It's nearly Christmas here in NYC, in my humble opinion one of the most beautiful places at this time of year, with lights and trees and festive cocktails wherever you look. I still find the chirpy 'happy holidays' greeting a bit discombobulating, though I appreciate the attempt to be all inclusive…. Especially as a heathen who only celebrates Christmas for booze, presents, food and as a light in the dark, dark winter, but definitely not for the baby Jesus.

One of my favourite festive traditions is the Christmas market and the city hasn't been letting me down, with a positive overload of them. The first we visited was just around the corner from us in Park Slope, at the Brooklyn Lyceum on 4th Avenue. The building is a rather delapedated old public baths (which still boasts separate entrances for men and women), used as a sort of community centre by those in the area. The market was held in the main hall and offered all sorts of locally made and sourced goods.

A short stroll up the road brought us to Skylight One Hanson, formerly the Williamsburg Savings Bank – despite being in Fort Greene – where the Brooklyn Flea Markets (which i've talked about before) move in winter. The building itself is stunning, with the most beautiful ceiling I've seen outside of a church since Grand Central Station.

Again, there were a huge amount of stalls selling everything a hipster could want and though there weren't as many Christmas jumpers on display as I'd like, I did spot this one.

The market was hugely busy and my Mr was getting hungry, so we headed downstairs to find some food.

First a slow smoked Texas style brisket sandwich.

Then a Japanese spicy beef taco.

The blog has been a bit Brooklyn focused recently, so to prove I do still go into Manhattan regularly, here's some shots of the Union Square Christmas market.

Before I bid you farewell, did you know they don't celebrate Boxing Day here? Without Boxing Day, how are you supposed to recover from Christmas Day drinking? When are you supposed to eat all your leftovers and watch tv all day?! Oh, the humanity!

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There is a strangely disproportionate amount of wall art in the area immediately surrounding us. Here's a selection for you. I'm pretty sure the first three are done by the same artist, who must have offered some sort of buy two, get one free deal.

The beautiful Park Slope library (of COURSE they have a beautiful library. Of course).

One of five Christmas tree sellers I've seen in a fifteen block radius, this one at the local food coop, staffed by, and only open to, members.

In the summer there is a 'People's Pops' popup shop at 7th and Union, selling hipster ice lollies (popsicles, if you're American). In winter the shop is taken over by the 'farm to sandwich' shop, Landhaus. This is their bacon stick, my new obsession, though I'm going to call it a porksicle. Nom.

Sadly, people don't seem to go as all out for Christmas decorations here as they do for Halloween, but I did find this house, toy soldiers and all.

Obama tree!

I told you it was poncey around here, might as well take that to its ultimate conclusion.

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It probably goes without saying (which isn't going to stop me from saying it) that finding decent places to sublet is largely a matter of luck. Fortunately for myself and Mr, we tend to receive preferential treatment from subletters. Partly, as I've said before, because many Americans seem to save a little soft spot for the British and partly because we're in our 30's, so the assumption is that we won't want to rave all night.

This month pickings were a little slim, so when I found us a dinky little place in Park Slope, we jumped at it, despite the cost being closer to places in Manhattan than the Brooklyn prices we're used to (an area this twee doesn't come cheap). When I first came to see the place I noticed it wasn't that clean, but assumed that it would be tidied up before our arrival. The owner also has a gorgeous little dog. When I came to see the place I loved him so much and was so gooey, I didn't notice that he had a not so gorgeous smell about him. Mid length story, very short, we arrived with all our stuff to a stinky and grubby apartment. Hurrah. The comfy sofa that I had coveted had stained cushions which, when turned, revealed years worth of crumbs and nastiness. Needless to say, I did an epic clean before settling in. The who lives here seems really lovely, but cleaning up other people's grub isn't my favourite thing to do, I even did a couple of mini dry heaves (thanks to old plasters found stuck to the underside of sofa cushions. Urgh) As much as I'm a good cleaner, I'd be crap at doing it for other people.

The apartment is also in possession of some seriously old plumbing, mainly concentrated in a pipe by the bed, which bangs and pops hourly from about 6am. If that didn't make my husband grumpy enough, we also have a rodent problem. Happily, the rodents of which I speak are mice, rather than rats… even more happily, they aren't cockroaches (my personal worst of all nasty small things). Mice are a very confusing pest to me, I'm torn between finding them adorable, so wanting to tame them to make them my tiny little pets and being far too aware of just how incontinent they are and how much pee and poop they must be trailing all over the place. I also have late night concerns about them doing said trailing across my face as I sleep.

We have this apartment until NYE, but with Christmas coming up, I wanted to find somewhere for January sooner rather than later. This means that we've now lined up another place, on the next street from where we are now, starting ten days before we have to be out of this one. A little bit of an indulgence, but one that means we can get out of here sooner and we have somewhere to put up holiday guests. As long as they don't mind mice. Or banging pipes.

Look! I actually got a picture of this one. Yeah, I wouldn't have chosen that colour scheme either.

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So, we've moved to Park Slope, an area which I once described to me as the most Brooklyn of all Brooklyn areas, which was not a compliment. This is the Brooklyn that makes some people hate Brooklyn, Park Slope is the hipster of neighborhoods, the area everyone loves to hate. Though it's actually less hipster than Williamsburg (my personal bugbear) as this is where they move to 'grow up' and pop out babies.

You guys, Park Slope is really, really twee. Twee like mismatching vintage tea sets, like pussy bow dresses and cakes made with lavender. Twee, you guys, twee. Within a block of our apartment you will find the following –

*A Swedish espresso bar (Swedish coffee is a thing?!) plus two other coffee shops and a patisserie.

*A grass fed and organic only butcher.

*A vintage shop solely staffed by men with engineered moustaches (one of about five vintage clothing stores a stones throw from one another, but the only one with insane facial hair as standard).

*A thrift store solely stocked with items from film productions.

*Countless restaurants, what do you want? Fish? BBQ? Italian? Mexican? Chinese? Lebanese? American? Vegan? It's all here.

*A gym, a crossfit, a bouldering centre, a yoga centre and a pilates centre (the mums of the Slope have to stay yummy somehow).

*Three dog walking services. Tiny dogs abound, even the childless around here want to mother something.

*Five boutique clothing stores (including one where you can have your own personalised batique t-shirts made. Yeah, me neither).

*Three gift shops.

*An oldschool milliner, now staffed by sexy bearded young men, that will make you your very own hat.

*A smoothie shop that sells wheatgrass shots.

Remember, I've only listed things in the blocks immediately surrounding us. The Slope is considerably larger than a couple of blocks and the pattern continues throughout.

The thing is, and I'm a little ashamed to admit this. I kinda love it here. I've lied to a couple of people younger and cooler than me that this isn't the case, but I'm admitting the truth to you, dear reader. It's just so damn easy, the subway is only one stop into Manhattan, the local supermarket is well stocked and plays lovely jaunty tunes (I had a little bop to 'Hit The Road Jack' just this afternoon) and Prospect Park is right next door. There are an abundance of amazing restaurants (including one around the corner that my friend in the UK recommmended after reading a rave review in a British newspaper), shops, bars…. and I've never seen so many coffee shops bundled together in one place before.

I suspect though, that the things which make it lovely here are also the things that would suffocate over time. It's unlikely that we'll end up living in NYC in the long term, but I can't help thinking of how each area we've tried would work for us if we did. Park Slope is the land of mothers, the streets are overrun with cute little mop topped urchins at school closing time each day, and their mothers seem to be quite a tight knit little community. I think about what that must be like, sending little India and Hugo to school every morning, then heading to Bikram Yoga with the other mums, followed by coffee and lunch, then to a shift at the local food coop, finally picking the kids up to spend the late afternoon at some sort of play date with the other mums… Or perhaps spending all day at work while a nanny tends to your children, there are a LOT of nannies around here.

Ultimately, this is all judgment based on assumptions I've made using my very limited knowledge, but as I I've said before, I prefer a little diversity. It's not quite as white as I found Midtown Manhattan, but its not far off, especially considering how concentrated it is. Prospect Lefferts Gardens, on the other side of the park, with its largely West Indian community, feels a million miles away. I don't think I'd want to raise my (currently theoretical) children amidst such homogeny… It's also really, really expensive, so there's that too. It's nice at the moment though, and we'll be taking advantage of all the fine eating and drinking establishments the area has to offer in these weeks leading up to Christmas, of that you can be sure.

I leave you with one of those omnipresent shit people say videos, as it nicely backs up all the stereotypes I've perpetuated here. Thanks YouTube!

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After spending our first two months in central Manhattan, I started to widen the hunt for our next apartment. Almost everyone we met lived in Brooklyn anyway and we'd finally accepted that taking the subway to work wasn't such a deal breaker (we're a little slow on the uptake sometimes). Brooklyn is absolutely enormous, in fact, if it was independent from the rest of New York, it would be the 4th largest city in the USA. Not so long ago, Brooklyn was where you lived if you couldn't afford Manhattan, but now parts of the borough are more popular than their Manahttan equivalents. This wasn't where we were headed though. In my search, I found an apartment which cost less for two months than we'd been paying for one, partly because the price included a discount for looking after the owners cat. Little did he know how much I'd missed having a pet, I probably would have paid for the privilege of a little furry hot water bottle pal, so, haha. I win. I've talked quite extensively about Harrison and Prospect Lefferts Gardens before, so I'll keep this brief, but damn, we miss that awesome little cat.

As an aside, I've got a theory that housecats tend to be friendlier than their outdoor equivalents. As we all know, cats don't give a monkeys about us, but being kept inside means they have less to focus on outside of their humans, so they pay us more attention. Despite that, I am not a massive fan of keeping cats inside. The apartment was a strange little hobbit hole, on the basement floor of a house. This meant two things, one, that poor tall Mr kept bumping his head on low hanging beams, and two, that Harrison only had tiny little windows to mournfully stare out the window at the free cats outside. There are undoubtedly cats who don't care about going outside (I've had one myself, though she was advancing in years, and did little except eat and sleep anyway), but Harrison was not one of them, and I felt horribly guilty every time I shooed him away from the door, as I left the apartment.

Our next apartment was in Bedford Stuyvesant, or Bed Stuy, which used to have a reputation as quite dangerous, both Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z were brought up in the area and 'Do The Right Thing' was set there. Nowadays, it's on it's way to gentrification. I'd imagine to the horror of some of its long term residents. I can see why it's being targeted by young professionals, there is some beautiful architecture and fast subway links into Manhattan, but it's not lost its personality yet. The super posh wine local wine shop was offset by the local grocery stores selling pigs tails and snouts… As well as the supermarket aisles of strange exotic foods that mystified me. The area was also well served by every fast food restaurant you could ever wish for, all the bigs had branches within 5 minutes of our place… Something that is apparently a race issue? It's not something I'd thought about before (being white, even a white that likes to think she's aware of prejudice, means a lot of insidious racism passes me by), but I'll tell you this… There are very few fast food restaurants in the predominantly white area we live now, so maybe there's something to this. I'm generally much more aware of my race here in America (even in NYC, which is barely even America in its truest sense) and the segregation of areas is much more pronounced here than it is in London.

The apartment itself was the polar opposite of the dark little basement we'd been in. On the first floor of a brownstone, with huge windows and constant sunlight, Mr (who is not a morning person) wasn't delighted with this turn of events. The open kitchen was a blessing for me though, after the strange cupboard kitchens I'd had to deal with previously. It was fairly clean too, but suffered from the lack of comfy sofa… Which I amended in our current sublet. More on this next time when I tell tale of our move to poncey Park Slope.

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I've written before about the Brooklyn flea markets, held every weekend in Williamsburg and Fort Greene. The same collective also run two food markets every weekend, Smorgasburgs, in Williamsburg (natch) and DUMBO. A couple of weeks ago we visited the latter, for the last market of the season. We spent our time munching through the stands, some crunchy schnitzel on pretzel bread here, a little pulled pork slider there, donuts, pizzas, pesto popcorn and even some oysters for our market companions (not for me though, sorry for being so graphic but oysters make me think of salty snot. Ick).

The people of DUMBO love them some BBQ.

Inspired by all the food on display at the Smorsgasburg, we decided it would be rude not to revel in the tradition of the Americans by cooking a meal for Thanksgiving, when in Rome and all that jazz. A couple of Canadian friends came to join us and we dined on turkey and an enormous mega ham, which Mr procured despite my protests about its size. Mr was right though, that ham was deeeeee-licious and we got a whole ton of meals out of it. Tasty AND frugal! Apologies for the schoolboy error of not taking any pics of the turkey before carving. I'm sure you can imagine roughly what it looked like (hint – like a roast turkey).

Yesterday we met some friends for brunch at Sons of Essex in the Lower East Side. The interior of the place is beautiful, all wood panels, leather corner booths and vintage nick-nacks… And the ambience was helped along by a merry crew of hipsters strumming some twangy jazz in the corner. Here's a little shot of the place, swiped from the Internet. I felt like far too much of a geek to take one myself.

I wasn't too ashamed to photograph our delicious food though, here is Mr's Loisaida steak huevos.

My butter scrambled crostini, with maple glazed bacon, truffle tater tots and mental mouth watering truffle Bloody Mary.

To finish, some dinky pancakes. The rest of the afternoon was spent propping up a bar supping many sangrias, perfection.

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Our next move was to a studio apartment in midtown, at 54th and 2nd. Our expectations significantly lowered by our last experience, the fact that this place had an actual bed (as opposed to a slightly wonky and uncomfortable sofa bed, or a blow up mattress situated in the sweatiest room in the whole of NYC), separate sofa (plus two armchairs. Oh the luxury!), effective a/c and proper desk for Mr to set his enormous computer up at, made us both extremely happy. We were in competition with a few other candidates for the apartment, we always are, as the sublet market is surprisingly competitive. Fortunately, our nationality seems to work in our favour, 'oh I love the British, you're so respectful!' they exclaim. I'm not sure they'd think the same if they visited one of our town centres on a Saturday night, but it works in our favour so I'm not complaining.

Our previous host had insisted on a cleaner at the start and end of our stay, for which we had to foot half the cost. Initially I was a bit peeved at this, taking it as a personal affront (I'm f*cking awesome at cleaning. Impressive, aren't I?). However, when we started seeing the cleanliness, or lack of, in other apartments, her reasoning started to make sense. When you're moving into a strangers home, sleeping in their bed, cooking with their kitchenware and bathing in their bathrooms, seeing accumulated grub can be a little stomach churning. To be fair to our midtown host, his place wasn't that bad, just dusty. Trouble is, dust is made up of something like 80% human skin and when that skin belongs to someone you don't know, and is everywhere, it can be a little grim. More on this in a future post, as we've had worse experiences since.

Despite the dust, the fact that we were stuck in one room (not counting tiny little box kitchen and bathroom) and our hosts strange taste in art (one of the pieces on the wall was either super libertarian or worryingly conservative, I never worked out quite which), this was one of our favourite months in New York. As I've mentioned previously, our housing choice was criticised by a colleague of Mr. Apparently none of the cool kids live in midtown anymore. I don't doubt it either, it's so expensive that there's no way most artistic types could afford it. Even a six pack of beer costs $3/4 more than in other areas (yep, I measure areas by the cost of beer, what of it?). The great thing about midtown though is that, like the name suggests, it's in the middle of everything, and walkable to many of the best sights in the city (though, admittedly, bars and restaurants are generally better in lower Manhattan). Walking out of the front door and being in amongst all the skyscrapers of NYC wasn't too bad either. Weirdly though, despite being just around the corner from the New York headquarters of the United Nations, midtown is WHITE. The only people who weren't as whitebread as the Brady's seen regularly tended to be working and didn't seem to live in the area. Not to sound like a city wanker, but I'm used to diversity and I prefer it. Happily, where we moved next changed this right up. Till next time my darlings!

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We’ve been in NYC for almost five months now (doesn’t time fly, etc etc). Mr is freelancing, so we’re never quite sure how much longer we’ll be here, as there’s always the chance that he’ll suddenly get work on a film and we’ll have to move somewhere completely new. This means all our apartments have been short term sublets, slotting into other people’s lives for a few weeks at a time. I was talking to a friend about this recently and she thought it might be a fun thing to write about, as it really is quite an odd way to live. So, here I am, writing about it.

When we decided to come down here from Montreal, we didn’t know if we’d be here any longer than a month. So, my first job was to find a place to house us in July. As any in-the-know American (or Canadian) will tell you, the only source for this is Craiglist. Yes, AirBnB is an option too, but the charge per night thing makes most places crazy expensive for a monthly stay.

Craiglist is partly a mine of pervs and scams, check this amazing ‘job offer’ I found. Revel in the nonsensical creepiness of it all. No, strangely bearded man, I would not like any of your roofied green drink. Thanks though!

Fortunately for the usefulness of Craiglist, hidden among the pervs are a sh*t ton of apartments needing paying guests while owners bugger off to cooler climes (remember, this is July. There aren’t many cooler climes than NYC in November, except Montreal. It would appear that Mr loves forcing me into freezing my tits off every winter). Rent in NYC, and especially Manhattan, is astronomical, which is conversely good for us, as it means most people have to find strangers to pay them to nose through their things while they’re away (strangers meaning other people, Mr and I are perfect tenants and never nose through other people’s things).

Sadly, most people (understandably) want to meet prospective subletees (is that a word?!) before they hand over the keys. This meant that as I was searching for our first apartment from Montreal, I got gazumped repeatedly. We were also slightly hampered by Mr and I being a bit silly and unfamiliar with NYC. In Montreal, he’d had a ten minute walk to work through a park and we decided that he should be able to walk to work in Manhattan too (in Soho, where he worked for a couple of months when we first arrived). Basically, we were bloody idiotic, meaning we eventually ended up paying an obscene amount for an apartment at 27th and 3rd (a forty minute walk, which I reckon he probably did twice the whole time we were there).

We never met the woman who owned the apartment, she’d already left the city when we arrived, and her ex husband (I was in no doubt he was her EX husband, as she told me about 30 times… She had a bit of the Manhattan bolshiness about her. I’m actually glad our contact was limited to Skype) met us with keys. Obviously unhappy with the idea of strangers rifling through her private things (how was she to know how perfect and uninterested in her things we were?!), the apartment was sold to us minus the use of her bedroom, which was locked. This left us with a tiny kitchen, tiny bathroom, tiny living room (are you sensing a theme here?) and tiny second bedroom, where we were to sleep on a blow up mattress (her babies cot not being big or strong enough to hold me and Mr). This plan fell apart less than an hour into the first night, when it became apparent that the sole a/c unit in the living room wasn’t powerful enough to cool us next door. This meant a month of eating, sleeping, sitting, everythinging in the teeny weeny living room. The kitchen was a little hot box that made me sad and, as everyone kept telling me, NOONE cooks in New York. This means that, plainly put, our first month we spunked money right up the wall. New Yorkers will tell you that it’s cheaper to eat out here than to cook at home. They lie.

On the brightside, we could see the Empire State Building from our balcony (most apartments here have balconies, although they insist on calling them fire escapes).

In the next instalment, we move to Midtown. Try to contain your excitement until then, yeah? Thanks.

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Recently while waiting for a train at my local Subway Station, I spotted a curious little poster sellotaped to an advert on the wall*. It seems that someone is looking for love, don't get too excited though ladies, one night stands only. He is very eclectic in his offerings, despite deciding before even meeting anyone that this is a one time only type affair. Fancy getting hot and heavy in the library? Or meeting for a cigarette and seeing if that might lead to romance? This guy's got it all, he'll take you to all the best places, McDonald's, or Wendy's if you prefer (though there's a risk he'll try and split the bill, unless Dutch dating refers to wooden footwear or smoking the 'erb). He'll even go shopping with you, window shopping only though, he clearly doesn't feel like one night stands are worth hanging around changing rooms for. Personally, he had me at 'cheese burger deluxe date', if only I wasn't a married woman *sigh*.

The next day the sign was gone, I thought perhaps an enterprising lady seeking deluxe hamburgers and soda had taken it down before contacting him, but soon after it was back! This time though, despite clearly being photocopied, there were subtle differences. This time he's offering cake and ice cream dates, hubba hubba. Screw the sanctity of marriage, I'm off to meet him now for some cake, cigarettes, walking and window shopping. See ya!

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An old friend passed through New York yesterday, on the way from the UK to a business trip in Charlotte. He'd never been to the city before and was only here for a few hours, so I took him on a whistlestop tour of the most iconic and obvious places I could think of.

What could be more iconic and obvious than Times Square. Here's us getting on that camera in the middle of the square (yep, you've seen this before).

As we debated what the cause for this madness could be, a young girl breathlessly ran up to us and asked if we could ask Niall if he would go to prom with her. I feel no embarrassment in admitting I immediately knew who she meant. These whippersnappers were waiting for One Direction, the crazyly popular British boyband. I'm not sure why she asked us, perhaps because we're British, so she thought we might have some sway with him. Sadly, we never got the chance to find out, as they weren't actually arriving until Tuesday (this was Sunday). Some other young ladies helpfully left a sign explaining this. I'm not entirely sure camping for three days in the hopes of seeing One Direction is the best way to celebrate youth, but as long as they're happy.

A wee aside here , I heard a confused American asking her friend who One Direction were as they passed us and the friend responded that they were the new Jonas Brothers. Erm, yeah, except the Jonas Brothers were 'abstinent' and wore purity rings. Whereas Harry from One Direction (the heartthrob of the band, think Jordan Knight. Yeah, shut up, I'm old) publicly dates 32 year old women and gives interviews like this extolling the virtues of safe sex. This, my friends, is why British boybands are better (except NKOTB, obv).

From there we walked across to Fifth avenue, intending to stroll up to Central Park but yesterday, 11th November, was Rememberance Day around the world, or Veterans Day here in the States. This means the Veterans Day Parade, with thousands of participants, young and old.

The crowd were extremely warm, clapping, cheering and thanking those marching as they passed. My own feelings were a little more conflicted, especially given the sort of 'wars' that the US have been involved in in recent years. I've always been more of a white poppy kind of gal, as I think that all victims of war should be remembered and respected, not just those who choose to fight. Saying that, I think the vast majority of those who join the armed forces feel that they do so for the right reasons (initially at least) and I won't begrudge them having the chance to know that their work is appreciated. They aren't responsible for the wars they get involved in and, apart from in individual cases, these aren't the people I blame for the unjust conflicts of recent times.

After weaving our way through the crowds we headed to Central Park and then, sadly, had to forgoe a trip to the top of the Rockefeller Centre for views of the city, as my pal needed to catch his train to the airport. See you in a few more years Zac! xx

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