own different ways and looking for love and connection. I still can remember, sitting in Brett and Emily's NYC apartment years ago, the moment when Adam first told me that he was going to make a movie. He was so passionate and driven about it that it was no surprise when I watched the rough cut and thought to myself--wow, he really did it!Fast forward to now, and Adam's movie premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June. It even won an award for best ensemble! Not only is Adam a great friend, but he is so inspiring. He is one of the few people I know who says he will create art and then go out and actually make it happen! I love him for that.On Friday, we went to an intimate New York City screening for cast, crew, and friends at the 92Y in Tribeca. It was so wonderful to see Adam's film on the big screen. I am really proud of him, and I can only imagine how he feels to see his five years of hard work come together.Dan helped Adam pick some music for the film (he's even credited!), but most of the music was created by a cool band called Jones Street Station. They performed a show after the film screening, and it was such a nice night for everyone. Congrats to Adam, and can't to see where it all goes next!P.S. While Hello Lonesome is not playing at a theater near you (well, not yet, anyway), you can go ahead and save the movie to your queue in Netflix. Adam hopes the DVD will be available very soon.
Adam's name on the big screen!!
Adam and actor Harry Chase during the Q&A after the show.
Jones Street Station toasts to Adam during their set.
Adam, me and girl Brett (who handled the casting for the movie)
Happy Fourth of July everyone! How did you spend your holiday? Dan and I had a nice relaxing weekend in the city.
The highlights:Dan and I invited Nell and Adam on a voyage to Flushing, Queens where we indulged in some authentic Dongbei (aka Northeast Chinese) cuisine at Fu Run.
Of course, we ordered some yummy fare like shrimp dumplings, noodles, spicy ribs, mixed vegetables and lamb...but if we were going to travel an hour by subway for Chinese food, we had to try something different. So we tasted jelly fish (which was surprisingly kind of crispy and not-so-surprisingly salty like the sea) and Dan insisted we order this delicacy recommended by our waitress that was some kind of seafood intestine.
The intestines smelled horrible. They kind of looked like whole wheat pasta in a bed of scallions, but it tasted more like rubbery nothing-ness. It was actually kind of bland. It reminded me a lot of this book I read where the author talked about how Chinese cuisine is all about enjoying weird textures in your mouth. Now this is what she was talking about.
Love Nell's reaction as she watches Dan eat some intestines. Glad we tried it, don't think anyone from the table would order it again.On 4th of July, Dan and I headed to City Island, which is a tiny seaport town in the Bronx.
It's kind of hard to believe that this sleepy, practically one street town is part of New York City. (We got here by subway and bus!)
This town is known for its seafood, so we headed to Johnny's Famous Reef which has been around since 1950, and had some delicious (and cheap!) fried soft shell crab and fries in a basket and lemonade.
We decided to spend the afternoon at nearby Orchard Beach, which was a world of difference from our quiet morning. When we arrived at the scene, we were amazed to discover a crazy party scene. 
I wouldn't call it a relaxing beach experience, by any means. A million people everywhere. The water was refreshing but kind of grimy. On the towel next to us, we watched a mom verbally abuse her children and saw the dad being handcuffed by police for drug possession. I was sad to see that the kids were witnessing this, but they have probably seen much worse.
Besides for beach-going, people seemed to come to Orchard Beach for all kinds of reasons. People watching, playing music really loudly, playing maracas, salsa dancing, basketball playing, barbecuing. It was a cool photo safari for me until a man yelled at me for taking his picture. Yikes! We were a little bit out of our element. 
It was a scorching 95 degrees (Dan told me it was the hottest day of his life) so we purchased an umbrella to protect us from the sun and the foot-burning sand but the umbrella either tried to run away or turned inside out every 10 minutes. We were thankful for the umbrella, but we hated the umbrella. We only stayed a few hours. The umbrella didn't come home with us.Besides that, in keeping with our Independence Day tradition, we saw a bunch of movies: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and Getting Him to the Greek (with Kim and Nien; after wards we ate burgers by the Hudson River at the Boat Basin).
On Saturday, Dan watched the World Cup (go Germany!) and after 10 years, I finally got new glasses.And lastly, there was a lot of ice cream. Oh yes, a lot of ice cream. What more can you ask for on the 4th of July? Oh how about the tidbit Dan told me that in high school, he used to wear a Seinfeld t-shirt on Thursdays to get pumped up for the show that night. Is that totally dorky/cute or what?
Back from the wedding & honeymoon, back to reality. As soon as I came back home, my phone started to ring and after months of work inactivity, I am now juggling three freelance jobs at once! I haven't worked five (plus) days a week since 2007 (I know, cry me a river). It's definitely an adjustment. I feel tired all the time and my free time is limited and all I want to do is eat chips (not a usual craving for me). I am going to take advantage of the opportunities and just work hard and make money and try to get our finances back in shape.
Hopefully things will come to a more normal pace in a few months. Besides for working, the rest of our lives lately has looked something like this:
Dan has World Cup fever, and while I haven't been following along too intently, soccer is on the TV all the time in our apartment, so I get my fair share of vuvuzelas. It's put a bit of a damper on our social life. It's been the first nice June weather-wise in years, and we've been stuck inside watching games, saying no to plans. Dan even suggested we head to the beach this weekend (getting me extremely excited) until he realized we couldn't go because of the Germany v. Argentina game was far more important. Boo.The first weekend of the World Cup, our friend Jason invited us and the poker people to a fancy lunch at The Modern to celebrate his 30th birthday.
We had a private room to ourselves and had a delicious meal and copious amounts of wine. The dessert was the greatest--it was dark chocolately-pistachio heaven.
The birthday boy.
Kayleen.
We got out of there just in time to watch the second half of the USA v England game. Here's some fake cheering (for the picture's sake!)
The following weekend, my sister Annette came into town. Her friend A.J. (who wasn't there) treated us to brunch. (thanks!)
We went to see American Idiot on Broadway. Green Day's album is one of my favorites (maybe top ten all-time) and so I had to see the show even though it's been getting lukewarm reviews. Luckily, my sister was just as excited to go. I ended up LOVING it...although it's not for everyone. If you are not a fan of the music, don't bother.
Walking around Times Square, we bumped into The Naked Cowboy.
We then stumbled across this street performer handing out fliers. He was one of the most handsome men I have seen in a long time and look at that outfit! I asked if I could take his picture and this is the pose he gave me. He was such a ham.Since we weren't going to the beach, this weekend I went home to New Jersey to finally pick up our wedding gifts and cards, and I was surprised to see that my mom had two of the same Mother's Day cards on her refrigerator.
I know I gave her one of them. Who gave the other? Apparently, me! Last year!
I even wrote the same message inside! I must have thought this was a really good Mother's Day card.
I went to visit my friends Stacy and Mike who had a baby girl the weekend of my wedding. (It's probably a good thing they didn't end up coming to New Orleans.) Her name is Juliana Grace and she's so pretty, even though in about 10 minutes time, she went from perfectly clean baby to a complete mess. We had to give her a bath.
Good thing she's so stinkin' cute that she can get away with this kind of stuff.
On Friday we went on another hike but this time we spiced it up with some suspension bridges.
These bridges were long and some of them were really high.
Don't look down!
It was a great way to see the tops of trees...
and offered some amazing views of the volcano.
We saw lots of greenery,
walked through a tunnel,
admired some cutter ants,
and laughed over waterfalls.In the evening, we went to a hot spring that is naturally heated by the volcano. The most famous spring in the area is at spa called Tabacon, but we got the impression that it was targeted towards old, rich people. Baldi Hot Springs appeared to be aimed toward the party crowd, so we opted for Eco Termes which seemed the most low-key and romantic. There were five pools of water, each one higher in temperature than the next, and a small pool of cold water, which you could use to cool off in between pools. I thought the first pool was already pretty freakin' hot, so I insisted we get some frozen strawberry daiquiris at the honor-system bar, which carried me through the rest of the pools. That hot on the outside, cool on the inside combination felt really nice. We had dinner there, which was good, even though a cicada fell on my head. Ew!
The heated pools were a cool experience but I have to say the most relaxing part of the entire honeymoon is when I got a full-body massage at our hotel spa. You know that music they play in spas to relax you? Well, they didn't need any of that. They led me to a little hut with a crackling fireplace, and I listened to the sounds of the forest (and the occasional rumble of the volcano) while they rubbed me down. Now that was a highlight of the trip.
