Once a year for the past five years, I’ve visited New York (stayed on Long Island, took the train in to NYC as often as possible) to visit some of my boyfriend’s family. Coincidentally, his family lives a short car or train ride away from one of my best friends of thirteen years, fellow agented writer and one of my beta readers, Melissa. So it’s been a lot of fun making time to hang out with her when I visit–although this is the first year we met as two agented authors!

And speaking of agents, I met mine for the first time, the very kind Jason Yarn, who picked out a chic restaurant with great food, Gramercy Tavern, for our meeting. (I apologize for being a few minutes late! That was the only day I’ve ever had to deal with train delays to that extent!) I had a fun time talking my writing, books in general and the geek culture at large. Now that I’m back home, I need to snap back into focus and get back to editing and working on new drafts!

Some highlights of the trip include:

Shopping

I’m not usually big on shopping, or clothes shopping in particular, but that’s not the case in NY. We hit all of our favorite stores, including Uniqlo, which I admittedly just started liking because it was a Japanese brand of fashion (similar to Old Navy in pricing–I don’t like spending tons on clothes!), but I really do love their HEATTECH line during frigid winters.

We also stopped at the Scholastic store, so I could squeal over Harry Potter and Hunger Games displays.

I hit the HBO Store, Disney Store, Nintendo World, FAO Schwartz, Kinokuniya (Japanese bookstore), Book Off (used Japanese and American bookstore), and Mitsuwa (Japanese marketplace in New Jersey), to name a few.

Eating

Aside from the aforementioned Gramercy Tavern, we ate at another chic restaurant with yummy food for a lunch, NoHo Star. We got some peanut butter sandwiches at Peanut Butter & Co, ate delicious Japanese food at Go Go Curry (multiple times), dined at the Mitsuwa food court, and stopped by Cafe Zaiya and Sunrise Mart for Japanese cakes and sweets more than once. (Sensing a pattern here? Yes, I tend to focus on Japanese places in NY!)

Wax Museum

Melissa convinced my boyfriend and I to accompany her to Madame Tussauds, and it was a lot of fun! The wax figures were so real, at one point, we fell for a trick; there was a wax figure of a tourist taking a photo of other wax figures and we seriously hesitated to let her take her picture… Which she never did. There was a Marvel 4D experience, and it left a bit to be desired, plot-wise, but it was amusing. And there were wax figures of the Avengers outside!

Central Park Zoo

We headed to the Central Park Zoo for the second time; we went a few years ago, too. But it’s conveniently placed in a beautiful location, pretty affordable for a NY attraction, and full of cute animals. The red pandas are my favorites here, but I got slightly better pictures this time of other adorable guys, like the polar bear, the snow leopard and the sea lions! Too bad my camera battery died right toward the end!

All in all, it was a great trip. Bye, NY! (And have fun at the NYCC next week, everyone there! I’m sorry I’m missing it… Even though it’s impossible to move inside the convention center anyway.)