No Martini - No Party

Believe it or not, 3 weeks have passed already since I arrived to the land of the free and the brave!

The weather is really crazy here and it is now that I appreciate the advise of several websites I looked at before coming here that unanimously advise to always be dressed in layers. Layers are key! The temperature can easily go up and down 10 degrees during the day and if you add wind variations to it, there are no limits on how extreme things can get. Most of the last two weeks were freezing cold, but in the last 4 days or so we saw some really great sunny days with about 20°C. Today is raining though...... and probably tomorrow it will too.

Every morning walking to work I'm on a lookout for something exciting - Wall street is one of the favorite spots of various film and news crews and there are plenty of chances to happen to be on TV. Last week though I nearly choked on my muffin when I saw a big headless and bloody body of a street vendor laying on the pavement surrounded by the paramedics. Looked very real. Turned out it was a scene for some show... there was another actor nearby touching up his makeup :)

On Thursday we went out with my new colleagues for a drink to a bar called "Ulysses" which specializes in different sorts of beer. Of course I had to order Lindemans, haha, safe bet.

And speaking of all things Belgian - there is a monument at the word trade center that definitely reminded me of masterpieces we see on the streets of Brussels :-)

From 35 Hudson

Yesterday, after a week of very exotic, colorful and extravagant (for Brussels) food I decided to go and have a down-to-earth pizza in the evening. Despite my thinking that this would be a familiar territory, I discovered that ordering a "martini" as an aperitif here means something entirely different. I was brought a big glass of vodka with olives and when I confirmed that I would not be able to drink that they brought a glass of vermouth with lemon, which still was not the same thing as what we know as martini in Europe.

I just had an epiphany - I should have referred to the below to better explain what I wanted :-)))

In general, lunches at Wall street are really great and as you can see below, there are also excellent places for wired Wall-streeters to take a quick nap and get back in touch with mother Earth :)

From NY Diaries

There are a lot of places downtown that are not really obvious, but it is actually a nice area to go out and have dinner or a drink, and there are also such places as Duane Reade (a big drug and convenience store) that take care of our every need:

From NY Diaries

:))) saw this on my way home tonight and had to take a photo

And by the way, for all the avid Gossip Girl followers out there, did you know that Chace Crawford, who stars as Nate Archibald in the show, lives just around the corner from my office in this building: http://www.dwell95.com?? How cool is that?

Olfa!!! I think you should come over here and get an autograph!!!

The last bit of info related to celebrities is the proximity of the downtown helipad (I actually could not understand before the nature of the humming noise we hear in the office all the time) which is apparently used by Obama when he comes to the city.

Wishing a great weekend to everyone!

Stand by for more NY notes :)

xoxo