Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Over the next few months, a group of seven bloggers will be sharing their workspaces, their homes, towns and more!

Make sure you visit everyone to see where the magic happens!

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Julia at When the Girls Rule
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After

My mother always said the best thing about living in New York was that in under two hours you could be at the beach, the country, farmland, the city, or the mountains. And she may have been right. You can really get the best of all worlds.

And some of those worlds are, well a world apart. Here on Long Island we speak of NY as being in three parts: the Island, the city, and “upstate” (anything north of the city). When most people from other places think of New York, they picture “New York City,” the tiny island of Manhattan, which is actually the smallest part of New York.

New York City actually consists of five distinct boroughs (all indicated in brown at the left – fish-head – end of Long Island in the map above): Manhattan (a tiny island unto itself), Queens and Brooklyn (which are actually physically part of Long Island, though inhabitants of those boroughs will fight you tooth and nail on that point), Staten Island (which really seems like part of NJ to me…and probably a lot of others, too), and the Bronx, which is north of the city and the gateway to “upstate” and western New York. The Bronx is actually the only one of the five boroughs that is attached to the mainland of New York state, and not an island.

NYC is home to many famous landmarks you all know of: Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, Rockefeller Center. Those landmarks draw a LOT of tourists: a record 67-million in 2019. We have fantastic museums and restaurants and live theater and shopping and fashion…and interesting, kooky, fun, artistic, entertaining people! I think NYC probably has the best people-watching in the world.

Being mostly islands, Long Island and New York City have a LOT of bridges. Eleven biggies, to be exact, connecting all the islands to one another, to the mainland of New York state, and to New Jersey. If you don’t like bridges, this is not the place for you. I used to have A Thing…when driving over a bridge I would have to really control my hands from not turning the steering wheel and heading off the side of the bridge. I never did it, but I always felt like I was about to if I didn’t really keep myself in check. My friends love hearing that story, ha ha, especially when I’m the one doing the driving.

Incidentally, the George Washington Bridge, which connects NY to NJ is the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge. Lots of comings and goings here. Millions of people work in NYC but it’s so outrageously expensive to live there that many live in the outer boroughs, New Jersey and even Connecticut.

Being “water-locked” (Is that a term? Like “land-locked,” but water?), NY also has a lot of lighthouses. Fifty-one. A lot are down here on the islands and the Hudson River…but I think there are even more in Western New York along the Great Lakes.

Did you know that New York goes so far west that it butts up against the Great Lakes? And to the north it borders on Canada. NY is pretty big! A lot bigger than tiny New York City. It’s the 27th largest state, so right about in the middle size-wise…but with 20-million people, it’s the 4th largest, population-wise. And most of those people are in the five boroughs of NYC and Long Island.

Once you get north of the Bronx and head “upstate,” the geography changes from beachy and urban/suburban to mountains and forests. Towns are smaller, homes are further apart. It’s quieter and more peaceful.

And it’s cooler, compared to Long Island’s humid, subtropical weather. They get a LOT more snow up there. Like 100-200″ in a winter. That’s a lot of snow! And upstate is where you go leaf-peeping in the fall as you get wonderful views of the mountains painted in all the shades of autumn.

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Both Long Island and upstate are home to many wonderful historic mansions and estates.

The capitol of New York is Albany, which is upstate. I’ve never been there.

It will be interesting to see how Emily of Dust&DogHair describes NY as she lives here also but is one of those “Western New Yorkers.”

I admit I have not traveled to western NY at all and haven’t really been too far up into northeastern (? is that a thing?) NY much. But I would like to start making some little mini-trips to the parts of NY I have never been.

You up for a visitor, Em??

Have you ever been to NY? If so, what was your favorite thing? And if you haven’t, why not?  It’s awesome and there’s something here for everybody.

Don’t forget to check out the other ladies today to see what they’re sharing on this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live!