Posts tagged #city life

We are Moving - To New York City

Being a Swede in the US

NYC

Last year we took a trip to NYC. We wanted to check out the city, but W also went for a workshop and I renewed my passport. Because as a Swede in the US there are only so many places you can renew your Swedish passport, and NYC is one on a list of two, yeah a total list of two places in all of the US where swedes can renew their Swedish passport, New York and Washington DC. There are mobile passport centers each year, but they usually get booked several months in advance. Last time I renewed my passport I timed it with a trip to Sweden, because flying to NYC or Washington DC from Fairbanks, AK, is equally expensive to flying all the way to Sweden, if you include cost of hotels etc.

Fall in New York City

While W was busy with his workshop I explored the city some more. I have never liked New York City unfortunately, but now I will have 2 years to learn to love the city. We are excited about exploring the city and finding our new favorite spots. During the time there this last fall I walked on average 9 miles per day. I am not much of a subway person, but maybe that will change once we move there. It's not the first time I have been to New York though, I was there when I was 6 years old, well if that even counts, but I have strong memories from that trip. I went there again when I was about 20 years or so, but I only spent a couple of hours in the city, and that didn't really add any positive vibe of the city.

Central Park

The best part about Manhattan is Central Park. While exploring the city through google maps I have learned that there are a lot of green spaces around New York city and all of the city's different neighborhoods. Even walking around as I did this past fall, I found a lot more green space (as in trees) than what I was expecting. The favorite green space and probably one of the places I will hang out around the most is Central Park. While I was walking around there, there were definitely some places where I was the only one around, which is suprising since NYC is a pretty big city. It could also have something to do with the rainy weather during that specific day...

How do you Move to NYC?

The last couple of weeks we have been scratching our heads trying to figure out what the best way to move really is. How are we going to move? I think we have settled on shipping our larger furniture, like the bed and bookshelves with a pod. That seems to be the most reasonable way, but we will see if we change our mind before the move actually happen. We are planning on going to NYC at the end of May with a smaller load of our stuff, and store that in a storage area outside the city. When we make the big move a couple of weeks later we hope that we will have a lot less stuff of course.

Where in NYC are we going to Live?

Well, that is a pretty easy question, but the details are more complicated. We are going to focus on Manhattan, and the area around and north of Columbia University. There are plenty of neighborhoods up there, Upper West Side, Washington Heights, Harlem, and Sugar Hill. North of that we have Hudson Heights, Fort George and Inwood. Those places look pretty nice, but they are unfortunately a little bit to far north. There are plenty of parks around there though, which would make that area ideal. We have screened the internet on how to get an apartment in New York, and Manhattan is of course to no ones surprise the most expensive place to be. While New York City is one of the most expensive US cities to live in, it is does not have the highest rent. Can you guess what city in the US have the highest rent? I'll give you the answer at the end of this post. Due to travel time to work we have to be around that area, unless we want to commute for more than 1 hr. The northern part of Manhattan have fewer skyscrapers, and fewer tourists, and I think we can find a nice place around there. In addition to actually finding a place you have to be careful about the ads you see online, there are many scams, and many people use false or stolen images to bait you and then tell you the place isn't available any longer, but then they say: here is another place, which more often is not a great place at all. You read stories about bedbugs, high crime areas and everything in between. Some people hire brokers, yeah brokers that charge 10-20% of the annual rent as a a fee you will never ever see again, in order for them to find a place. Some people pay 3000$/month for a studio apartment. We hope that we can get by without a broker, and still find a decent place. Time will tell.

What's your favorite place in New York? Have you spent some time at the northern part of Manhattan? So what city in the US have the highest rent? Well it is not too surprising but it is San Fransisco, CA. At least if you are comparing the median rent for 1 and 2 bedroom apartments.

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In The Rearview Mirror pt.3

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Flashback Friday

Summers in Madison are hot, I mean hot for being a northern girl. A girl who spent the last six summers in the field in Alaska. There was a reason for us to buy that air conditioner to put in the bedroom as soon as I arrived in Madison. Before I moved to Madison I looked up different diseases and alike that cats could acquire in Madison during the summertime. Bot fly came up, and surely I told W about this, but he insisted that this was something that would not ever happen. Well, it did. Tycho got really sick and he eventually threw up a bot fly larvae, and that is when I called the vet. She said he was lucky to be alive. Poor Tycho, my little kitty cat. Other than that the summer was pretty calm, once W got back from Yellowstone we started to venture out on both long and short hikes around Madison. The best thing that happened was probably that I got a job!

July

W went to Yellowstone so I tried to explore most of my immediate surroundings by myself. I realized pretty early that I had no clothes suitable for hot summer weather, but after a trip to the local thrift store I had updated my closet to a more "summery" closet. In some way July was the worst month for me, I was trying to find a job, W was gone and it was hot. And then by the end of the month Tycho got the bot fly larvae. But everything turned out great anyway. Both W and I have July birthdays but we haven't celebrated them together the last couple of years, which is kind of sad. Maybe next year? Oh wait, probably not. I did a lot of gardening and also went to the local farmers market to get cucumbers so I could make Swedish pickles.

August

More hot summer days, and ice cream. Did you know that Alaska has in the past been the no.1 consumer of ice cream per capita in the US? I don't think this is true anymore, but either way, I love ice cream. I can't say that I eat more ice cream here compared to Alaska, but I definitely had some days by the ice cream shop. W's mom and aunt also came to visit, we did what I like to call the tour of the midwest, well a light version. We went to Minneapolis to meet up with them, also because W's brother studies there. We went by the Swedish institute and Ikea of course, gotta love Ikea, well, gotta love Ikea bed sets, cause I at least haven't found that quality for that price anywhere else. After that all of us went to Madison for a few days. There are no mountains here, so I do the best of the situation, practicing macro shots and finding new avenues in my photography.

September

September came, with more hiking, and helping W out with his experiment. We did quite a bit of exploring outside Madison, and found several nice places to hike. We also went to La Crosse, for a biking and camping trip. W met up with his brother to go road biking and I went on my own little tour. It was still hot of course, but you could start to see signs of fall. We went on a beautiful hike at a place that I like to call the fairytale forest, because it really did look like a fairytale forest. We camped that night and of course ate s'mores. Have you ever added a slice of banana to your s'more? Well, just do it! After that we went on another trail which is an old railroad, and goes through several sets of tunnels. Even though my garden wasn't that successful in 2016 we did harvest quite a bit from it during the course of the summer. In september the harvesting kind of trickled down but the garden was still producing! At the end of the month we traveled to Colorado, colorful Colorado as they say, for a wedding. We of course encountered our first snow for the season there.

Did you do anything interesting late summer early fall?

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Rearview mirror 2016:

Feb 3, 2017

In the Rearview Mirror pt.4

Feb 3, 2017

Jan 20, 2017

In The Rearview Mirror pt.3

Jan 20, 2017

Jan 13, 2017

In The Rearview Mirror pt.2

Jan 13, 2017

Jan 6, 2017

In The Rearview Mirror pt.1

Jan 6, 2017

Posted on January 20, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, Rearview Mirror and tagged Madison city life City Farmers Market Hiking Wanderlust exploring rearviewmirror2016 Wisconsin2 rearviewmirror.

Why you should look for Adventures in your "Backyard"

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Adventure Tuesday

Mountains?

Living in Alaska definitely changes your perspective about mountains (coming from Stockholm, Sweden) and distances to places. It's amazing to have the Alaska Range as your own view every day you come to work. It's not weird to drive 544 miles (875km), through the Alaska Range, to attend a festival during 2 days and then drive back that same distance after the weekend is over.

Nothing is Impossible

People do this all the time. Another thing that I really liked about the community in Fairbanks was that no one would ever question you and your adventure plans. If you said you were going to run or ski a marathon people got excited, no one would ever question your decision to do that. As far as I know, in Alaska nothing is impossible, and anyone can do anything if you put your mind to it. The world is yours to have if you want it so go and take it!

Madison Adventures Anyone?

When I moved to Madison, WI from spectacular Fairbanks, Alaska my expectations were to find absolutely nothing that could fill my longing for the outdoors. Most of Wisconsin is flat as a pancake, ok maybe not that flat but there aren't any mountains and the highest point in Wisconsin is a hill called Timms Hill at a whopping 1951 feet (595m). The highest point in Fairbanks that I easily could get to within 10 minutes would be Ester Dome, at 2171 feet (661m), a great "hill" to run up and down. Now of course in Alaska the highest peak you could possibly climb would be Denali at 20310 feet (6190m).

Deep Forests and Dry Cabins

I do miss the mountains, the deep forest, the log cabin I used to live in...even though it came without running water and the propane stove stopped running if the temperature was around 35-40 below for too long. It's something really real about living in a cabin in the woods. Ok, my cabin was maybe not that far away from the "city" of fairbanks, but still, you could have thought it was. So coming to Madison, WI, and now living in an apartment/house, really changes your perspective of things.

Instead of the forest I now have neighbors and houses surrounding ours. I guess it's ok, but it's definitely not the same. I had to explore Madison and get to know a new perspective of adventures in my new neighborhood.

Citylife?

Moving to Madison has definitely tested my ability to satisfy my need for adventures. What is even an adventure? I don't think the adventure should be about the highest peak you climb or the longest ski you do, I think it should be about your feeling about what you are doing. If it makes you happy and you do something you might not do on a regular basis it can also be an awesome adventure. There aren't any peaks to climb here but there are a lot more urban wildlife for instance, or different plants, tons of small parks tucked into the city. The first weeks I lived here I would go for long walks around the neighborhood, and I would find all these small parks I talked about. I found a park with a lot of old trees and at least five wood peckers in that small park, that consisted of like 10 trees tucked together. We have a lot of insects I have never seen before, many many beautiful butterflies of course and a few months ago i discovered a Possum in the yard.

Adventuring

If you can't go on a big adventure, go on a small adventure, at least that is how I am surviving, at the same time as I am looking forward to future adventures of course. But it's not the end of the world to live in a city after living surrounded by the mountains, there are many many more things to discover in this world. Every weekend we have tried to go on a day hike, most of the places are pretty close (1-2 hrs from Madison) and although they do fill some satisfaction to me, I still want more. But I think the best thing is to learn to be satisfied with less sometimes, otherwise we will never be happy in this world, day and age.