City living

I just moved up to the city a week and a half ago. It's been interesting - there are definite pros and cons to city living. Though, I've found that I've adjusted really quickly and it feels like life as usual already...

Pros:
- No more worrying about Caltrain schedules. I still think Caltrain is the most comfortable mode of public transportation but with evening trains leaving at 7:20, 8:25, 10:00 and midnight, there weren't very many options for staying up in the city and getting home. The lack of dependence on Caltrain has also led to us getting up later and later and jumping on whatever bus comes by in the morning, as well. Yay more sleep!

- Convenience to stuff to do. In the last week we've been out practically every night, doing dinner in various places, caught some live music only 3 blocks from our house, went to a free advance screening of Rush Hour 3 (extremely formulaic), etc... We've been looking at the concerts at the Warfield or Fillmore, and I'm already debating getting a season subscription to the Best of Broadway series. I may end up spending a lot of money this way =).

- Walking to stuff + the bus system. We've got a supermarket a few blocks from our place, and restaurants also a few blocks away. We can hop on any bus with our MUNI monthly pass and go wherever.

- More flexible work hours - if I need to stay a bit later to get something done, I'm not committing to waiting an hour for the next train. (which goes back to pro #1)

- Actually I guess it just boils down to more flexibility!

Cons:
- People. Yes, I'm kind of anti-social and yes, I'm a bit of a freak for being rather suburb-oriented, but I'm not a fan of walking in crowds or standing in crowds. People are always just stopping or lagging right in my path, or pushing past, or yelling or whatever. I kind of would rather just be left alone and I wish they'd just get out of my way. And busses/light rail get so crowded sometimes.

- Smells. The city is smelly! The busses are teaching me the range of odors humans can possess. And I just looove walking through the smell of piss or worse. Plus the bus commute is really not as nice as Caltrain - I haven't quite got the hang of bracing against both the stops and the starts yet.

- Noise. I've been spoiled living in a standalone house for years. I'm relearning what it's like to have people above and below. Mostly ok except wow, they have a loud bathroom fan! Street noise hasn't been as troublesome as I had worried, though. Nothing like having planes fly super-low over your house every hour!

- Lack of exercise. It's funny that I should complain about my commute getting shorter, but I used to walk over a mile to work from Caltrain, so I was putting in a minimum of 2.5 miles of walking a day. Now the bus picks me up a few blocks from my flat and drops me off a few blocks from work. I'd better get to work on the elliptical or I'm going to go rapidly out of shape!

- Greater *inconvenience* for visiting my friends, who are largely on the peninsula or in south bay. Plus, SFO used to be a 15 minute drive away. Now it's a bus ride to BART and then BART to the airport... or driving, sure, but not as conveniently.

Overall, though, I'd say that city living has been working out quite nicely for us thus far. Most of my cons are just me being picky and whiny. I may get tired of going out every night though. I'm kind of a homebody at heart... would help if our living room was unpacked, though ;).