NYC Day Two (May 25)

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So after my whirlwind day in New York, Monday (you can read about it here), I was ready for another fun filled day to spend in the city that never sleeps. But I love me some sleep….. I did try to get a little bit of that on Tuesday morning, but I have a horrible time sleeping in hotels in general, so I didn’t get to sleep in much.

The first thing on the agenda that morning was breakfast. Cat and I remembered seeing all sort of delicious looking pastries in store front windows on our walk through the city the day before. Our mission, to find one of those shops of sugary goodness! Hey Cat… EUROPA CAFE! Lol….

We walked and walked and walked….. sure that we must have imagined that wondrous bakery goods. We were walking through Rockefeller Center, when we saw a couple eating a delicious looking muffin!

Kristi: “Cat look those people have a muffin! We should ask them where they got it.”

Cat: “Excuse me, but where did you get that delicious looking muffin?”

Tourist Couple: “At the Magnolia Bakery.”

The nice tourist couple with the lovely accents pointed us in the direction of the Magnolia Bakery, we thought we had walked passed it, so we looked up the directions on my phone, only to discover that we just needed to walk a few more feet! Can I just say that the Magnolia Bakery is awesome! I was able to snag an Apple Walnut Muffin with Cranberries, one of the few muffins they had left for the morning, and I believe cat had got some cookies! Needless to say it hit the spot.

After that we headed back to the hotel where we were parting ways for the day.

I was meeting author Julia Hoban for the day! Julia first contacted me to review her novel in the fall of 2008. She actually contacted me for review because of my dog, Xander. There is a scene in her novel that mentions a rottweiler. Julia and I have shared email correspondence since then and I was able to meet her in person on a tour she did for Willow back in September of last year.

I was excited to have her show me around NYC! But first I had to get there.

I hailed my first taxi! I don’t think I did it all that correctly and I’m sure the cabbie was laughing at the crazy girl from out of town, trying to hail a taxi. BUT, I did it and made it to the place I was meeting Julia. We ended up getting pedicures together! I’ve only ever had one other pedicure in my life, and that was on my wedding day, but it was nice to be girly and just sit and there and chat about life and books!

Can I just say that Upper East and West sides are a lot different than Midtown. And not just the buildings, but the people. High HIGH heels up here. I felt like the under-dressed ugly duckling in my chuck’s.

Julia took me to Barneys, where a hand-bag is more than my income for the month…. but we weren’t there to shop. We were there for fries. Yes, french fries. Barneys is home to the restaurant Fred’s. Where they have some of the best fries that I’ve ever eaten. They have this garlic infused mayonnaise that they make in house…. dippin’ my fries in that goodness…. nom nom! I also had Fred’s Chopped Chicken Salad, that was HUGE, but had yummy avocado in it! Delicious!

Then is was a walk through Central Park. Which was beautiful and huge! It was hot and I was sweating horribly by the time we made it out of the park and we didn’t even walk through half of it! I mean the park is over 800 acres. We cut through Central Park on our way to the American Museum of Natural History, which I think was roughly .5 miles… I’m so out of shape. I did get to see Strawberry Fields, the memorial for John Lennon. Which is named so, from one of the Beatles’ best known songs “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Of course the front of the museum was covered in scaffolding, just like the library… I did not get to see the front of any of the buildings I wanted to! But we ended up sneaking into a side entrance… I mean the security guard did let us in, but didn’t it sound more like an adventure when I said ‘sneaking.’ The museum is enormous. It is four never-ending floors, it would take days upon days to see all the exhibits. I was limited on time, so I really wanted to make sure I got to see one thing. REXY! When I go back to NYC, I’ll be spending more time in the museum.

After snapping a few pictures of Rexy, Julia and I headed to B&N. I bought a paperback copy of Willow that I had Julia sign…. (I’ll be giving it away on the blog and featuring a special ‘tour’ of Willow that I took with Julia too!) and I also picked up a signed copy of Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken!

I had a wonderful day with Julia!

I took the subway by myself (totally not a big deal for most people, but for someone that comes from a town with absolutely no public transportation system, this was a big!) to get to Books of Wonder for the 2k10 signing! And may I just say that it is not as bad as everyone says it is. I didn’t mind it at all, I may have even maybe just slightly.. enjoyed it.

I did get off at the right stop, but I turned left when I should have turned right, I turned around once I saw 7th Street! Plus I was texting Carol, who was already there, and she was a great navigator!

Books of Wonder was such a cute book store! There were a ton of fabulous authors there! I got some books signed, and finally got to meet some of the authors in person! Not only that but I got to meet some awesome bloggers!! YAY! I love meeting other bloggers. Unfortunately they didn’t have all of the author’s books available to sign at the store, and I had a majority of them at home. I did buy a copy of The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard and had the other authors sign bookplates, so I could stick them in my copies at home. Here’s a little video of the Books of Wonder signing.

After BoW, Cat, Susan, James and I decided to take a walk to Strand, because I really wanted to get a bag! Long story short…. we ended up getting lost and giving up, lol! I got a huge blister on my foot… ouch. Although the walk was not a complete loss, we did see this ADORABLE four month old French Bulldog puppy! The owner was nice enough to let us snap pics of him and pet and cuddle him so we could get our puppy fixes. So at least we got that out of it.

We were exhausted and hungry so we headed back to our hotel and Cat and I ended up joining Susan and James in their room to eat pizza and watch Glee. The pizza was huge, and I only ended up eating one piece of it. I think by that time I was too tired to eat.

Another great day!

Related posts:

1. NYC Day Two (May 25)
2. NYC Day One (May 23 & 24)