Making It Anywhere

The next in our regular series of interviews with digital nomads is with Erin and Simon from Never Ending Voyagee. We’d never spoken to them before the interview, but reading their story on their blog really inspired us: theirs was the first blog we found where people were travelling in the same way as us (slowly, in rented apartments and working while we go), and it showed us that you really can travel in whatever way works for you.

Travel rule #593: never Google information about Greyhound the night before you have a bus trip with them.

Seriously. You’ll be unable to tear yourself away from the tales of agony and woe that proliferate on every message board, and there’s an approximately 0% chance that you’ll come away feeling any better about the experience ahead of you.

But every good rule has an exception, and here it is: if you’re travelling with Greyhound Express, you have far less to worry about. Greyhound Express launched in late 2011, and has several important differences from regular Greyhound services – not that anyone seems to have told Greyhound’s employees or web developers yet.

Here’s what you need to know.

The best six months of our lives are coming to an end: we’re leaving NYC. To make matters worse, we’ve accumulated a shitload of stuff that a) we can’t take home with us, and b) we can’t return to the store because it’s outside the 30-day-return policy (not that we’d ever do that, of course).

Everything listed below is in excellent condition and will make you very cool among your friends somehow. If you’re interested in buying any of it, email us to arrange a time to pick it up (we’re in the East Village).

Yes, that means it’s not a proper yard sale. No, there isn’t even a yard in which to perform the exchange.

We’re not selling anything that’s even remotely mind-blowingly interesting, so I’ve gone to town on the item descriptions…

Ciro (Washington DC): “I try my best to answer questions rather than introduce everybody to Google”

We have a running series of interviews with our Airbnb hosts. Learn more about them here.

We visited Washington DC for a week at the end of May – arriving on Mish’s birthday (28 May, in case you want to know for next time…). The first half of the birthday wasn’t exactly delightful (it took place on a Greyhound bus to DC), but the second half was amazing: we checked in to Ciro’s gorgeous, bright, clean studio apartment slap-bang in the middle of Dupont Circle (the best part of town), had a wander around the pretty streets and then went out for oysters, lobster rolls and rosé in a fantastic nearby seafood restaurant.

We never got to meet Ciro, but he answered any of our queries within about five seconds of us asking! And he has a fantastic “door handle key locker” system, which enabled us to get into the apartment easily.

Being in Dupont Circle was fantastic: it was easy to get to all parts of town: downtime for all the politics stuff and museums, Georgetown for all the cutesy prettiness, Adams Morgan for nightlife and the U Street Corridor for jazz, Ethiopian food and a history lesson. 

On Day 1, I served a family of four so huge that they had to sit sideways around the table for breakfast (their legs were too fat to fit comfortably underneath).

Here’s what the adult son ordered: four fried eggs, four slices of fried bread with peanut butter on the side, two muffins, one bowl of cereal, one fruit bowl, one hot chocolate with whipped cream, and one glass of chocolate milkshake with extra chocolate syrup. He screamed at me when I said the owner thought he was going against the “spirit” of an all-inclusive vacation and then – after I got him everything he wanted anyway – didn’t leave a tip (of course).

For the next instalment in our digital nomad interview series, we’re really excited to be talking to Monica McCarthy from Show & Tell Productions.

You might not have thought that you could train people to improve their on-camera presence from across an ocean, or fit shooting videos for companies between frequent trips abroad. But Monica’s done it, and here’s how!

New Yorkers just love their acronyms when it comes to naming areas in the city. In Manhattan alone we have the following:

• SoHo: SOuth of HOuston (Street)
• NoHo: NOrth of HOuston (Street)
• TriBeCa: TRIangle BElow CAnal (Street)
• NoMad: NOrth of MADison (Square Park)
• FiDi (FInancial DIstrict)
• NoLIta (NOrth of Little ITAly)

Best of all, we have THIS beauty in Brooklyn:

• DUMBO: Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass*

Regular readers (hi Mum!) might have the impression we’re a bit obsessed with coffee. We have, after all, already rounded up our favourite coffee shops in Boulder, Colorado and Manhattan.

But it’s not just about the coffee. Take it from two people who spend 24 hours a day in each other’s company – 12 of those hours staring at a computer screen: sometimes you’ve got to get out and be reminded that other people exist. And if you can combine that with a caffeine fix, all the better.

So as we’ve been based in Park Slope (home of Patrick Stewart, smug parents and an inordinate number of lesbians) for the last month, we’ve tried one heckuva lot of local establishments that combine two of the finest things in life – coffee and wifi. Here’s our verdict.

This week we’ve had way too much fun at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, written way too many words (in way too many styles – damn you Americans and your Unnecessary Capitalization Of Titles), and had way too much coffee spurt out of our noses while catching up on old Modern Family episodes.

While we’ve been doing that, our fellow bloggers have been keeping us entertained and informed with their tales of trying tiny hotels, struggling with Sweden, and getting ever more ambitious with advancing age. We salute them in this week’s round-up of our favourite blog posts of the week.

Monique (Greenport, Long Island): “Update your calendar!”

We have a running series of interviews with our Airbnb hosts. Learn more about them here.

In Mid-July, we drove two hours out of NYC and ended up in Greenport, on the North Fork of Long Island. It’s like being in a different country out there – heaps of green space, beautiful beaches, wild animals, people who say “hi” in the street and not a Starbucks/Duane Reade/McDonald’s in sight.

We stayed in Monique’s two-bedroom house while we were there, and it was just perfect. We had so much space compared to our NYC apartments that at first we were stumped about what to do with it all! One bedroom became our walk-in closet for the week, and we soon got used to spreading all our work over the huuuge kitchen table.

Monique’s house had so many amenities that we just weren’t used to in New York. For example, there was a barbecue in the yard, so we went to the local fish market for shark and swordfish to cook on it; there were bikes in the shed (with locks thoughtfully left out for us), so we cycled to the beach every day for a mini-sunbathing session; we found a washer and dryer in the basement (whoop!), so we didn’t have to visit a laundromat that week.

We had the most peaceful, relaxing week at Monique’s house, and we’d recommend it to anyone.