Home again
Well, I'm home again. Actually, I've been back since Wednesday night, but it's taken me about that long to work out what continent I'm on and what time of day it is. I actually woke up in my own bedroom on Thursday morning thinking that my room in Iceland, or was it New York, looked different from when I went to sleep.
Anyhow, back to good old normal life and serious job hunting. Spent today poring over the Guardian Jobs section. Something needs to turn up soon!
N-Iceland
Had the most amazing two days here. Just going to mooch round Reykjavik tomorrow before the flight home, so we've really crammed in the activity over the past two days.
I spent yesterday morning going to the national art gallery, photography gallery and the settlement exhibition. The art gallery was full of the strangest conceptual art I've ever seen - a whole room of broken TVs, weird collections of objects, that kind of thing. I guess I may have missed something in translation. The photography gallery was fantastic though - they've got a retrospective of an Icelandic photographer from the 1950s, and his portraits were so stunning and contemporary, they looked like they might have been taken last week with people in period dress. Amazing. The settlement exhibition was cool too - I now know a lot more about how people came to live in Iceland and how they lived. It's based round the ruins of a house that's more than 1,000 years old, which was found in the centre of Reykjavik, and it's been preserved in the basement of a building with a big interactive exhibition around it. Chilled out in the afternoon and went to a couple of bars last night. It's so strange being able to smoke inside again - I'm not sure I like it. Bring on the ban!
Today's been a big outdoorsy day. We hired a big 4x4 this morning, and went to see all the big tourist sights, and one so far off the beaten track we had to off-road through a river to get to it. On the way to see a geysir, we stopped at the side of the road and wild horses came up and made friends. With everyone except me... I have a phobia of horses from having been bitten by one when I was small. Nice from a distance though. The geysir was spectacular and we managed to stay the right side of it so we didn't get soaked by the spray. Then on to the Gullfoss waterfall. And then, if we weren't being outdoorsy enough - we'd spotted a glacier on the way to Gullfoss, so came up with the brilliant idea of seeing how close to it we could get. Which involved 8km or so on a dirt road, driving across a river (thank goodness for 4x4s!) and climbing a massive hill. But it was absolutely worth it.
Piles of rocks seem to be a big thing in Iceland, and I built one at the top of the hill overlooking the glacier.
We then took the coast road down to Grindavik - the cliffs and rocks were spectacular, if unremittingly grey! But it was a fantastic way to get to the Blue Lagoon, where we sat soaking in the bright blue water as the sun went down.
And now I've eaten, I'm back off out again...
I love New York…
Sitting in the youth hostel in Reykjavik, and two days of New York to catch up on. Finally, on Saturday morning, the sun came out, and stayed out for the rest of the weekend. Having had two fairly miserable days of rain and greyness, New York suddenly took on a whole different character, and my opinion of the place completely changed. I went for a wander in Central Park. Like much of New York, because I've seen it so much on film and TV, it's odd to remember that I'd never actually been there before, however familiar the views are. Just wandering in the sun was incredibly peaceful, and the contrast between the enormous buildings and the trees was breath-taking.
Going to Ground Zero is an odd addition to the New York tourist trail, and I was honestly very wary of going to see it. In the end I found the experience hugely moving. There's an exhibition of photographs overlooking the big hole in the ground where the twin towers used to be, and they are just ordinary shots taken by ordinary people. One particularly struck me - it's a photo of a tourist's photos of the World Trade Center, taken over their shoulder in the back of a taxi. Obviously and tragically there was an enormous loss of human life on 9/11, but I found the absence of the buildings themselves strangely haunting. There's a massive and startling anomaly just across the road from the big hole outside Century 21, where a walking tour panel tells you all about the twin towers, and how 50,000 people a day come to work, and how as a visitor you can go to the top to see the best view of Manhattan... I don't know whether they meant to leave it there, or if someone just forgot to take it down.
I ended Saturday in true tourist style by taking the Staten Island Ferry. Literally there and back. I'm sure Staten Island is lovely, but I got as far as getting of the boat, walking round the building and getting back on again. The boat ride out was funny - I was among a whole load of tourists hanging over the side of the boat for a shot of the Statue of Liberty, only to find it completely obscured by the great big cruise liner that pulled up alongside us. Still, I got it on the way back. It sounds odd, because you can see on every map that Manhattan's surrounded by water, but it doesn't really feel like it until you are off it. Anyway, I walked back via Macy's, thought about buying jeans but couldn't find anything I really liked, paid homage at the Project Runway window, and headed back to the hotel with very sore feet!
As a New York day, Sunday was just about perfect. Went for brunch with Phil, Jonny, Ross and Carolyn on West End and 72nd Street, then jumped on the subway down to the Empire State Building. Amazingly, there were almost no queues. And it was just amazing. I was surprised at how incredibly quiet and peaceful it was at the top, with almost no wind at all. And I have to say honestly, that seeing the place from above completely changed my perspective on New York. I spent most of my first two days missing San Francisco really badly, and I wish now I'd gone straight to the top of the Empire State Building the moment I arrived in New York. The view from the top really made me fall in love with the city.
Afterwards, I met up with Jonny and Ross in Union Square (they'd been cycling in Central Park) and we went with Charlie, Christine and Lauren for frozen margueritas, fries and football. A perfect way to end being in the New York. They've promised to come to London soon, so I hope I'll see them all again.
And so, Reykjavik... At the airport this morning, standing in the queue to get local currency, I found myself thinking that I vaguely recognised the woman standing next to me. Just as she walked off I realised it was Bjork. Otherwise I would have asked her what all that petroleum jelly and whaling stuff was about...
Rent
Life's all about connections... OK, it's a strange place to start, but it helps to weave together my last 36 hours. The Bowie Ball was such good fun. My phone had died so I left it on charge, but there are photos of me on Jonny and Phil's cameras of me with big, blue, heart-shaped shades, blue feather boa and mustard velvet jacket, with a big blue sparkly star on each cheek - I worked the glam rock look! One of the highlights of being a smoker (if there are any) in a city like New York is that you end up on the street talking to people like Stefan - an Icelander who's over from Rekjavik for Fashion Week, with whom I discussed Project Runway at great length - and Charlie, Christine and Lauren. After the club finished, we went back to Christine and Lauren's place in Alphabet City, and spent the rest of the night hanging out. And here's the next connection, because they live a couple of blocks from 11th, between B and C, which is the setting for...
Rent, which we saw last night on Broadway. Jonny, Ross and Carolyn had entered the lottery for front row tickets, and they came up trumps. I sat with my feet resting up against the stage, literally eyeball to eyeball with the actors. There's a moment in the second act, after Angel's funeral (I wept buckets), where the cast reprises Seasons of Love (525,600 minutes...) and the actor playing Roger stood looking down at me with tears pouring down his face, and I sat looking up at him with tears pouring down mine. So, so amazing. And while I know, with the La Boheme link, that the love story between Mimi and Roger is the central driver of the whole show, I love the love story between Angel and Collins. So you'll have to indulge me...
ANGEL
Live in my house, I'll be your shelter
Just pay me back,
With one thousand kisses
Be my lover - I'll cover you
COLLINS
Open your door, I'll be your tenant
Don't got much baggage, to lay at your feet
But sweet kisses I've got to spare
I'll be there and I'll cover you
BOTH
I think they meant it
When they said you can't buy love
Now I know you can rent it
A new lease you are my love,
On life - be my life
Just slip me on I'll be your blanket
Wherever - whatever - I'll be your coat
ANGEL
You'll be my king,
And I'll be your castle
COLLINS
No you'll be my queen,
And I'll be your moat
BOTH
I think they meant it
When they said you can't buy love
Now I know you can rent it
A new lease you are my love,
On life - all my life
I've longed to discover
Something as true as this is
COLLINS
So with a thousand sweet kisses
I'll cover you
With a thousand sweet kisses
I'll cover you
When you're worn
Out and tired
When your heart has expired
ANGEL
If you're cold and you're lonely
You've got one nickel only
With a thousand sweet kisses
I'll cover you
With a thousand sweet kisses
I'll cover you
BOTH
Oh lover I'll cover you, yeahhhhh
Oh lover I'll cover you
And finally, the last connection... much of the Rent movie was filmed in San Francisco!
Today, the sun's out in Manhattan, so I'm planning to walk across Central Park to the Met Museum, and then see where the day takes me.
I left my heart in San Francisco
Sitting in Alt Coffee in the East Village on my first full day in New York - tracked down free wifi at last! It's overcast and occasionally raining here. And to think that two days ago...
I spent the day biking over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. We stopped off at the Palace of Fine Arts for some photos - it's strange that a place with no history felt the need to create an ancient Roman-style monument. Quite surreal, and less than a hundred years old. Must be a popular place for making out though if you're a San Francisco teenager - I'm not quite sure what else you'd do there.
Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge was amazing. I have endless photographs of the bridge and the views of San Francisco - as always there are far too many to choose from. Drew has video of me singing on the bridge too! The fog came and went, and the views were spectacular. Up close, you realise how much the bridge is a product of its age, with Art Deco patterned rivetting. It's not the biggest bridge in the world, but it is beautiful, and as ever, far more spectacular in real life than in photos.
So, we ended up in Sausalito, where we bumped into Lizzie, Jen and Jen, who we'd met on the Green Tortoise to Yosemite. We spent some time hanging out, eating the most amazing apple pie, and got the ferry back across the bay. A perfect end to sight seeing in San Francisco. It leaves Alcatraz and the Coit Tower for next summer...
My flight to New York was at 8am, and in the end I managed to get 0 hours sleep before! We decided it was only fair to celebrate my last night in San Francisco by going out, which involved my namesake cocktail (the Jaeger Jager) at my namesake bar (Andrew Jaeger's), a peepshow (hmm... yes... well, it was the girls' idea), Vietnamese food and staying up talking with Drew and Jen til I set out for the airport. Slept a bit on the plane, avoiding the terrible movie and then hung around JFK for almost four hours waiting for Jonny, Ross, Phil and Carolyn to get in from Rekjavik.
Having settled into our hotel, we wandered down to Times Square to be blinded by the neon and found a bar in Hell's Kitchen on the way back. Today's been fairly slow to be honest, pancakes and coffee, then just mooching round the thrift shops in the East Village, in preparation for the Bowie Ball at a club called Fat Baby later tonight. It's Ross' birthday, so we're celebrating in style. The dress code is glam rock... which for me so far stretches to a blue feather boa. Must try harder! I tried on a whole load of beautiful and dirt cheap fur coats, until I realised that I looked like my grandmother and freaked out. Everyone's wandered off in different directions right now, so I'll track people down when I've finished this.
Ink
Extraordinary day yesterday. The touristy bit, going to see the sealions at Pier 39, was fun - although when you are up close, sealions really stink. Imagine a mixture of body odour and fish. Yummy.
The other bit of my day was reason three for coming to San Francisco - getting a tattoo. It might seem a little extreme to fly across the world just to get someone to put ink under the surface of your skin, but there are only a few places in the world (most of them in the US) that do blacklight tattooing. It's invisible on the surface when it's healed, but then glows white under UV lights. I went to see Rob Merrell at Goldfield's Tattoo, and two hours and $200 later, I am the proud owner of what he described as a "kick ass tattoo". We went round the houses on design, and finally settled on the main stars of the constellation Orion in blacklight ink (you can see them as red lines in the photo - they'll look like that til they heal over some time in the next couple of weeks) around a beautiful ornate bow and arrow. I love it (which is a good job as I'll be living with it for the rest of my life!) and it was surprisingly OK to get done. Like being scratched by an overactive cat. Actually, by the end I was just exhausted and white as a sheet.
Sadly, I checked out of the Phoenix this morning. My friend Drew arrives in San Francisco tonight, and we're booked into the Holiday Inn Golden Gateway, before heading off to Yosemite tomorrow night. I've loved my time alone in SF (being able to do what I want, when I want) but it'll be cool having someone else here to share it with.
Barney & the Beats
An arty day in San Francisco today. I went to SFMOMA this afternoon (the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) which I really enjoyed. It's not enormous by any means, but packs in so many amazing things into a relatively small (well, compared to the Tate Modern) space. It has the most astonishing gallery of design, including the ubiquitous Alessi kettle and toaster, some extraordinary work by Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko, and currently a special exhibition of Matthew Barney, also known as Mr Bjork. The Matthew Barney is really the most surreal way to spend an afternoon, especially as I also watched Drawing Restraint 9 in a cinema at the museum, surrounded by lots of very confused people and some falling asleep. The film is set on a Japanese whaling ship, and involves melting a petroleum jelly sculpture, a tea ceremony, and Barney and Bjork slowly carving each other with knives until they transform themselves in whales. I particularly liked Bjork's blowhole. Odd is not the word. The soundtrack is great though.
I then headed up to North Beach to find the City Lights Bookstore. This was really my second reason to come to San Francisco - the Beats. City Lights has been at the centre of literary revolution since it was founded, and this year is marking the 50th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. I bought myself a copy and a couple of postcards, wandered round the corner to take a photo of Jack Kerouac street (sadly filled with diggers, but to be honest, the street sign is the most interesting thing about it) and found myself across the road. Literally. Finding myself so close to one of my favourite writers, and opposite one of the most famous bookstores in San Francisco, is a massive thrill!
Oh, by the way, yesterday I went to Haight-Ashbury. Big disappointment. Five words... Camden, fewer shops, more trees.
The Phoenix
I've realised I haven't said a single thing about my hotel, the Phoenix! It's not the best I've ever stayed in for amenities (it's basically just the rooms and a pool), but it is by far the coolest place I've ever spent any time. There's so much rock & roll myth making that goes on about this place, it's hard to see what's hype that visitors have told each other over the years against the reality. If another person tells me that this is U2's favourite hotel in San Francisco, I'm going to demand to see the guest book to check it out. Having said that, the myths about the place mean that it attracts a very cool and laidback clientele, and chatting over breakfast by the pool is always an interesting experience.
I heard a great story yesterday about the place. Apparently, a guest once had a friend to visit, who insisted on painting a portrait of him. The story goes that when it was completed, it was too large to take away, so it was donated to the hotel instead. I've yet to see it (I guess if the story is true it's hanging in someone else's room) but apparently it's made of feathers and a variety of bodily fluids... nice!
The Castro, Embarcadero and Nob Hill
Two days to catch up on, and San Francisco turns out to be diverse and interesting than I could have imagined. It's more like a collection of villages, with the character of the place changing almost block by block.
I spent Saturday afternoon hanging around the Castro. I've never seen so many rainbow flags in my whole life! I decided against the pub crawl option, because I thought I'd fall over if I tried (well, I'm useless at drinking and I was still jetlagged), so I decided to go for a pampering instead. A new haircut, a shoulder massage and a manicure later and I was in a world of relaxation! One of the amazing things about the Castro (quite apart from the fact that straight couples holding hands in the street stand out like a sore thumb in the gayest part of San Francisco) is the beautiful architecture. Away from Castro Street, there are beautiful old houses everywhere. It's an incredibly comfortable place to be, and I'll be back again later this week.
Saturday night was peculiar! Tara recommended that I went to Deco, a bar across the road from the hotel, and it turned out to be piano night with Houston Allred, a 60-something pianist and singer. It was a bizarre mixture of piano karaoke (as people from the audience got up to sing... including me!), comedy spoofs of Somewhere Over The Rainbow and a vast number of showtunes. I actually really enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I'd go again (if that makes any sense). I met some British guys who live in San Francisco, and a really nice guy called Lynden, who was one of Houston's "visiting artistes" (as he likes to call people who get up to sing).
Today started really slowly. I wandered down to the Muni and hopped on a train to the Embarcadero. Being right by the water is so different from the Castro (which is a long way inland), with sun, palm trees and beautiful views. I had lunch at the Ferry Building, walked someway along the Embarcadero, past all the piers, and jumped on a streetcar on the F line to take me to Fisherman's Wharf. The F line is made up of historic trams from all over the world, and every one seems to be different - the one I was on was Italian, with the original signs and beautifully cared-for wood. Fisherman's Wharf is just bizarre. It's probably the most touristy part of San Francisco, and it shows. Souvenir shops, overpriced restaurants, huge crowds milling around... but fantastic views of Alcatraz.
And then, finally, I got to Nob Hill. Hill is an understatement. On the map, SF looks deceptively flat. In reality, I have never seen such steep streets in my entire life. I walked a bit from Fisherman's Wharf, and then quickly realised the hills were going to defeat me, so I found a bus and a cable car instead. At what feels like the top of Nob Hill is Grace Cathedral. I can't remember when I first heard of Grace Cathedral, but it was one of the reasons I wanted to come to SF. I arrived just after the evening service had started, and took a quick look inside at the amazing stained glass, and then walked the outdoor labyrinth. It based on the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France, and it's a huge circle with a winding path to the centre. Walking it in and back is the most amazingly calming and yet frustrating experience. Although it has only one path, so you know you'll reach the centre eventually, it takes so many twists and turns that it is easy to feel lost. They say the labyrinth is a reflection of the journey through life, and it makes a lot of sense. When you feel furthest from where you should be, you're actually closer that you realise. That's my not terribly deep thought for the day!
Back at the hotel now, and there's a party going on downstairs around the pool. Honestly though, I'm knackered - I'll go down for the barbeque in a bit.
Union Square
The joys of free WiFi! Decided to bring my macbook out with me for the day, as I'd heard there was free WiFi in Union Square. And there is. Yay! Union Square is hosting an outdoor art exhibition later. I suppose it's SF's equivalent of Trafalgar or Leicester Square, but it's so much nicer. Open air cafes, great shops (I'm sitting looking at Macy's right now) and what looks like a jazz band about to start up on the stage next to me. I'll mooch around here for a bit, then off to Castro this afternoon.