NEW YORK, Feb. 19, 2005 — We are up early again. We go to a Burger Heaven for breakfast. After we eat (quite good breakfast) FFP goes to the bathroom and coming back sees someone he knows from Austin.

We decide to walk up the East Side, shopping and dipping back to the park here and there. It is still early. We window shop our way up Madison. We see one of our favorite book stores, Crawford Doyle Booksellers. A tiny store where books fall into two categories only: those you already have and those you wish you did. With current editions and a selection of out-of-print or vintage or first editions and even a little toy collector store downstairs. It is almost opening time. We have another cup of coffee and wait.

We loop back to the bookstore. It's part of the tradition to actually buy a few books and we do.

Then it's time to head to the Met. It's mobbed but they are handling things efficiently. We find out how to get to the roof and where the Rubens drawings exhibit is located. I stand in the ticket line. Doesn't take long to get up to the roof, take a snap or two. We find an exhibit of street photography like Walker Evans' and check that out. And then we find the Rubens drawings exhibit. Bit crowded on that front but enjoyable.

We leave the museum and head back into the neighborhood to have some lunch. Nearby places are very crowded. I suggest we go over to Lexington. As we walk down it I'm remembering Orsay, a polished French-style brasserie. So is FFP apparently. He spies it. They have a table. What could be better? On the way in, we see some folks from Austin. Amazing. Two gals sit next to us. We start talking to them since for some reason our food and drink keeps getting plunked down on their table. They are sisters and one has flown in from San Francisco to visit and see The Gates. This is repeated over and over when we talk to people...they are here to see this art installation.

We wander a bit, find another book store (Lenox Hill Books), buy a couple of things from them and go to the park. We go back to the hotel through the park, snapping more pictures of course.

And, of course, after all that...we've walked well into the eighties and back and all around...we need a rest!

Before we left Austin, I booked Feinstein's at the Regency for dinner and a show (Brian Stokes Mitchell). We get our selves dressed and head that way. Not far. We are directed to the coat check on the other side of the lobby. When we return, a loud woman in a fur is pressing said fur on someone who works there to check for her. "If you can't check your fur at the Regency, where can you?" she says, loudly. Then she gets to the desk and then calls out here and there for her 'boys' and gets her party of five together. Finally. I say, not so sotto voice to Forrest, "I hope we are not seated next to her." We are squeezed into a crowded banquette. I'll have to turn around to see the stage. We talk to the people around us, several in from Boston. My food is so-so and FFP declares his forty dollar steak as tasteless as cardboard, quite overcooked from what he requested.

Then they squeeze another table behind me. Because Ted Kennedy has arrived and room must be made. I suppose. I'm not a celebrity watcher. I manage a reasonable view of the show, however. And it's pretty good. Not the greatest but OK. The whole operation, though, with cover and expensive bad food has cost quite a lot. We probably won't visit this one again. But we are glad we can say we did it.

We retrieve our cooks and brave the cold streets back the short way to the hotel. I realize that so far we have ranged in such a compact area that we haven't been in a cab.