The NYC Randomness.

Because of my wonderful situation on the Jersey Shore, I have the ability to run back and forth to New York City whenever I please. Most the time I take New Jersey Transit into the city to put me at Penn Station so I can walk around. However on the last two trips my husband has driven into the city so we could go visit his favorite store called Myers of Keswick, an English Shop and Butcher.

We drove through the Holland Tunnel, it drops you into Lower Manhattan where it is less psychotic then Midtown where the Lincoln Tunnel puts you. I never got any pictures of the tunnel before so I thought it would be a good time to get some...










Danny wasn't to happy.

He was afraid we'd be labeled terrorists, but I emerged victorious with a few prized pictures.

We went to the butcher and decided to walk up to Midtown to see if we could get lunch at PRET, a London born organic/natural sandwich shop that makes a great brie and grape sandwich (don't knock it) but it was unfortunately closed on the weekend. What we did get to see on the way up was worth the 60 block round trip walk, the show of force by the NYPD.



















The show of force is basically what it's called, just showing all the cops to show the people of NYC and it's tourists how strong the police presence is, but I got a few good pictures.

The trip was rather short, but I know come the holiday season we'll spend a full day in the city when we go to see the tree, go to light some candles at St. Patrick's Cathedral and go look in all the pretty windows.

I'll end this blog with my favorite picture I took in NYC from that trip, I found it on a small side street, and even though the election was over it still make me laugh.

Where I'm From.

First off, welcome to the new blog, an offshoot of my Thoughts of Jersey Girl.

I thought a nice way to start off with a new post, a real post, not a list, would be for me to clue you in to where I live and where I come from although it probably doesn't explain my wanderlust and desire to see the world.

I live in a town by the Jersey Shore, and if you live in New Jersey, I live off exit 105. If you didn't get that, don't worry, you wouldn't know unless you were from here.

I've grown up in Jersey my whole life.

Seriously. My whole life.

I have only left the state to live in Pennsylvania and it lasted approximately four month. It isn't my crowning achievement through life.

I didn't begin to travel on my own until I began working at my current job for AAA. I'm a retail agent there and my job has allowed me to travel cheaper then I would have been able to before, and now I take full advantage of it. My parents weren't big travelers, my father could always do without it and my mom had done it all before, our family trips were always to Maine to visit my grandparents on my dad's side and to Germany to visit my Oma and Sweden to visit my cousins. The only family trip I had ever taken without visiting family was to Hershey Park in 1991.

I was 7.

Some traveling life right?

But back to where I live...

Before I got married this past May, I grew up in West Long Branch, NJ, a very typical town for the area, white, Catholic, and upper middle class. When my husband Danny and I were getting ready to get married it was obvious we couldn't afford a house, and an apartment was our only option. Because I'm a spoiled girl, in my mind if I was going to live in a tiny apartment and have to pay $1000 average for a small roof over my head, I was going to live by the beach. Danny wasn't originally to happy, but now it's safe to say he loves living here sometimes more then I do.

Because I'm just so shocking, I moved one town over from where I grew up to Long Branch, a city that use to be the getaway for the rich and famous and has even been featured in paintings, specifically by Winslow Homer who lived and painted here.




But now Long Branch looks much different then during the days of Winslow Homer and the Victorian Era. This is what my neighborhood looks like today. It's a nice downtown neighborhood in the good area of Long Branch. (There is a ghetto section of Long Branch, and West End, North End and Elberon are the nice parts of the town, I'm in West End.)



It's a nice place to be because all the small shops and eateries are near by. My favorite is the Windmill. They make beach food all year round and are luckily open till 3am when you and your friends are all drunk and oddly need cheese fries.



Not all places in Long Branch and the shore area stay open all year long, places like the Lighthouse, a great place to get Italian Ice (not water ice) and ice cream.



They close every year in October and will reopen in April before the Bennies begin to descend again on our quiet towns. If you don't know what a Benny is, just so you know, you are one and can get more definitions on other blogs on www.margotisyourhero.blogspot.com.

But the real reason I moved here, the reason people want to come here and live here can be summed up in a series of photos that I took just a block and a half from my house along the boardwalk:























































So now that you've seen exactly where I come from, maybe it'll give you a touch of the wanderlust to at least see the place where I call home, the place where I can get cheese fries at 2:30am and where I can take nightly walks along the breaking waves with my husband.

The Jersey Girl's List

Places I Have To Go.

This is my list of places I have to go in my lifetime also with places that I have been - this way I don't seem like an untraveled fool. This blog I will take the time to add to this list and talk about my other travels.

1.Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2.Iceland
3.Newfoundland, Canada
4.French Rivera, France
5.Paris, France
6.Calais, France
7.Versailles, France
8.Milan, Italy
9.Venice, Italy
10. Rome, Italy
11. Palermo, Sicily, Italy
12. Bordeaux, France
13. Athens, Greece
14. Boston, Massachusetts, USA (to be seen June 2009)
15. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA
16. Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA (to be seen June 2009)
17. Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada
18. Prince Edward Island, Canada
19. Halifax, Canada
20. Lisbon, Portugal
21. Moscow, Russia
22. Prague, Czech Republic
23. Tahiti
24. Fiji
25. Hanoi, Vietnam
26. Montreal, Quebec, Canada (to be seen May 2009)
27. Quebec City, Quebec, Canada (to be seen May 2009)
28. Burlington, Vermont, USA
29. Bennington, Vermont, USA (to be seen February 2009)
30. San Francisco, California, USA
31. Napa Valley, California, USA
32. Finger Lakes Region, New York, USA
33. Munich, Germany
34. Aruba
35. Alaska, USA
36. Seattle, Washington, USA
37. Portland, Oregon, USA
38. Crater Lake, Oregon, USA
39. Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA
40. Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
41. Sedona, Arizona, USA
42. Cancun, Mexico
43. Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
44. Key West, Florida, USA
45. Miami, Florida, USA
46. Savannah, Georgia, USA
47. Charleston, South Carolina, USA
48. Williamsburg, Virginia, USA
49. Salem, Massachusetts, USA
50. Oslo, Norway
51. San Antonio, Texas, USA
52. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
53. Stockholm, Sweden
54. Dublin, Ireland
55. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA
56. Washington DC, USA
57. Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
58. West Virginia, USA
59. Acadia National Park, Maine, USA
60. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA
61. New York City, New York, USA
62. Montauk, New York, USA
63. The Hamptons, New York, USA
64. Newport, Rhode Island, USA
65. St. Petersburg, Russia
66. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
67. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA
68. Hershey Park, Pennsylvania, USA
69. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA (to be done December 2008)
70. Toronto, Ontario, Canada
71. Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
72. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
73. Assateague Island, Maryland, USA
74. St. John, New Brunswick, Canada
75. Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York, USA
76. Tallinn, Estonia
77. Frankfurt, Germany
78. Helsinki, Finland
79. London, England
80. Edinburgh, Scotland
81. Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
82. Bozeman, Montana, USA
83. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
84. Glacier National Park, Montana, USA
85. Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
86. Bryce National Park, Utah, USA
87. Lake Powell, Arizona, USA
88. Zion National Park, Utah, USA
89. Denver, Colorado, USA
90. Aspen, Colorado, USA
91. Pikes Peak, Colorado, USA
92. St. Louis, Missouri, USA
93. Vicksburg, Mississippi, USA
94. Biloxi, Mississippi, USA
95. Montgomery, Alabama, USA
96. Nashville, Tennessee, USA
97. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, USA
98. Memphis, Tennessee, USA
99. Louisville, Kentucky, USA
100. Portsmouth, New Hampshire, USA
101. Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, USA
102. Bermuda, UK
103. Old Man in the Mountain, New Hampshire, USA
104. South Africa
105. Costa Rica
106. Panama
107. Galapagos Islands
108. Cape May, New Jersey, USA
109. New Hope, Pennsylvania, USA
110. Lewes, Delaware, USA
111. San Juan, Puerto Rico
112. El Yunque, Puerto Rico
113. Amherst, Massachusetts, USA
114. Pocono’s, Pennsylvania, USA
115. Hyde Park, New York, USA
116. Tarrytown, New York, USA
117. Mt. Vernon, Virginia, USA