I’ve often read and heard about Inwood as being a great neighborhood of Manhattan. Right under Marble Hill, Inwood is the second northernmost neighborhood on the entire island of Manhattan. If you come from where we live, you can take the A train, which runs express all the way to the last stop along the A line, which is 205th Street. We visited Inwood today, and as we were strolling through the area, I was annoyed with myself for not having visited sooner.

Inwood, by the Census numbers, has a very high Dominican population, but when you look around on any street, it feels extremely diverse and mixed. You can hear languages ranging from Spanish to English to African languages I cannot even name. You see people of literally all colors walking around and mingling with each other. On a single block, you can see a Chinese, Japanese, Puerto Rican, Dominican, “New American,” pizza parlor, and Mexican spot. There’s also this huge park up there that feels like it goes on forever, and today, although we’re at the end of November, the autumn colors really shone through everywhere we walked.

As we walked around and stopped at a few places, including a delicious bakery owned by a husband-and-husband team (that had MY ALL TIME FAVORITE PISTACHIO ECLAIR IN THE WORLD), a hole-in-the-wall taco spot that made the most delicious al pastor and lengua tacos, a pizza-by-the-slice joint, and a wine bar, I thought to myself, hmmmmm. This would be a really great neighborhood to live in. It feels like Manhattan because it is in Manhattan, but it also kind of feels like a suburb of the city. Yet it’s super diverse and has all kinds of interesting businesses. But… then I immediately thought. I love Queens. I love Manhattan Chinatown. If we were to live at 205th street, I’d be soooo far away from both, and it would take so much longer to get to both of these areas.

Queens is my first New York home. I love my trips there every time we go back. and Manhattan Chinatown is like another form of home to me. I can’t be that far away from either, otherwise I’d be pretty sad.