A Little Bite of the Big Apple

Well, we've found our new home in New York!  We flew out there last week and spent about six days in the city.  We walked and walked and walked and looked at a bunch of places, and we found a good one! We will be in TriBeCa (which I'm pretty excited about) and very close to the water and various parks.  Nothing as good as Hyde Park though, I'm trying to come to grips with losing it!  I'm in denial.  

Our new place has two bedrooms and two bathrooms (only smaller than our current place).  But we can fit a queen in both rooms, so if you're making plans to visit then come on up!!

Stephen's brother and SIL were in NY as well (happy 10 year anniversary to William and Lisa!) and we got to spend a ton of time with them, which was great.  I don't think I've ever spent that much time with them, just the 4 of us!  We walked and ate.  That pretty much sums it up.  

Speaking of food - glory be American food!!  I am so excited, how I've missed you!  We had brunch at Bubby's and holy crap was it good.  I had sour cream pancakes that were incredibly fluffy and delicious.  And actual bacon!  Bacon here in the UK is Canadian bacon (no, they don't call it that, they just call it bacon.  they're wrong.)  American bacon is "streaky bacon" here, and it's still not quite right.  I've just given up on eating it all together, which health-wise is probably a good thing.  But, I had real bacon with my pancakes and I could have died and gone to heaven.  We also ate at a steak house called Abe & Arthur's.  Three words - mac. and. cheese.  Awesomely, fantastically good.  Towards the end of the trip Stephen and I had a quick dinner at one of my favorites - Five Guys.  It's a burger place if you aren't familiar with it.  It reminded me of America's ability to over serve portion sizes.  We ordered one regular size fries to split between the both of us.  It filled up half of our paper bag.  Seriously, there must have been 6 potatoes in there.  We left NY saying to each other that we need to join a gym ASAP when we move, or all of this delicious food will really catch up with us!

NY has such a different vibe than London.  I knew that already, but it's different experiencing it after living in London.  NY is ALL about the ambition.  People coming and going, looking for their big break or to make a ton of money.  I haven't seen any celebrities since living in London (other than the queen), but in our trip to New York I saw Carrie Mulligan (complete with paparazzi, and staying in our hotel), Bethenny Frankel - real NY housewife (in our hotel having a PR/business mtg), Jenna Bush, a host from Fox and Friends (who's name I can't remember because I don't watch Fox & Friends, and who was at the same bar as Jenna Bush oddly enough), and an actor from Chappelle's Show who was working out in the gym in our hotel while getting a pep talk from his manager.  

Our last night there we got to watch the National Championship game (Roll Tide) with my friend from college, Laurie (Roll Tide!), and got to see Bama dominate LSU to win our 14th title!  Roll Tide!!  We also managed to catch the Broncos/Steelers game with the miracle overtime touchdown pass.  Man!  That's another thing I'm excited about returning to - Football.  

I know I have a lot of blogging to do before we leave London - South Africa, I never blogged about Scotland or Vienna... I'm going to try to get it all in!  My last day of work is next Wednesday, so that should help.  

Off to make a to do list for moving!  

Oh, and Roll Tide!!