#Table and Fountains in Oakland | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

didsomeonesaygo · 5 months ago

Text

You gotta know when to fold 'em

Started the day in Little Five Points, named for Five Points in the center of town, but this one is Little. It's a funky neighborhood where P used to go to get 10-hole Docs at the Junkman's Daughter and a 3-hole nose at the piercing joint. It turns out that hippies and ne'er-do-wells are not early risers, and most things were closed, so we'll try again tomorrow.

Next up was World of Coca Cola. We'd heard was really good, but… we have notes. It was interesting to see historic memorabilia and taste some truly awful concoctions from Coca Cola fountains around the world. We were also somewhat horrified to realize that Coke owns like ALL the bevvy brands.

The Coke museum is right next to Centennial Olympic Park, where we caught the rings before heading to Oakland Cemetery. The cemetery is Atlanta's oldest public park and serves as the final resting place for many famous Atlanta natives. Kenny Rogers' tomb put this damned song in my head all day; P thought The Gambler missed an opportunity to use his own lyrics instead of a gospel as the epitaph. Really shitty note about the cemetery: when the original cemetery grounds became full, they dug up the Black section and replotted it to sell it to white families. The bodies they removed were put into the paupers' grave. But they kept the huge section for confederate soldiers (the losers, you'll recall).

While we were at the cemetery, the earth moved back home; 3 people texted to ask if our house was ok after the 4.4 quake centered in HP, so we sat down in the shade to check the cameras. The house was fine, but we were melting, so decided to head home.

After cooling off, we hopped in a Lyft for an early birdseed dinner at O-Ku. Rooftop dinner was great, but the mushroom app was so filling that P ended up eating only one roll. Note for next time: start with sashimi/nigiri.

On the way to dinner, our Lyft driver pointed out the one cinderblock building in a sea of new condos and said "If you guys like dive bars..." (Boy, did he have our number.) The Northside Tavern was everything we hope for - pool tables, 80s rock on the juke, and locals at the bar. They also have live music 7 nights a week - the drummer was setting up when we got there. We could have had a whole night at there, but we had an old friend to see.

The last time P was in Atlanta, Melissa took him to the Clermont Lounge, the city's oldest strip bar, located in the basement of the Hotel Clermont. They had a great time, and, well, let's just say he got the t-shirt. So of course it was on our list for this trip. No photos are allowed inside, but, well, P got another t-shirt.

Bad stripping is only entertaining for a little while, so we headed up to the lobby bar, which was empty and silent, but on a trip to the (haunted) bathroom, I discovered there's also a bar on the rooftop. Beers in hand, we headed up the (haunted) stairs, and lo, the best little (haunted) roof deck! It was a perfect end to the night, and we decided that if anyone asked us where to go in Atlanta, we'd list that (haunted) place before the Coke museum.

#2024 #atlanta #dive bar #skyline

1 note · View note

wecoralcollectivebouquetfan-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Health Food Restaurants And Cafes In The U.S.

While modern life has been marred by the introduction of unhealthy fast food stands, Kevin Gianni and his wife Anne Marie journeyed across the country to locate raw, organic, vegetarian and vegan restaurants. 9 of them drew their attention in particular.

Chocola Tree is a refreshing cafe in Sedona, Arizona, that offers the freshest of foods, many grown in Joker123 their own organic garden. Some of the locals have even dubbed this shop a “little piece of rawsomeness!”

Bloodroot is a unique feminist vegetarian restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, opened over 30 years ago by Selma Miriam and Noel Furie. While growing their own produce to offer only the best assortment of organic, vegan and raw foods, the owners have also opened a feminist bookstore, only to bring the best of both feminism and healthy dieting.

Karma Road is located in New Paltz, New York and is owned by organic food loving couple, Jenn and Seth, who have managed to blend their appreciation for nature with their passion for cooking. Their menus are made of entirely pesticide-free, all natural dishes that will leave your mouth watering.

Au Lac can be found in Fountain Valley, California and offers an appetizing range of vegetarian dishes. Owner Mai Nguyen teamed up with Chef Ito and coined the term “humanese”, aiming to create an atmosphere that invites to philosophical reflections on how nutrition can benefit both the body and the mind.

Real Food Daily is a vegan restaurant opened both in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Initially a home catering company Agen joker123 https://joker123tiktok.com opened by Ann Gentry in 1988, Real Food daily now offers delish raw vegan meals that will please any palate.

Help Yourself is a diverse eatery in Key West, Florida, that caters to the tastes of any client. From raw vegan dishes to tasty meals that include meat and animal by-products, their menus all come form 100% organic and safely grown produce.

Cafe Gratitude is managed by environmentalists Matthew and Terces Engelhart who believe that human nutrition should both cleanse the body and protect nature that nourishes us. 5 very popular locations can be found in the state of California.

Manzanita is situated in Oakland, California and provides delicious raw, vegan and organic meals. The owners are health oriented and interested in bringing the best and most natural products available, to your table.

The Living Light Culinary Arts Institute is an amazing cooking school aiming to promote the benefits of natural food preparation that also hosts a raw vegan cafe. Owner Cherie Soria makes use of only natural, unaltered products to prepare each menu item.

1 note · View note

barinacraft · 1 year ago

Text

NFL Football Team Cocktails - Drinks For Every Roster

Game Day Drinks And Cocktails For All 32 NFL Football Teams

Football season means great tailgate parties away at the stadium for home games and at your in home bar for away games when your team is on road. These NFL football team inspired cocktails* will give you lots of game day party ideas for themed drinks for all 32 NFL teams out on the gridiron.

The cocktails were chosen based on a number of factors including team names, colors, mascots, player and squad nicknames as well as city, regional and state monikers, landmarks, festivals and more. A few were created as signature drinks for specific football teams, but most were added to the roster because they were a good fit for that club.

Whether its pre-season scrimmages, regular season games or the playoffs; Wild Card, Divisional, Conference and the Superbowl, there's a drink listed here that's perfect for your pigskin party. Some of the squads have several symbolic sips which lets you substitute your drink line-up based on the schedule.

So, with one hand waving your favorite team's foam finger shouting you're #1 and the other hand free for a refreshment, the only question is:

Are You Ready For Some NFL Football Team Cocktails?

American Football Conference Team Themed Drinks

AFC East

Buffalo Bills:

Buffalo Bill - equal parts apple cider or juice and bourbon or rye whiskey.

Niagara Falls - a fancy drink named after the natural attraction nearby the city along the Canadian border.

Miami Dolphins:

Mojito - the national drink of Cuba is a favorite in Little Havana as well as one of the most popular cocktails in Florida and throughout the rest of the states.

New England Patriots:

New England Highball - when it comes to cocktails, what's better than a highball while watching football?

Red, White and Blue - a pousse-cafe drink layered in patriotic colors.

New York Jets:

Manhattan - along with Brooklyn has the highest concentration of fans according to a 2013 Facebook study.

Bronx - followed by Queens borough, the former home of Shea stadium, also love the J-E-T-S. This drink is basically an Income Tax cocktail minus the bitters.

AFC North

Baltimore Ravens:

Purple Hooter - black raspberry liqueur colors these tailgate party potations plum perfect.

Cincinnati Bengals:

Bengal Tiger - the namesake is a tawny, red brandy drink while an original recipe adds black licorice stripes to an orange vodka cocktail that could be a spooky sip on Halloween too.

Cincinnati Cocktail - fill your favorite beer glass half full with a bold brew and top off with soda water.

Cleveland Browns:

Brown Cocktail - equal parts gin, light or dark rum and dry vermouth.

Brown Derby Drink - legendary football coach Paul Brown who the NFL team is named after was known for wearing his iconic hat on the gridiron sidelines. It was a fedora, but the (brown) derby is de rigueur.

Brown University Cocktail - their namesake college football team drink would love to be drafted by pros for game day. The “Brunonian” is equal parts bourbon and dry vermouth with a couple dashes of orange bitters.

Pittsburgh Steelers:

Black & Gold - refining iron ore put this steel town on the grid. Their NFL football team inspired gridiron drink adds a precious metal to the mix. Combine black vodka with gold flaked cinnamon schnapps two to one.

Monongahela Cobbler - named for one of the waterways which flows past Heinz Field (formerly Three Rivers Stadium) that's known for its rye whiskey.

AFC South

Houston Texans:

Black Gold - a nod to the city's former franchise, the Houston Oilers.

Longhorn - another college sports team themed cocktail that would like to be drafted by the NFL, especially from the same great state and mascot. The burnt orange color of the University of Texas at Austin inspired this recipe with lemon rum, orange rum, vodka, orange vodka, orange soda, ice and oranges.

Indianapolis Colts:

Horse's Neck - this drink is named after its garnish.

Jacksonville Jaguars:

Jaguar - a Barina Craft original drink recipe that is spotted with southern sipping favorites.

Tennessee Titans:

Lynchburg Lemonade - Tennessee whiskey, sweet & sour mix, orange liqueur and lemon-lime soda makes a southern sip worth suing the distillery over.

Tennessee Tea - same as above, just substitute cola for lemon-lime soda.

AFC West

Denver Broncos:

Orange Crush - this NFL football team inspired drink celebrates the nickname given to Denver's opponent crushing 3-4 defense and the Broncos bright colored home uniform jerseys in the 1970s.

Kansas City Chiefs:

Arrowhead Cocktails - the Chiefs' logo is carved in stone and one of these drinks is cherry.

Kansas City Ice Water - flows thru the fountains at Arrowhead stadium and in the veins of the players and fans who as of this writing boast the loudest sports crowd roar.

Las Vegas Raiders:

Casino Cocktails - now that the team is located in the Entertainment Capital of the World, famous for gambling and other activities throughout all the city's mega casino-hotels, these drinks are a sure bet for Raiders fans.

Oakland Raider Cocktail - a black rum and cola mixed with a shot of silver tequila over ice. This silver and black drink symbolizes Raider Nation whether they're playing in Oakland, Los Angeles or Las Vegas.

Los Angeles Chargers:

Charger Cocktail - toast the team's moniker to 'charge' when the bugle call sounds with this cherry brandy and rum sour.

San Diego Seabreeze - this legacy drink preserves team history. 1 oz vodka, ½ oz each blackberry brandy and blueberry & raspberry schnapps, plus 2 oz each orange and pineapple juice in a tall collins glass over ice.

National Football Conference Team Themed Drinks

NFC East

Dallas Cowboys:

Cowboy Cocktail - throw the cream away and drink the shot of whiskey straight up.

Fedora Cocktail - in honor of their legendary head coach Tom Landry who wore his heralded headgear on the sidelines for 29 seasons.

Thanksgiving Cocktails - dubbed America's team, they always play football on this holiday.

New York Giants:

The New York Cocktail - the entire state loves the NY Football Giants, except for parts of the city per Facebook 2013. This is an interesting whiskey sour style drink with rye, lime juice, grenadine and an old fashioned sugar cube.

Philadelphia Eagles:

Eagle Cocktail - Philly is the perfect roosting place for this classic drink.

Eagle's Dream - sugar and egg whites substitute for maraschino liqueur in this variation of the Aviation drink recipe.

Washington Commanders:

Cherry Blossom - this national flowering festival held locally is closely associated with the area as is a rumored story of a namesake founding father chopping down a certain tree.

Gin Rickey - “air conditioning in a glass” is the unofficial official drink of D.C.

Political Cocktails - any number of these drinks could be served at a game day party in this city if you want to mix politics with religion, er, football that is.

NFC North (Black and Blue Division)

Chicago Bears:

The Chicago Cocktail - pretty fancy for football but it is the city's namesake drink.

Detroit Lions:

Lion's Tail - Detroit is one of two NFL teams along with Dallas to always play a game on Thanksgiving to start the Xmas holidays so the use of an allspice liqueur, dubbed “Christmas in a glass” by Murray Stenson, in combination with the drink's name make this cocktail a perfect match. 2 oz bourbon, ½ oz each pimento dram and lime juice, ½ tsp simple syrup and 1 dash aromatic bitters.

Green Bay Packers:

Blood and Sand - Johnny ‘Blood’ McNally, who took his nickname from the movie and loved to sing Galway Bay while standing up on bar table tops, was a star player for four championship Packer teams in Green Bay and one of the original members inducted into the Pro Football Hall Of Fame.

Brandy Old Fashioned - to wet your whistle in Wisconsin, just replace the bourbon or rye you normally use in the recipe.

Minnesota Vikings:

Purple People Eater Elixir - raise your Viking drinking horn and toast possibly the best defensive line of any football team in NFL history.

Scandinavian Glogg - this Nordic mulled wine really packs a punch.

NFC South

Atlanta Falcons:

Georgia Peach Cocktails - did you know some suggested the Falcons be christened after the official state fruit?

Scarlett O'Hara & Rhett Butler - these two drinks are both named after characters in Gone With The Wind which was set in and around Atlanta.

Carolina Panthers:

Carolina Iced Tea - spiced rum, vodka and both peach liqueur & schnapps along with some southern style sweet tea in a tall glass or mason jar.

New Orleans Saints:

Sazerac - the official drink of New Orleans often referred to as America's oldest cocktail.

Vieux Carré - the signature drink of the French Quarter named after the “old square” at the center of the Crescent City.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers:

Bumbo - a pirate's poison.

Filibuster - although its more closely associated with politics these days, the word originally derives from the Dutch term vrijbuiter for pirate, which means "to plunder," where vrij means "free" and buiter means "booty."

NFC West

Arizona Cardinals:

Cardinal Cocktail - a Kir drink variation also known as Communard which substitutes red wine for white.

Los Angeles Rams:

Greatest Show On Turf - a nickname for the team's record breaking offense during the 1999 through 2001 National Football League seasons when they were the Saint Louis Rams.

Ram Cocktail - seems appropriate that the helmet battering Rams namesake drink is a variation of a Harvey Wallbanger.

San Francisco 49ers:

Barbary Coast Cocktails - a pair of pigskin party picks named after the city's seedy, crime ridden, red-light district during the California gold rush and beyond. One drink has equal parts gin, scotch whisky, white chocolate creme de cacao and light cream or half and half. The other is mixed with dry gin, cherry brandy, lemon juice and grenadine.

Frisco Sour - the tasteless moniker given to this gold drink garnished with a red cherry which matches the football team colors.

Seattle Seahawks:

Emerald City - a signature drink for this city with the blue green nickname whose major league football, baseball and soccer teams all sport these colors.

Share & Compare This List Of NFL Team Drinks For More Ideas

This list of libations is a work in progress. Be sure to check back for updated ideas, more NFL football team inspired cocktails and links to additional information.

Have a suggestion for a game day drink recipe for your favorite NFL team? Contact us or post on our Facebook wall.

Want a generic gridiron geared gulp instead? Check out these pigskin potations penned for plays, points and positions like the Block & Fall, Quarterback and Touchdown.

Please, always drink responsibly.

* - DISCLAIMER: NFL related images, logos, etc. are shown only as a point of reference / commentary for names, mascots, colors and so on as potential drink inspirations and do not represent an affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement by the league, any individual team or associated person or group.

#Cocktails #Drinks #Football #Sports #Party #Themes #Tailgating

0 notes

conorreid · 5 years ago

Text

Melting Ice (Part 1)

Our planet is dying. Nowhere has this been made more obvious to me than in Glacier National Park, “the crown of the continent.” Located in northwestern Montana, right up against the Canadian border, Glacier is a stunning 4,000 square kilometres of Alpine terrain with an impressive array of flora, fauna, and animals. Its namesake glaciers are the source of the Mississippi, Colombia, and Saskatchewan rivers. And like the rest of our world, glacier National Park is collapsing under the weight of the Anthropocene.1

To visit Glacier is to receive a crash course in the devastating climatic changes we—or rather, capital—have wrought upon ourselves. The first, and indeed most obvious, change I noticed was in the glaciers themselves. The signage around the park was unequivocal—by 2030 all the glaciers will be gone.2 There are now just 26 glaciers in the park of the same name, down from 146 in the middle of the 19th century.3 While most of the glaciers in the park have disappeared, the ones remaining have shrank substantially; since 1850 the park’s glaciers have lost 70% of their surface area.4 These few remaining “glaciers” are truly pathetic. A few dozen metres across, nestled in the shadows of a mountainside; to call many of these snow packs “glaciers” is an insult to what they once were. All the same, watching and indeed hearing these sad husks of ice and snow melt in the summertime sun was an eerie sight to behold.

That’s not to say the other changes brought on by the climate crisis are not readily apparent from a quick drive through the park. As the glaciers melt, water table levels reduce and the risk of catastrophic forest fire goes up.5 Fire is of course a natural part of life in the American West, but in recent years climate crisis has brought a series of fires to the Glacier National Park hitherto unseen. The entire Western side of Lake MacDonald--one of the main lakes in the park and a popular tourist spot-- is nothing but burnt, black tree corpses, standing as a warning of our future. They’re from a fire (named Robert Fire) in 2003 that burned down over 50,000 acres. In that year an unprecedented 13% of the park was consumed by flame in the most destructive fire year on record.6 Just last year in 2018, another fire tore through the same region around Lake MacDonald, reburning brush already devastated from the Robert Fire a decade before.7 As the risk of fire goes up and up, the park will see more of its beloved land consumed in the fires of collapse.

Fire is not all bad. As I stated, it’s a way of life in the American West. The flames clear out old trees for new growth—like the wildflowers Glacier is famed for—to sprout up. But as the earth itself gets warmer (and Montana warmer still, as it is seeing temperature increases double that of the average8) the tree line moves even higher, meaning more and more Alpine meadow is conquered each year by trees fleeing the burning valleys.9 The plants are running higher and higher to escape a warming world. They’ll be disappointed to find that they can only run for so long.

I was around all this “change” for the course of a little more than a week. But the park rangers who have been in Glacier for decades have watched the fires, the advancing treeline, the melting glaciers first hand. Understandably, their outlook on the matter was overwhelmingly resigned. They all had a curious manner of talking about the glaciers as if they were already dead.

I took a boat tour out on the lake, and the guide was a 94 year old park ranger named Doug. He’d been working in Glacier for over half a century, and enjoyable referred to Glacier as “your park.” He implored us to go on hikes, to “make your way up to the glaciers and say goodbye.” On a separate trip, another guide explained that it was best that you saw a glacier or two now “to pay your respects” as you won’t have the chance in just a decade’s time. They also resignedly pointed out that the tiny snow patch just now visible on the mountain was called Gem Glacier, despite it being far below the size threshold for being an active glacier.10 They explained that this small size was actually a gift to the shrinking giant, as its tiny diameter and ample shade meant it would most likely be the last “glacier” left in the park before melting away. A third joyfully explained that they’d already come to a decision regarding the name of the park: a glacier-free Glacier National Park will still be called just that.11

When looking out across the landscape of the park, these rangers did not see just the now. No, they also saw the future—a parched park devoid of glaciers—and began to act as if the future were the now. The glaciers, despite still being here, were already gone. The beauty of the now had been crowded out by visions of a doomed future so striking that one felt as if that, not what could be seen in front of them, were the true now. This time distortion effect and what that means for our understanding of and adaptation to the climate crisis is what I would like to explore in this piece. In examining our aesthetic—that is, our immediate impressions—understanding of this warming world, I hope to make coping—for that is all we can do, really, short of massive global revolt in the next decade or so followed by a coordinated and democratized effort to rapidly decarbonize—with our doom a bit more palatable.

The term itself is under some scrutiny. While I disagree with the implication of “Anthropocene”—ie that the blame for the disastrous climate now destroying our world lies with all of humanity equally rather than a privileged few that have determined the rules and structure of the fossil economy and are responsible for the overwhelming majority of carbon emissions, something I will elaborate upon further in this essay—the name itself is in such general usage and sounds far better than alternatives like Necrocene or Capitalscene that I have defaulted to its use here. For a more robust handling of this topic see Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism, Oakland (CA): PM Press, 2016 ↩︎

Myrna H. P. Hall and Daniel B. Fagre, 2003, Modeled Climate-Induced Glacier Change in Glacier National Park, 1850- 2100, BioScience 53: 131-140 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/53/2/131/254976 ↩︎

Erich Peitzsch and Lisa McKeon, “Retreat of Glaciers in Glacier National Park,” https://www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/retreat-glaciers-glacier-national-park ↩︎

Fagre, D.B., McKeon, L.A., Dick, K.A., and Fountain, A.G., 2017, Glacier margin time series (1966, 1998, 2005, 2015) of the named glaciers of Glacier National Park, MT, USA: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/F7P26WB1 ↩︎

Climate Change, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm ↩︎

Rolf Larson, “Glacier Park Fires of 2003,” The Fires of 2003: An Anthology, 2004, The Inside Trail Vol. XVIII, No. 1, http://www.glacierparkfoundation.org/InsideTrail/IT_2004Win.pdf ↩︎

Howe Ridge Fire Incident Overview, 2018, National Park Service Incident Information System, https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6135/ ↩︎

Thomas Michael Power and Donovan S. Power, The Impact of Climate Change on Montana’s Outdoor Economy, 2015, Montana Wildlife Federation, http://montanawildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Impact-of-Climate-Change-on-the-Montana-Outdoor-Economy-Dec-2015-Final-Report.pdf ↩︎

Climate Change, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm ↩︎

Doug Struck, “Glacier National Park’s name will outlive its glaciers,” 2019, The Christian Science Monitor, https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2019/0618/Glacier-National-Park-s-name-will-outlive-its-glaciers ↩︎

0 notes

180abroad · 5 years ago

Text

Day 189: All Good Things

Finally, after more than six months abroad, the end of our adventure was upon us. Jessica and I had spent 189 nights in 48 different rooms, but after rising from our beds this morning, we would not lay our heads to rest until they were reunited with the long longed-for pillows of our own beds back home.

But we still had half a day to kill before our flight, so we figured we might as well explore some more of Reykjavik while we had the chance.

The Church of Hallgrimur proved just as stunning in the light of morning as it had in the evening two nights earlier.

Just downhill from the church is an area known as the Neighborhood of the Gods---so called because all of the streets are named for Norse mythological figures like Odin, Loki, and Thor.

(The Icelandic letter “Þ” is equivalent to the English “th,” so Þorsgata means Thor’s Street.)

Like I said, we had time to kill.

We saw some of the older buildings in the center of Reykjavik dating back to the late 1800s. (When it comes to architecture, at least, Iceland is on the same time scale as California.) But what really stood out to us were the statues---some more explicable than others.

Behind the memorial to the Unknown Bureaucrat, we came upon the Tjornin---a serene, glassy pond in the middle of the city.

The Tjornin is famously full of birds well fed with tourist bread (though still no match for the swans of Stratford-upon-Avon). Jessica and I laughed to see Nic receive a small measure of the avian intimidation tactics we were faced with back on our way to Liverpool from Wales.

Truly, when you stare into the eyes of a waiting duck, it is the void that stares back.

Next, we took a nice stroll along the Reykjavik harbor before stumbling onto an indoor flea market that's only open on the weekend.

Wandering back into town, we spotted another statue at the top of a hill, so naturally we climbed up to see it. It turned out to be a statue of Ingolfur Arnarson, the Viking captain who first colonized Iceland and gave Reykjavik its name, which means "Smoky Bay."

From the top of the hill, we had a decent view of the surrounding cityscape. Reykjavik is definitely a city on the rise. Construction and renovation projects were underway everywhere we went.

We still had a couple hours left to kill, so we went back to the main tourist street and did some window shopping.

There was one incredibly cheesy but impressively committed Viking-themed souvenir shop, as well as a smaller but more interesting shop selling trinkets inspired by Viking culture and mythology. I bought a pack of Norse god themed playing cards, and Jessica got a pack of cards featuring the Yule Lads.

You see, Iceland doesn't just have one Santa Claus, it has 13. The catch? They're a band of impish degenerates with self-explanatory names like Bowl-Licker, Sausage-Swiper, and Window-Peeper.

If for some reason you still want to send these lovely lads your Christmas wishes, you can deposit them in a specially designated mailbox outside the shop.

Finally, after a perfunctory lunch at Subway, we picked up our bags from our host Ingi, then made our way to the pickup spot for the airport shuttle. Somewhat unfortunately, there weren't nearly as many pickup spots as drop-off spots, so we had to walk about a mile across town to the nearest one. Still, it gave us a chance to enjoy the minimalist architecture and brisk subarctic air.

We also discovered that Reykjavik has a Brewdog, the TV-famous Scottish craft brewery that we'd visited with my Dad in Edinburgh.

Keflavik is a pretty small airport, and we'd arrived a couple hours early like we were supposed to. Still, we barely made it through security before our plane started boarding. Icelandair has done a great job of attracting people to Iceland with budget prices and easy stopovers, but it seems like the airport hasn't quite caught up. The people there were perfectly nice and respectably fast, but there were just too many people in line.

In fact, it was so crowded that we barely had time to fill up our water bottles---the line for the fountains was a good five minutes long.

The gates opened on schedule, but it was well past the flight time before they’d finally gotten everyone on board. Icelandair is a good value for the price, and I'd happily fly with them again, but they don't quite seem to have their act together when it comes to scheduling.

Oh well. No harm, no foul.

We walked out onto the tarmac to meet our plane, and I stooped to touch the ground one last time before we left for good. As we buckled up in our seats, it really started to hit us that the trip was really over and we were finally heading home. We didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

The flight was long and uneventful. A nice additional perk of our stopover in Iceland meant that the return flight was a couple hours shorter than our original flight from Oakland to Barcelona. It was still a long flight---9 hours---but when every hour in the air feels longer than the last, the difference between a 9-hour flight and an 11-hour flight is huge.

Of course, it may have helped knowing that we didn't have a full day in a foreign country ahead of us once we landed.

The one somewhat unpleasant surprise was that there was no food service unless you paid. And I'm the sort of cheap jerk who would rather go hungry than pay for mediocre, extortionately priced food.

Finally, we landed in San Francisco, just a few hours after we'd left Iceland, thanks to the time zones. Surprisingly, getting back into the US proved far easier than getting out of it, and we were soon reunited with our parents at the curbside pickup. My uncle Steve---Nic and Jessica's dad---had rented a preposterously large SUV to pick us all up together with my aunt and both my parents.

There were happy tears all around, but by this point the three of us were delirious with hunger and fatigue. At least, I was. And I was too far gone to notice how anyone else was doing.

We were swept away in our big black four-wheel-drive chariot.

We were at Super Taqueria enjoying the burritos we'd been waiting six months for and barely tasting them.

We were at Nic and Jessica's house saying goodbye.

I was home, simultaneously reunited and separated in ways that were perfectly natural and yet somehow strangely new.

I was in bed---in my own bed, with my own sheets and my own pillows---drifting off to sleep, no different than any other night, as if nothing had happened at all.

But it had happened. It had all happened. We have the stories and the pictures and souvenirs to prove it.

Epilogue

It's strange to be back home after all this time, which I guess isn't all that strange. But at the same time, one of the eeriest things is just how easy it was to slip back into all the old routines.

For a while, I felt a bit like Tom Hanks at the end of Cast Away as he looked at all the untouched food on that buffet table at the airport. Only instead of food, it was stuff.

That first night back, as I was getting ready for bed, I had a groaning realization that all my stuff was still packed away in my backpack downstairs. Just as I'd resigned myself to getting it, I realized that I had a drawer full of sleep clothes and a bathroom cabinet with toothbrushes and toothpaste to spare.

Having my desktop again was nice---though it was less nice when I booted it up on my first morning back and remembered that it was perilously near death when I had left it. It would be a frustrating, hours-long process just to get it back into shape, and what I really needed to do was buy a bunch of new parts and rebuild it from the case up.

Why put so much time, effort, and money into a desktop when I'd been perfectly happy with my laptop for the past six months?

Easy: games. And laptops cost more in the long run if you use them all the time. And, and, and…

Still, one of the biggest lessons of the trip for me---apart from opening my mind to other places and cultures---was the realization of just how little stuff we really need to get by. Which is a bit ironic, considering all the cool things I wanted so badly to buy in so many places but didn't have room to carry.

Looking back on the trip, I think we did an impressive job for two introverts who'd never really done anything like this before. I'm glad we got to see so many different places, and Airbnb made an incredible difference in the cost and quality of the trip.

Our parents being able to join us one by one over the course of the trip was also a brilliant idea and an absolute blessing.

If we were to do it again, though, we'd probably do a few things differently. We'd spend more time in fewer cities. Maybe take a weekend here and there. As much as we enjoyed seeing so many different places, it was exhausting and wore on our nerves. I'd also like to try and put myself out there more when it comes to interacting with locals---though that's far outside my comfort zone. And it would be nice to see what some places look like after dark.

And we'd probably skip Lausanne.

But besides that, I'm satisfied with everything we did, even the not-so-good bits. Getting sick in the Sahara and finding ourselves homeless in Rome were terrible experiences, but they're also some of the most vivid and interesting memories of the trip.

Anyway, I guess I'm just rambling now. This story may be over, but I'm sure there will be others to tell soon enough. One thing about living out of a backpack for six months and getting by on hardly any money: it kind of changes your perceptions of what is and isn't possible.

#180abroad #reykjavik #iceland #travel #strange statuary #homecoming #all good things

0 notes

spherewine28-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Apartment Profile: Jefferson Mount Laurel

Apartment Buildings

The upscale garden apartment community is the Virginia-based apartment developer/manager's first foray into South Jersey.

The first completed building at Jefferson Mount Laurel welcomed its first residents at the end of February. | Photos: Jefferson Apartment Group

Jefferson Mount Laurel, Jefferson Apartment Group’s newest Philadelphia-area community, may not have a grand old Victorian mansion for its clubhouse.

But, says JAG Senior Vice President and Development Partner Drew Chapman, what it does have is a level of luxury that’s new to the South Jersey rental market: “We offer our residents a number of things other communities in New Jersey haven’t offered.”

Those things include amenities now standard in upscale apartment communities on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, including Jefferson’s own Maybrook apartment complex in Wynnewood. That’s the one that was built around the historic Maybrook mansion, built in 1881 as the summer home of liquor magnate and developer Henry C. Gibson.

The 7,100-square-foot Jefferson Mount Laurel clubhouse will be new from the ground up — it’s rising as you read this — and what it may lack in history and originality (no 60-foot-long, 50-foot-high ballroom here) it makes up for in quality and variety of amenities.

The interior of one of the finished units

First-class amenities for South Jersey renters

Those include a residents’ lounge with shuffleboard, foosball and billiard tables and a double-sided fireplace, a media lounge, an up-to-the-minute fitness center and a business center. Outdoor amenities include a resort-style swimming pool, a sports court, a putting green, an outdoor living room with fire pit, grills and a movie screen, a courtyard with fountain and lawn games, a pet spa and two dog parks (one for large dogs, another for small ones), a playground for the kids, garden plots and more than a mile of walking trails. The parking lot includes electric vehicle charging stations to boot.

When complete, the complex will have 490 apartments in 21 three-story buildings with controlled access. Most will also have elevators. As of now, 70 units have been completed, with more coming on line as work progresses over the course of this year.

The apartments themselves boast nine-foot-high ceilings, high-end kitchens with quartz countertops and stainless steel appliances, wide plank floors, in-unit washers and dryers, and private balconies and patios. Apartments with private entrances and garages with remote control access are also available.

Closeup of the apartment kitchen