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Early April in New York

Posted by Jim St. George on August 14, 2019
Posted in: North America, USA. Leave a Comment

Sven, Ajay, Fiona, and Mary Beth celebrating our new condo with us

A chunk of the early part of April was spent waiting and waiting for word on going to closing on the Cooper Square condo we were trying to buy. The unit we were buying had previously been part of a larger unit before being split off on its own. Because the occupancy permit stayed with the rest of the unit – which was in fact occupied by the owner – we had to wait for a new occupancy permit before closing. Wait and wait and wait. Of course, all that waiting saved us plenty of money; she was paying property taxes and condo fees while we were using the time to develop the floor plans that we would submit when we finally owned the unit.

And then, when the occupancy permit finally came through – Hooray!! – the owner wanted to delay the sale even longer. The purchase agreement had said we would close within a week or 10 days of issuing the occupancy permit, but her lawyer thought it would take longer than that and she wasn’t going to be in the city until the end of the month and on and on. And then there were questions about building permits she had taken out that were still open. The purchase agreement said that they would be responsible for ensuring they were closed, but her lawyer basically said “Yeah, we’re not going to do that.”

The tiny New York Marble Cemetery, quite near our temporary apartment, is the oldest non-sectarian cemetery in the city.

Frustrating, ugly, nasty … what a process. The night before we were scheduled to close it looked as though the whole thing was going to fall apart, at least for a few weeks and maybe even months. Finally, that night, frustrated and angry, we accepted her lawyer’s position on the work permits, agreed to take responsibility ourselves (since our work was going to be a total gut job renovation anyway) and we went to closing. Frustrated and angry instead of joyous, but we closed. And then held a little champagne lunch party with 10 friends to celebrate.

With that behind us, the next steps would be just as challenging. Our architect had to put the final touches on the plans to submit to the condo board’s architect who has to approve them to ensure we are not doing anything that would affect the building’s structure or that would be too disturbing to current residents. After that we go to the city for permission. In other words, it could still be a while.

The south view from our condo in what will be the living room

Meanwhile, while not spinning our wheels waiting or working with our architect on the plans, we tried to enjoy spring in New York. There’s a lot to like about the city in April, including an early visit to the Botanical Garden out in the Bronx (we’re getting around, even leaving Manhattan!) where they had a stunning orchid exhibit.

And then, the day after closing, it was off to London where we were to spend a few days before meeting my brother and his wife for a two-week tour of Italy. To be honest we weren’t too keen on leaving so soon after getting the keys to the apartment, but, well, it is Italy, so how bad can that be?

Here Mark is with the keys. Finally! Now it’s off it Italy.

Toasting our new condo with fancy champagne glasses, a gift from our realtor (who did very well on the sale…)

Mary Beth and Mark celebrating our closing, standing in what will be the dining room. That drop ceiling towards the back will be removed during demolition giving a much better view of downtown when it’s done.

A beautiful spring day in the New York Botanical Garden up in the Bronx with Mary Beth

Orchids the likes of which we’ve never seen

Feels like spring!

Mark had to go to a hospital for a fairly routine medical exam … and was greeted by this large portrait of David Koch, one of the most vile libertarian/Republican funders. On the good side though the hospital was really nice and everything checked out fine for Mark.

February in New York

Posted by Jim St. George on June 8, 2019
Posted in: New York (Home), North America, USA. Leave a Comment

Moving gently into the role of hosts, we had our friends Sven & Mary Beth over for drinks one night before going out to dinner. Soon we would face our fears and insecurities and actually cook a meal for guests.

This whole “Catching Up” process hasn’t gone so well. I was pretty happy back in April when I wrote up our final stop in Brazil, and then in May when Mark posted our January doings. But here it is in June and instead of having caught up … well, we haven’t. And it’s not as though we’re super busy or anything. I mean, retirement leaves a lot of spare time.

At any rate, back to February. The big deal for the month was getting a household set up after not having a household for nearly six years, but there’s not much interesting to write or say about that. We started the scary process of inviting people over for dinner; after six years of not cooking our skills were a little rusty. Mark’s parents came for a visit, our first house guests though we were pretty confident not our last.

It was a mild winter in New York and only once in February did we get any accumulation of snow at all. That once was enough for me to go down to the Battery at Manhattan’s southern tip to enjoy the views.

A lot of the month was just getting to know our new home town. Turns out it’s a big city with a lot to do. We’re trying to embrace the cultural opportunities here so we joined both the Metropolitan Museum and the New Museum, a modern art exhibition center just a couple blocks from our apartment. We even went to a “Music in Time” lecture an old graduate school classmate was giving on the Upper West Side. He’s mostly retired from the CEO-ing he did after graduate school and instead puts his energy into researching the relationship between music and political history. In this case it was Verdi’s role in the Risorgimento, Italy’s reunification campaign of the 18th century. It was a fundraiser (in an apartment on Central Park West) for a music scholarship program where his lecture was interspersed with real opera singers doing some of Verdi’s arias. Very New York.

Speaking of very New York, we absolutely love this view of uptown from our Lower East Side apartment

And then of course there was the seemingly interminable waiting to close the contract on our new loft at 62 Cooper Square. We wanted to close as quickly as possible to get the whole process rolling but that was not to be. The previous owner had had some construction done and needed to get an occupancy permit for the unit before the condo board would allow the sale to go through. You see, she had previously owned both the 11th and 12th floors, with a staircase connecting them, since no one could be expected to live in just a single full-floor unit. But she was downsizing and had the staircase removed and the floors created as separate units, meaning ours needed the occupancy permit. Now, all the work had been done; it was a perfectly livable with toilets and a kitchen and all that. It’s just that the city bureaucracy, particularly in the Department of Buildings, can move at a glacial pace. So we waited. In the meantime we were working with our architect to design the space (assuming we would be able to buy it eventually) while the then-current owner was paying taxes and condo fees. Frustrating to have to wait but ultimately not a bad deal for us.

As the month closed though we had no occupancy permit and, more frustrating, no idea whatsoever when the city would get around to issuing it.

Our first house guests, Mark’s parents, enjoying pre-dinner snacks and cocktails

Classic New York street scene near our apartment

One of New York’s new “pencil towers” on what is becoming known as Billionaire’s Row up near Central Park

We met Tamara in April 2014 when we first discovered the fabulous Temple Lodge in Bali. We bonded with her, stayed in touch, and even visited again with her in Bali in January 2017. While she still travels a lot, she lives over in Brooklyn so she was our first dinner guest. She appears to have survived.

There’s a lot to love about shopping here. For instance, New York has cheeses…

…and Jesus (this one by El Greco at the Met)

And here is El Greco’s view of Toledo (the one in Spain, not Ohio)

Me, enjoying an espresso and wearing the sweater I bought in Baku that I wore nearly every day in February…

And one last view of winter in New York

Campos do Jordão

Posted by Jim St. George on April 19, 2019
Posted in: Brazil, South America. Leave a Comment

Mark on our balcony before breakfast with the morning sun hitting Mantiqueira Mountains behind him

This was the end. After over 2,000 days of traveling the world, our last stop would be at a glorious resort 4,000 feet above sea level in Brazil’s Mantiqueira Mountains. But first a little note about this post.

We were here the end of December 2018, though I write it in mid-April 2019. After over five-and-a-half years of traveling and editing pictures and writing, we were ready to move to New York, find a place to live, and settle down. And then there was that whole pulmonary embolism thing where I could well have died in Rio, meaning I had to find a doctor quickly to see what had happened and whether the doctors in Rio had treated me properly. (Spoiler alert: they did. And I survived.) So when we got to New York the morning of January 2 I had other things on my mind and somehow just never got around to finishing this final post.

Fast forward to April and we’re in London, our first overseas trip since Brazil. We’ve been enjoying New York and found an amazing loft in New York; we closed on it the day before leaving. It will be a total gut rehab, so there will be many months of work before we can move in. In the meantime we’ve decided to post here occasionally, whether on a trip like this (London for a few days and then two weeks in Italy) or just about fun things to do in New York. And I’m sure the good, the bad, and the ugly about a big renovation project in Manhattan. To write those things, though, we first need to finish off Brazil, so here we are.

Every morning after breakfast I’d come out to this comfy lawn chair to read. For a couple hours I would be the only one there. Nothing not to love about that experience.

For our last and final stop on this fantastic adventure we stayed at the Botanique Hotel & Spa, up in the mountains outside of São Paolo. It is really a special place, isolated, beautiful, peaceful. They grow a lot of their own produce and so the food there was special. I suspect that there might have been some great hiking in the area but, as I was recovering from that pulmonary embolism and was under doctor’s orders to not exert myself, I was remarkably inactive. Up early, read on our balcony, breakfast, read out on the back lawn, lunch, nap, read, dinner … you get the idea.  At one point, after a couple days of inactivity, I tried to go on a little hike up into the hills with Mark. I got a little way up the hill and just had to turn back; Mark finished the loop above and around the resort but it was just too much for me.

Mark took this photo on his hike above and around the resort. Almost the definition of serenity.

And so it was decided: I would finish our epic adventure sitting around doing pretty much nothing. The weather was beautiful, pleasantly warm but high enough in altitude that it wasn’t at all too hot. The sort of place I would probably love even more if I’d had the opportunity and ability to have been more active, but a perfect place to be inactive.

Fireworks

And suddenly it was New Year’s Eve. The resort, in the middle of nowhere, had its own fireworks, with champagne, of course. The next morning, New Years Day, we were up and eventually headed to the airport in São Paolo for an overnight flight to New York and the start of our new life. Just like that, a new adventure begins.

All around the property there were these raised beds where they grew both decorative flowers and lots and lots of produce for our meals. It doesn’t get more local than that.

Another favorite reading spot. Imagine lounging here in the late afternoon sun reading Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Pretty nice, huh?

A view of the lodge from below. That top balcony was ours.

Breakfast was typically served right here with sweeping views of the mountains

There I am, waiting for breakfast

For the Holidays the resort had hundreds – literally hundreds – of these yellow plastic balls just rolling around everywhere. Festive and cute.

Did I mention that I enjoyed my reading time here?

Relaxing at lunch, reasonably happy that I hadn’t died in Rio

And yes, I know it’s horribly blurry. But what could be a better finale to this amazing journey than champagne and New Year’s Eve fireworks. Late the next morning we were off to the airport and a new life.