Falling in Love for the First Time (and this time I know it's for real)

Just back from a little less than a week in New York and New Jersey, and I have to say it was the best time I've ever had in the city. My explanation begins with a few of the photos I took in the course of my trip:

The Toronto skyline seen from the Porter Airlines terminal on one of the city's islands. I contemplated writing a separate blog entry on my newly-discovered love of Porter airlines, but I'll keep it short and just say that I had the greatest experience of my airborne life with Porter. Everything, from the low-key airport right in the heart of the city, to the free biscotti and tea (complete with elegant china cups and saucers) in the waiting lounge, to the gouda and melba toast in my in-flight snack, was perfect. Even the box for the in-flight snack was adorable and clever. It took me awhile to get the joke - let me know if the "orte" has you stumped.



The lounge/boarding area at the Porter airport. Told you I loved this airline.



The street a street or so down from the street we'll be living on as of next week - Jersey City. Kickin' brownstones, trees beginning to come back to life, pretty church.


These pictures have a common theme: none of them were taken in New York City. We spent most of our time in the city, but I don't have a single photo to prove or commemorate it. That right there is the key.

A quick rifling through my old photo albums shows picture after picture of the New York you see on postcards. Central Park, the Empire State Building, Times Square, etc. My brief trips to the city have always been spent in a hurry to see all those famous things everyone wants to see. Every trip to New York has been exciting, but just a little bit disheartening at the same time. Where's the real city, the unique, personal city you can't see while you're in the midst of the swarms of shoppers at Macy's on 34th Street? Everyone says there's a magic quality to New York, but I never felt it while hiking from one spot on my itinerary to the next. There was no time to slow down, sit back and soak it all in.

This past trip, we had the opportunity to do that. I didn't worry about catching anything on camera, and the best way I can explain my reasoning is that you don't sprint a marathon. We had dinners in Tribeca, Chinatown and Little Italy, walked to the East Village, covered just about every block in Nolita and had our first Pinkberry experience in the process. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and on to a flea market in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. I think I walked a good 20-30 miles this past week, and I kept my eyes wide open the whole time. I love the thought of piecing together a mental map of the city, and I want to do it slowly and thoroughly. For the first time in my life I got below the surface of New York, and this tiniest of forays into the locals' version of the city (the metaphor here would be an iceberg, with Oliver and I as freshly-suited divers just now jumping in the water to swim down along the berg to its bottom) inspired me. I'm not going to pretend to know the city, and in fact I hope I don't ever try to pretend that I am the ultimate expert, but it no longer seems like a concrete and steel mystery to me. No, scratch that. It's still a mystery, but now it's a sexy mystery as opposed to a sluggish, densely written one.