We drove for 20 minutes from Ogdensburg, New Jersey to the small township of Sparta, where Café Pierrot is located. After a full day at the mine (going down the tunnel, touring the museum, and rock collecting for my boys) with just hotdogs and sandwiches for lunch, we felt we deserved a proper sit-down dinner. My husband also needed to replenish his fresh bread supply. We found the perfect place on our way to Vestal, New York. Café Pierrot is a quaint old house converted into

I love Japanese food. And I love ramen. I am always on a quest to find the best ramen in any major city that I visit, if they are available. Since New York is a multiculturally diverse city, I knew I would find some good ramen here. I had planned on going to Ippudo after finding out there was one a few blocks from our Midtown hotel, but it had been elusive. On the first night in NYC, I couldn’t find (I blame it on the heavy rains) and I ended up dining at Nippori, which was a

Some fortuitous circumstances had led me to the Grand Central Station and I welcomed it. I had been meaning to go visit anyway, at some point, to check out the market section and take pictures of the Main Concourse and the Booth Clock. This historic, world-famous landmark, featured in so many American films, is not only a major transportation hub, but is also a shopping, dining, and cultural destination. It has a variety of shops, restaurants and cafes, and a full calendar of

I left my husband and our son at the American Museum of Natural History. They wanted to stay longer to explore the Earth and Planetary Sciences Hall and to see the Space Show at the Hayden Planetarium Space Centre. As for me, it was time to see some art after looking at dinosaur bones. Since they were not interested in going to The MET (The Metropolitan Museum of Art), I went alone. I left the museum via the West 77th Street grand entrance and passed by the Grand Gallery wher

The program for Day 3 in New York City was to see the dinosaur bone exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After figuring out the maze of the New York subway system, we hopped on the C Line which took us right at the museum door within four stops. The only snag was the wait time. When we entered the museum, the security guard told us that the line-up extended outside the entrance doors and along the corridor of the subway sta

This mom was on a mission to make her son happy. And this mom was determined to get that Springsteen autograph. When we arrived at the Walter Kerr Theater, I didn’t see the bodyguard from the previous day, but there was definitely some prime space left inside the cordoned area. I prodded my boys to take their positions right away. My husband started chatting with this lady who is an avid fan of Springsteen. And since he often gets lost in the intensity of a conversation he i

When we arrived at the New Amsterdam Theater, the venue of the Broadway show, Aladdin, I was a mess. My hair was in disarray, my face was wet from tears, my eyes red, and I was panting like a horse that just lost a race. The front-of-house staff saw us and assured us that we were just in time. They scanned our tickets, gave us our playbills, and ushered us inside. They said it would be another couple of minutes before they closed the doors. A couple of minutes! That was close

The plan for Day 2 in New York was to visit the Intrepid Museum, which was just a few blocks away from our hotel. My husband wanted to spend the whole morning there as he thought seeing the aircraft carrier itself plus a space shuttle, a submarine, a jet, and small airplanes and helicopters would really be a cool experience for our son. We had to stop at a bakery for fresh bread because he couldn’t eat from the hotel’s breakfast buffet. Fortunately, we found a good one on the

It had been a hectic first day in New York City with the morning ferry ride to the Staten Island to see the Statue of Liberty and the afternoon tour of the 9/11 Museum and Memorial. But the excitement was just beginning. My husband was eager to execute his “surprise drop” for our little boy. On the walk back to our hotel from the museum, we stopped at the Walter Kerr Theatre, the venue of the Springsteen on Broadway show. My husband pretended he was just checking the posters.

After the ferry ride to see the Statue of Liberty, we caught the next “hop-on-hop-off” bus and got off after two stops to visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. We thought it’s important for our little boy to see this place, to explain to him what happened here on September 9, 2011, and to make him understand its implications, not just for the people of the United States, but for the rest of the world. It was our first time to be here as well. On our last visit to New York City,

We arrived in New York City on the day before my boys were to watch the Bruce Springsteen concert. It was late by time we got to our hotel and there was nothing to do but check in and leave our car in the parkade. However, since our hotel was on the same street and only a few blocks away from the Walter Kerr Theatre, the concert venue, my husband decided to walk over with our son to “check things out” maybe catch a glimpse of The Boss if he happened to be going out of the the

“I love New York,” says the items on sale at the souvenir shops. And it’s true. A lot of people love New York, including my husband. And some people I know who have never been there list it as one of the top cities they’d like to visit in the United States. I have been to New York City a couple of times before this visit and though I like the city, I cannot honestly say that I love it. “How can you not,” asked my husband once. He knows that I am at home with big, bustling ci

Who would have ever thought that there is a North Pole in New York? And Santa has a house there…inside the Santa’s Workshop theme park. A theme park in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains! Who would have thought! Our son had already gotten a glimpse of Santa’s Workshop the previous day (when it was close), so the excitement level was not that high, and it was not high in the first place because at age seven, the fascination for Santa Claus had simmered down. Add the fact

On our second morning at the Adirondacks, we drove to High Falls Gorge in Wilmington, around 20 minutes from Lake Placid. High Falls Gorge is a privately-owned nature park with hiking trails that take you to four waterfalls cascading over rocks and ancient granite cliffs into the chasm that was carved by the river a billion years ago. This is like a smaller version of the Ausable Chasm. Okay, I have a confession to make. When we went to the Ausable Chasm the previous day, I

It was not hard to find the Pirate's Cove golf place. It is situated on a main road, and right by the entrance was a huge billboard with its pirate face logo flanked by pirate flags fluttering in the wind. Beside it was a life-sized statue of a fierce-looking pirate brandishing his sword. The place was not busy due to the bleak weather, so we found parking in no time and got our tickets without lining up. We got our golf clubs, golf balls, and score sheet and off we went to

Ausable Chasm is known as “The Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks.” It is a sandstone gorge that is about two miles long, carved by the Ausable River through the 500-million-year-old Cambrian Period Potsdam Sandstone around 10,000 years ago. The Ausable River runs through it and empties into Lake Champlain and is fed at the south end by the 91-foot-tall Rainbow Falls. Though not as grand as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, this chasm boasts of a continuous exposure of a section of

I love mountains and lakes. And if there are places with both, like those beautiful lakes in the Rockies or the Northern Cascades that I visited in the past, it’s even better. My husband always teases me that my love for mountains is sort of like a peripheral love. I love going to mountain resorts, driving along mountain roads, and staying in cities with a mountain backdrop, but I am not really into hiking and mountain climbing. Since he is a hiker, his definition of “love fo