Home Sweet Home

I can’t tell you how great it is to be home. New York was great, but nothing beats sleeping in my own bed and cruisin’ around with the windows down and the cool Bay breeze blowing through the car. Looking back though, here are my thoughts on NYC:

Things I’ll Miss About NY

The view from our host’s condo - You can’t really beat this. 30 floors up, with a bird’s-eye view of the MoMA, 5th Ave. and Central Park. Looking out the window and standing face-to-face with the skyscrapers. A block and half from the NBA Store. Restaurants and a subway stop close by. And at night, the lights from the skyscrapers light up the skyline.

The restaurants - Granted, I don’t make it a point to explore the culinary scene here in the Bay, as I do when I’m on vacation in NY…but the restaurant scene in NY is really unparalled in the US. Not only the quality of the restaurants, but the convenience and variety as well. We tried some great Japanese (Yakitori Totto, Hagi, Hatsuhana), steak (Peter Luger), brunch (Norma’s) and ethnic (Cafe Habana) places.

The vastness - I can’t really describe the feeling of walking around the city, whether it was 5th Ave., Times Square, Soho, Nolita, or any other neighborhood, and being engulfed by the pure vastness of the city. Looking up at the buildings, old and new, I could almost get a sense for how the city has grown and transformed over the decades, and how how much history the city has.

Things I Won’t Miss

The weirdos and assholes - Emily and I kept a long list of people who really deserved to be thrown for being so rude. And New York has A LOT of them: the movie ticket agent who wouldn’t accept my student ID cuz it had a bus sticker on it that said “2006”; the taxi driver that gave us attitude when we wanted to pay by credit card; the weirdo in Times Square who tugged on the front of my shirt as I walked by and said repeatedly “can I have that?” (NO YOU CANNOT. ARE YOU CRAZY?); the rude Dunkin’ Donuts worker who retorted “it’s already in there” when Em asked for milk for her coffee…what if she didn’t want milk?

The summer heat - Most days we were in NY were humid and hot (upper 80s), with a horrible heat wave that hit the last weekend we were there. I’ll take the weather in the 60s and 70s with a nice summer breeze that we get in the Bay, thanks!