To get on the SBS bus, you put your ticket into a machine
that spits out a receipt, which you show to the driver on
request. This apparently allows them to load more passengers
quicker than the normal way. It's an irritation, but it
appears that some of the people don't bother with this step
and just board by crowding through the rear door.

We were lucky to get on here, which turned out to be the
first stop at the airport, with lots of people getting off
and making room for us. We actually managed to get seats,
not together, by virtue of being elders.

The Roosevelt Avenue Jackson Heights 74th St. is the major
transfer point to the subway, and almost everyone gets off
here. We decided to take the R train all the way, as it goes
closest to our destination, the Hampton Inn Downtown Financial
District, where they gave us about as quiet a room as possible,
down a short corridor with only two rooms. Oh, a disadvantage of
traveling with someone who can't see - we walked right past the
hotel and had to ask directions of the doorman of another place.
Eventually we got there. It was a smallish cubic room, rather
odd, but okay for the city and fairly comfy. Rest and shower time
followed by a quick subway ride up to 57th and a stroll back to
La Bonne Soupe, an unpretentious and not too expensive eatery
that features in addition to soups, quiches, omelettes, and,
thank goodness, burgers (les steaks haches).

So the deal was I was short on cash but needed to pay money
on a couple future occasions, so it was arranged for me to
use my card and have people give me cash (someone wondered
aloud what that was). By way of gratitude, I was going to
take the first couple bottles of wine, which was Les Garrigues
2016, an insignificant but flavorful Rhone, pretty soft,
pleasing enough with the food and to the less picky drinker.
Somewhere around 4x MSRP, but of course it can be gotten at a
discount from that, so I was being soaked. Of those who care
about wine, the Monitor was reasonably pleased (he is attuned
to New York prices), but Bob W found it minimally acceptable,
being used just to Anchorage prices.

Lilli had the steak hache mornay, over half a pound of
excellent ground beef done medium rare as ordered covered in a
nutmeg-heavy cream sauce and an impossible amount (a couple
ounces at least) of Gruyere. Excellent fries with that. My
paysanne came with a buttery red-wine garlic sauce, also quite
nice but done medium rare though ordered extra rare. Also,
fries came with mine, though I'd ordered a special substitution
of creamed spinach. Eventually a dish of lukewarm but tasty
spinach came on request; it wasn't charged extra for.

When I counted my take, people had put in for all the wine as
well, so my planned additional outlay became zero or less.

Our host Mark had to get up early to go do his catsitting
business in the morning, plus he doesn't drink, so he couldn't
join us at the afterparty, which as usual was at Bob D's rooftop,
where a bunch of us collected for more wine. Standouts were a
Salice Salentino, very smooth and tasty, whose brand I
unfortunately couldn't see in the gloaming, and the Petit Guiraud
15, which had that Rieslingy pineapple thing going (odd, there's
no Riesling in it) as well as orange, oak, and a bit but not an
enormous amount of Botrytis.

Bob suggested we take an Uber back; I'd planned on
walking to Columbus Circle, maybe half a mile, and taking
the subway, easy peasy, but we relied on his greater
expertise, and to tell the truth we'd had enough to drink
and riding in a car rather than the MTA actually did appeal.

Problem was the otherwise perfectly okay driver took us
hither and yon to avoid traffic, just getting us into
worse traffic (Manhattan, midnight Friday night) and
eventually dropping us off at the wrong Hampton Inn -
ours was at 32 Pearl, and he took us to the one at 320
Pearl. We had to get another Uber to take us to the
right place. On recounting this to the staff, the reply
was a chuckle and Oh, it happens all the time.
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