Welcome to a new series here on Tall Girl Big World! Over the last few years, my writing has changed a lot. When I first started blogging, my posts were mostly recaps of my recent adventures with a few hastily snapped photos thrown in for good measure. Somewhere along the way I started writing mainly informational pieces sharing my best tips and tricks from my many travels. Obviously, I want my corner of the internet to be useful to you, my lovely readers, but I also want to connect with you and share more about my life and who I am.
Enter: my travel diary. Now, many of you already know that I keep a legit travel diary (which I highly recommend doing!). But I wanted to create a space on my blog where I could share everything with you from personal wins (filing taxes, woo!) to what I got up to on the weekend. I’m a nosy person, and I love reading posts like this on other blogs. It’s just so fun to see what people in other cities get up to in their day-to-day life, isn’t it? This series will give you a play-by-play of my adventures here in NYC and abroad, and I’m sure I’ll throw in more than a few foods pictures along the way.
This weekend wasn’t particularly exciting, but I was super productive and checked a lot of things off my to-do list. Namely, I submitted the design questionnaire to the lovely woman who’s going to be redoing my blog in a few weeks! Her name is Laura, and she’s the creative genius behind Pixel Me Designs. My friend Maddy (who runs the fabulous blog Travel Alphas) recommend Laura to me after she redid the Travel Alphas website. Maddy’s site looks incredible, and I immediately emailed Laura after I saw it.
Before beginning the blog redesign process, I had no idea how much thought goes into designing a website. My current website is a pre-made WordPress theme, and there was very little I could customize. I cannot tell you how many hours I’ve spent pouring over font styles and color swatches in preparation for this redesign. Unsurprisingly, I do not have an eye for design. Luckily, my dear friend Caroline does (she has a degree in it and everything!) and she very graciously helped me figure out what the best look for my blog would be.
Besides working away on the redesign, I finally got to visit the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side on Saturday. The Tenement Museum has a variety of tour types; I did a tour called “Under One Roof,” which took us through an apartment in an old tenement building. On the tour, we heard the stories of three families who lived there from the ’50s-‘80s. What’s so unique about the Tenement Museum is that they share the stories of real families who lived in the area. Museum officials scour government records to figure out who lived where, when they entered the US, etc.
One family that really stuck out to me was the Epstein family. The parents were Holocaust survivors who met in a displaced persons camp in Germany. They got married, and decided to begin a new life in America. Hearing their story and learning more about their lives after WWII was incredible. In school, we learned so much about WWII and its aftermath on the German people, but we never actually learned what happened to those who survived the concentration camps. The Tenement Museum humanized the whole experience for me, and I’m so happy I finally made time to visit.
Besides that, I have nothing exciting to report! I’m going to The Met this week to see my first-ever professional opera (Madame Butterfly, I anticipate lots of tears). What did you get up to this weekend?
Tell me: What kinds of things are you interested in reading in these travel diaries?
Signing off,
Claire
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