A dark, dreary day in the city that never sleeps...

...and my boy is still sawing logs at 10:30 in the morning. I know he stayed up late watching Leno and Conan so while I'm rested, he's got some catching up to do. Our plans are to take the double-decker bus tour of the city, something we do every visit to NYC, and hop off in Chinatown for lunch...or perhaps Little Italy. He wants to have dinner tonight at Times Square, "under the lights" as it were. Tomorrow we leave for home so this is our only chance. When we ate at Bubba Gumps', it was daytime, so didn't count as dining under the lights. No shows either this trip--apparently we aren't the only tourists in the city right now, many school groups, etc. have bought up the seats for the "good" shows. That's okay with us, we're fine seeing the Broadway shows that come to Jacksonville. We've seen our favorites already on past visits to New York. We can share the lights of Broadway with others....

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I am so glad that I took the advice of Julia and joined AAA! We got good rates for the hotel and airfare, and found out that the tour also takes AAA so we'll get a discount for our double-decker bus ride today. Justin likes the idea that I'll have a little safety net in case something happens when I'm on the road, as I feel the same for him. It's certainly not expensive, and as Julia said, she's surprised I didn't have something like this already. I can't say why not, except that I think when I was married, the decision was made to not renew our membership for some reason and I never gave it a second thought. Hmmm.....

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Reading my book makes me long to go on a trip, a "real" trip, like to Amalfi and/or the Greek Islands. I believe I mentioned the high praise Judy R. gave, comparing my writing and Francis Mayes'. She, Francis, paints such a lovely picture with her words, describing the sights and sounds on their travels. As I was saying to Justin yesterday, I'd have a real hard time finding foods to enjoy in some of those places in southern Europe. They sure do like their seafood over there! I'd have to throw a stick of summer sausage in my luggage and some yellow mustard, to survive!

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I am so uncomplicated!