BEA and BBC (Book Blogger Expo) New York City- Edition # 1

Teddyrose@1

14 years ago

Many of you are probably wondering why it has taken me so long to post about my first trip ever to New York City, the BEA and the BBC. Well, the last day I was there, my feet swelled and by morning, flight day, I had to stuff my feet into my shoes. My legs blew up like balloons on the flight home and my husband and I spent the evening in the emergency room of the hospital because I have a high risk for blood clots. That had never happened to me before. They gave me blood thinners as a precaution but it turned out I didn’t have a clot, thank goodness. I had never had my feet or leg blow up like that. I seriously wondered if I put a pin in them if they would pop. LOL! It was much better for two days and now it came back again but not as bad. I have had to keep my legs elevated this entire time, which hasn’t been very conducive to blogging.

Now that I have explained my absence and how I have fallen behind in my blogging, lets get to the fun stuff!

I spent nine days in New York City. Like I said above, I had never been there before, so I wanted to get some sightseeing in. I was able to go four days before the BEA started because I had a free place to stay, thanks to Allen, my brother’s best friend. Seriously, I cannot thank him enough! I wish I would have taken pictures of his place! OMG, so much nicer than any hotel. He has traveled all over the world and has an art collection to show for it. I thought I was living in a museum. His place was stunning and quite spacious for a New York City zip code.

My 19 year old niece, Rachel went with me. She had been there a couple times before with her parents, so she was my tour guide for the first couple days. Thanks to her, I didn’t get totally lost on the subways.

Rachel and Teddy in Times Square

On our first day, we spent the morning in line to get discount tickets to plays. We then walked around Wall Street and saw “Ground Zero”. I was very excited when I saw a street vendor with pretzels because I wanted to make a point of buying a pretzel off of a street vendor in NYC. Crazy, I know! It was so big that I could only eat a quarter of it but I enjoyed every bit. Rachel refuse to help me out so I had to toss what I couldn’t eat. It was a bargain though, for $2.00. We also went to Filene’s Basement where I got a bargain on a new pair of walking shoes.

On day two I decided to go have brunch on my own since Rachel didn’t want to go. Before the trip I was given all kinds of recommendations for vegan friendly restaurants. I went to Curly’s Vegetarian Lunch. It turned out that they are not strictly vegetarian but mostly. They claim on their menu that they can make any of their items vegan. I had the lumberjack breakfast, which included vegan pancakes, scrambled tofu, curly fries, and fresh fruit. To be honest, it was nothing spectacular, in fact I didn’t like the scrambled tofu at all. I just skiped the toru and ate about a third of the rest of the plate.

After brunch I met up with Rachel and we saw the musical, Billy Elliot together. It took me about a half hour to get into it but then I really enjoyed it. Then we went our separate ways again. We had heard that some theaters had rush tickets at a discount so I walked around from theater to theater inquiring. The play I really wanted to see Good People only had rush for students. But then I asked about Bengal Tiger with Robin Williams. They have a draw nightly for 21 tickets. I got lucky and won! Rush tickets were only $27 and they were for the front row! I found myself face to face with Robin Williams and all the actors. The play was great. It was a serious play that took place in Baghdad.

On Sunday we went to Times Square again, to try to get rush tickets to see Wicked. There were about 200 people there and they only drew 12 names. I really wanted to get a ticket for Rachel to see it but there were not even discount tickets to be had and I wouldn’t pay full price. They was a fun market there, where some of the streets were blocked off so we went shopping. We got five tee shirts for $20.00 and some other gifts and then we ran into the Naked Cowboy.

Then we went to a create your own burger place. You choose the patty and the toppings. I was in luck, they had a veggie burger. We also shared just a few fries. LOL!

On Monday I went to get my BEA badge and then took the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty. I wanted to take the boat ride to the statue and Ellis Island but I didn’t have 3 hours to wait in line. It was a grey sky day and a bit foggy so the photos didn’t turn out very good.

After that, I made it just in time for the Random House Tea. When you walk into the lobby of Random House, you are greeted by many first editions of their books. That was very cool. Once inside the room for the Tea, I ran into my friend, Amy of The Girl From the Ghetto.

Soon after that, an author in attendence saw my name badge and acted like I was a rock star. It was Ellen Meropol, author of House Arrest. I had given the book a 4.5/5. She was so kind and gracious.

Lisa See was there and talked about her new book, Dreams of Joy. After we were all given copies to have her sign. After, it was time to grab our swag bags. They had a table full of books and canvas bags and you just took what you wanted. Of course for me, I felt like a kid in a candy store! I only took books that were on my TBR, which just happened to be most of them. LOL! I then put my bag down to visit with others in attendence. When it was time to go, I realized that someone had taken off with my bag by mistake. I felt bad for them, because they ended up with a Lisa See signed to Teddy. LOL! I was also crushed because I was so excited to have met her. All of a sudden she reappeared and I had her practically by herself!

I was also invited to replace the swag bag!

On Tuesday, the BEA officially started. I will write about it more in my next post.