"Norway to Newfoundland! This route, I quickly realized, was a subject to itself. For it was the route the Vikings took when they set their clinker-boats in the sea, I resolved to use the wanderings of these cranky, restless people as a rough travel itinerary, trekking the same gaunt cliffs they trekked, camping on the same wind-skudded sherries they camped on, breathing the same salubrious air: But I would play the occasional game of traveler's roulette, too. Since couldn't very well ship aboard the same boats as Eric the Red and his companions, I would ship aboard any boat I could find, even if it sailed somewhat off course. Also, between a fast boat and a slow boat, I would choose the slow boat. Between the slow boat and walking, I would choose the latter, as walking makes the world the vast and savory place it used to be in times long past." -- Lawrence Millman in Last Places: A Journey in the North. 

"Make plans with a friend six months in advance. As you sit in the restaurant waiting to order, have her delay the plans by an hour, then eleven hours, before postponing them indefinitely."
How to Train for Your First Flight in Two Years by Ali Solomon (The New Yorker)

“What does 750,000 people more in a single year flushing the toilets five times a day do to your wastewater treatment facilities?”

Elaine Stritch does Noel Coward.

"No, the huge, lofty train hall, with its soaring skylights, doesn’t magically resurrect the old Pennsylvania Station or extinguish the raging dumpster fire that is the current one. It leaves all sorts of herculean challenges and tasks around Penn Station unresolved. But it delivers on its promise, giving the city the uplifting gateway it deserves. When was the last time you could say something like that about a public works project?"
The rest of the story:
A $1.6 billion transformation of a post office has given the city a lofty, light-filled steel, glass and marble cathedral. Moynihan Train Hall: It’s Stunning. And, a First Step by Michael Kimmelman (New York Times)

... If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” -- Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

Stuck at home, we've discovered that restaurant-quality meals and foods that we imagined were only available to us from ethnic eateries and foreign travel are actually as simple as pie when you put your mind to it. Restaurants may be closed, but heaven help us, ethnic markets are open.

Nukazuke pickles at the Nishiki Market in Kyoto, Japan.Credit...iStock/Getty Images

Housebound because of the pandemic, an international correspondent finds a way to travel the globe in her kitchen: Conjuring Up the World Through the Sense of Taste by Hannah Beech (New York Times)