Here is our new building, in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn! In a surprisingly fast turn of events, we found it Wednesday, signed the lease Thursday, and the movers came on Saturday.
Here's the entrance (just so cute I had to give it its own photo).
And the street.
The apartment is way, way bigger than we wanted or needed (we're used to tiny places). The kitchen is really really spacious, especially for New York, where everything is usually just squished into a corner or odd space somewhere. You can't see it, but behind where I'm standing taking the picture is another large space that's part of the kitchen as well.
The apartment is "railroad" style, which means all the rooms are in a line. Next comes the "guest room" I've been telling you all about. It's going to be our hallway/storage area at other times, as we really have no need for it...
If you walk through the "guest room" and another small room, you finally get to the Emerald City (it feels like, since it's miles away from the kitchen), which will be our office.
We're on the fourth floor, so we have a view! The Chrysler building and the Empire State. So awesome.
If you look back through the apartment from the office, you see our little bedroom alcove, then the guest room, and at the very end, the kitchen. Our house is HUGE but we love it, not just because it's going to be all cozy and homey, but also because we love, love, LOVE our neighborhood!! We have been congratulating ourselves on deciding to live here, not just because it's a great mix of Polish delis, interesting restaurants, dollar stores, cool old churches, hipster coffee shops that serve Seattle coffee (really!), awesome bars and artsy folks, but also because ...
... the neighborhood came with friends already installed!! We didn't know it, but our friend Nate from Seattle lives just two blocks from us. And our friend Antonio lives two blocks the other way. And our other friend Matt lives just a few blocks away too. Nate works as a fancy cocktail bartender now (apparently New York is the center of the world's high-end cocktail scene), and we got to take advantage of his mad skills at his place. He made me a very, very tasty Negroni.
After all this, we ended up back on Manhattan on Saturday afternoon and ran into this street performance in Washington Square Park. This is the fantastic thing about New York - even the random buskers in the park are really, really good. These guys are called Tic and Tac - they're hilarious twins who do acrobatic, break-dance stuff plus a comedy routine. We got totally sucked in and stayed for almost an hour. This is their signature move, called "The Helicopter." Pretty impressive! Also they make fun of racists, which is funny.
We are starting to heart New York big time.
