I’m in a HomeAway sponsored vacation rental while in NYC. FYI.
I like vacation rentals because they allow me to migrate more easily into the fantasy that the place I’m visiting is actually my home. I can carry a bag of groceries up three flights to my temporary flat. I can have a neighborhood where people live, where bicycles are locked up on back balconies and my window looks not into an impersonal wall of hotel rooms, but into other apartments where dishes pile up on counters and conversations about work leak out into the weird narrow spaces between buildings.… continued…
For a child growing up in 1970’s England, New York was a revelation. It was shiny, glamorous, attractively packaged. And there was so much choice. Take the cereal. In London we had cornflakes, ginourmous boxes of weetabix from the cash and carry (actually the individually packaged biscuits were quite cool, but weetabix for months on end, not) or porridge with golden syrup as a very special treat. Coco Pops were still a twinkle in a cereal designer’s eye.… continued…
