The first time I took a trip to New York City was in 1980. I meant simply to look for the legendary 1920s Algonquin Round Table, to check if a community still existed, before moving on to another destination.
The daily luncheon comprising the city’s literary luminaries at the historic Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan was no longer around.
But I ended up staying in New York for three years, during which I managed to get a job, get married and get pregnant – all in that order.
On my next trip to the Big Apple, I returned with my two children.
Our borrowed Midtown Manhattan apartment came equipped with a simple TiVo subscription – this was back when Netflix was not even a speck in the tech horizon – and was located at a walkable distance from first-rate bookstores, cafés, parks, theaters and sundry tourist haunts.