First day in my new apartment

First day in my new apartment. Sitting at my dining table, having take-out pad thai and looking out the window. The first time I see the night-time view of the Boston harbor from up here.

My 22^nd story window faces East, across the water looking at Logan airport. If I look South I can see the lights on the piers along the shore line. North, there’s the New England Aquarium and more piers up to the north End. The water in front of me is sprinkled with 40-50 sail boats, all of them a few hundred yards out from the docks. Need to figure out why they aren’t at the docks – there are plenty of empty boat slips in front - maybe they are too big. I don’t know these things – I’m not a boat person.

It’s great to be in the apartment, although almost all of my belongings are still in boxes. The movers came this morning and spend until early afternoon getting everything in here. The put my bed and desk together and generally put the furniture in the right place, but I still need to unpack ~30 boxes which is going to take some time. I did about five boxes of kitchenware today but am saving most of it for the long Thanksgiving weekend coming up.

Ding-dong! That was the condo owner ringing the doorbell just checking in to make sure everything went ok with the move, and offered to lend me a couple of matching barstools to use for the kitchen counter. Very nice. He lives in the condo next door so we’re going to be neighbors.

I also need to make some hard decisions about my furniture. Since I’m moving from a larger apartment I’m not going to have room for everything. So, as I unpack I imagine a good number of things will have to go to the trash/Goodwill/Craig’s list – whatever makes sense. I spent most of three days going through my stuff before I moved and threw out things I don’t need. I believe I made ~15 trips to the dumpster but apparently that was not nearly enough.

More to follow when I’ve gotten more organized and can take some decent pictures.

And I wondered how the same moon outside...

...over this Chinatown fair
could look down over Illinois
and find you there
Tom Waits - Shore Leave

My upcoming move to Boston made me go back and look at the geography of it all. As the crow flies, I'm moving 2,288 miles / 3,683 km. (Google Earth is great for measuring distances.) To put that in perspective - here are some other places that are closer to each other:

- Scottsdale, Arizona - Tegucigalpa, Honduras (3,296 km)
- Stockholm, Sweden - Casablanca, Morocco (3,425 km)
- Stockholm, Sweden - Tehran, Iran (3,556 km)
- London, UK - Istanbul, Turkey (2,503 km)
- Freetown, Sierra Leone - Recife, Brazil (3,018 km)

Finally, for the last two years I've met up with a group of Swedes in San Francisco who have been coming over for the Oracle Open World conference. I don't attend the conference but enjoy meeting with them socially so I've been flying up there for a weekend each year, and we talked about doing it again next year. So, Boston - San Francisco: 4,338 km (2,695 miles). Let's compare:

- Stockholm, Sweden - China-Kazakhstan border (4,337 km)
- Stockholm, Sweden - Medina, Saudi Arabia (4,221 km)
- Göteborg, Sweden - St. John's, Canada (4,334 km)
- London, UK - Baghdad, Iraq (4,094 km)

Making any of these trips to meet up with friends for a weekend seems unthinkable, but I'm still thinking about making the trip to San Francisco next October. So what did I learn from all this? Not much, it seems...

Onward and upward

I found my apartment in Boston!

I spent most of Wednesday with a rental agent looking at twelve different apartments all over Boston. I saw several great places and had a really hard time deciding between different types of apartments (old, modern, walk-up, high-rise...) in different parts of town (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End, Waterfront, Financial District...), but in the end I went with a high-rise on the Waterfront.

Harbor Towers are the two tall white buildings on the right. I'll be living in the one on the left.

I'll be renting a condo on the 22nd floor of Harbor Tower II - the ever-so-slightly shorter (396 ft, 121 m) of the twin buildings designed by I.M. Pei in the early 70s. Because the units are individually owned the interiors can vary quite a bit. I first looked at a unit that had not been updated since it was built and it really felt uninspired, but the second unit had been completely remodeled into gorgeous condition. When I viewed the apartment the owner still had his furniture in there, so what you see in the pictures below isn't my furniture but should give you a good idea of the apartment.

The dining section of the living room. I really like the new cherry wood floors and the large windows facing the water.

The view through the living room window overlooking the waterfront and Logan airport in the background

Looking back through the living room

Kitchen with cherry wood cabinetry, granite floor and counter tops

Bedroom with a view - same warm cherry wood floors as the living room

Marble floor and subway tiles in the bathroom

When I lived in Boston in the 90s we almost never went to the Waterfront. It simply wasn't very nice then, but with the completion of The Big Dig the ugly highway that went through the city has been placed completely underground, and replaced by the Rose Kennedy Greenway making the area much more attractive and accessible. Around the same time, there was also an initiative to make the water more accessible and the concept of the HarborWalk was created, extending throughout the city

Part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in front of the Harbor Towers

The Waterfront is still a bit disconnected from my old stomping grounds (Back Bay, Beacon Hill...) by having the Financial District lodged in-between, but it's still less than a mile from Boston Common so it's an easy walk. Boston is such a compact city that nothing is really too far away. The North End (Italian neighborhood, great food) is only a few hundred yards away from my apartment and so is Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market (although that's a bit too touristy for my taste). And, the Aquarium T-stop (subway) is right next door which gives me easy access to the whole city.

In short, I'm very excited about the move - I only have one week left here in Arizona so it's all happening very quickly. Whoop whoop!