What's It Like In New York City?

Or perhaps I should ask what's it like in New York City with young kids?  The short answer is fabulous.

Sitting here at 5 am (I have jetlagged kids who have been up and racing since 4...) it is hard to know where to start.  We are safely home again after 2 long haul flights and a night in a hotel near Dubai airport.  The Farmchildren excelled themselves as travellers and were perfectly behaved on the plane - thank heavens.

Anyway back to NYC.  Where to start?  We threw ourselves into New York and absolutely adored it.  Needless to say it was a huge culture shock for The Farmchildren whose only experience of a city was downtown Perth.  The traffic, the buildings, the people, the smells and sounds almost resulted in sensory overload.  The first few days The Farmer and I had to watch The Farmchildren like crazy as they were so busy looking around them they actually walked into the odd light pole and amused pedestrian.

We stayed in the West Village in an apartment we had rented from Air B n B.  It was perfect and more by luck than good management was in the building next door to The Farmer's brother and his wife.  I love everything about the West Village and staying in our very own fifth floor walk up made us feel almost like locals.  The five flights of stairs however just made us feel fairly unfit.  Although they provided justification for more than the odd extra croissant or slice of pizza.

View From Our Apartment Window

The West Village felt cosy and by the end of our 11 days we had made friends with the laundry lady (who gave us special treatment as we all thought she had a not-so-secret crush on my brother-in-law), found our preferred coffee shop (Prodigy for the record) and found our preferred pizza shop (Bleecker Street). We also explored all the gorgeous wandering little streets as the West Village  is the only area of Manhattan that is not in a grid and hence we got gloriously lost on more than one occasion.

My other West Village highlight was when I saw Sofia Coppola on the street.  Apparently she lived a few doors down and she was walking down the street with her children.  I gave her a quick smile and headed in the other direction with my kids.  (Obviously I had my New York cool on and wasn't going to do any embarrassing autograph gushing whilst the poor woman took her kids to school.)  She smiled back and we both went on our way.  Incidentally The Farmer thought he saw Justin Timberlake at Bubby's which is a restaurant Justin is supposed to frequent.  I did a casual saunter-by reccy and it was so not Justin it was ridiculous.  So The Farmer failed Celebrity Spotting 101....

Having The Farmchildren with us just made the holiday so much more special.  The Farmer and I had been to New York before on our own and this was a completely different experience.  The Farmchildren were brilliant and absolute troopers about getting out and about.  By the end of the trip Farmboy had become an excellent assistant in hailing taxis.  Farmgirl had a different talent with taxis as she regularly felt car sick when in the back.  While this was unpleasant for her it was a definite bonus when it came to avoiding being ripped off by taxi drivers who were trying to take advantage of tourists by taking the long route.  We just nudged an already green looking Farmgirl and she loudly said she felt sick.  It was amazing how quickly the driver then overcame traffic/roadworks etc and got us directly to our destination....

Look At All Those Tiny Taxis

I have so much more to tell everyone about our trip.  My question though is how much do you want to know?  I know this is a blog about farming but how about I moonlight as a travel blogger for a while?  There will also be brief forays into fashion bloggerdom and a touch of foodie style blogging?  What do you reckon?  We will return to regular subjects soon enough.  And I think the whole point of a holiday is a complete break in routine....

Hope all is well in your worlds.

Take care.

Fridge Magnet in Our Apartment - My Sentiments Exactly