Tag Archives: Market

New York

Home for the Holiday

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Shana tova! Happy New Year!

I was more than delighted to leave New York City this past weekend and spend Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, at home in Rochester with my family. My brother is a sophomore in college who flew home for the holiday and my sister is a grad student in Rochester, so she was already home. The three of us overlapped in my parents’ house for all of 24 hours over the summer and I was almost childishly excited to be together again.

My grandparents drove from Montreal and Toronto to be with us, as well. I know that I am very lucky to have all of my grandparents and that they are all healthy and able to drive long distances. Without traffic (almost a certainty at Customs) Rochester is five hours from Montreal and three from Toronto, so it’s a significant amount of travel time. I am so grateful to be able to be with my family at any time, but especially at the start of the new year. So far, this is absolutely the best part of returning to the US.

Rosh Hashanah started Sunday night and I arrived Saturday morning, which meant I had time to do a few Rochester-related activities before contributing to the Rosh Hashanah cooking that my mum had been working on all week. I ended up making two cakes, stuffed vegetables, and doing a variety of prep for other dishes. Before getting involved in holiday preparations, however, we had time for a trip to my favorite local place, the Rochester Public Market.

There are a number of farmers’ markets in various Rochester suburbs, but the downtown public market is the largest and definitely the best, both for quality of produce and variety of options. It’s open year-round Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays with an increasing number of vendors as we get closer to the weekend. When I lived in the Park Ave neighborhood after college I went to the market every Saturday morning to buy my produce before heading to our local grocery chain, Wegmans (which I dearly miss!), for the rest. I knew which vendors would have what I wanted and where they were located, who would sell half baskets for half the price, and who sold parsley leaves in little bags instead of large bunches. Some vendors have changed in the last few years, but the market is still my favorite Rochester place.

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Market shoppers! There’s more diversity here than any other place in the city. (Note: Statement based on personal experience, not empirical evidence.)

My parents picked me up at the airport on Saturday and we headed straight for Juan and Maria’s Empanada Stop for a late breakfast. I meant to get a picture but I was too distracted with my empanada and fried plantains. Next time!

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This is NOT Juan and Maria’s. Juan and Maria’s has a cult following complete with bumper stickers, but this place also looks tasty.

And then it was time to buy vegetables, fruits, and pumpkins fresh from the farmers at ridiculously low prices:

 

In addition to produce, there are meat and cheese stands, local wine vendors, family bakeries, flower stalls, and several craft beverage specialists:

 

Part of the market is reserved for small household goods and occasionally clothing stands:

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Afer completing Mum’s shopping list and heading back to the car, we passed Duke’s Donuts. I’m not a huge fan of sweets but they have apple cider and that’s a very good thing:

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Great place to spend an hour, even if you just look around. There’s lots to see, free samples at many stands (my favorites are cheese and wine), and excellent people watching. Planning a trip to Rochester (at a time when I happen to be home)? Let me know when you’re visiting and I’ll wander around with you!

As good as the public market is, however, it doesn’t top being with my family. I have yet to find anything better than that.

 

Travel Guide

Travel Guide: Philadelphia, PA

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In all my travel blogging, this is only the second blog post about the US! I’ve been other places, really.

Last week my parents and I turned a wedding in New Jersey into a short vacation that included three days in the City of Brotherly Love. My dad has been there a number of times for conferences, but neither my mum nor I had ever visited. We loved the architecture we saw, the history we learned, and the food we ate.

Philadelphia looks like this:

 

Anyone who has ever studied American history knows that many discussions about the formation of the US took place here. We visited Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed . . .

 

. . . Congress Hall where the first US Congresses met, way back when Congress actually did anything . . .

 

. . . and the Liberty Bell, so named because it has been the symbol of liberty for various groups working for freedom and justice in this country. . . .

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We spent a while in the National Museum of American Jewish History, too. I particularly liked the section on Judaism in colonial America because that’s what I know the least about. My knowledge of modern Jewish history is much better. As a result, I wasn’t as captivated by the museum’s exhibits as someone new to the topic might be. The museum was really well done, and I’d recommend a visit.

For a dose of local life and fresh vegetables, we visited Reading Terminal Market on three separate occasions, which I absolutely loved:

 

Philadelphia is also home to Eastern State Penitentiary, which struck me as ironic considering the love infused in so much of Philadelphia’s portrayal of itself. There is a dark side to everything human, a side that reminds us that there is more than one story. Through audio testimony, we learned how prison design and the purpose of prison in the US has changed over time. The exhibits also asked visitors to consider important questions about the prison system today, like whether prison is rehabilitative, whether it is objective, and whether punishments truly fit crimes. That was the most important section for me because it put visitors in uncomfortable positions and asked them to think about humans rather than numbers.

 

We also spent a good deal of time at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has multiple buildings with a wide variety of exhibits. Tickets are good for the day of purchase and the following day, so we took advantage of that. That’s where the Rocky statue and steps are, too. Yes, I ran up the steps and I’m pretty sure my mum took a video as proof.

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Everything I’ve heard about food in Philadelphia turned out to be true. We enjoyed the following:

Breakfast: Pearl’s Oyster Bar and Dutch Eating Place, both at Reading Terminal Market and both delicious
Lunch: Lucha Cartel and OCF Coffee House
Dinner: Vedge, Zahav, and Abe Fisher
Coffee: La Colombe Coffee Roasters

The DNC is taking over now and that’s pretty cool, too!

 

As an added bonus, I got to meet up with my friend Lauren from Singapore! That was the icing on the cake, really.

If you have a couple days, I’d recommend a visit. After all, what’s not to love about a city with a sense of humor?

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Travel Guide

Travel Guide: Colombo

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This is the first of three blog posts that illustrate the week Mitch and I spent in Sri Lanka. You can see the posts for Kandy and Galle here and here, respectively.

Mitch and I met up in Sri Lanka for the week I had off for spring break. Going to Sri Lanka had been in the back of our minds since we met two Sinhalese Sri Lankans at the guesthouse we all stayed at in Langkawi, which was my and Mitch’s first travel experience in Malaysia. When I was in the States back in December Mitch and I spent a considerable amount of time evaluating travel options for this week. We considered a variety of places – Japan, Korea, Nepal, Kenya, Iceland, Latvia – before settling on Sri Lanka because it was relatively halfway (4 hours for me and 20 hours for Mitch, which was better than 17 hours for each of us) and quite affordable (the entire week ultimately cost only $300 more than flights to Kenya). And, of course, we have friends in Sri Lanka. Who we met in Malaysia. Which I just think is so damn cool.

One of these friends in particular, Janitha, was instrumental in helping us plan what we were going to do for the week. He also made sure we were able to work around the Sinhalese and Tamil New Year, which fell during our travels. We had a useful guidebook, Rough Guides, but having a friend is even better.

My flight landed in Colombo a few hours before Mitch’s, so I had some time to explore on my own.

I didn’t go inside the temple (rare for me, I know) but enjoyed looking at it as I walked around the lake.
This cracked me up, but should have warned me about Sri Lanka’s attitude towards women.

The highlight of Colombo was meeting up with Janitha and Jayamin for drinks and dinner (yes, in that order). They took us to a bar at the Old Dutch Hospital (exactly what it sounds like) and then to a restaurant where Jayamin ordered me a plate of cheese kotthu, which, though considered standard local fare, was everything drunk food should always be.

The next day, Mitch and I took our first Sri Lankan tuk tuk ride. Tuk tuks were the easiest and most accessible mode of transport everywhere we went. Janitha told us about a very useful app, Pick Me, to hail tuk tuks in Colombo. It’s basically Uber for tuk tuks and worked really well!

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We couldn’t help but notice this “water bottle” in our tuk tuk . . . based on his driving, its contents are questionable.

We wandered through the colonial district to take a look at some of the buildings left over from the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonization periods:

By far my favorite part of Colombo was our visit to the Pettah, Colombo’s bazaar district. I’ve been to markets literally all over the world and felt so out of my element here! It was big and loud and crowded, divided as it would have been when guilds were in power, and totally overwhelming. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I would not have been comfortable attempting to haggle over any purchase. I haven’t had a problem doing that anywhere I’ve been in the past, but this felt very different to me, perhaps because of the sheer numbers of scams and general harassment we had encountered by that point (more on that below).

The Pettah district is also home to a stunning mosque:

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We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Independence Arcade (used to be the Colombo Asylum and is now a pretty spiffy mall) and Viharamahadevi Park. I particularly liked that bike rentals were available!

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At the end of the day, we watched the sun set from the rooftop of our hotel and enjoyed espresso martinis. Coffee time had passed and we both wanted the caffeine, so we improvised. It worked.

Later that evening, we headed to Galle Face Green to have dinner at a different hotel located by the shore of the Indian Ocean. We could hear and smell the sea and I felt completely at peace. The ocean has always been my happy place.

As this is a travel post, I’m going to close with a note of caution:

Sri Lanka is the only place I’ve been where I wouldn’t have felt comfortable alone. However, even being with a buddy (in this case, a pretty tall guy) didn’t diminish the amount of harassment we experienced everywhere we went. The Pick Me app likely saved us from extortion, just based on how much regular tuk tuk drivers suggested for a rate. The location of one of our guesthouses had disappeared so we had to find a new one. Boys and men hurled dirty comments in broad daylight, regardless of whether I was alone or with Mitch. It was the sexual harassment and its various forms that surprised me the most. I’d definitely still advocate a visit, but I’d also suggest getting out of Colombo as soon as possible. We much preferred Kandy and the hills and simply loved Galle. Click on the links to read about them!