Dots~ I absolutely, absolutely canNOT wait for my next trip back to New York.......!

I didn't get to do anywhere near enough but I did manage to get to the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia that a friend at work told me about and we spent hours there.

And I got to look, fondly, at the murals in the city as we passed out of town and smashed my face against the van window as we passed the ncredible architecture downtown - how magnificent! Philadelphia sold me on returning even before we hit New York.

So, I got to do these things, not necessarily in this order - strolled down Bleeker Street and went into a bunch of shops; went to Magnolia Bakery which is supposed to be famous for their cupcakes; ate at John's Pizzeria, also on Bleeker Street and my friend Pat and I consumed a whole pizza by ourselves……OMG it was GREAT.

Four of us had dinner outside in Little Italy at Lunella's, they had a section of the street enclosed as their personal patio and the breeze and the Italian music wafting through it was just perfect. The sense of history and the lives of the immigrants was thick in the air. We walked til it looked a little weird and then caught a cab to the cupcake place at 11 at night, where there was a line coming out the door, of people putting cupcakes in their pink boxes……Then we strolled in the direction of our hotel and looked inside the storefronts and walked as far as we could toward our hotel on 7th and 33rd....until the guy-on-guy action got to be a little weird. Then we hailed a taxi.

We went to ground zero on the subway at 12 a.m. (three of us) and saw the lights in the sky that will shine no more. We did the statue of Liberty and Ellis Island trip which took the whole day. I don't know that I would do Ellis Island again necessarily but it was interesting.

We went to the top of the Empire State Building and we did the little helicopter (simulated) ride that Kevin Bacon narrates but for $10, I could have foregone that.

We had lunch at The Boathouse in Central Park, a wonderful oasis in the middle of such a firecracker city, it was a nice respit. We walked to Strawberry Fields and across the street to the Dakota building and I am so NOT a groupie that I was going to skip that little “moment” but decided not to after all.... and when we went back across the street and wandered through the park I stood looking at the "Imagine" mosaic and was consumed, all at once, by the enormity of John Lennon's artistry and I got a different perspective on Yoko Ono (I get a lot in these 'moments' I have) and her encouragement of John to continue to think outside the box and her dedication of a portion of the park in his memory. I thought how interesting it was that the subway entrance was also right on that corner and how he could very easily slip in and out of his building undetected at times, to go anywhere in the city or right across the street.

So, as I'm standing there taking this all in, there are some homeless people in the bushes 50 feet or so behind me to my left, a couple on the bench, some tourists passing by, a couple of modern dance performance artists 50 feet or so in front of me and the day is beautiful and a woman comes up the path, just to my right and heads straight for me. I'm just looking around and basking in all this and as she passes, never missing a beat, she says, very conspiratorially, "...and that is how we change the world..." She never missed a beat, never slowed down.... and she was gone. A moment, just for me.

I got to go to the American Museum of Folk Art and saw an exhibit of the late Sister Gertrude Morgan, a black preacher, evangelist, artist, musician who was great in her honesty and simplicity. Went to Times Square, drank margaritas in an Irish pub (VERY loud). The pub, not the drinking. Mmmm......and I went to the Cupcake Cafe.... trying to see the difference in the bakeries that Andrea told me about.......but I think I've got them.
Oh, and we made it to Serendipity for supper and dessert......what a sin and we'd all gladly live it again! And some art galleries but only as we were walking by.......and a few other things that seem to escape me at the moment. And we saw 42nd Street and it was terrific but honestly, it paled in comparison after we saw the production of "Noah" at Sight and Sound, in PA.

Lancaster, PA was a whole different story and just as rich for me but another time. Personally, I think I got more out of it than all six of us.