Out and About

Funny thing about "real life": the days just go by while you're getting up and going to work, making dinner, relaxing, and visiting with friends. And then you look up and the year is already 1/3 over. Even in its mildness, we hibernated through January, which was easy to do after the excitement of Christmas, not to mention moving, finding and starting new jobs, and figuring out what the new normalcy looks like for us here in NYC. February was a little more active, but was much preoccupied in pursuit of a change I'll discuss in my next post.

Enter March, continuing The Winter That Wasn't, and bringing with it visitors from New England - Julie and Matt.

The Keenans @ Corner Bistro

Thank goodness! We finally got out and started exploring again, even in if it was just our own backyard. Lucky for us, our backyard offers almost anything you could imagine seeing, eating, doing. So we walked our way through lower Manhattan, ate our way through burgers, Italian, Korean (thanks to Matt for being a good sport!), and even took in a smidgen of culture at the Museum of Natural History (after which we took in Times Square, the ultimate tourist attraction of the city.

Our sightseeing also took us to the newly-opened 9/11 memorial. Surrounded by construction that looks like it will last at least another decade, the two tower footprint pools somehow exude myriad emotions in their elegant simplicity.

I won't get into specifics as I'm sure each visitor has his own very individual experience, and I have never felt I have the "right" to big emotions over 9/11, knowing that so many other people were affected more directly. Suffice it to say that it was powerful to observe, reflect and remember. And it made me proud to call this incredible city "home" once again, and glad to be out and about exploring in my amazing concrete backyard.