Tinasbeen

Where I'm living

OK, now that you all know I like my job, I want to reassure you that I like my new neighborhood too. Of course, leaving West Philly was hard - it's a pretty amazing place - but Bill and I have really enjoyed settling into the Ironbound.

Check out the Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbound for some details about the history of the neighborhood, past and present. Basically, it's a thriving Portuguese and Brazilian community, with increasing numbers of Ecuadorian, Mexican, and other Central/South American immigrants. I'm practicing my Spanish more than I have in years, and the few Portuguese phrases I managed to pick up while visiting my sister in Brazil have served me well - but I'm hoping to learn more quickly!

It helps that the neighborhood has lots of great food, so we can practice our language skills while ordering - there's a cute little internet cafe with cafe con leche and tasty brazilian snacks for a dollar each (we went there on the day we saw the apartment and have been back often - especially when we were waiting for our internet service to get turned on!), a corner store with its own butcher shop in the back and fresh portuguese bread delivered daily, a fantastic supermarket six blocks away stocked with amazing cheeses and more salt cod than i ever knew existed (see photos here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=87997 ) . There's also a truck out front of the supermarket where you can buy fresh churros - fried cylinders of dough rolled in cinnamon sugar and filled with cream. They're deadly, but irresistable.

Plus there's tons of restaurants - I took my parents out to a huge lunch at Iberia over the summer (it's on Ferry Street, the main commercial strip in the neighborhood) and we've also enjoyed a couple meals from McWhorter's BBQ down the block, where a tray with half a chicken, a quarter rack of ribs, and a couple pounds of rice and black beans will set you back a whole $10. There's a reason it's always filled with cops and EMTs, I guess.

There are also lots of great bakeries around, plus Nasto's, a famous ice cream place that supplies hundreds of restaurants in the area: http://nastoicecream.com/index.html ) We're hoping to get there soon - we tried yesterday but they closed a bit earlier than we expected. ;( Somehow I think we'll survive, though.

posted by Tina @ 3:30 PM