This past Sunday we had a matinee and then were free until the show Tuesday evening - however, we took off Tuesday night so we didn't have to be back until Wednesday. Brian and I hopped on a plane to New York City to visit friends and go looking at condos in Hoboken, NJ.
Bright and early Monday morning we left my old apartment in Astoria (I still own the couch so we have visiting rights whenever we want), stopped at Brooklyn bagel for a long-awaited bacon, egg and cheese on a mini sesame bagel, and hopped on the N train. We took that to 34th street and then attempted to tackle the PATH train to New Jersey.
The PATH train is surprisingly easy - you can even use your Metrocard from the subway. And Hoboken is much closer than I even realized! In 15 minutes we had gone from Midtown Manhattan to Jersey. And aside from the PATH train, there is a bus that gets you to 42nd street is 10 minutes or you can even take a water taxi if you're feeling adventurous!
As soon as we got off the PATH train in Hoboken and had walked around for about 5 minutes we were in love! Hoboken is a charming little town that feels sort of like Astoria, but more like it's own community than part of a big city. It's full of young 20 - 30 somethings who mostly work in New York City, and young families.
We met up with Stuart, our real estate agent we had been chatting with over the past few weeks, and went on a whirlwind tour of 7 different properties in Hoboken. It was a highly successful day and we saw 2 places we really liked. We planned to meet at the same time the next day to see some new places and go back to the 2 we liked for a second look.
When we got back to the city we met up with a few friends for dinner at Blockheads, a popular mexican restaurant with $3 frozen margaritas. (What is with us and the margaritas lately?!) It was so great to see some of our friends, since we hadn't been back in the city in 9 months!
On Tuesday, we got up early again, made the obligatory stop at Brooklyn bagel, and headed to Hoboken to meet Mom and Dad C. who were going to join us for our 2nd day of condo hunting.
We went and saw 7 new properties and then went back to the 2 we had liked the day before. We managed to rule out the 2 from Monday that we had liked, and found 2 more that were on our minds.
After a lunch at a local restaurant called The 4 L's, which incidentally serves the BEST sweet potato fries I have ever had in my LIFE, we chatted about everything we had seen and said good-bye to Mom and Dad C. who were headed back to Baltimore for a Diana Krall concert.
We headed back to Astoria for a quick power nap, and then walked down to the Bohemian Beer Garden where we planned to spend the evening hanging out with friends. It was much more fun than we could have even guessed, as a huge number of our friends came out to see us! It was so great to finally see everyone again and it made us really excited about the upcoming wedding!
This morning we headed back to Detroit to finish out the run of Grease. There is still one condo property that we really liked and is stuck in our minds, so we will see what happens!