The Highline & Trestle on Tenth

I planned a nice little date for Jessica yesterday. After work, we went down to the Highline in the West Village/Chelsea area. This is a part of NY that I really like but rarely visit. There is a lot of beautiful post-Industrial architecture, most notably the Highline itself. The Highline is an old elevated train route that has been converted into a long garden park with a walking path. NY is quite humid this time of year and it is actually noticeably cooler up on the Highline. We exercised our amateur photography skills and enjoyed some people-watching.

 The Highline is only half finished but the current northern-most stairs are only a few blocks from a great restaurant, Trestle on Tenth . I was there for a friend's birthday party a few weeks ago but this was the first chance I've had to get dinner there. Their food was really great, especially this Swiss cheese our waiter suggested, a Tête de Moine that we found very interesting. All in all, it was a solid evening. Any of you fools in NY trying to come up with good date ideas, take heed of this one. Seriously, take heed.

Social Media Diagram

Check out this funny graphic on a t-shirt sold by despair.com.  For the heavy users of these services, I think there is some truth to this.  Question is, where does Posterous/Tumblr fit on the diagram?

March Brazil Trip, Rio De Janeiro

Finally, before returning to New York, I spent the weekend in Rio. This was definitely the highlight of my trip especially because my friend Damian from Seattle happen to be visiting Rio that same weekend.

 We hit up the beaches at Copacabana and Ipanema. We went up to the Corcovado and checked out the ridiculously huge Cristo. We had two massive dinners, one at a seafood churrascaria and one at this Sushi LeBlon spot in the upscale "LeBlon" neighborhood near Ipanema. There were a couple crazy nights of partying with the cariocas and lots of sun. I had a great time and I definitely plan to return at some point.

March Brazil Trip, Florianópolis

Florianópolis (or Floripa) is an island vacation town for affluent Brazilians along the coast, south of Rio. I stayed with a handful of colleagues from my fund and for four days we discussed the markets and relevant macro trading themes far away from New York. As you can see from the pictures, there was some time for fun each day. I tried surfing, wakeboarding, hiking and paragliding. I enjoyed some excellent meals and I got to lay out for a short bit on Floripa's famous beaches before I left for Rio.

March Brazil Trip, São Paulo

This is pretty pathetic but I am finally posting my pictures from my trip to Brazil last March. I am probably violating numerous statutes of limitations for blogging about old events but I promised my family I would share these.

 This set here is when I was in São Paulo for about seven hours while waiting for my next flight. We had a guy drive us around in the city and we stopped and walked around Ibirapuera Parque which I guess is like their Central Park. We had a pretty good lunch too before we went back to the airport for our flight to Florianópolis.