firecracker firecracker boom boom boom

I'm back east for the semester doing an internship, and that means...I get to go to New York more often! Still five hours but no tiny airplane bathrooms and no jet lag! Last weekend was the Chinese New Year celebration in New York as you can see. These furry creatures invade restaurants looking for money to eat.

Try to touch the dragon head! (He's really not that fast but my phone camera sure makes it look that way.)

Marco Polo had his picture taken with mom and a dragon. (Up next, my Adventures of Marco Polo series!)

Then, off to visit Brooklyn. It was sunny but still cold...I'm a weather wimp now because I've been spoiled by California. But, hey, nothing beats New York! Marco was pooped though; just look at that face.

mmmm goooogle

Sure, everyone uses the search engine or gmail or whatever...but you don't understand how great Google is until you visit. My friend took me because he has an internship. These photos don't capture the atmosphere but, believe me, it's like an amusement park for adults where everything is free! (Though don't take anything from the gift store without paying; those t-shirts and toys aren't free.)

First stop: of course, it's one of the cafeterias! Google has 19 and the food is sooo good.

There's outdoor seating but this day was kind of misty.

And there are things to play with--slides to slide down, video games at the arcade, trails to run, bikes to ride, capuccino machines to fiddle with, bocci ball, volleyball. I ran out of batteries so this is where the story ends, but...

you know I had to take some snacks for later!

the trip that never ended

To mend a fried brain, take one day to goof off. However, don't spend Labor Day in San Francisco without a map, without GPS and a friend who is as clueless as you are when you really have no idea where you're going. You can guess how this ends... It started off okay. We walked from Caltrain to the wharf where we had garlic fries. The garlic wasn't cooked and burned a bit going down. But we were famished, so they were delicious! We walked up to Little Italy...though I don't know what they call Little Italy here.

Then we went through a tunnel. Dad says a tunnel from Chinatown takes you to Union Square. So I thought this must be the tunnel. How many tunnels can there be?!

Well, it was kind of scary to walk through such a dark tunnel so close to cars. You wouldn't walk through the Holland Tunnel! But I guess people here do this all the time because we weren't the only ones. Then, we walked out and saw this.

Yeah, it wasn't the right tunnel....

We ran into these, too. I don't know....It took us another couple hours to figure out where we were.