Just before leaving, I celebrated my birthday with a bunch of friends, and one of them couldn’t stop laughing at the idea of us spending time in Nantucket. Why is that? Apparently, limericks (a poetic form I didn’t know about) are made about Nantucket. And there are hilarious There once was a man from Nantucket (Whose dick was so long he could suck it is one of my best line to come after). Okay, it’s completely rude and childish but it made my day biking and sweating on the sand.

I also have to tell you about Newport, Rhode Island where we were the weekend before. If you have other ideas to continue the first line of the limerick, leave a comment below!

Last weekend, we spent two days in Rhode Island, the smallest states in the US.  We arrived in Providence Friday night and it was pouring – some rest of a tropical storm. Fortunately, the day after, the sun was high in the sky and we walked around in 3 neighborhood of the city:

• Federal Hill - it used to be super chic, then super dangerous and now it’s becoming hype.
• College Hill - where there’s Brown University,
• Downtown.

It’s the capitale of the State but it’s still a really easy city to walk by. We enjoy the Waterfire, a show on the canals at night.

Brown University

Downtown Providence

Waterfire

Federal Hill

Food

The translation of this post is coming soon! and the next article will be about the day after Providence, when we were in Newport, Rhode Island. I won’t post it right away cause tomorrow is my biiiiiiirthday and I’ll be out of town for a few days. See you soon!

When I think “week end in New England”, Vermont’s countryside (and cheese), Maine’s lobster or Cape Cod’s beach come  in mind first. And what about New Hampshire?  We spent Memorial Day weekend over there. What stroke me first when I came there was the “Live Free or Die” motto written everywhere. Claiming freedom is THE biggest deal in the US, and New Hampshire is really proud of it. Some examples though are a bit surprising: no helmets for bikers, no seat belt for car passengers, and no taxes on a lot of products. But anyway, what I’ll remember from this weekend won’t be about freedom, but mostly about wilderness: country, lakes, mountains, ocean, they are all in New Hampshire.

The video of our 3 day trip

Musics : Daft Punk / The Whitest Boy Alive  / Cocoon.
You can watch all the videos on the blog, and on Youtube ! 

And that’s the big loop we did:

Portsmouth and the Atlantic coast

The road along the ocean is narrow, and I’ve got the impression to be surrounded by water: the ocean on one side, and salt meadows on the other side of the road. On top of it, it was raining. We didn’t stay long though, since the coast is only 18 mile long, which makes it the smallest coast in the US.

Portsmouth is a really charming city. It’s small, but downtown is bustling with cafés and restaurants, the harbor is still on, and there’s a whole neighborhood with historic houses. We stayed for a couple of hours at the Strawbery Banke museum: it’s an old neighborhood preserved from destruction in the 70′s. It’s now possible to go inside each of the houses, to wander in the nice yards full of flowers. A bunch of costumed people tell stories about the past.  It’s kind of eccentric, but I really enjoyed it. The name of the museum comes from the original name of Portsmouth. So cute!

Lakes region

In the center of New Hampshire, there’s a huge lake, the Winnipesaukee, which means “Smile of the Great Spirit”. But it’s not the only one, there’s almost a dozen of lakes. On the edges, we saw small coves, boats and cabins. With this sad weather, the feeling around this area was mostly… mysterious. It seems though that it’s pretty bustling during summer, with rustic stuff to do, like fishing and canoeing. We saw really nice villages over there, with tons of American flags, even more than usual – Memorial Day style I guess.

Close to the Winnipesaukee, there’s Squam Lake, where the movie On Golden Pond (the French name is: The House on the Lake if you ever interested) with Jane and Henry Fonda was shot. 

New Hampshire humor: Fish Free or Die.

White Mountains

It was our third time in these mountains, we went skiing this winter, and last summer, we spent one day in the spectacular Flume Gorge. I’ve booked a few weeks ago two tickets for a cog railway to go at the top of Mount Washington, the highest point (2,000 meters, 6,288 ft – it’s definitely more impressive with the feet). It was really touristy, but I wasn’t really up to hike this mount: it has the reputation to be one of the hardest mountain to climb, not because it’s high, but because the weather is terrible and hard to predict. And this weekend, it snowed on top of the mount. So we found a shelter at the museum, where we learned everything about flowers and animals living there. But well, since the weather is awful, there’s not a lot of life up there.

We found this awesome BnB on AirBnb. Gorgeous view over the Presidential Range, home made breakfast with bacon and pancakes, and at night, fireplace, and sauna. We’ll go back! 

Dartmouth College

We spent the last day on the countryside. The first stop was actually at a yard sale where we found a super rocking chair – saying that reminds me that I’m almost 30. We drove really slowly this morning, there was a parade on each village we crossed. It smelled barbecues.
In Hanover, we walked around the famous Dartmouth College campus (I say “famous” but actually I didn’t know anything about it before going there). High quality campus: red bricks building, cute white bell tower, large green where students do nothing. I wonder how it would be to live there during winter. I guess you just have to study.

Small villages in the south

Once again, we had the pleasure to admire true postcards of New England (maybe because we don’t go to ugly places): villages, white bell tower, mill along the rivers and of course, covered bridges. We need to go back for the fall foliage!

Cutest police station ever.

See you soon for new adventures! We are going to Rhode Island for the first time this weekend. Follow us  on Facebook – le blog de Mathilde – and on Instagram @mathildepit.

Why go to a running club? And more important: why come back? These are the metaphysical questions I’m asking to myself on Wednesdays. It all started with a nice conversation with a friend one night, and then it shifted to an annoying one a few days after: “So, have you found your running club?”. After a while of avoiding his questions that remind me my laziness, I gave up, and I started going to a running club.  To explain what it is in short: a running club is a group of people gathering to run together. I picked a particular club because it was organized by a brand of yoga clothes – I thought they would give me a free top to congratulate me at the end of class (I was wrong). It’s now been one month that each Wednesday night I sweat gallons of water (i.e. 3,785 liters). At first, it wasn’t a big success, but slowly I’m liking it.

First time: warm up.

I’m early to the meeting, so I go upstairs in the yoga clothes boutique. There are already 15 people, between 25-40 years old. Some have shirts showing the half-marathon they’ve just run – and even some shirts from the Boston marathon. My friend Trish is with me; she motivated me despite the rain, which apparently isn’t excuse enough to avoid running.
I tried to look as if I were perfectly at ease in my pink sneakers. I’ve been running on and off for the last year. At least the last time I’ve run wasn’t in middle school. That’s what I say to myself to feel confident.
There are actually two groups tonight: the running group, and the bootcamp one. I go with the runners. We start with a short and slow run to get to the public garden, and then we do loops around it. Trish seems perfectly okay – she runs 5 times a week, at least 7 miles each time. We chat, I’m already reddish (only the face, my neck stays strangely white), but soon I’m physically unable to keep talking.  Once we get to the park, 3 things strike me:

• The park has hills.
• The group runs fast.
• I’m already exhausted.

After one and a half loops, the group is far ahead and I can’t reach them. Just below one of the hills (the worst one), I give up. Perfect excuse: Trish is in a rush, she’s supposed to go to a dinner and as a good friend, I’ll go back with her to the shop. We jog back slowly. I’m safe. But I feel that I failed this first attempt.

Second time: Bootcamp!

Tonight, I’ve decided to do the bootcamp; it seems more doable than running like a crazy around the park. Peter will train us tonight: he’s a short and strong guy who speaks with a loud voice and makes a lot of sounds with his mouth (like a steam train). The word bootcamp is scary: I imagined soldiers rolling in mud, but at the same time, I’m excited to start.

I met some nice people at the running club.

After running 10 minutes to get to the park, Peter explained the night’s theme: “Run hills repeat”:

• we run full speed on a hill
• we go back down really slowly to recover
• we start again
• at the end of a set, we do some classical workouts – dips, abs, push-ups, etc.

I don’t know what happened to me; I probably stopped thinking, but I liked it. The coach was motivating, and the group was motivating too. From the beginning I was completely into it. I liked bootcamp. The coach didn’t say stuff like “Retard! You won’t get anywhere” but things like “You’re rock stars”, “You’ll look great in your bathing suits this summer”, “Keep going, you’re awesome.” They’re the kind of phrases that really annoy me in real life, they seem so shallow, but there, they made complete sense (English has this capacity of making things sound cool that are kind of dumb). Everybody was high-fiving each other; there was a very supportive and inspiring harmony between us.

Third time: slow down.

I picked the bootcamp again, but it was less fun. Peter wasn’t there, and the two girls leading the class didn’t have the same energy: “You may do 15 push-ups if you want to”. Don’t make me think about what I really want. 

Fourth time: cruising speed.

I think I’ve eventually gotten the point of the running club: the motivation of running with a group. When I run, usually, there are 3 possibilities:

• When I’m running alone, I’m always doing the same loop – I’m afraid to try something different and collapse in the middle of nowhere. I’m walking for a bit each time, always at the same point. Most of the time I’m running pretty slowly, I don’t challenge myself – except when I’m listening to Madonna. It’s easy even if I’m exhausted when I get back home.
• When I run with Manu, I’m complaining all the time, I find some imaginary injuries, I swear all the time.
• When I’m at the running club, I don’t want to look like the big loser, nor the extremely annoying girl who likes complaining. So I just have one option: running.

The level in the group is pretty high, people are used to running and come here for the social part (free appetizers at the end). That’s why when I’m in the pack of people, even if it’s too fast for me, I’m following, and I think of myself like a zombie or a dog – the metaphor can change according to the day. I run, without thinking of anything, I don’t think about my legs, or the fact that I’m red and sweaty. I just try to stay close to the person next to me. It’s kind of creepy, but it works.

Unfortunately I really can’t go to the running club tonight, but I went for a run this morning at 7am. Something has definitely shifted for me. 

The video sets up the ambiance of the weekend…

Eastern Promenade

Old Port and piers

Museums

West End

Portland Headlight, on Cape Elizabeth

Maine is known as the Lighthouse State, there are more than 60 along the coast.  Thee are 5 of them just in Portland. Two great projects I really need to consider when I retire:

• going on a tour along the New England coast to take pictures of all the lighthouse, starting in Rhode Island, and going up north until the Canadian border. He! that’s fun. Most of them are closed to the public, but the really chic thing to do it to see the view.
• sleeping in a lighthouse. I can completely picture it: blue and white stripes pillows, sandals, spiral staircase and picnic with rosé wine in front of my temporary house. I could do it in some of them, even if it’s pretty pricey and it would require to book in advance. (see here Little River Lighthouse, or there Pemaquid Point Light).

Lighthouse are such clichés:

• they always look like postcards.
• they always look romantic. The path along the rock is narrow and dangerous, it smells like ocean, and we feel small facing all this immensity. 100% cliché.
• they are quintessential spooky-ness, specially on a day like that when the weather was threatening (pretty word to say cold and rainy). And Maine is pretty spooky by itself, don’t forget that it’s Stephen King home State. I can feel why he was inspired by these kind of landscapes.

On Cape Elizabeth, there are tons of big houses facing the sea. How cool it that! And knowing that Bette Davis and John Ford makes it even better.

We should start a collection of lighthouse pictures, we’ve seen a few on the East and West coast:

• In Acadia Park, up North Maine
• In Boston! Believe me, there’s a tiny lighthouse in the harbor. We saw it last year while visiting the Boston Harbor Islands.
• In California, at the very end of  Pointe Reyes. 

We went to Portland by bus, from Boston. We didn’t take our bikes, so to go to the headlight, we did a tour on a  trolley. I highly recommend it, because the walk to the cape would be very long. The poet Longfellow used to do it!

Le lobster roll

Some people say that this specialty was invented in the 20′s, in Connecticut, in a dinner named Perry’s. Some disagree and pretend that the first lobster roll was prepared in Maine, at the Red’s of Wiscasset. It didn’t really matter for us this night. We just wanted it to be fresh and good. A lobster roll is only made of 3 elements:

• bread. A sort of bun, slightly sweeten and toasted.
• lobster. Steamed and served warm. There’s a bit of everything, claws, knuckle and tail. The pieces are pretty big, and most of the time, there’s at least 1 pound of meat (about 450 g).
• sauce - mayo ou melted butter. Not much, no veggie, no spicy taste, just some lemon, pepper and sometimes cives. That’s it!

Manu tried another option: grilled lobster, with a surprising side, a corn on the cob. Super American. As an appetizer, we tried some crab cakes, a sort of beignet with crab meat.

• Cuisine: seafood and fish, cooked on pasta, sandwich or classical dishes. They also have good local beers.
• Price: the lobster roll costs $21 (without the tip), you can find cheaper, it’s definetly a touristy price.
• Coming back ? Yes! The ambiance is relax, the food is fresh and simple. It’s busy, so good for big groups!
• Where: Fort Port Landing, 88 Sleeper Street. Ask for a table by the window, close to the harbor.
• Before the Barking Crab: visit the latest exhibition of the super museum of contemporary art, the ICA, and the walk along the waterfront is really nice.
• After the Barking Crab: have a cocktail at  Drink.

If lobster is your passion, watch this great video by American Test Kitchen on how to get all the meat from a lobster.  

Looking for a place to eat in Boston or Cambridge ? Check my brand new page on the blog of my favorite places.

We are used to say in French to talk about the United States: “the country of Uncle Sam”, as we say to refer to English, as a language, “the language of Shakespeare”. I get why we say that for the language, though fortunately nobody’s talking like  Shak’. But who is this Uncle Sam? I had no idea. Then I started looking online, and I sort of knew the face of this guy, but still. Who was it? Why we always use this phrase?  This is a nice family story…

Who is Uncle Sam

It all started like a joke. At the beginning of the 19th century, soldiers in the Hudson Valley got some meat boxes, and US was written on them (it stands for United States, but by this time, it was most common to write down U. States). The provider of these boxes was Samuel Wilson, and everybody called him Uncle Sam – he was a nice guy, honest, and of course loved his country. Soldiers started saying that US meant Uncle Sam. The legend start spreading, and in the 1830′s, cartoonists used this image to refer to the country. At first, he was a big guy, but after the death of President Lincoln in 1865, Uncle Samie looked like  him: tall, skinny and with a goat beard. The character became a symbol.

Do American people use this phase like in French?

Uncle Sam is famous, but it’s not used to refer to the country in general, but for the administration. You can say stuff like “I need to pay my taxes to Uncle Sam.” With his hat, blue jacket, pants with stars and stripes, he’s a personification of the American homeland, like the Statue of Liberty or the bald eagle. He can be nice, or sometimes threatening, and was used for war propaganda.

And how American people call France, the country of cousin Marianne?

After some research, the answer is: American people call France, France. I think they secretly call it the country of the baguette, this is one of the rare words that people know here, with “bonjour”, “merci”, and sometimes for the bold ones: “voulez-vous coucher avec moi”.

A friend of mine offered me to see a roller derby game. I didn’t know anything about it but Arielle used to play in a team a few years ago and promised me to explain the rules. We went a Saturday night to a rink in Cambridge. It was usually used as an ice-skating rink, so they put some sort of layer of the floor. Still, my feet were frozen. Despite this detail, the game was fun.

Arielle explained the rules in this video.

• “Girls just want to have fun”? In the 1930′s, roller derby was fake, like wresting games: it was just a show to please the audience. In the 80′s, it was like in the 80′s: spandex and neon clothes. And at the beginning of the 2000′s a group of girls in Austin, Texas started to play again, in a real sportive way, while keeping the fun and crazy part. The movie Whip it  with Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page popularized it as well.
• Scary names. Girls create their own names – Margareth Trasher, Baby Ruthless. I didn’t know that the referees did it too! It’s too subtle for me to get this kind of jokes which refer to US pop culture for most of them, but anyway, it sounds really cool.
• Tattoos and mini-shorts. Girls had a lot of tattoos, but it’s pretty common in the US. Their outfit was less funky, contrary to what I thought, but they were still pretty cool: taxi for the girl of New York, and Boston Massacre girls looked pretty badass without too much hot-craziness.
• Let’s skate! I thought that roller derby was always on a banked track, but actually there’s also a league of “flat”.
  
• A game for mean girls? It plays fast, it seems to hurt, there was a lot of elbows and butt kick. But it also seemed pretty fun! Girls fell but got up right away. When we congratulated them at the end of the game, everybody seemed pretty cheered up, even the Bostonians who lost. They hit our hands, and it was pretty rough.

Everything is possible in the US.

See the video there.