Living in New York When the Honeymoon's Over

Aug. 30, 2003

Our honeymoon in New York City doesn't seem quite as special now that we've lived here three years of the seven we've been married.

Yep, today's our wedding anniversary, and after we said "I do" in 2003, we hopped a plane to LaGuardia and spent a week exploring a city neither of us knew.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, and now I wish we would have spent our honeymoon in a place we would never call home. New York will forever after be livable instead of magical, and in what fairy tales do the prince and princess get whisked off to some merely habitable locale? I guess we can't all be Cinderella.

And anyway, I can hardly call New York merely habitable. Even three years later, it still does have some of that magic sparkle, honeymoon or no honeymoon. What's more, on our honeymoon we did check off a few of the touristy must-sees that I was trying to avoid when we first moved here in my effort to feel like a local. For example, seven years ago we toured the UN building and went to the top of the Empire State Building. I haven't returned to either.

As can be expected, I was very naive about the city back then. I think we rode the subway only once -- I couldn't figure out whether I wanted to go uptown or downtown, toward Brooklyn or the Bronx, and it was just easier to walk anyway. Now I barely have to look at a subway map.

Without that honeymoon, however, I certainly would have been much more nervous to have moved to New York in the first place. In fact, as much as I loved the city on our honeymoon, New York didn't strike me as the type of place I wanted to live. Obviously that feeling disappeared -- maybe because I don't live in the city proper, but rather the city improper, Brooklyn.

Now do I love living in New York?

I do.