My Visit to New York and Maryland thus far.

Welcome back to the blog!  It has been a while since I posted on here.  I do have some posts that are partially done, but haven't been published yet... 

So, on a bit of a spur of a moment, well, maybe more like a couple of months, I decided a trip outside of Japan would be a good thing.  Now where to go?  I usually travel to Canada and the US, but that would entail 4 weeks of quarantine at minimum!  Since the US does not require quarantine if you have a negative COVID test, I decided to travel over to Maryland.  While I was here, I drove up to New York to visit my nephew and his family for a few days as well. Mike and Sian live on a wonderful property that has some woods and much more space than I am used to in Tokyo.  It was quiet and very relaxing. Their property borders on Croton reservoir which is used for those in New York City.  We went on a walk and I took a drive down to Cold Spring, NY, which is in the Hudson River Valley.  A quaint little town right along the Hudson River.  

This was on one of the walking/bicycling paths in the area.

Croton Resevoir

Fern and Leo, also friendly dogs, but took a bit more time to warm up to me.

Sasha, a very friendly dog.  Definitely has Burmese Mountain in her, but probably has some other dog breed as well.

View from the front porch

Hudson River looking upstream

Straight across the Hudson River

Looking downstream on the Hudson River

The park area by the Hudson River

The tunnel under the railway tracks going to and from the river.

I love the quaint houses and buildings in the village.

Looking up Main Street

What a great way to advertise

Croton Dam

My cute rental car for while I'm here.

Eighteen years ago when I lived here in Maryland, I purchased a 2 bedroom one bath condo in Rockville.  When i left to go to Japan, Menkis Reality agreed to manage the property for me while I was gone.  Back in 2012, many people from the Silver Spring CRC helped me with moving, cleaning up the condo and getting rid of a lot of my stuff I had accumulated!  I walked out of the condo 9 years ago, I have not been back in it until today.  I was pleasantly surprised!  

Entrance to the building

 

My condo is on the 2nd floor of 3 floors. 

Front Door

Just inside the door

Living room with patio

View of the front door

View of the kitchen from the dining room

Looking into the livingroom from the kitchen/dining room

View of the dining room

Going down the hall to the bedrooms and bathroom

Master bedroom

Looking out the door of the master bedroom

Second bedroom (it's darker because there is no ceiling light)

Look through the door (left it out of the bedroom and right is in the closet) to the bathroom

Going into the bathroom.  There is a washer & dryer on the left.

Bathroom, definitely no heated toilet seat.  Don't particularly like the green tile...

Exiting the bathroom into the hallway area and towards the livingroom.

It is not a modern place, but it is pretty clean and I was pleasantly surprised.  There will be a few repairs and then put back on the market to solicit renters.  It was really good to walk through there and I thought of a lot of good memories while walking through there.