October 17 <back to main page>We're back in New York after spending two days "on the road", visiting Washington, DC and Boston. Altought we really wished to have more time to visit those places, the few hours we spent on each city were reeeally nice, thanks to our great hosts, Jonathan and Stuart. They were so kind and drove/walked us everywhere.
Jonathan met us at the station and then we went
to the Capitol and saw some congresspeople debating. The place was quite
empty. Actually, there were more people in the galleries watching than
congressmen in the chairs. All Monica's guilt, we've been told. We went
to the National Gallery but couldn't see the Van Goghs. No more passes
were available. :( We bought some gifts at the gift shop, but I managed
to left them on the street, probably near the White House, along with some
FBI badges we bought. We tried to tour the FBI but the line was tooo long.
While there, we got to see some awesome videos teaching kids how to defend
themselves from the Internet. The video said many times: "never met somebody
you knew in the Internet before checking with your parents!". Oh, boy,
I'm so glad I checked with my parents before! :) :) :)
There was also a "just say no to drugs" video. Sadly, Mulder and Scully
will have to wait for our next visit to DC. And have I mentioned we missed
the train? That turned out to be a great thing because I and Jonathan had
time to drink some beers and chat about Sito. I reccomend this to everybody!
Great time! I almost felt like missing the next train as well, but
then we would have not been able to arrive in NY in time to have dinner
with our friends.
Ater eating Afeghan food we manged to take a quick bath at our
friend's hotel - no time to go back to Harlem - and got inside the train
again. We arrived in Boston really early, and caught Stuart still sleeping.
We walked by the Freedom Trail following the red bricks and enjoying the
beautiful and clean city. We entered some stores and found cool geek stuff
bargains, suh as Mulder & Scully dolls with aliens and accessories
for 9,99 and the complete Star Trek videos collection for 1,99. We met
Stuart for lunch, and he toured us through MIT. We went to the basement
and got some abandoned rocks from the former Geology Department as souvenirs.
The Media Lab was our next stop. As you would expect, they have lots of
hi-tech equipment, cool projects, and expensive well-designed brochures
all over the place. We met Stuart's friends from the Interactive Cinema
Group and saw some of their projects. Then we visited Automated Media Systems
and had dinner with Stuart, Sarah, Patricia and Pericles. We _almost_ missed
the train, but we managed to catch it in its next stop.
Back in NY we slept the whole morning to recover, and then had breakfast,
walked a bit, and met Taro, Cibele's and Damon's friend.
Washington, DC pictures:
The Capitol dome
...at the gallery, with Jonathan (last sight of the gift's bag
before its mysterious dissapearance)
This was taped to one of the TV station vans.
Ivana at the FBI.
The White House.
Boston Pictures:
Stuart and Ivana with the "hands" sculpture at MIT
We tried to photograph the Media Lab, but all we got were disk error
messages. Weird, isn't it? This was the closer shot: Media Lab is the white
building cropped to the right.
To be fair, it was difficult to take a picture at the dinner too. Apparently,
our disk was severely injured. But we got it in the third try. Left to
right, Sarah, Stuart, Pericles (partially hidden), unknown woman at other
table, Patricia, Ivana and Lenara.
More NY pictures:
Me and Cibele at our favorite brakfast place in Harlem: Cafe Largo.
Cibele grabs Taro cheeks while he gets red all over the face.