I don’t know why it’s assumed that over spring break everyone wants to go to the Bahamas or somewhere equally hot and packed with drunken college kids. I like spending my vacation right here.

1. Yoshinoya Beef Bowl on 42nd St is a wonderful thing. There are hundreds of them in Japan, but only one in New York. I like sitting at a booth in the back with my vegetable bowl and novel and watching the tourists peer cautiously in at the menu before giving up and going to the awe-inspiringly gaudy McDonald’s across the street.

2. This week has crept up into the high 60s at times: t-shirt weather. Now is the time to go scampering around the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in bare feet. You’re not supposed to do your scampering in bare feet, but the security people don’t make a big deal about it unless you’re also lying on the grass reading in a non-lying-and-reading area. Of the grass.

3. Book hunting at the Strand is an experience made infinitely more pleasurable if you have the opportunity (say, when you’re on vacation) to go during the middle of a normal work day, as opposed to a weekend afternoon when everyone in the Village spontaneously decides to go book hunting at the Strand.

4. Yes, I read a lot when I’m on vacation.

5. I rarely watch tv, but there’s something terribly vacationy about soaking up movies (and Dune) at other people’s houses, especially if they’re the kind of other people who have digital cable, when maybe you yourself don’t.