Seams And Chronicles: New York

After visiting most Europe in the last 15 years, wanting to spend as much of my holidays on the continent, I decided to take a change for my honey-moon trip. My husband opened my curiosity and desire to get to know New York and since a couple of years I couldn’t stop thinking of the trip, especially when watching Law & Order, CSI NY, Blue Bloods, Person of Interest etc. The visa formalities went fast and smooth, to my surprise I was given a 10 year permission to apply for the visa given at the entry on the American territory.
We booked a week for end October - early November and planned our stay: to visit as much as possible especially non touristic neighborhoods and discover interesting places related to our professions (museums, design shops and art galleries). Finding accommodation has been a true nerve wreck as everything we inquired was not available. Our search was focused on finding a clean, cozy, good located studio/apartment. After 10 days of constant search and 8 days before our departure, we happily found something fitting our expectations. Many positive inquiries came minutes after we booked the flat but we were so relieved and excited to start our trip. The rental platform seems safe and the chance to find good and fast accomodation is high.

Shortly before our departure, I’ve got the idea to contact some local fashion designers and ask for insider tips such as fabrics companies, leather suppliers, book stores, art galleries, vintage stores/markets. The best place to find contacts and have a good feeling about it, is Etsy. So, I filtered my search down to NYC artists and chose 10 designers that have personal, beautiful and friendly shops: Sarah (Sarah Leora), Andre (Pantora), Regina (Seven Blooms), Yaeli (Yaelis), Katherine (Designer Deam Closet), Milton (Mescalante). To my positive surprise I’ve received almost instant answers with lists of great tips! So, I greatly thank again to each designer that took time to write and inform me, it has been very helpful! Even more, Sophia (Persine) invited me to join her at a vintage market in Brooklyn and Astrid (Astrid Land) invited me to her trunk show held at Gesamtkunstwerk. It was nice to know that people that I don’t know in person can be so friendly!

The travel has been really tiring (we took a direct flight by Austrian Airlines), especially the return way during the night (we had the bad luck to be seated near loud people). The flight attendants were very unfriendly, the seats old and movies crappy. But what I found delicious was the food!! I could choose the menu when booking the flight so I had exactly what I wanted :).

Preparing to land in NY

New York is what I expected! But what I didn’t imagine is how familiar it feels….some parts of Manhattan reminded me of Vienna and even Patrick had felt the same. 6700 km away can mean nothing sometimes. The sky scrapers are looking friendly despite their height and their brown shades are changing in different weather conditions or time of the day.

The apartment has been really nice; the building old but charming and the street noise was an authentic part of it.

The bedroom

We could reach Central Park within 2 minutes and few underground lines within 5 minutes. The host was extremely friendly and helpful.

We managed to visit everything from the list; the weather was ideal and could enjoy every minute. Food was delicious (but expensive!), Whole Foods from Columbus Circle was great and went there daily.
To name some places: we’ve been to Brooklyn via the Bridge, Queens, Connie Island, Staten Island and Manhattan (Little Italy, Chinatown, Central Park and Harlem). Visited the New York Museum (MCNY), MoMA, the Fashion Institute of Technology (Daphne Guinness exhibition), The Garment District (Mood Fabrics, Global Leathers, Magazine Café), 5.th Avenue (Bergdorf Goodman, Barneys), books stores (Strand, Barnes & Noble), Rockefeller Center, the construction site of the WTC, the Chelsea Market and the Highline (truly loved it!).