My first blog post since I started working! After my business trip to Germany I didn’t really had a jet lag, I only woke up a bit earlier as usual the first days but that was it.

On Wednesday I brought the first cupcakes to the office and going with the comments and the time they were all gone I think my colleagues liked them. On Wednesday another piece of furniture arrived, the Rochelle apartment sofa! And the sofa is perfect for our condo both size- and color-wise. After the sofa arrived Danielle went to Eaton Center for shopping and ended up at the Bulk Barn which is a something like a supermarket for baking products. And off course new stuff needs to be used as soon as possible so I brought the delicious orange cupcakes with lime frosting to the office on Thursday.

Thursday evening Danielle and I wanted to look for floor lamp to create some more light in the living room, so we made a shopping date in Yorkdale to look at a lamp I found online at the Crate & Barrel website. We expected a delivery time of multiple weeks or that the lamp wasn’t as beautiful in real as online but the opposite was true, we ordered the lamp and took it with us right away. Also we ordered 4 side chairs which will be delivered not he 10th of November. Furthermore we asked John for some ideas for a Rug, Curtains and an Ottoman. And I can tell you the ideas we got are really cool but we first ordered some swatch to check or the colours fit to our condo’s interior. The same evening I setup the floor lamp as Danielle prepared some Halloween cookies for in the office…

On Halloween I went to work dressed up as a Bavarian and I worked the whole day in Lederhosen. Defiantly not the best contestant in the Halloween contest but at least I can say that I participated. In the evening I drove back from the office together with Martin and although it was raining there were some families Trick-or-treating on the streets. We had something else planned, Martin and Sabrina came to our place for Nasi Goreng with peanut butter sauce. And Danielle did a great job, the most delicious peanut butter sauce I’ve ever eaten in my life…

The weekend we spent mainly on shopping at furniture stores where we ordered a nice glass desk for our guest suite / home office bought a nested ottoman for the hallway to have place to sit when we take off our shoes. On the way back home we went to Lowes and bought some simple hooks to hang the painting of New York and the cupcake sign on the wall. Here I found out that these hooks are available in a version where you do not need any tools. You just push the hook in the drywall and you’re done even I could do that. And not to forget we bought 800 christmas lights for our christmas tree…

Since the mounting of the hooks was so easy I started looking into a wall clock, we found something online at the Urban Barn but when we saw it in the store it was to large and not as nice. We decided to give up on that and search again on the internet when we were back home until we found the perfect clock at the Pottery Barn in the Yorkdale mall. Too bad we missed the promotion from yesterday which said 20% discount on one single item today only, until I found a sign which they forgot to remove from the store! Only minutes later we walked out of the store with a new clock.

But hey, I wrote something about Christmas lights! Yes since Halloween is over I felt like christmas and I decided to set up our christmas tree which we took with us. And so it happened that I was setting up the tree while we listened to a christmas playlist on Spotify everything seemed to be perfect until..I ran out of christmas lights! Lucky for me the Lowes is open on Sundays till 8pm which left me with 2 hours, I also decided to order a Belkin Wemo Insight Switch to remote control the christmas tree lights at the Futureshop 2 blocks up north from us. After I got 300 additional lights and the switch we finished our tree at around 9pm, although finished? I think we might bring some color in the tree this year since there are so many beautiful ornaments at the Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel.

Unfortunately our brand new clock was broken and so I went back to the store today to get a new clock. This was no problem at all and ever since I put the battery in the clock it’s ticking fine.

We had no plans for today but in the end we’ve done a ton of things after we had a lazy morning. At 10 o’clock we left the hotel walked to the subway station at 47-50 Sts/Rockefeller Ctr from where we took the subway line M towards 5 Av/53 St. After exiting the station it was raining but we were close to our goal, the Museum of Modern Art at 53 Street.

At the museum we watched at all the floors and the most interesting items where from Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh and a big part of the contemporary section. Furthermore art museums is not our kind of museum to see and we guess that it was also a bit to crowded, probably because of the weather forecast. After we left the museum we wanted to visit the ‘Rain Room’ a room where it’s not raining when someone stands there. But when we learned that the wait was over 3 hours we decided to do something else.

We walked from there towards the Shops at Columbia Circle at the corner of 8th Avenue and 59th street. The shops were nice and it wasn’t crowded but we didn’t came for shopping, did that surprise you? We came to lunch at Porter House, they had a 3-course Park View lunch for only $25 which included a mushroom soup, a petite filet mignon and a NY cheesecake combined with a nice wine. It was delicious and the price was right. After lunch we went out and took the subway line C at the 59 St/Columbus Circle to get to 14 St.

At 14 St we walked to Chelsea Market. Chelsea Market could be described as a huge food mall with a lot of sweet food. You’ll find lobster, doughnuts, cookies, sushi, freshly brewed beer and more in a very good-looking building. And although we had eaten enough we both got appetite and went for a cupcake at Ruthy’s Bakery which is specialized in 3D baking. Danielle ate Cookie Monster and I went for Big Bird.

Since the weather was still nice we wanted to walk outside and we were near to Highline park so we decided to walk uptown through this park. Highline park is a long park build on top of a former elevated rail line which has a very nice design and gives some nice views at Manhattan.

After we walked from 14th Street uptown to 30th street we walked towards 34 St/Penn Station where we took the subway line C towards 42 St/Port Authority Bus Terminal from where we walked to our hotel over times Square.

In the hotel we partially packed our suitcases and we are still below the maximum weight. We also made a reservation for transportation to the airport for tomorrow since it might be raining and when it rains it’s difficult to get a taxi.

for the evening we had an appointment with Glenn, unfortunately Gina wasn’t able to come since she was ill, but we had still fun at the Irish pub near our hotel. It came to our mind that we’ve seen Glenn on every single US Vacation we’ve had, we’ve seen wedding photos from last year, we ate a burger, drank Irish beer, had a laugh and at about 11 o’clock it was time to say goodbye because we fly back home tomorrow.