travel – Page 18 – broom's blog

回京见闻之四川办

跟一帮朋友去吃四川办。上学的时候老听说新疆办巴州办，貌似也都去吃了。川办应该是听过但是还真没去过。这次一去才发现就在建国门附近，住在旁边一年多都不知道……

菜做得还挺好吧，据在座两位四川人鉴定勉强可以算正宗，就是普遍偏咸。这不是本文的重点。

席间我们打算点一盘叶儿耙。一个看起来很敦厚的小姑娘服务员问“是不是要甜的”，全桌的人一起说“要咸的”。过了一会儿上了一盘，六个，三个人夹起来一尝。得，甜的。。

这事儿也没啥，也就是小姑娘糊涂点儿。我们就叫服务员过来说换了吧。旁边一个小男生服务员也过来了，两个人都表示很为难，厨房不给换什么的。到这儿已经有点2了。我们表示我们那么明确的告诉你是咸的了还搞错，凭什么不换。这时候他们居然提出我们已经吃了三个，于是最多只能换剩下的三个……而且他们还是表示不确定能不能换。

事情就此陷入僵局。两个小服务员私下嘀咕了一会儿，啥也不说就出去了……我们都愣了，也不知道这是怎么个意思。于是继续吃等人来再问。然后就有人说现在这个服务员是很难招，她们单位门口的饭店服务员都换了好几茬了，一茬比一茬差，现在这茬已经到了有点呆呆傻傻的程度了，让她怀疑是不是都是饭店给这些人下药了让他们来做服务员……

过了一会儿经理来了，居然还说不好换厨房不给换，这真nm是个厨房统治下的饭馆！然后又说我们已经把甜的吃到只剩一个了，于是只能换一个!@#$ 我们当时就很无语，说你换一个吧那就，你做得出来就行。

过了20来分钟还真上来了，明显现蒸的，一个大盘子里面孤零零一个叶儿耙。。之前剩下那个甜的他们也不拿走，到最后也没人吃就扔在那儿。

We went to “Broadway on Broadway” free concert last weekend. It was a public show in Time Square, right at the cross of 46 St and Broadway. The performers are all from broadway musicals, basically one song for each show. There are more than 10 songs this year.

We arrived there 10 minutes before the show started. It was quite crowded already, and we could only stand by the TKTS glass stairs. From that place we could barely see the stage, but had to watch LCD screens all around us. The streets and audience area got much much more crowded after the show officially began, because so many passengers and tourists stopped for it. This is how it looks

The TKTS stairs are actually a good spot to watch the show. But at first it is only open to some people. I guess they were members or bought some ticket. After the show started for about 10 minutes, the staff began to let other people in because there was still lots of space on those stairs and probably no one will buy ticket anymore. We were pretty lucky and got 2 seats :)

The show was very nice. It’s not an anytime opportunity to take a peek of lots of famous musicals on the stage. Though most performers are not wearing the costume, and the stage was not specially designed, it’s still a quite different experience to watch them there than on YouTube. I mean, much better. It’s a smart advertising way.

One of the most impressive shows that day for me was “MoTown”. It’s about to hit the stage in NYC in 2013 spring, so now it’s just a preview. The black girl singers and dancers were so energetic and vivid. It’s not easy to stay immune to their radiant performance, if possible. “Once” and “Spiderman” seem targeting teenagers. The female singer of “Scandalous” has an amazing voice. “Mamma Mia” and “Chicago” are 2 shows I watched, which I still recommend.

吃热狗大赛及其他

周三独立日放假一天，去Coney Island看了有名的美国吃热狗大赛。这比赛从小就听说，现在才发现就在离家一小时地铁的地方。也不用买票，比赛就在一个比较宽阔的路口搭的台子上，下了地铁循着声音过去就是。到了那儿我拍了张照想上传，然后就发现instagram上有张几乎一样的照片。四处看了看，在左边两米的地方发现师弟一位。。

这比赛在美国相当受欢迎。现场观众怎么也有几千人，ESPN还有转播。同事扯淡的时候张口就说出了这比赛纪录保持者的名字，就好像提到的是乔丹这样的体育明星一样。我觉得可能是因为这比赛够平民够无脑，虽然据说ESPN的解说还会煞有介事的分析参赛选手的技术要领。

今年男女夺冠的都是蝉联冠军，悬念不大。比赛是十分钟，男的冠军吃了68个热狗，女的吃了45个。基本上前五分钟还有人能勉强跟上他们，后五分钟差距就拉开了。这些人吃的时候还是有些小技巧的，有些人是沾湿了吃，有些是捏碎了吃，还有些人会小跳貌似要把东西颠下去。大部分选手的吃相是很努力甚至有点痛苦的，尤其是吃68个的奇人Chestnut。有点意外的是这个决赛的选手几乎没有很胖的，前几名都很苗条。难以想象那么多热狗是怎么装进去的。

这个比赛是Nathan’s Famous办的，结束之后立刻就有无数人去买这个店的热狗吃。我们在附近惊奇的发现一家Grimaldi’s，就是Brooklyn很有名的那个pizza。吃了一下之后不得不说和桥下那家总店味道差距很明显。

Breakneck Ridge, Again

Went to Breakneck Ridge to hike again this Saturday with lots of friends (7 people in total). It’s almost an exact replicate of my one-man hike 1.5 years ago: Breakneck Ridge loop => Little Stony Point => Cold Spring. The difference is we took a smaller loop this time, and had some drinks in Cold Spring.

The fun part of Breakneck Ridge is at the beginning. The first 0.5~1 hours, depending on how fast you hike, can be pretty challenging for people who don’t hike often. After that there are many trail choices, and you can plan a loop of almost any length. This time the 7 of us split to 3 groups: riki couple was really fast and went ahead a lot; Jack/Sharon/Xiang took photos and fell in the middle; xw and I were really slow and took the shortest possible loop…

Little Stony Point park has small beaches. It’s warmer this time so we hang out there for a while. Most of my photos on Instagram of this trip were from here.

The whole team rendezvoused at a French restaurant in Cold Spring. It’s an interesting feeling to walk into this beautiful town after 1.5 years. I saw those nice buildings, yards, bench by the river which had been so clear in my memory stayed exactly the same, only the season changed. Such a quite and timeless town.

It was actually my dream to revisit all these beautiful places I had been in US with xw again. Breakneck Ridge and Cold Spring are the first step!

Brooklyn Boulders

新浪微博上有个很红的萌妹子教英语的videocast，叫OMG美语。。前天看到新出了一集是纽约的室内攀岩馆，觉得挺有意思于是今天就去了。以前从来没攀过，嗯，尝试一下。

交通很方便，坐到Brooklyn的一个大站然后走走就到。外面看静悄悄一个小门，推开进去就发现里面还真是热火朝天，当然也伴随着扑鼻的汗味就是了，哈哈，还好过一会儿就习惯了。交了50块钱，是一次初学的课程和租攀岩鞋。教我的是一个叫Tommy的光头大叔。他先让我自己爬了一条很简单的道，然后他给我讲了一些要领，再在他的指点之下攀果然容易了很多。

以前一直觉得攀岩好像挺容易的，这次学了一下才知道布满墙壁的那些突起不是随便用的，爬一条道就只能使用这条道标记的那些突起，突起下面的彩色贴纸就是标记各条道的。每条道都有难度级别，数字越大难度越高，初学都是从0-,0,0+开始的。周末在馆里玩的人不少，水平各种各样的都有，分布比较均匀。还有一些小孩子在乱爬着玩，很cute。亚洲人不少，好像也听到了几个人讲中文。这地方玩的有两种，比较高的那种要用绳索，叫ropes，比较矮的这种不用绳，叫boulders。玩boulders的时候下面都是软垫，失败的时候直接掉下来就行，一点也不痛。只要注意不攀的时候离墙远一些不要被掉下来的人砸到。

攀岩虽然好玩，但是我现在体力太弱了。。也可能是因为刚开始学不得要领，所以体力消耗太快。基本上攀了一小会儿手上的力量就不足了。。半个下午我基本上都在尝试另外一条0-的道，但是一直没成功，囧。倒是也算有点进步，慢慢的可以攀到还差一步的地方，但是一直没能完成最后一下。手上抓不住就越试越困难，我觉得如果体力充沛的话应该肯定可以搞定这条道了。

可惜下周就要回国了。以后有机会要再来玩这个！