These are two pictures that I never shared from our West Coast trip two years ago. The top is the Chelsea Hotel in New York and the bottom is a Walmart somewhere outside Portland Oregon. Walmart was on my to-do list to take a look at while we were on the trip as you see them in films and so on. Wow those shops are huge.
I can also see that the top must have been from a roll of Kodak Portra 400 VC and the bottom from a roll of my beloved Kodak Ektar 100.
This is the last of the West Coast trip pictures. I will probably do a final wrap up post at some point.
Inside the Japanese bookshop Kinokuniya is a branch of Cafe Zaiya with a fantastic view over Bryant Park. Last time I was in New York I accidentally ordered this matcha frappe thinking it was a matcha latte but it tasted so freaking good I ordered it on purpose this time. Utter indulgence.
Cafe Zaiya also has lots of nice Japanese bakery items.
As I mentioned before we had as much Japanese food as possible while we still could. This food was in a place near the Dainobu Japanese Deli in midtown.
Babycakes Bakery, these were vegan, gluten free, sugar free, and tasty – miracle? Yes.
I don’t remember where :)
From the Staten Island Ferry, the best value thing to do in New York City.
It’s often cheaper to fly back from other USA places via New York and we thought that if we were going to be changing planes there we might as well plan in to stop for a few days. We have been to New York before and so didn’t feel pressure to be very touristy. We stayed at The Gershwin which has the most reasonable (that aren’t in a complete dive) en suite rooms in a good location that I could find. The only specific thing on my to-do list was to visit The High Line park which had opened since I was last there, such a great place! A must-see. Otherwise we would just set off in the morning and would wander and talk and wander and talk until we got hungry, then I’d find a Wi-Fi spot and Yelp for suggestions. We ate as much Japanese food as possible while we still could as our access to it is so limited over here.
(The first four are lomo, the rest digital.)
We stayed at Sunset Inn and Suites and while I don’t think anyone would call it hip I’d highly recommend it as a nice place that’s great value as you get a mini apartment with a kitchen plus free breakfast. We engaged in the usual tourist pottering around, went to Granville Island on one of those tiny cute boats, and browsed the shops, I liked Paper Ya. We walked around Kitsilano and Stanley Park. We tasted poutine – that is one crazy dish, chips cooked a lot with cheese curds and gravy over the top, I suspect it might be a good dish after an evening on the ales ;) We got the free shuttle bus to Capilano suspension bridge to have a look around there (not as scary as I’d hoped/dreaded) and then went off up Grouse Mountain on the bus. It is very expensive but we were glad we went up as it was still in deep snow. All the after-work-skiers seemed very happy about this too. We then got the bus back down to the water and crossed on a ferry. All too quickly it was time to catch our flight to NYC, the last stop on our journey.
Lomo pictures…
Digital pictures…
We had the briefest time in Seattle but it was great. We made sure to do the tourist places like Pike Place Market, go up the Space Needle, and take a look at the original Starbucks :) I felt quite at home there, maybe because of the rain! Places that I particularly enjoyed were the Seattle Public Library, Tsukushinbo Japanese restaurant, Uwajimaya supermarket (that place is huge, nothing like it that I know of in the UK), and the happy hour at Serious Pie where you could share a few tiny different pizzas. We then got the train on to Vancouver. Something I hadn’t come across before in any country was checking in luggage before boarding the train – so you have to show up several hours in advance. Luckily that all went well and we left USA on a Cascades train packed with people going to board huge cruise ships in Vancouver. Great views from the train (lomo)…
