New York Roaming

So after a rather relaxed few days in Boston, I headed to New York. I didn't have much of a plan other than to write and wander around. I'm beginning to be good at having no plan. So I sat in Central Park and tried to do some writing, but ended up people watching much more. And of course just sitting there opens you up to meeting many strange people. My favorite was the guy with barely any teeth that sat down and asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said no and I'm not looking. He said great I'm not looking for a boyfriend either. To that I had to laugh, but our courtship ended when I wouldn't buy his poem for my special discounted price of $1.

Now when I got off the plane in Boston and walked outside it was like getting hit in the chest with a fist. How did I forget how much I dislike humidity? And the humidity in NYC was much worse than Boston. So finding air conditioned places to escape was key. Some how in all my trips to NYC, I'd never made it to the public library. The Copley Library happens to be my favorite spot in Boston, so I was surprised when I walked passed and realized I'd never been inside the giant New York Library. All I can say is that it's immense, grand, beautiful, a mausoleum where you could walk miles without ever actually seeing a book and above all else well air conditioned. The stairways were endless and the entrance on par with some grand museum or palace (which to my way of thinking is a fitting place for books).


But the one thing I did stumble upon while there (and I do remember being told they were there at some point but I never put it together) were they original Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Kanga, Piglet, and Eeyore dolls. They looked well loved and fitting of their place in the library museum. But I had to walk around the back of the glass case just to make sure Eeyore's tail had actually been pinned back on...it was. In fact his tail looked like it had been stitched, pinned, and stitched together again. All was right with the world and somehow it up held my faith in books.

In the three days of walking around the city I've calculated I walked about 95 blocks - from east 68th street to about west 4th and over and back up. And 57 of those blocks were in one day. My feet were about to fall off. I stopped at many parks, cafes and stores along the way. It was a good visit of lunch with friends, and getting lost in hours of book wondering at the Strand (a must stop for every visit).

I'm heading back to Boston (writing this from the bus - wifi is a marvelous thing) for the big holiday and then off to Martha's Vineyard for the weekend. Hope you all have a Happy 4th of July!