After enduring 9.5 hours of holiday traffic, we finally made it home from our fast-paced Thanksgiving weekend in New York. We began with a family Thanksgiving on Long Island, followed by another meal on Friday in New Jersey, and capped it off with a day in New York City on Saturday to revisit the places that used to be our neighborhood.
Together we lived in NYC for eight years, moving through ten different apartments across three boroughs, before relocating south to my home state of Virginia. The only time our residences overlapped was in Astoria, Queens—too bad we didn’t know each other then, and that we were two years apart in age. Little details, but interesting to think about.
We took a quick walk through Astoria to revisit our old apartments and to recall just how little we expected from housing when we were broke college students. I was particularly grossed out by my former place; after three years away it either declined considerably or my memory had softened. Either way, it was an eye-opener.
Sherry Was Here John Was Here
After our Queens stroll, we treated ourselves to the new CB2 store in SoHo—one of our former neighborhoods. The store had opened only a few weeks earlier as the brand’s first location, so it was predictably busy. Still, seeing the designs and displays in person was a lot of fun. We resisted impulse buys and left with only a few disco-ball Christmas ornaments—mostly because we didn’t want to carry too much around the rest of the day.
While in SoHo we also popped into the recently opened Z Gallerie and a new Japanese-inspired shop called Muji, which felt like a cross between American Apparel and Ikea. For lunch we stopped at Kitchen Commune, a gourmet coffee and crepe spot where the interior design caught our attention even more than the goat cheese and turkey crepes we ordered. One standout feature was a large kitchen-utensil chandelier that fit the space perfectly.
After lunch we wandered through Chinatown for a bit, then hopped back on the A train heading uptown to visit my sister and brother-in-law at their new apartment. They bought the place last year, and it was a pleasure to watch someone else handle a home improvement project for a change. Marty proudly showed off the chandelier he installed to define their dining area—a move that felt familiar to us.
They found the light fixture at Lowe’s after trying a few others (including a shade from CB2) that didn’t quite work. The final result delighted everyone, and I could tell Marty was relieved the installation was finished.
That pretty much sums up our quick trip to the city. We don’t know when we’ll return, but we’re already planning a visit when the weather is warmer.