The Weather Outside is Frightful

We had to cut our New Jersey trip short because there was a blizzard a'comin.'


By the time we reached Manhattan on Sunday, the flakes were already coming down.


We nested at home for the rest of the day. This is is how things looked outside our window on Sunday night. It was a crazy storm with lots of snow, high winds, even thunder and lightning! I believed we got dumped with around 20 inches of snow.


We ventured outside on Monday morning and discovered a hushed, white winter wonderland. Many of the streets were still unplowed and empty, including the usually busy Second Avenue (above). We came upon a handful of cars and city buses(!) that got stuck on the streets the night before.

Dan would have preferred to stay home all day. The reason for our outdoor excursion was that we were meeting with my German friend Tom and his brother Ken. I met Tom in Cologne, so I was pretty excited when he contacted me saying that he was visiting New York City for the week and wanted to see me. I was feeling ambitious and suggested we go on a walk in Central Park. But when we met up, it was immediately clear that everyone would rather sit inside a cozy cafe for a coffee and sandwich instead of walking in the snowy tundra.


So that's what we did--after Dan and Ken unsuccessfully tried to help move this guy's stuck car.

After lunch, we said good-bye to the boys (they headed to the place where all Euros go: Abercrombie and Fitch). I forced Dan to walk around Central Park with me, much to his dismay. Here are some of my pics.











I found the entire scene to be peaceful, beautiful and invigorating. Dan found it to be cold.  We didn't stay long.


The next day I had to go to work. It felt like I was the only person going into office that day. My commute had some obstacles.


A lot of people were complaining about how slow the city was cleaning everything up, but you had to find the sense of humor in the situation.


On Wednesday, we braved the bottomless puddles and slushy roads and met the Germans again for a nice dinner at Paprika. I daydreamed of visiting them in Germany for a second travel trip (Polish Ham? With Dan?)


On Thursday, we had a rare LA visitor, Francesca, who was visiting her family in Jersey. We drank wine and ate thai food and talked about the Mets, weddings, Newsies and such.

Five days later, they're still talking about unplowed streets on the news, but I am guessing most of the snow will be gone by Sunday since it's supposed to rain. That's the way snowstorms go here in New York. A big freaking deal one day and gone the next.