A trio of star-crossed tourists take their seats

Went to the ballet with some friends from elementary school (I know, right!). With a few glitches: I barely made it uptown by our agreed-upon time, then waited 30 mins with no sign of them, until the ushers stopped letting people through the doors. By the time I got off the subway back at home, there was a frustrated message on my cell: they were lost, about 90 blocks off target in fact, having been misdirected by the concierge of their hotel. 65th and Broadway, not 65 Broadway. WhoTF doesn't know where the ballet is, anyway? (I'm looking at the concierge.) Same place where the Met opera and the Philharmonic and Juliard are. Lincoln Center.

Anyway, they were actually only about 4 blocks from my house, oddly enough. I quickly got us on the train and to the theatre just in time for the start of the second act of Romeo and Juliet. We were way up high, but I loved the 6-storey interior drop to the orchestra pit. I also really enjoyed the show even though the Times had panned it; I don't go to the ballet often enough to not just enjoy it when I'm there. There seemed to be a lot of sympathetic sniffling in the audience, too - but that could have been because of the outrageous pollen levels in the air right now. Even I feel like I have allergies.

(By the way, apparently it's a good thing we went on Wednesday 'cuz on Tuesday Bill Clinton was there along with the rest of the NY leet, and I would have felt even more out of place with my nap breath and wrinkled cords. LA DE DAH.)

Then I took the gals 50 more blocks uptown to Le Monde because god help me if I was gonna set foot in Times Square, where their hotel was, for that post-performance drink. We gossiped and ate, it was good. Turns out everyone we went to school with can now be exhaustively summed up as some concatenation of: doctor/lawyer/married/gay.