Settled in to Life on the UES

This academic year we are in New York living on the Upper East Side. We're fortunate to have a leave from our usual work in Knoxville to focus on research and writing as Visiting Scholars at the Russell Sage Foundation, located in the city. We've now been here for about a month and have settled into live here easily and well.

I hesitate to include accounts of our time here under the heading of travel. But it really isn't all that different than many of our other travels. We like to relocate for extended periods when we can and truly immerse ourselves in a culture. We have 10 months in NYC, and we'll basically be doing normal life here during that time. We'll be working a lot. But we'll also be making every effort to take advantage of the cultural offerings of this great city.

It was a whirlwind to get here. We arranged our trip to Peru this summer before we knew we would be here for the academic year. So we came back from Lima, spent about 10 days living with friends in Knoxville since our house is rented to help defray some of the costs of living in Manhattan, went on vacation for about a week with my parents, and then drove to New York.

The foundation really made the move as simple as possible. They own the apartment we live in and we rent from them. It's furnished so we were able to move in with several suitcases and a few boxes. Jana's parents don't live too far away so they were able to help with logistics. It's a really big deal to not have to search for housing here. It would have been an incredibly daunting process, and we were able to bypass it. We love our apartment. The picture above is the view out the window in the master bedroom. And, yes, master bedroom implies a 2nd bedroom. The apartment is spacious. It's in a great building with doormen that make it feel like living in a hotel. The location is great. We are a three minute walk from the Little Lady's school, and a 3 minute walk to work. We don't even need to get on a subway except to go have fun in other neighborhoods.

We really could not ask for a better setup. We should be able to get plenty of work done, and our colleagues at the foundation are delightful. And we are in a lovely location as well. The Little Lady is going to kindergarten at the neighborhood public school. She likes it a lot. She has ballet down the block once a week. We've found great options for helping her maintain Spanish. We are 5 crosstown blocks (those are long blocks for the uninitiated) from Central Park. We already got our New York City IDs which has provided us free membership for the year to a number of museums and cultural institutions. Already, we've taken advantage of a ride on the Staten Island Ferry (our very first weekend), as the Little Lady wanted to see the Statue of Liberty. Zoos, history museum, art museums, and lots of great food are all very close. We have access to essentially the whole world within a 45 minute subway ride.

There are some complications, but nothing to complain about. We're learning our way around via the subway. The immediate neighborhood feels small and is easy to navigate. Going further afield can be a little more complicated, but Google Maps makes navigation pretty easy. Also, at least in Manhattan if you can just remember that avenues go up from east to west and streets go up from south to north it's hard to get completely lost. Even the Little Lady pretty much knows which subway stop we should get off on when coming back to the apartment. Groceries are insanely expensive. But good fresh fruits and vegetables are available affordably at street stands. That feels like Peru. Also, there is a farmer's market just a few blocks away on Saturday. And here's something interesting. Stuff there is no more expensive than similar items at the Knoxville farmer's market. That is a pleasant surprise. We also have a couple great coffee places nearby. And it turns out great coffee in Manhattan is about the same price as great coffee in Old North Knoxville. That is a general pattern we've found so far. Bargains are really hard to find in Manhattan. But since Amazon, Wal-Mart and all the rest deliver here (with the doorman bringing it right up to the apartment), it's possible to minimize expenses to an extent. And high-end, high-quality items cost only a little more (if any) here than they do back in Tennessee.

I'm looking forward to reporting on some of our adventures while we are here. In coming posts I'll discuss a recent architecture tour we good on a boat with our colleagues from work. Also some trips to the zoo. We've already been busy, and I can tell I'll have to make some hard choices about what to include here and what to skip.