BEA TRIP Wrap Up Post

Hey Everyone!! As you all know, we were off in NYC last week enjoying the amazing city and sights as well as BEA (Book Expo of America in case you didn’t know)! We will be doing a wrap-up podcast with our blogging BFF’s Swoony Boy Podcast, but we wanted to highlight what our trip was like before that goes up!

This was our second year at BEA and the experience of last year really helped us in determining what we could and could not get done. We actually decided to stay a couple days longer because we missed out on a lot of the NYC experience last year… so our BEA/NYC week actually started on Tuesday! We’re actually going to try and split our recap up into a couple installments. Hopefully that will be less overwhelming! Today we’re going to talk about our trip, part 2 we’ll talk books and authors and part 3 we’ll talk about all the events!

Tuesday:
Erin and I flew into LaGuardia and the book I grabbed to read was The Falconer by Elizabeth May. I had been hearing how amazing it was for quite a while and I decided it was time. Let me just say that I absolutely loved it. I ended up finishing it in the hotel that night because I didn’t want to put it down. Erin read Remember Me by Romily Bernard and loved her travel pick as well! (I can’t wait to read this one! GRIFF)

We’re going to tell you all a secret. We stay in New Jersey… right across the river and we take the ferry across every day and save a TON of money. I know some of you are probably thinking that it’s not at all convenient because you’re not staying right in the city… right next to the Javits… but honestly, I don’t think I’d do it any other way. The ferry is located right directly behind the Javits and there is a free shuttle that drops you off practically at the door each morning. There is no way we could cram us all into one room with our books if we stayed in the city.

Upon arrival and once all the hugs were out of the way (I can’t believe I hadn’t seen these girls for one year!) we grabbed dinner and drinks and kind of just relaxed because we knew the rest of the week was going to be insane!

Wednesday:
We were up bright and early to grab breakfast at Pershing Square Cafe and we also met up with the amazing Liza for a coffee before Meg, Kass & Liza headed over to the Little Brown offices … Erin and I people watched and wandered around a bit while we waited for the girls to finish up. Then it was off to the Javits to pick up our passes. AND apparently this year they didn’t do lanyards, so we were on a mission to find some. Note to future self – bring one of your MANY lanyards next year just in case!

We had a couple events that we planned to attend on Wednesday evening – We rushed back to the hotel to get ready and then set off for the amazing and gorgeous Woolworth Building where we attended the Harlequin High Tea. You guys… if you haven’t seen this building you’re absolutely missing out. The pictures I’m including are not my own, we were afraid to take any in case we got yelled at, but if you ever have the opportunity to get inside this place, you will be stunned at how gorgeous it is.

Our second stop on Wednesday night was to Ainsworth Park for the Epic Reads Harpercollins party! This bar was amazing you guys and there were tons of people there. We played trivia, drank wine and visited with authors, fellow bloggers and Margot & Aubrey of Team Epic Reads. They even had this awesome photo booth where we could have our pictures taken and then we could tweet them immediately!
We definitely had a blast! Then it was back to the hotel where we ordered some room service from Masina Trattoria and got our schedules ready for the first day of BEA!

Thursday:

We basically lived at the Javits all day as it was the first day of the conference, but we’ll tell you all about that more in depth later. That evening we headed off to the #YAPARTY located in the beautiful Gehry Building. You guys… the views from this place are amazing. Getting to share them with some more amazing authors and bloggers and my lovely friend Liza was such a blast!

Friday:
Day two at Javits … I’m not even going to lie to you, it was hard to get up, but we did it! We made it to the Javits with time to grab coffee and then get ready for all the action. When we were done, we actually went back to the hotel to get organized and get things shipped out since the shipping place wasn’t open over the weekend. After that it was … yes a chain restaurant… but don’t blame us, we were tired and hungry! We headed to PF Changs and then it was back to the hotel to prepare for Saturday. And preparation was definitely needed as it was the first day of #BookCon

Saturday (AKA HELL):
We wanted to go on Saturday because there were a couple of books that we were hoping to get our hands on that we missed out on previously. Plus I had to get The Return… there was no question about that. What I didn’t love about this day… 10,000 people crammed into a tiny little area of the Javits. It was a nightmare. That picture over there … that was the line by 8am. By the time they finally opened the doors, it was a mad rush and so ridiculous. I hope that they re-evaluate how they are going to do this next year, I hear that they are spreading it out to two days, but I hope they end up limiting tickets for this next year or make the area for this event bigger.

As soon as we finished up with our last few grabs, we headed back to our hotel to drop things off and then we got cleaned up and headed out to the 9/11 memorial. We wanted to go see this last year, but ran out of time, so it was on our list as a must do this year. To say it was a sobering experience would be an understatement. I’m glad we had the opportunity to go, but sad we missed out on getting into the museum. Maybe we’ll get to that next year.
Then it was off to meet up with the amazing Jess at Fiddlesticks in Greenwich Village where the food was soooooo good!

Sunday:
This was our last official day in NYC and we were determined we wanted to see some of the New York sights… and what better way to do that than get on a boat!! We ended up taking the City Sightseeing New York cruise and we had gorgeous weather and saw some amazing sights!

After our cruise, we met our friend Jess again… this time for brunch at Almond. After that we were off to see more of New York! We saw the lovely Flatiron Building where the amazing Ksenia works…

Then of course we had to make our trips to The Strand and Books of Wonder!

Then we stopped at Crumbs for some much needed cupcakes!

We basically spent the rest of the night packing and repacking and being sad that we had to part ways once again with our Blog BFF’s but we had to get up super early to make the ferry to get to the airport on time. But did you guys know you can get super fancy breakfast at LaGuardia airport?

So there you have it! That was our wrap up of the stuff we did and saw that weren’t necessarily BEA related – Next up we have a wrap up of the books and authors and then watch for a wrap up of the events we attended too!

Let us know what you think in the comments and if you went, what your favorite part of the city was!