My Romantic Times — Day 4, Most of it Anyway

Got up early enough on Friday that I was able to get out for a walk.  Cold was entirely gone and I strolled down Canal, in part so I could find The Ruby Slipper where a bunch of fellow Berkely authors and I were due to have breakfast on Saturday.  From there I walked down Rampart Street, because it was there, and it was Rampart Street.  Found Lafayette Square.  Found the appellate court, which is housed in the John Minor Wisdom building.  And the jokes just sort of write themselves, don’t they?  Saw a bit of the warehouse district as well before turning back to the hotel and the conference.

Today on the agenda was “Not Your Mama’s Science Fiction,” a discussion of the state of the art.  In other lives and under other names, I’m an SF author, and Linnea Sinclair is nice enough to include me on the program.  Discussion was lively and upbeat and a lot of fun.  And yes, I did actually say “Sex doesn’t happen in a vaccum, trust me.”  It made sense at the time, trust me.

It was our last full day, so Cindy and I decided we needed a last trip to Cafe Biegnet.  We sat in the courtyard for a long time, enjoying the sun, eating the biegnets and watching the sparrows aggressively trolling for crumbs and ignoring the cat.  To be fair, the cat also ignored the sparrows, so it all worked out.

There is a sparrow in there, really.

On the way back we detoured into Meyer the Hatter:

Both Cindy and I have hat-positive husbands and have been known to be hat-curious ourselves.  Nothing on this trip, but across the street we happened upon The Wildlife Reserve, and among other things, Tabitha Bethune’s hand-crafted umbrellas:

The shop, a work in progress will not only be dedicated to classic, locally crafted fashion, but local art and artists, and I really want to come back and see it all finished.  And I think I’m going to have to have one of those umbrellas, cuz they’re awesome.

This was all before the ghost & vampire tour, of course.