Roanoke

 I stayed in Roanoke on the way back to Connecticut, as I did on the way south last October.

The Hotel Roanoke and Convention Center is a beautiful, classic hotel in downtown Roanoke, high on a hill across the tracks from the railroad station and the downtown.

The hotel connects with the downtown through a glass and steel elevated passageway across the tracks .

On the other side is the Taubman Museum of Art.  It closes at 5.  I arrived at 5:15.

City Market is a nice older brick building leading to a neighborhood of restaurants, bars and shops.  It reminds me of a smaller, less touristy and less busy version of Boston's Quincy Marketplace.

A brick wall in the City Market area welcomes visitors with a simulated old-fashioned advertising sign.

Between City Market and the railroad station there were throngs of well-dressed young people who looked like they were coming from a graduation or going to a prom, or both.

In an upper level of the railroad station, there is a big round 2010 sculpture by Edwin White.  Beneath the Roundhouse emulates the roundhouses that turned trains around.