NYC Travel Tips to friends of friends

Amigos-of-the-heart called up the other night, in part to check out travel tips for them to recommend to friends who will be visiting NYC. Hard to do, since we don't know their interests, but if John & I were heading up to Manhattan, here are a few of our favorite things...

BOOK STORES

Books of Wonder 18 West 18th Street 212-989-3270 www.booksofwonder.com

Kitchen Arts & Letters 1435 Lexington Avenue 212-876-5550 www.kitchenartsandletters.com

Rizzoli Bookstore 31 West 57th Street 212-759-2424 http://www.rizzoliusa.com/bookstore

Shakespeare & Co. locations throughout NYC (but still independent!) http://www.shakeandco.com

Strand Book Store 828 Broadway (at 12th Street) 212-473-1452 www.strandbooks.com

FOODIES UNITE! (managed to hyperlink these - go figure)

seriouseats blog is an invaluable resource for all things foodie in NYC

Union Square (area) - Could spend an entire day in & around Union Square! (Tom Hanks bought flowers here for Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail); not far from Grammercy Square, a private mini-park (similar to the one in Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant flick, Notting Hill), ringed with wonderful brownstones

Zabar's – legendary Upper West Side food emporium (Tom Hanks saved Meg Ryan from infamy at the "cash only" aisle in You’ve Got Mail)

Serendipity 3 and/or Dylan’s Candy Bar - sheer unadulterated inner child FUN

Dean & Deluca – must include as it is mega popular, but my heart belongs to Zabar’s

HIGHLY RECOMMEND... (most hyperlinked)

Newyorkology - one stop blog for all things NYC

Beast Speed Boat tour of New York Harbor

Cocktails at Peacock Alley, The Waldorf-Astoria – ultra luxury hotel experience www.waldorfastoria.com/

Cocktails at the Algonquin Hotel, in the lobby – small, intimate, clubby, heavy literary & theater history; when you head out of the Algonquin (be sure to say good-bye to Mathilda, the current Algonquin Cat), cross 44th St and head east toward 5th Ave for about 20 feet - look back across the street at the remarkable facade of the 110 years old New York Yacht Club

We enjoy dining at Un Deux Trois, off Times Square

Best place for afternoon tea WAS The Plaza, before they gutted the spirit to make way for condos – suggest doing an online search & see what appeals most

what a saturday!!

whew!

helped john set up our village market @ southampton station vendor space,
then hightailed it to justin & jody's to pick up ann,
who i then delivered to the general church assembly's final plenary session at the asplundh field house,
after which we took the college bus over to the doering science center
where i saw that she got settled for howard thompson's workshop &
confirmed with brian horner that he'd keep an eye on her while i
nipped back over to the field house to pick up the car &
hotfoot it back to the village market to
see how john was doing (just fine & dandy),
then back in the car &
down the pike to the doering ctr (great parking spot) where i
waited in the stunning atrium for howard's workshop to end,
then anne & i whisked out to the car &
bopped over to the dining hall for lunch,
where - wonder of wonders, miracles of miracles - i connected with roz taylor's table for a bit of "no assembly required" hob nobbing
(leaving anne under lisa's loving eye),
picked up anne at 1:15ish &
dropped off back at j & j's, then
zoomed up to southampton station to help john pack up.

followed by a bit of r&r with my beloved hubster at kenny's.

epic!!

dang it!

hoped i might get access to a friend's licensed kitchen. would have allowed me to bake my hand-crafted, twice-baked crackers without a lot of expensive access fees ~ the c&s club charges $100 per afternoon. ouch!!

alas, the friends very practically declined. makes sense. and brings home to me ~ again ~ the all too obvious reality that i haven't a purely practical bone in my body. i lead with the heart, not the head. we rep the friend's bbq sauce at our village market vendor spot not because we are such magnanimous type people but because it was the right thing to do.

which is the interesting place this takes us - determining the right thing to do seems 99.99% subjective. to me, providing the space for the bbq sauce was a no-brainer ~ just the right thing to do because we have the space & can help our friends. to them, letting me use their licensed kitchen was a non-starter because of its adverse impact. as i'd ask my dvhs students time & again when presenting two different points of view on some historical issue - which was right? reality is that both had their points, depending on your perspective.

dang it - would have been such a neat & tidy, even karmic solution. ah well, onward with hope!

exhausted but happy

saturday's flea market at holcombe-jimison homestead, between lambertville & the rt. 202 bridge, helped buttress our event infrastructure.

my alarm failed to ring (or maybe i slept through it), so i got up an hour later than planned. no panic - figure was meant to sleep an extra hour.

car was packed & we were on the road within our 5-minute grace period of departure time. plenty of time to get take-out from fred's.

on the drive, thought i'd forgotten the table covers, john had left his prints & we'd left the bread (for sampling bbq sauce). took in stride (regrettable, but no going back so why get into a bother). picked up white bread at sunoco mart and it turned out we HAD packed the covers & prints (& crusty bread). happy happy happy we didn't waste any time stressing.

discovered we'd been assigned terrific spot at flea market. right next door to the administration building/"food hall" (hot dogs w/chili or saurkraut).

felt right at home right off the bat with auctioneer dave commenting as he went past our vendor space, "missed you at fred's this a.m." raised my just-purchased traveling coffee mug to show we'd been there.

liked the group. flea market is a once-a-year event at the beautifully bucolic homestead. like their mission ~ preserving what was done on the farm over the 250 years it was farmed.

great weather, not too hot & not humid. special, very special. visually beautiful to boot. felt like we were in a national geographic article.

a good day. more to come.

and we sold 5 bottles of bill's best bbq sauce!!

oops - forgot to repost creative links from facebook

will have to check out what's still retrievable from facebook. am still doing it - will until aug's "blogher" event in san diego and sept's "creative connection" gathering in st. paul. i WILL get to at least one of them!!

busy six weeks!

early may to mid june are always packed with things to do & places to go ~ this year even more so. and all of it WONDERFUL!

glad we have two village markets under our belt as we prep for saturday's flea market in lambertville. and mega happy that i am not, cannot (no permit), back so much as an itty bitty cupcake or a single twice-baked hand-crafted cracker. instead, focusing all of my attention on john's artwork (offering prints for the first time), repping "bill's best bbq sauce" (complete with attached grilling recipe) and selling magnets of john's artwork as a fundraiser for tabby's place (about 10 mins from l-ville, in ringoes nj). from 8 to "mid-afternoon" whatever that means.

so glad this blog is dedicated to sharing bits of this & that. good place to send people to get a sense of deev aka ellie b aka keet aka budgette - oh, and elsa lockhart murphy - who, in the immortal words of cara glenn dibb, "leads her friends astray." i hope!