Back and Forth Across the Pond

This blog is a variety of photos I took as we explored the city. There is no defining theme other than New York. This is the view from our apartment in Little Italy. We were right on Mulberry Street. The Chelsea Market is a popular indoor area featuring a variety of shops and restaurants in the Chelsea neighborhood. It's housed in the old National Biscuit Company warehouse. You know NAtional BIScuit COmpany. I was intrigued by the place for two reasons. One, I never knew the origins of the name NABISCO because I never realized that we used to call cookies biscuits like they still do in the UK. Two, I really appreciated how they had the old biscuit tins, advertising, and collectibles on display in windows throughout. I like when a place remembers its history. This is one of the display cases.  Here's another. I love the brand name. Talk about subliminal advertising. Why did Oreo stop the lemon filling? That sounds yummy!  The interior still has some of th...

As you may have noticed, I've renamed this blog to "Back and Forth Across the Pond" because the time has come to share photos and experiences from this (the U.S.) side of the Atlantic. I've pretty much exhausted my stockpile of England photos and I've had other adventures I want to share. I'm pretty hot and heavy with the dissertation writing now, so blog posts will be even fewer and further between but I will do what I can. Steve and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary in June. We marked the occasion with a short holiday to New York City. Steve proposed during an overnight New York trip (technically we were in New Jersey), so it seemed the right place to celebrate 15 years together as Mister and Missus. We used Airbnb and rented an apartment in Little Italy rather than a hotel and that made for a great experience. I highly recommend trying it. We also decided that this trip would be one of firsts. We've been to the Big Apple on several occasions...

In our England wanderings, Steve and I made it a point to travel the "A" roads as much as possible during this trip, instead of the motorways. A motorway, or "M" road, is the same as a highway in the U.S. It's designed to get you where you're going as quickly as possible. It's not meant to be scenic. An "A" road is a step down from an "M." It's not a tiny road (that's a "B" road), but it's offers a more scenic drive. For this trip, the journey was as much fun as the destination, so we took a lot of "A" and "B" roads. This brought us close to some interesting sites, such as Poole's Cavern in Buxton, Derbyshire. I'm not sure why but I never thought about England being a place with caverns. It's silly, I know. I just never equated the two together for some reason. So it was pretty neat to spend a few hours exploring the cave and comparing it to some of the caverns Steve and I have v...

At long last, I'm back to posting the remaining England photo blogs. My last England blog entries shared my wanderings with Steve around the walled city of York. From York, we traveled south to meet up with some old friends. In Chesterfield, we popped into the Parish Church of St. Mary's and All Saints, also known as the Church of the Crooked Spire. You can see where it got its name in the photo. There are fun fables about why the spire is crooked. My favorite is that a great dragon landed on it and twisted it. The real reason is that the spire is made of wood and it warped. Not nearly as fun. The spire definitely gives the church a distinct character. My camera was giving me fits in the low light and did not take very good pictures. This one, though, is kind of artistic looking. The spire from the distance.