Gone t' Bog...

After driving all the way out to the New Jersey countryside to find a cranberry bog, who'd've thought we'd end up finding one right in the middle of Manhattan?!

Today there was a special Ocean Spray promotion happening outside the Rockefeller Center...

 They had constructed a mini cranberry bog, with cranberry farmers wading around in it answering questions... there were telly people doing News Spots from in the bog, and had people doing interviews and stuff...

 There was all sorts of different harvesting machinery dotted around too, all with little signs telling you about the harvesting process...

 It was great to see the whole thing, and such a coincidence that it was happening so soon after our little adventure at the weekend. I'd still love to see a real life working bog - in the wild, but seeing one at the Rockefeller Center will do nicely for now!

Sunday Sun...

Brooklyn Bunting...

Turning Left...

I went for a wee walk this afternoon and decided to do something we hardly ever do, turn left out of our apartment.

If you turn right out of our front door you reach Cobble Hill and Fort Greene, there are some really nice shops, restaurants and bars, there's the art school and the sculpture gardens, there are lovely brown stone houses and leafy streets.

If you turn left out of our apartment, you head deeper into BedStuy, under the railway arches and into 'real' Brooklyn, where Notorious BIG used to hang out and were things are a little less gentrified. There are lots of 99c shops and fast food places, lots of Projects housing and lots more graffiti. It's a bit more like how I think Brooklyn used to be before people started moving over here from Manhattan.

Anyway, despite never going down that way, it was really interesting to walk around and see such a different side of Brooklyn just a few minutes walk from our front door...

Pat's Van...

Well, it's not as lovely as Postman Pat's van, but I do like these little post vans.

Smokey...

The state parks in America have a great mascot for fire safety - Smokey...

By the looks of some of the tracks near the bog, I think Smokey had been taking a walk in the sun too...

Then again it might have just been a racoon... or a dog?

Double Trouble...

Yesterday Abi and I had a little adventure, we went off in search of Cranberry Bogs in New Jersey. We'd heard that the closest, most visitor friendly bog was in a place called the Double Trouble State Park, so that's where we went.

The drive out there was great, luckily we didn't have to drive through Manhattan this time, instead we got to enjoy the views of it as we drove down to Staten Island and across the Verrazano Bridge...

It wasn't long before we were out of the city and onto the Garden State Parkway, a big stretch of road that goes through some lovely areas in New Jersey. Then after nearly 2 hours we reached Double Trouble...

The entrance to the State Park was just off the main road, but once you were in the car park and under the canopy of pine trees it felt like you were miles away from any traffic or anything.

There were lots of little wooden buildings dotted around under all the trees, probably left over from when the State Park was a working farm...

 We weren't quite sure where the bogs were, so we asked a very friendly Park Ranger (who was sitting in a little wooden hut with a very nice porch) and he pointed us in the right direction.

 We thought we'd come at the perfect time, the harvest was happening this weekend and the park range said that the bogs were being flooded ready for harvest, so we were expecting to see a big lake of water with lots of floating cranberries in it, but I think we were a wee bit too early...

The bogs weren't completely flooded yet, and the cranberries were still attached to their vines, you could see some of them under the water...

During the harvest all the cranberries get detached from the vines, then float on the water and get collected up and taken to be sorted. All that would probably be happening today, but the State Park is closed today so we wouldn't have been able to see it anyway.

The water was flooding the bogs at one end (by the white building) and then passing through channels and flowing into a second bog, and then a third, and then passing back out into a steam. I'm not sure if the water gets recycled or not, but the water flowing both in and out had an amazing red colour to it...

 It was pretty disappointing not to see the bogs as we'd expected to, but it was lovely to be able to walk around and get an idea of how the whole cranberry farming process works...

 It wasn't a completely wasted trip, we got to see a beautiful area of New Jersey, learn something new and we managed to get a bit shop done at Walmart... and it was a beautifully sunny day too!

Ben Harper...

Last night I went to see Ben Harper play at the legendary Carnegie Hall!

It was a special 'acoustic evening with Ben Harper' - a solo show, just him, a chair, a piano, a xylophone and 13 guitars! He had everything set up nice and neatly on the stage all ready for a long night of amazing music...

The stage looked incredibly (but brilliantly) bare, without any huge amps, not big lighting rigs, no curtains or anything. I'm not sure what the stage usually looks like at Carnegie Hall, but it seemed odd not to have any kind of curtain or anything.

There was a huge applause when Mr. Harper took to the stage and sat down with a lap steel guitar. It was amazing the sound that he was making just on his own, it was beautiful to hear some of the bigger songs sounds a bit more stripped back too.

Although it was a pretty big venue, he managed to make it feel like an intimate gig, he was telling stories and interacting with the crowd, he kept saying how appreciative he was of all the 'love in the room'... it certainly felt like everyone was having a great night.

He played for nearly 3 hours, and I think he played every single instrument on his stage (expect one guitar). He played all the songs I love, a couple of new songs, a Marvin Gaye cover, a Bruce Springsteen cover and an amazing Jeff Buckley cover or Hallelujah.

I think there were about three standing ovations for him throughout the night (I've never seen that before), and he said at the end how New York had shaped him and his music more than any other city and that he'd never experience a night like that again... he genuinely seemed quite overwhelmed with everyone's response.

I was up in the heavens so my photos didn't come out very well, and everyone was getting told off for taking videos, so I wasn't able to get any of my own - but I found this great one on Youtube. This was the last song the Mr. Harper played. He moved his chair to the very front of the stage, away from the microphone and sat there with his un amplified ukulele and managed to absolutely fill the room...

(Thank you to whoever's video this is, I hope you don't mind me using it on this blog)

 It was an absolutely amazing evening in a really special venue, it was yet another New York gig that I'll never forget!

Going Underground...

Autumn Roots...

There are some lovely looking Autumnal vegetables at the Union Square Market...

I think it must be nearly soup making season!

Fly Me To The Moon...

Last night Abi took me on a date to the MOON!

Because we're members of the Natural History Museum (fancy) we were able to go to a special event yesterday evening at the Planetarium - A Field Trip To The Moon.

It was a special feature in their dome theatre, where we got to experience flying to the moon (including rumbling seats at takeoff!), orbiting the earth, flying through space and landing on the moon.

It was BRILLIANT!

There were a LOT of children there, very clever children it seemed as they were able to answer all the questions much faster than any of the adults (especially the two designers sitting there trying to work out what the layer of cloud that surrounds the earth is called). I think all the adults were just as excited as the children though.

That theatre is so clever, it feels so real and almost 3D, without being 3D. It was incredibly relaxing too, sitting back and watching all the stars and stuff.

I still don't understand why we haven't been back to the moon since the 70's, and I still have NO idea how anyway worked out how to get there in the first place. I love going to the Natural History Museum, I always feel totally amazed whenever we come out of there.

As if a date on the moon was awesome enough, we went for a Shake Shack burger afterwards!

Little Red Riding Through The Hood...