Europe and America Unite in New Orleans

Pictures by Laura Vaillard and Lucia Tissone (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

New Orleans is the place where the New World and the Old World meet, in a city that has no resemblance with any other American city: French-style town houses, musicians playing jazz in the city corners, and people drinking coffee at petit coffee bars.

At this city, African slaves, indigenous people and European colonizers shared their cultures and mutually influenced each other, motivated by the French government, until New Orleans became a peculiar city with unique history. From its foundation in 1718 until Napoleon sold it to the US in 1803, New Orleans remained a French-Spanish colony.

Between 1920 and 1870, New Orleans continued to welcome immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Croatia, Italy, Greece, the Phillipes, and Haiti, who continued adding diversity to the city.

During carnival and Mardi Gras, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, each afternoon people in New Orleans demonstrate the city's diversity and strong Creole heritage through the colorful carnival celebrations.

While during the night, Bourbon Street is covered by colorful beads that people throw from the balconies in exchange for a little fun: a dance, a smile, or a daring flash, depending on how adventurous you are that day.

Behind this energetic and crazy New Orleans, there are parts of the city that still display leftover damages from Hurricane Katrina; a sight that saddens the city's festive and jovial ambiance.

Nevertheless, the sounds of jazz that emerge from the city's main arteries are able to give back the happiness to tourists.


In one of the extremes of the French Quarter, at Jackson Plaza, you can find Café du Monde, where you can try the famous vignettes, typical of New Orleans.

Despite its name, the café was originally Spanish, and not French. Regardless of the place's popularity, the cleanliness and tidiness of the place lag behind (especially the kitchen, which you have to walk through on the way to the restroom). Nevertheless, the place is still ideal to rest and recharge batteries to continue to sightsee this beautiful city.

Mexican food is more than tacos and fajitas in Houston, Texas

Mexican food is more than tacos and fajitas, and Mexican Restaurant Hugo's in Houston, is an excellent place to experiment the diversity of Mexican cuisine.

Mexican chef, Hugo Ortega, is in charge of making sure that every dish at Hugo’s is as authentic in the United States as it would be in Mexico.

To begin the evening, I had spicy peanuts and empanadas made with plantain dough filled with cheese: the sweetness of the plantain invaded my mouth with each bite, and the cheese melted throughout my mouth preparing it for the next dish.

The menu offered a large variety of tempting dishes like: Tampiqueña BBQ meat, huachinango a la Veracruzana, duck with mole poblano, stuffed chilies, shrimps with black sauce, among others. I finally decided upon cochinita pibil, one of Mexico’s most typical pork dishes. The cochinita was so tender that I didn’t even have to bite it, since it melted as it touched my lips.

For dessert, I decided to venture myself with an interesting dish: chocolate cake with chilies. The strong taste of chocolate and the spicy chilies made an explosive combination: curiously, first you tasted the sweetness of the chocolate, while after a couple of minutes, you felt a spicy after-taste that enabled the taste to remain in your mouth for a long time.

After tasting the food at Hugo’s it is no wonder that the restaurant won several awards: Sante Award for the excellent traditional menu, "Houston Branch of The International Wine & Food Society Award", a mention as "Best Mexican Restaurant" according to Best of Houston-Host Press 2005, and an Award to the Restaurant of the Year in 2003 according to Houston Press.

For that reason, if you find yourself in Houston, stop by Hugo’s, it is a good option to escape the typical Tex-Mex food, and enjoy authentic Mexican food in a cozy and familiar atmosphere.

HUGO’S RESTAURANT
1600 Westheimer Houston, TX 77006
Phone: (713) 524-7744
Fax: (713) 521-7719

Working Hours:
Monday to Thursday and Sundays: 11 a.m. - 10 p.m.
Friday and Saturday: 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.

See Map

What better partners to visit NASA?

Written by Laura Vaillard with Carlos Crespo (Quito, Ecuador / Houston, TX, EEUU)
Pictures by Laura Vaillard and Nuria Minces (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

What better partners to visit NASA in Houston, than a guy who always dreamt to become an astronaut and a young lady who is not afraid to act out the girl she carries within?

Even though NASA was not far from where we were living, rockets and astronauts never interested me enough to motivate me to visit the Space Center.

However, due to my never-ending curiosity and my interest to see new things, these two individuals convinced me to drive up to NASA with them.

I did not expect much from the trip. Yet, I came back fascinated after seeing astronauts live from the Space Center and comparing models of how astronauts lived in space in the 70s versus how they live now in the XXI century.

I returned excited like a little girl, after balancing myself of a string and weighing myself in different scales that showed how much I would weigh if I were to live in Mars or Jupiter, instead of Planet Earth.

I was overwhelmed after looking at the size of Saturn V, and amazed after looking at pictures of the different mission crews, including Apolo XI, Mercury and Gemini.

It was a wonderful experience and I am very glad my friends made sure I did not miss it.
This time, Houston, we had no problem.

Eating Under the Sea at Houston’s Acquarium

Pictures by Giorgina Di Rocco

I loved eating under the sea while fish swam around your table.

Well, I confess I did not have lunch under the sea. However, the gigantic, 150,000 gallon fish tank in the center of Downtown Houston’s Acquarium Resaturant and the store’s decoration made me feel underwater.

The restaurant’s walls resemble coral rocks, the lamps on the roof are little fish that swim between the customers, the seat’s backsides are ondulating sea weeds and waiters are so polite they look like mermaids.

It is incredible to have lunch between sharks, shovel-nosed guitar fish, leopard rays, clown fish, color-changing fish, and flirty fish dressed in blue with large lips, so large they look like models right out of the surgery room.

I hade eaten in places with fish tanks before, but it was the first time I was a guest at a marine feast worthy of Ariel, the Little Mermaid.

I leave you the address in case you even want to enjoy a delicious meal as you explore the sea.

Downtown Aquarium Houston
410 Bagby
Houston, TX 77002
(713) 223-3474 (FISH)

Other cities where you can find Aquarium Restaurants

New York: More Romantic and Less Accelerated

I remembered New York as a noisy and fast-paced city, but when I arrived, I found a rather romantic city. Yet, since I was traveling by myself, I had to share Big Apple’s romanticism with myself.


In this occasion I chose to leave aside museums and stunning Broadway shows to enjoy New York in open air.


I strolled down Fifth Avenue while I window shopped in some of NY’s most famous shops, I entertained myself observing diverse and unique individuals, and relaxed walking across the SOHO, China Town, Little Italy and The Village.


At the SOHO and Little Italy I got inspired by paying attention to the decoration of all the petit restaurants and small stores that offered varied, fun, different and ordinary artifacts.


I got momentarily accelerated as I went through Wall Street, the world’s financial center, seeing how business people ran across the street to avoid loosing precious seconds of their valuable time.


I freed myself walking along the shore of the Hudson River while I watched how the tourists’ boats set sail towards the Statue of Liberty.


I was left gasping in the middle of Brooklyn Bridge, an architectonic wonder with an unmatchable view of New York City, where I ran into one of my graduate professors from Spain; a wonderful surprise worthy of my surrealistic life.


I enjoyed myself with ChinaTown’s baubles and got transported to some forgotten corner of Paris or Madrid as I walked down The Village; an area of low houses built very close together in an area of NY that was unknown to me until then.


In Central Park I fell in love with life as I admired trees painted with autumn and joyful skirls that jumped from one tree branch to the other.


It was a short, but incredible trip. It lacked museums, culture and extravaganza, but it was filled with the beauty of simplicity.


It was the trip where I discovered it is possible to enjoy romance without company.

Cómo llegar desde DC:
http://www.vamoosebus.com/
Bus diario de NY a DC y viceversa

Gorgeous Arlington Cemetery Cannot Disguise Horrid Effects of War

I prefer peace over war, and funny movies over scary ones. For that reason I was unsure if I wanted to visit the Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC, USA, where they burry all those who represented the United States in some war, or served the American army, naval, and/or air forces; there are currently 290,000 veterans along with their family members buried along the cemetery’s 107 hectares of land.

Despite my low desire to visit the cemetery, the outing was amazing: from afar, the headstones resembled white flowers over an perfectly trimmed grass carpet, and the Arlington House shone as the sun hid behind the hill where the Kennedy family is buried.

As if this wasn’t enough, we had the opportunity to witness the change of guard in front of The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; a rigid and meticulous ceremony so structured that it gave goose bumps to its spectators.

While I observed the soldiers’ synchronized movements I imagined the precision needed to undertake military maneuvers and tactics successfully, and I turned uncomfortable watching how these boys slowly became less and less human.

Now I ask myself, do soldiers need to dehumanize themselves to avoid suffering from the psychological effects that war causes people, or are they only acting this way for the ceremony?

I am not sure, but watching this robotic ceremony and the large number of victims buried in this place (approximately 24 people are buried daily), helped accentuate my feeling of rejection towards war.

The cemetery’s park is gorgeous, but it is not beatiful enough to disguise the horrid result of war.

How to get there:
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington VA 22211
Estación de metro: Arlington Cementery
Teléfono: (703) 607-8000http://arlingtoncemetery.org/

Oil Platforms Unable to Erase Peace from Corpus Christi, Texas

I am a mountain girl because my body claims the vaiven of Avila´s trails (Caracas, Venezuela) and my retinas miss the mountainous horizons.

However, I haven’t been able to find refuge in the mountains lately, instead, my destiny has frequently placed me in places where I get lost in the serenity of beaches platinated by the falling sun; a novel feeling of tranquility that I am beginning to enjoy more and more every day.

Last weekend I found peace in Corpus Christi, a place in the South of Texas, USA that I had heard about many times but I hadn’t had the time to visit.

We got to Corpus around midday, and we headed straight to the beach to absorb the last summer’s sunrays (a wise decision considering Monday started with 52°F).

Since the season was almost over, the beach was practically deserted; we only shared to beach with about a dozen people, a group of seagulls, and an oil platform that looked strange in the horizon but was unable to remove me from that tranquil scenery.

I was tired and stressed… exhausted… my body was overworked and my mind was on fast-forward. I needed the sea breeze to oxygenate my thoughts and the pacifying and constant sound of sea waves to soothe me down.

Corpus might not be the glorious white-sanded/turquoise water beaches that we see in postcards from the Caribbean, but it is the closest “paradise” to Houston, a fabulous cosmopolitan city where traffic stills your life away.

Welcome to Houston where LARGE is the Standard Size

Everything in Houston, Texas seems to confirm its State´s slogan: “Everything is big in Texas”.


Compared to Buenos Aires where gourmet meals are in fashion (characterized by adorned reduced portions served in excessively large plates), in Houston, the plates conserve the large size, yet each portion can easily satisfy two hungry customers.

After seeing such succulent portions, it is not surprising to hear that Houston was considered the “fattest city” in the United States from three consecutive years until 2004.

Nevertheless, in this city chefs do not sacrifice quality for quantity, for that reason tourists and locals can easily enjoy varied cuisine in one of the 8,000 food facilities in Houston.

Little by little, I will share with you my experiences in this city. But right now it is dinner time; exploration time.

Bon appetite!

Two Romes on the Mirror: Twin Cities

A couple of years ago I got permission to use my scholarship in a study abroad program in Rome, Italy.

I was excited about the opportunity of visiting my relative's land for the first time, about having the opportunity to come in direct contact with this distant culture that was also my culture, about meeting my far relatives, about traveling, about growing, about everything...

At the same time, I new that since I was only going to be in Rome for a semester, I wanted to internalize and absorb everything as fast as I could: I wanted to learn about the culture, compare “Italian” food in Italy with the one I eat in the new continent, see how Italians lived, how they studied, what it was like to work in Rome…

For that reason, I was eager to find a job in Rome through the Internet. After sending many e-mails, CVs and applications, I got an e-mail from a History Museum that was looking for a communications intern in Rome. It seemed like the perfect opportunity: I was going to be able to practice Italian (very basic at that time), I was going to learn a lot of history about the country, and I was going to gain experience in my field.

A month before flying to Rome, I wrote to the Museum’s managers asking them if they could help me find accommodations in Italy. They cordially responded something like: Unfortunately, we cannot help you find a place in Italy because we are located in Rome, Georgia, United States.

Those few words were enough to kill my perfect plan of having a full immersion into Italian culture. However, they were not enough to attenuate my excitement f traveling to the old continent.

From now on, whenever you are searching for a city in Internet, you should double check to make sure it concerns the desire city, otherwise you might be looking at the unreal reflection of a name that counts twice.


Places on a Mirror (includes cities and states):

• Ennis, Irelanda vs. Ennis, Texas, USA
• San Francisco, California, USA vs. San Francisco, Cordoba, Argentina
• Valparaiso, Zacatecas, Mexico vs. Valparaiso, Chile
• Oran, Salta, Argentina vs. Oran, Algeria
• Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico vs. Guadalajara, Castilla - La Macha, Spain
• Medellin, Antioquia, Colombia vs. Medellin, Veracruz, Mexico
• Valencia, Spain vs. Valencia, Venezuela
• Bolívar, Venezuela vs. Bolívar, Colombia
• Ayacucho, Perú vs. Ayacucho, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Armenia, Quindio, Colombia vs. Armenia (country)
• Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico vs. Monterrey, California, USA
• San Rafael, Mendoza, Argentina vs. San Rafael, California, USA
• Aguas Calientes, Mexico vs. Aguas Calientes, Peru
• Santa Rosa, La Pampa, Argentina vs. Santa Rosa, California, USA
• San Jose, Costa Rica vs. San Jose, California, USA
• Santa Barbara, California, EEUU vs. Santa Barbara, Antioquia, Colombia
• Krakow, Poland vs. Krakow, Wisconsin, USA

Trios:

• Cordoba, Spain vs. Cordoba, Argentina vs. Cordoba, Mexico
• Merida, Spain vs. Merida, Venezuela vs. Merida, Mexico
• Paris, France vs. Paris, Texas, USA vs. Paris, Tennessee
• Trujillo, Venezuela vs. Trujillo, Spain vs. Trujillo, Peru
• Sucre, Perú vs. Sucre, Venezuela vs. Sucre, Bolivia
• Athens, Greece vs. Athens, Ohio, EEUU vs. Athens, Texas, USA

Multiple:

• Humboldt, Germany vs. Humboldt, Santa Fe, Argentina vs. Humboldt, California, USA vs. Humboldt, Nevada, USA
• Providence, Rhode Island, USA vs. Providence, Colombia vs. Providence, Chile vs. Providence, Santa Fe, Argentina
• Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina vs. Rosario, Sinaloa, México vs. Rosario, Chihuahua, Mexico vs. Rosario, Filipinas vs. Rosario, Uruguay

Learning to Tango like Tom & Jerry in Fort Worth, TX

I learned to tango like Tom&Jerry, following dotted lines and shapes of feet that danced on the TV screen following the tango rhythm.

I would have preferred to learn to dance through a different method. But unfortunately, the chubby and badly dressed woman from one of those “teach yourself” videos, was the only one available to teach us in an old house in Fort Worth, Texas, the capital of country music.

Neither the place, nor the teachers were ideal to learn to tango. But I had no way out. My friends wanted me to represent Argentina by dancing tango at the 2005 International Banquet at Texas Christian University.

My Colombian friend Mauricio Oliveros and me, put a lot of effort and dedication, to learn how to do the “ochos” and the turns. We practiced over and over again, playing the videos in slow motion so we could take a good look at each move. After a couple of weeks, we had “learned” to tango, or so we thought, and we presented our show at the Banquet.

Our public, with little knowledge about tango, warmly applauded the show and our effort. Even though at that moment I was satisfied because I had shared a little of my culture with the audience, I also knew I had indebted myself with my roots: at some point I needed to learn how to really tango.

Consequently, when I reached Buenos Aires, I signed up at the first milonga I heard about; it was my opportunity to pay off my debt and corroborate how much I had actually learned from those videos.

With a different partner, but the same enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, I put on my dancing shoes and went to La Viruta at the Club Armenio located in Palermo. When we arrived, the place appeared to be empty, but as soon as we heard the first harmony of a tango, the dancers took hold of the floor.

There were so many people on the dancing floor that it was difficult to dance more than three seconds without bumping into someone. On top of that, as beginners we were too busy looking at our feet to pay attention to the other dancers.

We were like wheel-less bumping cars lost in a fun and chaotic, yet tolerant place.

After dancing for about two hours, I think I made the first payment to settle my debt. Although I will need to take many more classes to be able to settle my debt completely. But at the same time I must admit the “teach yourself” videos gave me a strong base that will enable me to learn quickly.

Additional information: Where to tango in Argentina