Neighborhood Hunting, AKA a Reason to go to The City

So our little NJ town didn't exactly offer the type of lifestyle that we have come to know and love.  And being home with a newborn with no car and a very small, limited town to walk around made me antsy for a reason to get out and do something on the weekends.  My best rationale for a visit to the city became that we needed to explore neighborhoods so we would know where we wanted to be when it was time to find an apartment.  Pretty smooth.

Since the train stop was visible from our apartment you would think that it would be really easy for us to jump on the train and zip to the city.  Wrong.  We missed the train repeatedly.  This usually included us running around the apartment like lunatics trying to pack Jaime's diaper bag in 30 seconds to get to the elevator and have one of them broken so it would take eons to get out of the building and then have the train pull away as we were waltzing up the steps.  A couple of times we decided to drive in at that point and take the dogs.  A few times we just waited for the next train, cursing being in the suburbs the whole time.

We always loved a nice walk through the city.  Jaime often slept for a lot of it.  When he was awake he would look around with big wide eyes taking it all in.  He was asking us "why are you keeping me in that small tiny town when I could be here?" 

We didn't just miss the train for heading into the city.  We also missed it heading home.  One Sunday afternoon we were headed home taking the Path to the Transit and we just made the Path train and then sat there as it crawled along and then missed our Transit train... so we cursed not just getting dinner in the city but made due with a bbq place in Newark since it was an hour wait for the next train.  Jaime was a such a sport.  He never fussed on these trips.

After our first visit to the Upper West Side that was it.  We were done with exploring neighborhoods in the name of home hunting as there was no question that this would be the neighborhood for us.  Then I just had to convince Dan that it was time to make the leap of faith that one of the jobs I was interviewing for would work out and start the apartment search.