We started the day at the Children’s Book & Author Breakfast. The featured authors were Octavia Spencer, Rick Riordan, Mary Pope Osborne, and Veronica Roth. All four were very good and I could have listened to them for a lot longer, which is saying a lot since I usually get bored with speeches. This was definitely my favorite event of the Expo. If I go again, I will go to all of the author breakfasts.Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent series.

That was the end of the Book Expo for us. The rest of the day was for tourism. We took the subway to the World Trade Center. It was my first time on the subway and it was not dirty, not hot, not scary; however, at one of the stops when the doors opened, I saw a rat the size of a small dog running across the platform. My mouth must have dropped open because a guy sitting near me asked, “Did you see that?!” I wish I could have gotten a picture of that!

The view while waiting to go to the World Trade Center Memorial.

One of the memorial pools. So many of the names are of emergency personnel. I’d forgotten how many people lost their lives trying to save others.I had to stop at The Strand Bookstore. This is the view when you walk in.

Last stop: Wicked. It was amazing. If I ever go back to New York, I think I’ll spend my time and money on Broadway. The only negative about that night was that during intermission we got a text from my sister saying that tornadoes were headed toward Joplin and 2 tornadoes had touched down in St. Louis so it was hard to enjoy the 2nd half of the show not knowing what was going on at home.