New York
Look, I am not a cosmopolitan gal. I was raised on a farm in the Midwest with no cable television and only my older brother for company. Let's just say it made me easy to entertain.
So when my friend Goldy invited me to go with her to New York for the weekend, my expectations were simple: don’t get lost, don’t get mugged.
Goldy did a good deal of planning, but a lot of the weekend depended on luck. We couldn’t get a reservation at Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel, but when we showed up Goldy had a quiet word with the host and suddenly we had a table in the bar. The murals make you feel like you've wandered into one of the Madeline books I read with the kids when they were little. We had steak at Delmonico's. We saw Oh, Mary! on Broadway, which I would describe for you but I'm still not entirely sure what happened, only that it was funny. We toured the New York Botanical Garden's Concrete Jungle exhibit and spent time with Goldy's son and a rotating cast of his friends, all of whom were charming.
I came home with blistered feet, an empty wallet, and a garden I am now deeply unsatisfied with. HRFP, consider yourself warned.
But here's the thing I didn't expect: the trip filled my writing tank. A man in the lobby of our hotel was on a world tour with his wife and two kids. He said the only peace he gets is from the time he closes the trunk to the time he opens his car door to drive away. That's every family vacation, distilled into one sentence. And it's exactly the kind of thing visitors to Blue Lake would say.
Here are a few pictures from our escapades:
