I'm in New York, having left home in Colorado at 7 this morning. I'm here for PMA University, a conference for independent publishers, which precedes BookExpo America, the mammoth trade show for the entire U.S.-plus publishing industry. The events are always paired and are not always in New York. Last year they were in Washington, D.C., and next year they'll be in L.A.
Travel notes:
I did work out how to get NetLibrary audiobooks to work on my portable audio player, although the book I chose was boring and the earplugs
earphones aren't comfortable. I've got a few wrinkles to work out,
although I think in the long run this technological odyssey will have
been worthwhile.
So I knitted on the alpaca shawl and read Winifred Gallagher's House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live, in the standard print version.
New York City is a relatively new discovery for me, although I was married for a bunch of years to someone who was born and raised in one of the boroughs. Every time we'd come visit his family, they would tell me about wonderful things in New York—like the tapestries at The Cloisters, which we would certainly go see the next time we came to visit.
In 2002, fourteen years after we separated, I traveled to New York for my own reasons. And yes, I visited The Cloisters, and yes, the tapestries—and a lot of other stuff there—were wonderful. I also got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick, the Whitney. . . . I've been back since, and discovered the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of the Hispanic Society of America and its fine collection of Sorolla paintings. And more.
I've been back a few times since. I have found a hotel that suits me, and have discovered how to eat easily and reasonably, and can keep track of where I am most of the time.
Mostly I eat at corner delis. However, at the independent bookstore back home I had found an unusual guidebook, City Secrets New York City, which contains lots of interesting people's favorite parts of the city. One of its listings recommends the Candle Cafe, described as the "best vegan restaurant in the city, in a neighborhood where you'd never expect to find such a thing." That neighborhood was just over a mile directly north of that hotel I mentioned. I'm a vegetarian, not a vegan, but this sounded wonderful.
Here I am in the very odd situation of having to choose from among all of the items on the menu, not just the two or three vegetarian options. Judy, my traveling buddy for this trip, needed to record this unusual event. I had a tofu club and she had a Jamaican jerk wrap. We split a chocolate decadence cake.
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