Upper West Side

My apologies to the handful of you who read this regularly and who did not find a post at this site yesterday. I usually have a backlog of posts that sees me through most contingencies. But I am in the process of moving from the Financial District to the Upper West Side and this is New York City after all, so it has been quite stressful.

But once moved in, you can set that stress aside, and enjoy that feeling of being surrounded by the culture and the energy of the Upper West Side. There are few areas more exciting. Lincoln Center is three blocks South. My favorite Barnes and Noble Bookstore in all of New York is across the street from Lincoln Center. And Central Park beckons just two blocks to the East. But there is so much more. For instance, Riverside Park to the West, which runs along the Hudson, is another amazing resource, with a beautiful bike trail that actually extends at least as far as the upper reaches of Washington Heights. Columbus Circle is nine blocks to the South, and Carnegie Hall just another three from there. The New York Historical Society is just a few blocks to the North and East, along Central Park, a museum we have come to appreciate deeply, particularly for their fabulous list of lecturers on historical subjects. And, of course, a place we have not gotten to know but is revered as one of New York's most famous museums - The Museum of Natural History - is also just a few blocks away.

Tonight is a special event at the Guggenheim, which is just across the Park, more or less. We are not only looking forward to the event, which celebrates the work of Wassily Kandinsky, but also the stroll home that skirts the Central Park Reservoir and offers a breathtaking view of the skyline and then winds around picturesque bridges, open spaces, and ponds, all a bit unreal, as if they were put there straight out of some idealized storybook about life in New York City.