Celebrate!

To commemorate two milestone birthdays, the Hirshy family headed to a cottage in the Finger Lakes, NY, for a celebratory weekend.

Our Rochester rental car filled to the brim with groceries and all of our luggage we made our way to Hanoeye Lake (pronounced very differently than the seemingly Japanese tone we had adopted) to meet the gang.

Beautiful weather set a perfect stage for an awesome weekend. The kids spent almost all of their time outside, playing on the swing set, swimming and skimming rocks on the lake, creating passionate dance routines and scouting for dead fishes.

Of course, even the adults headed outside to join in an intense and lengthy game of Spud!

In the evenings, we spent our time playing "Childhood Music" trivia and Clue and then catching up on life while eating four whole cakes.  

Most of the gang left on Monday but a few of us stayed on for a little longer before heading to Canada, squeezing the last few possible minutes out of the reunion.

Maybe birthday getaways should be more frequent - an annual tradition perhaps??

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

We couldn't visit New York without seeing some theatre and so we booked tickets to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch, starring Darren Criss.  

Although the performances were good and the audio visual effects innovative, we both agree that this was not our favourite play.  We wanted to like it but just were never drawn into the storyline or the music....

New York, New York

After spending time in Los Angeles, we headed west, with a short stop in Chicago for a work conference and then a day in New York City.  

Although we only had 24 hours, we did our best to make the most of it.  Using the University Club affiliate - the Penn Club - as our base, we explored Madison Avenue, Times Square, Bryant Park, the Empire State Building and other various enclaves during our short visit.  

Once again, we were impressed by the wide variety of delicious food options.  Whether it was the delightful and buzzy food trucks lining the pedestrian walkways in Times Square or the vegan Korean restaurant, Hangawi, that was already packed with diners by 5pm, we certainly enjoyed some fabulous eating experiences. 

Oddly, New York City offered substantially better weather than Los Angeles, with the sun shining brightly the entire day.  New York - it is the city that continually surprises.

Resurgence

The Grand Central Market, a key downtown landmark since 1917

Downtown LA is the city's central business district and is also a diverse residential neighbourhood.

It has seen an impressive resurgence in recent years after the construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003.

This magnificent building brought people back to the centre of town and spurred all sorts of new growth.

There are currently 19 new apartment buildings under construction and 30 in various stages of permitting.

A diverse group of people are now re-entering the downtown making this a hip new part of town and adding another dimension to the greater Los Angeles area.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Tasty Delight

Perhaps our favourite part about LA was the food.  It is a vegetarian paradise.

Every restaurant has numerous vegetarian options and vegan restaurants abound.  It was almost too hard to choose!

We were so thrilled by amazing food and drinks that we partook in the activity as often as we could - in restaurants, near street vendors, on the Hop On Hop Off Bus...we even enjoyed some cocktails and snacks while Geoff bought what seemed like a whole new wardrobe at the Ted Baker store!

Our favourite restaurants include:

• Cafe Gratitude in Venice Beach
• Seasons 52
• Fig Restaurant at the Miramar
• True Food Kitchen in Santa Monica
• Au Lac in downtown LA
• Real Food Daily in Santa Monica

To the City of Angels...

After work commitments separated us for a few weeks, we reconnected in Los Angeles.  

We were fortunate to find a great place in Santa Monica and felt settled almost immediately.

Although Los Angeles has been suffering from a prolonged drought, we somehow once again got caught with cold and wet weather in California.   The locals could not believe the streak of wet weather.  And neither could we!  This was a far cry from the mid-40 degree weather we had enjoyed in Dubai.

Los Angeles is large.  And very spread out.  Without a car, it can be a tricky city to get around.  And so, we relied on a travel operator we rarely use - the Hop On/Hop Off Bus - to help us see the sites. The bus in Los Angeles has several routes, covering the key areas and it was a great way to see the city.  

We managed to see all the big tourist sites:

• Rodeo Drive
• Mann's Chinese Theater 
• The Walk of Fame
• La Brea Tar Pits
• Melrose Avenue
• Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hilton
• Brentwood
• Westwood...

Although the bus recommend only covering 2 of their main routes in 24 hours, we pushed the envelope (maxing out the full 24 hour ticket!) and actually managed to hit most of the sites.

We enjoyed Los Angeles but Santa Monica was surely the highlight.  This quaint part of the city enjoys a beautiful stretch of beach, a great little shopping street, fun restaurants and a really relaxed and fitness-focused vibe.   It also didn't hurt that our lodgings were located directly above a Starbucks!

Fast Times in Fujairah

After a very few hectic working weeks in Dubai, we managed to escape for a weekend in Fujairah to do some diving and finally see the 7th Emirate.  

Fujairah is the most eastern of the Emirates and the youngest, having gained independence from Sharjah in the 1950s.

The diving itself was fairly cloudy but we did see some turtles which was a real highlight and made up for the mini jellyfish bites we got on our faces while surfacing at the end of the dive.

We were also lucky to enjoy some very good weather and a surprising all-Celine Dion radio station to listen to on our drive.

The rest of the weekend, however, was less than ideal.  The Hilton hotel we chose was rife with problems, from stalled check-ins, to the pool being closed for maintenance, to a very mouldy smelling room and a virus-laden communal computer stall.  After one night there, we could not wait to check out.