Back from New York City.

We chose a daft time to go: the hottest spell of weather that’s hit the east coast in a few years. It was insanely hot, so we tried to spend at much time indoors as possible.

As such, we spent time in:

– a Pret a Manger
– a bookstore
– a music store or two
– a coffee shop

We also had some fun – and spent time with old friends.

We saw Little Miss Sunshine, which is a wonderful and funny movie. The cast is perfect, the script and direction crisp and effective. It’s easily one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, and I’ll try and post a more detailed review soon.

Of course, the main focus of our visit was “An Evening With Harry, Carrie and Garp”, where Stephen King, John Irving and J.K. Rowling read their works and answered questions in the cozy confines of Radio City Music Hall. It was a superb event: the authors were treated like rock stars (Kathy Bates even compared introducing Rowling to Ed Sullivan introducing The Beatles), the audience was in great spirits, and the authors had a gas.

I’ll write more about the whole thing later this weekend. Needless to say, though, it was a lot of fun.

Oh, one more thing: we learned not to trust the Amtrak automated phone info system, which caused us to miss our train from NYC back to DC.