Aaah, ya jerk

The 27th saw yoshi, soph, nath, Adam and I head to New York City for a couple of nights. It was about this time that Adam and Nath discovered that they shared a love of jerky, which is readily available in the US. All enclosed spaces we passed through smelt like jerky for the rest of the trip.

After fighting our way to our hotel through the crowds at times square, we headed out for dinner to John's - a very highly recommend pizza joint in the west village. Despite being starving, we braved the queue outside the restaurant. And boy was it worth it. We had a ricotta and mozzarella calzone and two pizzas between us, which felt like we had over ordered, and looked it too when they stacked them in the middle of our small table. But it was so delicious we couldn't help but clean our plates. We found a great little bar after dinner where we could chat, recline on couches, play galaga and pinball and darts, while consuming ridiculously strong drinks. Casualty number three: yoshi with flu.

Casualty number four quickly followed with nath disinclined to get up in the morning (he swears it was more than a hangover). Once again: flu. Soph, Adam & I headed to Cloisters, a unique though kinda creepy collection of European Churches and medieval religious artefacts. No really, the building was made by a Rockefeller, from bits of churches taken from Europe. But it was in a beautiful setting in a cliff top park overlooking the Hudson. After an extravagant lunch at an Upper East Side deli, whilst enjoying making up tales about the strange locals we encountered, Adam and I headed across Central Park to the Natural History Museum for a great afternoon spent wandering the halls of the dinosaurs section, followed by the dinosaurs exhibit and a Darwin exhibition. Followed by a modest dinner (in price if not in quantity) at a sushi restaurant back in the village, and a bit of shopping before an early night.

The next day it was back to Boston to meet up with Ev & Tracy, Bob & Mary Ellen and Lenie for lunch at the much talked of Legal Seafoods restaurant. We all partook of cocktails, and the delicious clam chowder and lobster bisque. And Adam and I, and Nath and Ev tackled lobsters, while the rest sampled from the other delicious seafood concoctions available. Dessert was unanimously turned down. And once again, the ready availability of doggy bags saved food from being wasted. After lunch, Ev and Tracy took off to New York, Nath headed for the shops, I headed for the Museum of Fine Arts and the rest went home to digest lunch. The 30th was again spent in Boston, with a trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum - she opened her house and her art collection as a museum in 1903, and at her death in 1924 bequeathed it as a public museum but to be kept as she had laid it out. The collection was wonderful, and somewhat eccentric (a whole room dedicated to her collection of autographs), and the three storey house was stunning, particularly any view including the central courtyard.

On New Years Eve we took off for the lofty heights of Atttitash, New Hampshire. Bob & Mary Ellen generously put us up once again at their luxurious time share mountain chalet, complete with gas fires and a jacuzzi in every bathroom and bedroom, in a wonderful winter wonderland. We celebrated New Year's with a bit of drinking and a walk in the snow (it did actually snow very lightly at midnight) down to the bar for more drinking. New Year's day was a day of rest, for all but Nath who decided to try his luck on skis, and an evening of the Game of Life. We learnt that, rather than spending all that time and money on college, you are better off becoming a rock star and rolling three eights.

Our last day was spent enjoying the snow and cold. We drove to the nearby town of Jackson, across a covered bridge, to look at the half frozen waterfalls, where the boys (aka Calvin & Hobbes) passed the time throwing ice chunks to dislodge the ice sheets which had formed on the water surface, and watching the ice sheets flow down the falls. In the end we spent half an hour waiting for one exceptionally large chunk to pass over a weir, with all of us bombarding it with any snow/ice we could find. As dusk fell we went dashing through the snow on a two-horse open sleigh, over field we went, laughing all the way tee hee hee. As we drove back to Boston, we hit a snowstorm. The best falling snow we had seen all trip!