In October 1934, Stein arrived in America after a 30-year absence. Disembarking from the ocean liner in New York, she encountered a throng of reporters. Front-page articles on Stein appeared in almost every New York City newspaper. As she rode through Manhattan to her hotel, she was able to get a sense of the publicity that would hallmark her US tour. An electric sign in Times Square announced to all that "Gertrude Stein Has Arrived." Her six-month tour of the country encompassed 191 days of travel, criss-crossing 23 states and visiting 37 cities. Stein prepared her lectures for each stop-over in a formally structured way, and the audience was limited to five hundred attendees for each venue. She spoke, reading from notes, and provided for an audience question and answer period at the end of her presentation.