This is being written on board the Autotrain to Florida.

Well, we had to move a second time. Our hotel closed. I had said that Starwood had moved remaining guests out of the Sheraton Manhattan diagonally across the street to the Sheraton New York, so that they could accomodate the Lehman Brothers brokerage firm at the Manhattan. I had also said that the "W" Tuscany was separated by only two brownstones (brownstone townhouses) from the "W" Court, and that in many ways they were run as one hotel.

Sunday, with only one more day of our 18-day stay to go, we were informed that we had to move that afternoon. We were being upgraded to a suite at the Court. When I asked about the short notice they claimed they had left a message a few days earlier on the phone message service. They hadn't. (Once we had moved, they sent us a complimentary cheese platter for our trouble.) I objected to the first suite they gave us (on an airshaft) and found myself a nice one on the corner of 39th Street with an even better view up Lexington Avenue of the Chrysler Building.

I was afraid this was a another sign of the hotel industry everywhere, and in New York in particular, going down the toilet, but the young man at the front desk thought it would reopen in a week or two, after they took advantage of the slowdown to install high-speed internet access in the Tuscany and then reverse the process to do the same at the Court. We'll see.

Speaking of Tribeca (TRIangle BElow CAnal), the whole of this upcoming neighborhood is still isolated, since Canal Street is presently the southernmost limit, going towards Lower Manhattan, of vehicular traffic. But I understand that the restaurateurs there, such as Drew Nieporent, Capsouto Frères (where we had eaten a few weeks before the attack) and David Bouley of Bouley Bakery and Danube have all distinguished themselves commendably by feeding the rescue workers free of charge. But I bet the red ink is flowing.

Also, when I was on the upper end of South End Avenue and couldn't enter that last block, I recalled that our drugstore is in that block, and one of our two wine shops. I'm sure they survived, but they're not going to do business for a long time. They've set up a free shuttle bus in Battery Park City to take people to the Bowling Green subway station, but it's still no way to live. I read about some people planning to move out, and I'm sure that'll happen. I would also imagine that real estate prices there are going to drop for a while, maybe longer, or until the neighborhood regains some semblance of normalcy.

When we left New York yesterday (Monday), we could have crossed the Hudson using the Lincoln Tunnel in Midtown, which we rarelly do, but since I had heard that the Holland Tunnel downtown, which we usually use, had just been reopened (to outbound traffic only), we drove down through Greenwich Village an almost up to Canal Street to take the Holland (named in the 1920's for its engineer, not the country). I've never seen it so empty. Usually it disgorges onto city streets streams of cars coming from New Jersey, and entering it often involves huge backups, but there was a thin stream of cars this time, and in the tunnel there was only 4-5 cars that I could see ahead of me.

But from Jersey City we had a good view back on the New York skyline, my first from the west since the attack. Let me coin a phrase, "petite skyscrapers". I know it's an oxymoron, but it describes perfectly what the skyline looks like without those towers, actually, the way it had looked before.

After spending a night at a hotel in Lorton, Virginia, near the Autotrain south of Washington, we had some time before it was time to leave and drove back towards downtown Washington. I had heard that they had just reopened Route 27 on the damaged side of the Pentagon, and we drove past it twice, first going north, then returning south.

With full cognizance of the fact that it was an attack on a national icon, and with all due respect to the victims, both on the plane and inside the building, the damage, though palpable, is not spectacular, not on its own, and certainly not compared to the WTC. It looks like the first slice that has been cut out of a huge wedding cake.

The Pentagon is about 5+ stories tall and has rows and columns of identical look-alike windows that go on and on. The "slice" missing is about 5-6 vertical columns of windows wide. To the right is about 3 columns of burned-out windows, with a large flag. To the left is maybe 5 burned-out columns, with a crane working on repairing the roof. There were no rescue workers or any activity other than repairs visible from the highway, so I suppose that phase is over.

The Autotrain runs daily nonstop between Lorton, Virginia, and Sanford, Florida, near Orlando. It's essentially an overnight trip. One train leaves each terminus at 4PM and arrives at about 8:30 AM the next day. At full compliment (not this trip), it's the longest passenger train in the world, 3/4 of a mile, and can have up to 18 passenger cars (coach and sleepers) and 33 auto carriers, pulled by two diesel engines.

We’ll stay in Florida until the Spring.