New York city #4 - our final US day, including the Empire State Building, Tenement Museum, Moby's vegan restaurant, and the bottom tip of Manhattan

It feels a teeny bit embarrassing to conclude my American travel posts 4 months and the following year after our return to Australia. Nonetheless, today I am doing just that! This post provides the 12th and final recap for our 18 days in America, and the 4th recap specific to New York City. (The previous posts can be found on my travel page.)

Smoggy Empire State Building views

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New York city #3 - Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, and solo shopping

Intrepid Museum, with the space shuttle Enterprise in the centre

I have decided to divide our four New York city days into four separate posts because, well, the four days were all full. Today covers our third NYC day, which was also our second last day in America. It held exciting plans for both of us!

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New York City #2 - The Metropolitan Museum of Art (including The Cloisters) and High Line

With today being American Thanksgiving (happy Thanksgiving!), it seemed appropriate to return to our recent US travels and the second of our days in New York City.

Our second day included an ambitious list of destinations: The Cloisters, part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art but located in far north Manhattan; the High Line park in the centre of Manhattan; and the main Met museum on the Upper East Side. We managed all three, but it was definitely a full day.

The Cloisters

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New York city (#1) - The Frick Collection, Matilda on Broadway, and city-based wandering

New York has the honour of being the only place in the US that I have been to twice. It is, of course, the sort of place you can visit 10 times and still not see it all. At the same time, it invites familiarity after a delightfully short period of time. The combination of famous landmarks and nicely numbered / lettered streets makes navigation easy, and walking delightful.

The drive from New Haven to New York was our last driving stretch. I generously offered allocated it to Mr Bite. In order to avoid driving into Manhattan itself, we dropped the car at LaGuardia airport and made the rest of the journey by bus. As a consequence, the drive wasn't that bad (said by the person who was a passenger) but it was still long enough. New York drivers really like to beep!

Our apartment building (the lowest window visible at the front,
 half underground, was our lounge room)

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Boston to New York city, via New Haven

Between work and camping and the inevitable nature of time (it passes!), our American holiday is receding into the past more rapidly than seems right. I shall try to get my final few American posts written before my memories recede too!

Yale University, New Haven

After our two nights in Boston, we drove the 4 (ish) hours to New York city, our final destination before returning home. On the way, though, we stopped at New Haven, Connecticut, for petrol and lunch. This wasn't a planned destination - New Haven just happened to be about the right distance along the drive.

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American food #2

My first American food post was all the way back in Washington D.C. (how is that 6 weeks ago?). Thus, I think we are overdue for the second! These items are from various stops on our travels, and all seemed worthy of blog attention, albeit not so much attention that they get their own posts.

First: Enormous pizza.

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Boston

Boston waterfront

I expected to love Boston. This is, of course, a dangerous way to approach a city. It is far better to expect little and be pleasantly surprised.

As those opening lines may hint, I didn't love Boston. Neither of us did. I almost hesitate to write this - some of you, I am sure, will be in the Boston loving crowd! - but we can't all love the same things. There was nothing actually wrong with the city, and I am glad that we visited, but I don't have much of a desire to return.

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Vegan pumpkin cheesecake with optional raspberry topping

I'm glad that my last post conveyed my enthusiasm for the pumpkin cheesecake that, well, inspired this pumpkin cheesecake. It may be accurate to say that Candle Cafe provided me with the best dessert of my life. It is certainly accurate to say that it provided me with the best dessert of our recent trip.

When I set out to recreate this dish, I remembered Gabby's vegan pumpkin mousse cake posted this time last year on The Veggie Nook. I bookmarked it at the time, but it took the Candle Cafe prompt for me to pull it out again. I am glad I did, because not only did it result in a dessert to rival that of my New York experience, it was also unexpectedly easy. You need to allow some time to soak your nuts (there is no way to make that sound good), and to let the cake chill and set, but the active preparation time is well under an half an hour.

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Chocolate and books - Chocolove Almonds & Sea Salt in Dark Chocolate; Endangered Species Dark Chocolate with Goji Berry, Pecans & Maca, and with Cherries; and more historical fiction

A shorter title for this post would have been "all the good things". After all, is there a better combination than good chocolate with a good book? I suppose any good food with a good book is wonderful - but chocolate is a strong contender in the 'good' category. Or at least, these American blocks are.

I nearly didn't buy this Chocolove Almonds & Sea Salt chocolate block. After all, almonds and sea salt aren't that uncommon in chocolate. I confess to wondering if the block really deserved precious luggage space.

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Hanover, New Hampshire, with an all American diner experience

After our night in Burlington, we set off on a much shorter driving day to Boston, with a planned lunchtime stop in Hanover, New Hampshire. It was fortunate the drive was short, because I was so traumatised by the day before I declared I didn't want to drive at all, and made Mr Bite cover both sections (!). 

Happily, not only were the drives short, but they were also scenic and largely very easy (up until the Boston bit, which was as busy as you might expect Boston to be if you arrive at 6pm on a weeknight). All through our driving we had sections of fall colour starting to turn, giving rise to bright orange, yellow or red trees set amongst the green.

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Toronto to Burlington, Vermont (featuring Walmart, scary driving, and vegan crepes)

When we left Toronto, we did so with the goal of skirting along the bottom of Canada to re-enter the US at the New York State / Vermont border, just south of Montreal. With our overnight stop planned for Burlington in northern Vermont, it was our longest day of driving with an estimated 7 hours in smooth traffic.

When planning our drive the night before, we looked for obvious lunch stops without finding any. And so, we did what any two Australians in North America would do: we searched for Walmart stores along our route. There was one in Kingston, just under 3 hours from Toronto, and so that became our first stopping point.

Walmart. I know, it's not that exciting.

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Jumbo spicy kale salad with tofu

I was expecting to love America's range of vegan snacks, desserts and chocolates. I was expecting to enjoy almond milk coffees, and readily available veggie dishes, and tofu in various forms. I did enjoy all of those things. Unexpectedly, however, my greatest American food love (pending one incredible dessert that shall be discussed in time) was the salads. Huge salads. Meal-worthy salads. Salads with All The Things.

These are serious salads.

I could bring back chocolate and snack foods, but I couldn't bring back the salads. And so, I am making it a mission to make my own. Here is the first attempt!

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In my kitchen - the America to Australia edition (October 2013)

I am linking this post in to Celia's monthly In My Kitchen event at Fig Jam and Lime Cordial.

In my kitchen, there is me! We survived our incredibly long journey home (1.5 hours to get from Manhattan to JFK airport; 3 hours at the airport; 11 hours on a plane; 2 hours at Dubai airport; 10 hours on a plane; 1 hour to clear passport control, customs, and get ourselves to actually home) and are back in Australia in body, if not fully in mind.

The last holiday photo, just before we disappeared through that A6 gate.

In my kitchen, there is a Whole Foods bag I brought back with us. I filled it this morning when re-stocking on fruit and vegetables.

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Pennsylvania to Niagara Falls

I can see my travel posts becoming increasingly 'behind', so to speak, as we visit more places and eat more food and take more photos. Fortunately, my travel blogging is driven by a desire to document our experiences (and share them!) rather than any timeline around when that happens. Thus, today I am posting about our travels from a week ago, when we left Washington D.C. to drive north through Pennsylvania. Lest you think a week isn't very behind at all...it will only extend out from here!

Pennsylvania driving. 'Twas a sloping road, not a mis-angled photo.

Our Pennsylvania visit was, in our plan, just a means of getting from Washington D.C. to Canada. We stayed the night in Altoona, a small town that was roughly the right distance between D.C. and the Niagara Falls border crossing. What I hadn't expected was how beautiful the state would be, especially with leaves starting to turn red and yellow. It was a gorgeous drive and Altoona itself was a surprisingly scenic spot.

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D.C.'s Sticky Fingers vegan bakery

I mentioned that I wanted to give separate space to one of our Washington D.C. dinners, and I hope that with this post you will see why. In addition to Sweetgreen, Sticky Fingers Bakery (all vegan) and Pete's Apizza (vegan pizzas with Daiya cheese on offer) were on my list of 'to visit' places for D.C. food. We didn't end up making it to Pete's Apizza, a consequence of some delayed jet lag on my part and the fact that I really prefer my pizza cheeseless. We did, however, make it to Sticky Fingers. It was so good I wish we'd made it twice!

Sticky Finger's awards

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Washington D.C. (part 2)

I think it is probably well known that D.C. is home to a lot of museums. However, I didn't realise quite how many until I started researching the city prior to this trip. The answer to how many, in short, is many. Delightfully, lots of them are also free, thanks to the Smithsonian Institute and some additional affiliated museums.

Much as I enjoy museums, I do enjoy them balanced with other activities. One per day is usually my limit, unless they are particularly small - and those in D.C. are not small. Thus, we picked two that I would do with Mr Bite and left him to consider if we wanted to see more when I was conferencing. The two I joined in on were the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art.

National Air and Space Museum: Entry foyer with various space craft, various airplanes, 
and the actual space suit worn by Neil Armstrong on his trip to the moon.

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American food #1

It didn't take me long to swing into a food-focused post - and really, how could it? If there is one thing America is renowned for, it is the range of edible options available for those with money to purchase the items on offer. Vegan food is no exception, at least if you know where to look.

This is a pretty good place to look.

To try and put this in perspective, for every one 'exciting' vegan product in Australian supermarkets (by which I mean packaged / prepared vegan foods, rather than natural products like fruit/vegetables/grains) there are perhaps 25 in U.K. supermarkets. In the U.S., I'm going to estimate the count at 100. It is dazzling, dizzying, and a little overwhelming.

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Washington D.C. (part 1)

Hello from America's capital! It is hard to believe it's only 4 days since we left Australia - partially, I suspect, because if you take into account the time change it is actually 5 days. Regardless, we have walked and explored and seen and photographed a lot in the time since we've arrived. I can picture Mr Bite now sleeping for some of the time I'm off conferencing.

The White House, from afar

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Reflections and departures - the U.S.A.

It dawned on me this week that I've never written about my previous (and only) trip to America. This makes sense, given I visited in 2008 and only started blogging in 2011. At the same time, I feel like it deserves note because it was such a memorable and momentous trip.

I went as a third year PhD student, my first time visiting North America and one of my first times travelling internationally alone. I also went after working (in a PhD-focused sense) on at least one weekend day of each weekend over the previous three years. I think I took a few days off each Christmas, but holidays weren't really in my nature. (Oh, how Mr Bite has changed me!) I had a student's budget, but my flights and some accommodation were paid for out of research funds.

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