Sea Change

We are loving it here in New York. There is a real buzz and energy here. We are staying in a flat in Greenpoint, Brooklyn which is a traditional Polish area now very hip with lots of young people and feels very safe, with lots of restaurants.


There's a wealth of fruit and vegetables here in Brooklyn, good variety and all fresh, often local. The weekend farmer's market has stands that are all potatoes, all apples..., and again local. Heartening to see, especially after the limp imported expensive produce in Puerto Rico. Missing that papaya though - although I can buy some dried papaya sulphite free, a trend I've noticed here.

The Apple Shop in Chelsea is really cool. We went and learned how to style up our photographs there tonight. We also stumbled upon an enormormous multi shop food emporium, full working bakery, chocolate shop, enormous fishmonger, direct farm to shop butchery, itlaien deli, kitchen shop, etc etc...our kind of heaven.

Visiting a Polish restaurant for authentic Polish food has made us put that country very low on the food tourism bucket list. Heavy, grey and texturally most unpleasant. The cranberry blintze with cheese was the only saving grace.

When we arrived the apartment wasn't quite ready so the owner sent us around the corner for a coffee and we had some of the best food and best coffee we had had since leaving New Zealand. Ange was reading reviews of it later and was surprised when one said " beets on a hamburger, who would have thought of that!" ... sure enough it had Australian and New Zealand influences.