Eau de East River Esplanade

Aron has been taking Hudson on a lot of early morning strolls lately (one of them is getting a new tooth) and he wandered out to the East River the other day. He came back with some lovely photos, showing me what I was missing out there, in the 5 o’clock hour. We decided to make a return trip together on Monday morning and let Hudson nap in the stroller while we walked down to the Brooklyn Bridge.

As we are apt to do these days, we gesticulated wildly at the bridges and the buildings and the Brooklyn skyline and were all “This place is amazing!” “We’re going to miss it so much! It’s the Capitol of the World!” The newer stretches of pathway are so great, and were filled with joggers and commuters and, later on, Tai Chi practitioners.

Down by Wall Street, we stopped and admired the recently-built structure at Pier 15, a lovely addition to the public spaces along the made-over East River Esplanade (part of the city’s East River Waterfront project, wherein a continuous “greenway” will run from 125^th Street all the way down to the Battery). And Hudson stared inquisitively at the helicopters flying in and out of the harbor.

But before all that, we first had to get past the trash-truck’s drip trail.

“What is that smell?!” Aron stopped to examine a puddle and it was quite possibly the most-disgusting thing ever. We’re talking maggots. It was certainly the most disgusting smell, ever. Essentially, the trash track was dripping all the compacted garbage as it moved along the river, and every time it paused to by a trashcan to load its contents, it would accumulate the drippings into one putrid puddle. Every few minutes we’d find ourselves plugging our noses and gagging.

Finally out of the path of the wafting fumes, we were left to enjoy the walk and views once more when suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of deafening construction near the old Fulton Fish Market. I literally started to run with the stroller to pass by as quickly as possible but it went on for what seemed like forever and Hudson woke up. So much for that!

All you can do is laugh: “New York spit in my mouth!” we joked. You can’t escape the love/sick dichotomy: In fact, I think it was only a few days earlier that we were walking to breakfast and extolling the virtues of the East Village when we passed a man peeing.

[P.S. Having a baby in Manhattan]

“He spit in my mouth!”

I know I’ve shared this clip before, but I can’t help myself. Aron and I just re-watched this episode of 30 Rock because it’s crazy how often New York makes you feel like you’re in the capitol of the world… and then it spits in your mouth!

Requisite example to come later today.

Passport pet peeve (and a travel tip)

I just added additional pages to my passport. I suppose, overall, it’s a good thing that we’ve traveled enough internationally that I think I might need extra pages. But paying whopping fees for additional pages because border control agents tend to stamp pages willy-nilly really irks me! Here’s the thing: there are grids on each page. Stamps are supposed to indicate when/where you entered a foreign territory and then when you returned to your country of residence–and they’re supposed to sit beside each other! Visas often require full pages and, more often than not, there are requirements about how many consecutive pages you must have blank to get one. For example, we need two consecutive blank pages for our entry visa when we arrive in Bali. I happen to have exactly two such pages remaining, but I also have quite a few where Homeland Security has stashed a stray re-entry stamp, multiple pages away from its partner. We’re traveling through Germany and then Thailand before we get to Bali so I’m thinking it’s too risky to expect that the agents (well, maybe not the ones in Germany if stereotypes persist) will stick to the grids and steer clear of those two remaining, consecutive pages.

Okay, slightly persnickety, and possibly dull travel rant over. But seriously! What is the deal? We have to be so careful with these documents; is it really too much to ask that they stamp them in sequential order?

Lesson learned (and passed on): pay upfront for the extra pages if you plan to travel internationally often, and check visa/page requirements early in your travel planning to avoid expedited-service fees.

[Image of very orderly EU stamps via Chris Guillebeau, The Art of the Non-Comformist’s The Hidden Messages of Passport Stamps]