I wanted Andrew to love New York because New York is the only other city in the United States I would like to live in. But I knew he would love it in his own regard because he loves cities and the proximity to other people and the variety of sensation that cities provide.

His friends Brett and Meg live in Brooklyn now. We took local trains from Camden to Penn Station and the subway to Grand Army and then walked to their apartment, which is only a block or so from Prospect Park. We marvelled at the size of their apartment (bigger than we expected) and then walked down the slope to 5th to get coffee at Gorilla Coffee and to browse among the trendy on that street. I was (am) absolutely struck by how neighborhoody this part of Brooklyn is, how green and livable. I was immediately smitten.

Then the walking began: Walking to subways and standing or sitting and walking up out of them to the Lower East Side and then to the Village and back to the train. On other days, riding the train all the way to the Met and walking again toward downtown through the park and midtown to the Empire State Building. We loved it all the way, even as our feet withered.

One morning, we got up and jogged around Prospect Park with about 1 million other runners and bikers.

I guess it's not a trip to New York unless you talk about the food. The thing is, the food is good everywhere and sometimes the really good food is cheap. Often, the really good food is long-established and content to be what it is, which forces long travel times and long lines of people waiting for a good thing worth the effort. We ate Hungarian and Magnolia Bakery cupcakes. Perhaps the best was heretofore-unknowably good pizza at Grimaldi's. All of it made Seattle cuisine seem pretentious and provincial.