May marks my first full month in New York City. The start of May was chilly and rainy, but New York is one of the few cities I know of that improves in the rain. The air smells cleaner and fresher, the streets are momentarily cleaner and the sidewalks are quieter. As a result, the city is in full bloom. Near the end of May, we started having warm, sunny spring days I’ve been waiting for – no jumper required! Patio season has officially begun, as cafes and bars around town are rolling out their awnings and setting up patio seating around their venues and the city’s many boat bars are open once again for business (Grand Banks, Pilot Brooklyn, Lightship Frying Pan, Brooklyn Barge and my personal favourite, North River Lobster Co).

I find it really hard to wake up early in New York City. Once the jetlag wore off (goodbye 4am wake ups!), I had found it really hard to get out of bed in the morning and was sleeping more than ever. I love waking up early, and at first I wondered if New York’s night owl culture was already getting to me (or that there’s something in the air that makes everyone in New York sleep late!). I think moving to a new country is just more exhausting than I gave it credit for. Or it’s exhausting for longer than I expected it to be, anyway.

The first three weeks here were really busy, scrambling to set up an apartment and a life, while also enjoying being in New York. For the second three weeks, I let myself off the hook with pretty much everything, and focused on keeping my head above the water. Now, I finally feel like I’m back to my usual self!

A conversation I had a long time ago with my wise little sister has been coming to mind a lot this week. She had just returned from a trip around Europe with her best friend, and was reflecting on how as much as she loved the mental stimulation of discovering new cities and cultures each week, she had really missed the time she usually dedicated to personal growth and creativity. While you can be creative on the road, life as a “digital nomad” (my least favourite phrase), does mean there’s often less downtime to read lots of great books, make enough bad art to make good art, dedicate yourself to fitness challenges and think deeply about your life, where you’re going and who you’re being. I mentioned this to her on during a phone call this week, and she added “You can’t grow without roots.” Of course, it works for some, but I’m very excited to have enough downtime in New York now to refocus on my personal projects, and to see what being in this city brings to them.

I am grateful that I haven’t felt overwhelmingly sad, stressed or lonely yet. I have felt all of these things and more at some point over the last six weeks, but never so much that I felt like I was drowning. It’s only early days I know, but so far the move hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be. Of course, I’m still in the honeymoon phase with my new city, and I find that the difference between moving vs traveling tends to take a few months to appear. Moving to Melbourne (from my hometown of Brisbane) was the best decision I made in my early twenties, I’m hoping that moving to New York will be the best decision of my mid twenties (26 is too early to say late twenties okay!).

May adventures 

Tribeca Film Festival

I love film festivals, so I was really excited to be able to see a film at the Tribeca Film Festival this year. We saw the documentary What Will Become of Us about Jewish-Australian businessman Frank Lowy, who fled the Nazis in Eastern Europe, served in the military in Israel and then came to Australia as a young man. He co-founded Westfield, and became one of the most successful businessmen in Australia.

We also spotted out first “celebrity”, or at least, our first high profile person in New York. Ironically, it was former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and I’m pretty sure we were the only people in the theatre who recognised him. He and his wife arrived just as the film was about to start, and were unable to find two seats beside each other, so Malcolm spent a long time walking around asking various indifferent New Yorkers whether they seat beside them was taken.

Spring flower appreciation

Peak cherry blossom season was over, but there were still gorgeous spring flowers all over Manhattan in May. I particularly loved the pink and purple blooms all over Columbus Park in Chinatown!

SoHo

I love making the time for a dedicated photoshoot. There’s no other agenda, so I can follow wherever my camera leads me and just focus on making photos. This month, I spent a morning in SoHo photographing the neighbourhood for my SoHo neighbourhood guide.

Dumbo 

One sunny Saturday, we decided to catch the ferry across the East River to Dumbo in Brooklyn. We took the ferry from Wall Street, which in hindsight wasn’t the most efficient way to get there. Even though the trip only took a couple of minutes, the ferry only comes every half hour. We spent more time queuing than we did on the water, but it was a beautiful view!

After disembarking, we walked along the waterfront through Brooklyn Bridge Park, which has the best views of the Brooklyn Bridge I’ve seen, as well as of Manhattan’s skyline across the river and even the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

There’s actually not that much to do in Dumbo, unless you’re planning to go to a bar or restaurant, or have a picnic in the park, so it’s worth making a bit of a plan for something to do when you get there. It was still really fun to visit the neighbourhood and get out on the water on such a beautiful day.

East Village 

East Village is one of my favourite places in Manhattan for aimlessly wandering. There are heaps of great bars and shops, and there’s always something happening. I’m a really big fan of Tompkins Square Bagel, and also the bars Mother of Pearl and McSorley’s.

Mother of Pearl is a beautiful bar with some outdoor seating that’s perfect for people watching, a solid wine list and a great cocktail list. The latter, McSorley’s, is more of a novelty for me, since they only serve light or dark beer (so I’m always stuck on ginger ale) but it’s the oldest bar in America and it seems to have barely changed over the years. It’s like nowhere else I’ve ever been, and is always a welcome pit stop between other bars.

On our way to McSorley’s one Sunday, we walked through a street party for the Ukrainian Festival, outside a Ukrainian church in East Village. It’s in a part of East Village known as Little Ukraine, which is home to a third of New York City’s 80,000 Ukrainians, as well as a Ukrainian museum, the Byzantine-inspired St George’s Ukrainian Catholic Church and iconic 24 hour diner, Veselka’s.

Museums & Galleries

I didn’t get to any of my favourite museums and galleries in new york city this month, but am determined to re-visit a few of my favourites like The Whitney or MoMA in June. Instead, I visited a few smaller galleries and museums in SoHo.

The Drawing Center is exactly what it says on the box – an institute dedicated to drawing. I love to draw, so this was a fun visit for me. I also stopped into the Jeffrey Deitch gallery, which is free to visit and was showing a very colourful and whimsical exhibition which was the perfect antidote to a rainy May day.

Eating & drinking

Bars

Early in the month, we joined in the Cinco de Mayo celebrations at Ghost Donkey, Saxon + Parole and Tacombi. It’s officially patio season, and I’ve resolved to try and not sit inside until October. Some of my favourite patios, terraces and gardens have at Morandi in West Village, Mother of Pearl in East Village,  and frozen margaritas at Sweet + Vicious in Nolita.

I think I’ve found my favourite wine bar in New York at Compagnie des Vins Surnaturals, between SoHo and Little Italy. Bar Veloce in West Village is a solid go-to, and one of these days I’ll work up the nerve to try more natural wines at YN Wine Bar in Nolita.

Read more:

• The Best Bars in New York City
• SoHo neighbourhood guide
• Nolita neighbourhood guide
• West Village neighbourhood guide

Coffee & Cafes

I’m relying heavily on Bluestone Lane for coffee, and Ruby’s for classic Australian brunch. Cafe Belle in Nolita has better fresh cannoli than you’d find anywhere in Little Italy. Fiat Cafe in Nolita has adorable decor for the Instagram age, but so far I’ve only had their (very French) coffee. Next time I’ll go back hungry, because they’re menu looks simple but nice.

There’s also a great crepe place in Nolita, which was perfect on a rainy day – and will be perfect in winter!

Restaurants

Lovely Day is perfect for a cheap date night and delicious Thai, and our first foray into dining in Little Italy was a success at Sofia.

Little Italy has a reputation for being very touristy, and it definitely is, but I feel like  “touristy” can be a broad brush that paints many decent restaurants as “inauthentic.” I find that a lot of the time, “inauthentic” can also just mean cheap or not trendy – yet authentic Italian food is rarely either of those things. You won’t find the likes of critical darlings like Morandi, Locanda Verde, Carbone, Via Carota or Lilia in Little Italy, but if you compared many of the mom & pop Italian restaurants in Little Italy to their Italian counterparts in the motherland, you’d find hardly any differences. There are definitely a few tourist traps which look awful, which gave the neighbourhood a bad name, but I think writing off the whole area is a bit of snobbery rather than a reflection of the neighbourhood’s authenticity. Italian food is simple and delicious, and doesn’t need to be expensive to be authentic.

Highlights

Living in downtown Manhattan

At the end of April, we moved into an apartment in below the grid. I love this part of New York, which feels so much more vibrant and village-like than Midtown, Flatiron, and the Upper East and Upper West Sides. I’ve only been back to Midtown when I’ve been meeting David for a dinner break when he’s working late on weekends, and otherwise I’d have little to no reason to go back (except to go to museums). I barely need to use the subway, which is a blessing.

A perfect weekend

The first warm, sunny weekend in May was one of the best so far. David and I went for happy hour before going to dinner in Chinatown and drinks at Whisky Tavern on Friday night. On Saturday we took the ferry to Dumbo in Brooklyn, which has beautiful views of the city, and on Sunday we wandered around East Village and made the most of patio weather.

Catching up with old friends

My friend Laura, who hails from Minnesota but now lives in Texas, was in New York a few weeks ago visiting her brother-in-law. We met in Melbourne, when we were both new to the city, and it’s been a few years since she moved back to the states. It was so great to catch up!

On my first visit to New York in 2015, Australian travel blogger I knew, Ashlea, was organising dinner & drinks with a few of her friends she’d met through blogging, including Katie, a Scottish journalist who was living in New York with her American husband. Ashlea has moved back to Australia now, but I caught up with Katie for a drink, which was a lot of fun.

Furniture!

Our apartment is finally coming together. New York City is an expensive place to breathe, let alone shop, so we’ve been furnishing the place pretty slowly. I’ve bought some plants, we finally have cupboard drawers to put our clothes away (after 7 weeks of living out of a suitcase!) and I’m starting to decorate the place now that we have our essential furniture. Our apartment feels like a home.

Lowlights

Moving to New York is an experience I am incredibly grateful for. As a result, I’m hesitant to complain about any frustrations or inconveniences because the good outweighs the bad and it’s all part of a very valuable experience. However, we live in the Instagram Age and I don’t want to present a glossy highlight reel of a life in New York and contribute to the growing chasm between what we share online and reality. This is my reality check!

AirBnB Fraud

Imagine my surprise when I received two emails from AirBnB congratulating me on two new bookings I’d made. I couldn’t even pronounce either of the cities in rural Estonia that the bookings were made in, and parts of the email were in Mandarin (I’m not sure whether this was my “guest”‘s name, or what). Something was up.

I checked my credit card. There were two pending AirBnB charges amounting to more than $1100, made only moments ago. I put an instant block on my credit card before they could do any more damage. Next, I tried to cancel my card – I wasn’t using it in the US anyway and it was due to expire in a month. My bank’s chatbot was useless, so I began the process that night of contacting AirBnB and a person to speak to at my bank in Australia. None of this was straightforward.

Since I’d blocked transactions on my card, I had to move a bunch of direct debits to my American bank card which opened a whole can of worms for many of the services which needed Australian bank cards, since I’d created the accounts in Australia. It’s caused such a mess and wasted hours and hours of time.

As for AirBnb? I had to call customer service twice, both times told that I couldn’t speak to the correct department but they’d email me in two days. Never happened. As it turns out, the first customer service person I spoke to never even put my support request through, despite telling me that it would be dealt with with urgency. Thankfully, my bank was able to contact them on my behalf the funds were eventually refunded. Once the amount had been refunded, I could then close my credit card.

Turns out I’m not alone with the AirBnB troubles. Getting a refund or getting any sort of support has been repeatedly documented as exceptionally difficult. Despite having fantastic experiences with AirBnb in the past, thanks to great homes and great hosts, when it goes wrong, I’ve found out that I’ll always be on my own. It annoys me that they’re brand is all new age, cool, down to earth, tech-savvy bla bla bla but they’re customer service is impersonal, corporate, behemoth, useless. Huge disconnect between the brand they’re selling and the service they actually offer. Moving forward I’ll be using Booking.com to find my accommodation.

Back problems

At a barre class a few weeks ago, I hurt my back. I’m still not sure whether it was mostly caused by straining a large back muscle or whether it was a pinched vertebrae, but either way I’ve found a great physiotherapist and am back to normal now.

One thing I really miss about my pilates studio in Melbourne, CoreCandy, is that classes were always small, with a rare max of 14 in the class. The instructors kept a careful eye on everybody’s form and were also quick to come over if they saw someone struggling, or stopping if they were in pain. I’ve met some great instructors at my studio here, but in that barre class I felt like just a number. I stopped numerous times during on exercise as I felt my back flare up, and when I let the instructor know I was leaving because my back hurt, she was happy for me to leave but didn’t show any interest in adjusting the movements so I could stay or finding out more about an injury. I was familiar with the exercises we were doing, having learnt them at CoreCandy, so while the weights were heavier and the movements were faster, I at least knew the correct form for doing them – and still hurt myself. So many people in the class were doing exercises with high reps and not-insignificant weight with really terrible form, that the exercise would be at best ineffective and at worst dangerous. I don’t know how any instructor could look around a room with so many people having terrible form and just ignore it.

By the time I got home, the muscle in my back was regularly spasming, which was incredibly painful. I spent the entirety of the next day in bed, because even sitting up caused major spasming and reduced me to tears. I called 6 or 7 different physios in New York, but only reached answering services that took my details promising a physio would call me back in 24-48 hours to book an appointment. Few called me back, but thankfully one did – and I got an appointment first thing the next morning.

I’ll go back to that class, perhaps when a different instructor is taking it, but I’m absolutely going to listen to my body rather than the one-size-fits-all vague instructions of an instructor who isn’t keeping an eye on her students.

The silver lining is that it’s renewed my interest in learning more about my body and how it needs to work, so I’ve bought a couple of pilates books on Amazon that breaks down how all the muscles in the body work together, and how to strengthen them to prevent injury.

Lols

No one understands my name

I really need a go-to name & email address when I need to order products or services. No matter how loudly and slowly I spell Genevieve, it ends up starting a D (have you ever met someone called Denevieve?), or being some variation of Jenaveve. It’s awkward because I’ll let them go wild with the spelling when they’re just taking my first name for the delivery address, but then have to correct them when I realise they also need it for the email address for my order confirmation.

Nothing is simple

What are they even doing in Silicon Valley? Half the time it feels like 1955 over here, which I know is rich coming from an Australian. Cash is still king here. I’m constantly getting cash out, which is strange for me because no one in Australia carries cash. Tap & go payments is also only just rolling out in America, but it’s been widely available in Australia for years.A bank transfer, which is fast, easy and free in Australia, regardless of whether both parties are with the same bank, is slow, expensive and complicated here.

To pay our rent, we were told we could go to the bank in person and create a cheque (most Australians under the age of 40 have never used a cheque) which costs $15, or we could “wire” money online. We went with the wire, but it ended up being a long and complicated form and it cost $25. And the recipient will be charged $15 by their bank for the privilege of receiving the money they’re owed.

Yes, Australia has embarrassingly slow Internet, but at least moving money around doesn’t require a carrier pigeon and a strong working knowledge of morse code. There’s an app called Venmo, which makes it possible to transfer money between friends, and it would be totally redundant in Australia because the feature is built into nearly all banking apps.

America is a global leader and science in technology, but it doesn’t trickle down to the everyday needs of the masses. It seems to be in America’s nature that systems are behemoth and complicated. It makes sense, being such a large country, but boy is it frustrating. I will leave you with this mind numbing feedback loop from hell.

I needed to pay for my physio with PayPal or Venmo, or cash.

1. I can’t add an American card to my Australian PayPal account.
2. Fine, I’ll make a new American PayPal account.
3. I can’t access PayPal USA’s sign up page, despite being in the USA
4. Fine, I’ll use Venmo. I jump through some hoops to change my Australian app store to the US one so I can download the app.
5. I download Venmo, and sign up. Uh oh, my phone number is associated with another account, so I need to call Venmo.
6. I call Venmo, they ask me to email them a copy of my phone plan with my name, phone number & address on it.
7. I explain I am on a prepaid plan, because I’m new to the country, but have had the phone for 2 months.
8. The customer service person repeats that I need to send them my phone plan.  I repeat that I cannot get a phone plan in America yet.
9. I give up. I can’t get a phone plan yet because I don’t have a credit card. I can’t get a credit card because I don’t have a credit history. I don’t have a credit history because American banks don’t recognise foreign credit ratings, even if the credit rating has been created by an American credit rating company operating in Australia. If it didn’t happen in the US, it didn’t happen.
10. In a few months, once our bank is confident that we exist, we can apply for a credit card, and I can get a phone plan, and I can get Venmo.

This is my life now. I jump through hoop after hoop, to find that I need to go directly to jail, do not pass go, and do not collect $200, sit out three turns and then I can resume playing. Obviously, if I was American half of these steps wouldn’t be a problem, but woowwwww it’s annoying not being American here.

This impromptu tourist photo shoot

I had to laugh when I saw this in Dumbo one day. That bus is not empty, and it’s not a prop. There is a bus driver in there, trying to go somewhere, and all of these tourists decided it would make the perfect backdrop against the bridge for their selfie.

On the blog

After posting nothing new in April (whoops), I’ve resolved to post four times a month. In May, I shared my first post about life in NYC, a SoHo Neighbourhood Guide and finally got around to recapping the best food & walking tour I’ve ever done, and I got a bit sentimental for my native Queensland and shared a list of 15 Amazing Things to do in Tropical North Queensland.

I’ve been working through properly editing, culling & back up alllll of my past trip photos, which isn’t fun but is much easier in America where the upload speed is 10x faster!

I’ve FINALLY finished editing my thousands of New York photos from 2015 once and for all. I used to cherry pick the ones I wanted to use and edit those, and not deal with the rest. I’ve finally deleted the duds, edited the ones worth keeping, and backed them all up and it’s such a relief.

Reading

I was sad to finish reading America Day by Day, the journal of Simone de Beauvoir during her four month trip around the USA. Her writing is such a pleasure to read and so many of her insights and observations are as true to me today as they were for her fifty years ago. Highly recommend if you love travelogues or are interested in reading more about the USA, her outsiders perspective is very interesting.

I’m still reading A Little Life, which is easily one of the most devastating books I have ever read. It’s an epic tale, so I’m still only about halfway through despite spending hours and hours reading it. I find that I need to take a break for a few days after binge reading a lot, because it is quite sad. It’s beautifully written, but absolutely heartbreaking.

I really needed something to lighten the mood between reading A Little Life, so I finally picked up China Rich Girlfriend, the sequel to Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians. His books are 100% fun from the first paragraph, the only problem is that I nearly read the entire thing the afternoon that I bought it! I’m trying to break it up with other books (that are less easy to burn through, see below) so that I don’t finish it too soon – I’m enjoying it so much. Luckily he has one more book in the series to read next!

I love reading history, but I’ve learned this month that not all history writers are created equal. I’ve read so many history books which are so engaging, but A Brief History of France by Cecil Jenkins has been a bit of a slog. The title promises insights into how history shaped the culture of France and the French, but so far it’s been a dense history. In an effort to remain “brief”, it fits a dizzying amount in to each paragraph without enough explanation for my liking and tends to jump around a lot. I’m already halfway through, so I’m determined to finish it in June. The book sounded like it was going to dig more into how French history shaped French culture, but mostly it just focused on the history.

Another book that’s been a bit slow for me is New York Stories,  a collection of short stories set in New York, from notable writers throughout history. I picked it up at the Tenement Museum bookstore last year, and it’s been on the back burner pretty much since then. It was one of the few books I brought over to the USA in my suitcase, in the hope I’d finally finish it once I didn’t have as many other reading options. Slog slog slog. I also just don’t like short story collections as a general rule, I’ve decided.

Have you ever moved to a foreign country? What surprised you?