I'm finally blogging from my laptop, but this still has to be pretty brief; I have a lot of stuff I need to do tomorrow before moving to the conference hotel and immersing myself in romance culture. New York has been v. awesome so far, and I'm loving the city far more than I expected to. Clearly my tastes have changed over the past decade; when I was eighteen, I thought the city was dirty, unkempt, and generally somewhat unappealing (which is also how I viewed London at twenty). But, after living in both India and San Francisco, with unnecessarily frequent encounters with human feces (actually, SF has given me more encounters than India did; at least in India, people had the decency to do their business in the poo fields outside my apartment, rather than on the sidewalk like in the city of sin), London and New York no longer faze me in terms of dirt, and I'm able to appreciate the beauty and benefits of cities that never sleep.
Granted, it's still dirty as hell, and I don't understand why the method of garbage collection just involves throwing bags of trash on the street. But, today was lovely; we got up quite late, as one might expect since we were out until four a.m. and Ritu needed to recover so that she could work her ER night shift tonight. After we all got ready, we had a late brunch at this place called Punch, which was near Madison Square Park. We were originally going to go to the beer garden on top of Eataly, which is Mario Batali's massive Italian food emporium, but Eataly was packed and the wait for the beer garden was 30+ minutes, so we left (although if I could safely get fresh mozzarella back to California in my suitcase, I'd definitely go back before leaving New York). Punch was delicious, though, so it all worked out. Then, Steph and I let Ritu go back to her apartment so that she could sleep for a few hours before the night shift.
Our destination was the Metropolitan Museum of Art (aka the Met, aka the museum where the kids in "The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" hid out when they ran away from home). Specifically, we wanted to see the Alexander McQueen fashion exhibit. We were able to skip the hour-long entrance line using Ritu's membership card, which was clutch, but even if I'd had to stand in line, it would have been worth it. His fashions, while often extremely bizarre, were exactly what interests me about fashion, since every article of clothing told a story and could set off whole worlds of inspiration. Most of it was unwearable in either form (giant metal headpieces that could easily take out the wearer's eye, bondage-inspired straitjacket-y bodices) or function (10-inch heels that only Lady Gaga could love, dresses with the crotch ripped out), but the work was fantastically beautiful, elaborate, and the epitome of tailoring and craftsmanship. In short, it was incredible, and if you like fashion and are in NYC during the next month, you should go.
After the exhibit, we wandered around the Met for awhile, although I could spend several days there, and then left to walk through Central Park. We only saw a tiny fraction of it, but what we saw was beautiful and felt quite wild despite its location within one of the biggest cities in the world. Then, we took the subway to Nolita (or Soho, I'm still figuring out my neighborhoods) and had dinner at Cafe Gitane, a French/Moroccan place with an out-of-this-world herbed goat cheese appetizer. I had hachi parmentier, which is basically a shepherd's pie, which is basically ground beef and mashed potatoes (my faves), which is basically delicious. Steph had a salmon pot pie, which was also delicious, and we both had wine (plus a diet coke for me, to feed my addiction). After dinner, though, I abandoned Steph to come back to the apartment and work (at nine p.m., so it's not exactly an early night). I finally figured out most of my schedule for the conference, although I still need to choose which workshops to attend, and I got some other things done that had been weighing on my to-do list. I'm likely not going to be able to do much fun stuff tomorrow, since I still need to prep for my meeting with my agent on Monday and build a splash page for a website that I'm setting up, but I'll still be able to see Ritu for a bit before moving to the conference hotel tomorrow night.
And that, my friends, is all for now. My culinary adventures will shortly become romance conference adventures, but as I expect the next few days to be packed, hopefully you'll enjoy this blog more than the boredom of the move-filled last two weeks. Goodnight!
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