Reading with Tequila Does BEA 2011! Part 1

BEA this year was an amazing and eye-opening experience. I thought I knew what I was getting into having gone last year, but with everything in life, surprises abound. This post contained all of the pre-BEA fun. Part 2 will cover the actual BEA experience.

Sunday
I arrived in NYC around 1pm Sunday afternoon. I live at the Jersey Shore, so my husband drove me and my luggage in. Took us about an hour to get up there and no lugging luggage around the city = awesome. Lexie met me at the hotel right after I arrived and we hung out with some other bloggers who were staying at the same hotel.

Briana arrived next and the three of us grabbed some dinner at a pizza place in Port Authority. Later that night Taschima arrived and we all stayed up late comparing potential schedules for our days at BEA.

Monday
We got up early and headed over to Javits to get our badges, where we met Emily. We were all registered as press, and since many bloggers seemed to enjoy claiming we'd be turned away for not paying, we wanted to make sure we could have to opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings if they arose. Of course, there was no problems. Book bloggers are press at BEA. Bloggers from BlogWorld were the ones supposed to register as bloggers. So, thanks to all those who said awesome things like "I'm going to laugh when the people who registered as press aren't allowed into BEA this year." You suck for many reasons, but mostly because you were being super bitchy, ended up being completely wrong, made many people worry for no good reason and even convinced some people not to attend at all since they weren't going to be able to afford the registration.

After registering, we all headed up into the press room, where we found computers, printers, juices and breakfast foods. For those who worried about being allowed to hang out up there, the lady manning the door was helpful and super nice once she learned we were bloggers. We wandered around a bit and then headed over to Discovery Time Square for the Harry Potter exhibit.

My lone picture of the Harry Potter exhibit. No cameras were allowed, which was disappointing. Nikki and Danielle met us for the tour and then we all headed to John's Pizzeria. We ate pizza in a church! Well, a renovated former cathedral, but close enough.

Our growing group navigated the subway (I survived!) and made our way to Strand Bookstore. I was good and only picked up one book - The Quarters Dead by Richard Peck. I wandered the huge store and even got a little lost in their sweltering basement.

From Strand we went directly to the Teen Author Carnival. I sat in on the Kick Ass Females in YA panel and the Teen Angst panel. In between the two panels, I finally met up with Amelia, who we'd missed all day long. The panels and authors were awesome, but it would have been nice had they been on a stage of some sort. Sitting down, we had to try to tell who was talking by the sound of their voices, which was difficult at times.

After TAC, we headed back to the hotel to wait until Tegan arrived and then went to Dave & Busters for dinner. Wonderful food, horrendous service. Thoroughly exhausted, we went back to the hotel fully intending to sleep, yet managed to stay up until 2.