New York City!

Brea and Siri and Kitty have been spending the past few days in air conditioned comfort at Animal Care Associates while Mary T. and I explored Manhattan.  She was able to get a pair of highly coveted tickets to the Harry Potter play, and that was all the excuse we needed to go to New York. 

The play is in two parts, and ran Saturday afternoon and evening, with a two hour break between parts one and two.

Of course we wore Gryffindor colors. 

Under threat of a curse, I'm forbidden from saying much about the play except that it was amazing.

We arrived in New York late, about 2:00am Thursday morning, courtesy of Amtrak, and stayed at the Park Central Hotel, which is midtown, near Central Park and a few blocks from Times Square.

Thursday we went to the Strand Bookstore. 

"Eighteen miles of books" and more on the street. Believe it. Once inside I forgot all about taking pictures.

After that, and after lunch at a place whose name I forget but had really good food, we went to CW Pencil Enterprise, a wonderful little store I've wanted to go to since they opened four years ago.

 You might be surprised at how many different kinds of pencils and pencil sharpeners and erasers and other pencil accessories and technology there are in the world. And this place has stuff from all over the world.

If you've ever read the book Time and Again, by Jack Finney, you might recognize this:

(19 Gramercy Park)

Or this:

The Dakota apartment building.

If you don't appreciate the significance of these two places, maybe you should read Time and Again. I first read it when I was 13 or 14. It was the first time travel story I ever read, and it really captured my imagination, and sparked an interest in time travel stories.

After that - this was on Friday - we went to the American Museum of Natural History (very crowded and noisy), and then up to the Washington Heights area, where we went to the Cloisters.  It was a welcome respite from the noise and the crowds.

Hmmm. Haven't we seen imagery like this in some of the Harry Potter movies? 

We left the Cloisters, walked some winding paths through Ft.Tryon Park, and met my sister, who lives in the area and was walking her dogs.

Her dogs, by the way, came from the Fayette County Animal Shelter in West Virginia. They're schipperkes, a Dutch breed, and they're about fifteen years old now.

 So that is a very condensed version of our trip to New York. I left out the part about all the walking we did - miles, literally, every day, or all the really good food places and coffee shops there are. Three days is not enough.