Sweet City Love: Moving day!

As quick as a flash - our summer in the city was on its last leg. We woke up on our last day on 34th St., after an incredible dinner at Emporio the night before, and it was pouring rain. How perfectly pleasant - no guilt for being stuck inside packing and no worries about having a lazy day inside. Packing wasn't even too painful. It was over pretty quickly actually. We had a number of suitcases and these monster recycling bags where we could cram our leftover things. Once we had nice little stacks of our bags, we knew it wasn't over, moving is never that simple. The worse part was yet to come....cleaning!!! EEEEEK. Cleaning our own house is pretty low on our totem pole of things we like to do. Cleaning someone else's apartment...eww. Yes, we lived there for several months, but there was a layer of grime on every surface that we really had a hard time eliminating. We held our noses, sprayed cleaner furiously and left it much better than we found it...and we found it needing some serious elbow grease.

This smile didn't last much longer...bathroom cleaning was next

On our last night, soaked through from the rain, we decided to go to a movie. Friends with Benefits, while not a cinematic masterpiece, ended up being a great choice. It was filmed in Manhattan and visited familiar streets and even filmed inside a restaurant we went to over the summer, this great cuban place in SoHo with the best corn on the cob you'll ever have! We left the movie smiling ear to ear, it felt like our mini finale. Since we were near the train, we hopped on and headed to Joe's pizza one last time. It was pouring and we were reflecting. How had we fallen so hard for this city? Would we ever come back? Could this be our home one day? Will we ever have a slice of Joe's pizza again?!

Just a little rain

It was this last night when we saw a homeless man and pup that looked so much like Charlie from the open window at Joe's. We had seen them several times over the summer and each time it broke my heart. Thinking of our sweet Charlie on the streets made me want to scoop up this husky mix and take him home. We saw them twice this night. The second time I ran outside in the monsoon, handed him some money, cupped his dog's sweet little face in my hands, gave him a pet and walked away, tears streaming down my face. It was such a strange feeling - so sad to be leaving the city, so sad for the man and his precious dog on the street, yet so relieved to be heading home and to be able to give my own pup and huge hug the next day.

We left the next morning, driving our Chevy Malibu (the leg room was insane!) through Manhattan. We were prepared for the worst and, honestly, it wasn't so bad after all. We never even got honked at. We made it to the lincoln tunnel, never once hitting a pedestrian (phewf) or slamming into another car (double phewf). All in all - a success!