the past two weeks

I was in New York City for the 2nd time in my life.

- And I was again impressed by the skyscrapers,
by the amount of people trying to cross the streets,
by the yellow cabs driving around like ants crawling to get to a piece of food first,
by the size of central square,
by the number of hot-dog and pretzl,...

- And this 2nd time I went to a musical on Broadway. A present for my 26th birthday, for my graduation, and for our engagement: the Lion King was absolutely fan-tas-tic! Great costumes, great performances, great songs, great music.

- And stayed in a fancy hotel instead of in the also nice but less fancy hostel

- And was overwhelmed by the heat in NYC so decided to go to 'Rockaway Beach'

- And noticed that the 9/11 site has completely changed compared to 4 years ago: no real silence anymore, constructions going on, life goes on. Except for the memorial site nothing directly remembers at what happened almost 10 years ago.

I showed my 'Beautiful Boston' to Koen

- And we went on the famous Duck Tour

- And we visited the New England Aquarium

- And we acted like kids in the Science Museum

- And I showed the place where I will work for the next year

- And whales were waving at us on the whale watch tour

- And we had very nice lunches and dinners at leagal see foods (thanks Wim), the Hill tavern, in chinatown, 'the American'

- And we watched soccer games while having brunch

- And we followed the freedom trail which happens to be indicated by a red line on the pavement

- And we strolled around in many of the nice parks in Boston

- And Koen realized I have many reasons to be happy to be here

I quickly visited Acadia National Park and the White Mountains

- after we decided to buy a tent and an airbed for camping

- and we quickly realized tenting was not what we were looking for this holiday when the pump was not charged to fill our airbed with air and we drove around untill 1 am to find a reasonable priced motel

- and we saw falcons

- and did beautiful hikes in the nature

- and heard thunder-like sounds in thunder hole

- and took some nice pictures

- and got pretty exhausted of the steep climbs but enjoyed to be doing some 'sport'

- and went swimming in the 'heated' pool of the campground with ocean view

- and stayed in the 'bear country' on a campground where they saw a bear a couple of days before we decided to pitch our tent

- and returned after 4 days to Boston again to enjoy the comfortable bed, to enjoy a nice shower, and a good movie