Thanksgiving in the Big Apple!!

This is a great time of year. Thanksgiving is a useful time to reflect. It's obviously a time to be appreciative for the good things in life. It also marks the beginning of the longer holiday season including Christmas. This period of expectation is the most joyous month of the year for me and many others, I'm sure. It's extra special for us because the Little Lady was born in early December almost five years ago now. And we have extra reasons to be thankful this year, having a year in New York to work and live and play. And this Thanksgiving we took full advantage of being in New York.

A Weekend as NYC Tourists with Knoxville Friends

A couple of weeks ago the Jennings family from Knoxville were able to make the trip up to New York. It was a real treat to have them with us. While they were in town, they got a chance to visit lots of top city attractions. And we got to act like tourists for a couple of days. Here are some of the highlights.

New York Halloween - More than Enough Candy to Share!!

We don't go all that crazy on Halloween. But the Little Lady does like to make her rounds for some candy. We have a perfect neighborhood back in Knoxville for trick-or-treating -- houses with great architecture and fun decorations, plenty of friends to connect with along the way, safe sidewalks, and lots of generous folks handing out candy. It's a good time. And it's a lot different than the upper east side of New York. Here's how we did it this year.

A Great Autumn Weekend in the City

It seems that fall weather has finally arrived to New York. We enjoyed a glorious weekend, with temperatures generally in the upper 60s with plenty of sun. A major storm arrived on Sunday, which gave us a great excuse to just relax in the apartment and enjoy each other's company. But Saturday we stayed busy. Here are the highlights:

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.

An Embarrassment of Culinary Riches in Lima

We are long back from Lima by now, but I wanted to write down a quick take on a number of restaurants and coffee shops we visited on our summer 2017 trip. Bottom line here is that Lima has an amazing number of very high-quality dining options. All of the places mentioned here are good enough to recommend, though you'll see I'm much more excited about some than others. The coffee scene is still developing, but it has progressed markedly over the past couple years (our last visit was in 2015). All of the places I mention here are in what I would consider the top tier of coffee spots in Lima. There was no clear winner, but these are all worthy options. This list just scratches the surface. I'll perhaps add to it as I think of more places and make more return trips.

Peruvian Independence Day is July 28th. But in reality the entire month of July in filled with a variety of events that help to celebrate the culture of Peru. For the past two years, the Ministry of Culture in Peru has partnered with many other cultural institutions in Peru to sponsor the "Retablo Sinfónico." We heard it was a great and fun performance, so we decided to get tickets we are so glad we did.