Dear Reader:

Little did Brooke and I know Friday when we flew out of Charleston to New York City that by bedtime that night we would have seen Rockefeller Center, the beautiful  Christmas”Rock” tree, bumped into Elmo for a hug, seen a rather strange Statue of Liberty wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, seen singing/dancing stars hanging from a tall, tall ceiling in the Time-Warner building, had some libations at the Landmarc lounge, became tree huggers around some of the beautiful icicle-looking trees in Columbus Circle and eaten at an once-in-a-lifetime fabulous restaurant called Quality Italian. Whew! I just get tired thinking about it….thank goodness excitement keeps the old adrenalin glands pumping…and the heart too!

But before I show some of the pictures from this first evening…let me show you around our apartment that we rented for the weekend. It had three doors a person had to get through in order to get to us. Brooke and I laughed and said that we could have left one door open and been perfectly safe….nobody wanted to get to us that badly for all the trouble it involved. Here are our three doors leading to the upstairs apartment we called home for the weekend. We could get in all three doors with our three keys but never got that buzzer system down!

The apartment was quite spacious for NYC…the pull-out sofa was huge and so comfortable…however, we spent little time in the apartment except to dress for the next occasion and sleep…then we were off…

On to Columbus Circle with its beautiful “icicle” trees, the singing/dancing stars, the Lanmarc, Rockefeller Center, and the Quality Italian for dinner. (With a hug from Elmo to spur us on!)

(Henry, Brooke’s son, and his girlfriend, Lacy, were our tour guides for the afternoon and evening…and they were unbelievable in getting us through some heavy traffic.)

By now we had worked up a very good appetite and we were off to a very very good restaurant named Quality Italian….and believe me… it was of the utmost quality! Delicious!

By the time we got home it was close to midnight…Brooke and I just shook our heads….had we really done all that in part of one afternoon and evening….after flying to Newark, taking the air train to the New Jersey Transit (train) to Penn Station to our apartment. Let’s just say sleep came very quickly.

A hint at our first place on the Saturday agenda….I had a meeting with an old friend whose health I was concerned about over the past two years….but, to my surprise, my “friend” had grown even more in stature and dignity. Want to take a guess?

So until tomorrow may the excitement of new sights and familiar sights lure us to discover new places and revisit the special ones.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh