Tag Archives: hotel

Letters From A Brawd (Issue #1)

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I don’t mean to brag, but I excel in designing vacations in which, upon landing in a different country, of a different time zone, that speaks a different native language, I arrive completely stranded. No matter how far in advance I reserve a hotel, Phil and I inevitably end up standing on a foreign cobblestone street bearing nothing but useless confirmation emails and sleep deprivation.

It began with our honeymoon last June. We decided to go to Athens, figuring nothing celebrates a union better than a protest-ridden city on the brink of seceding from the union. You say walks on the beach and candlelight dinners? I say riot shields and tear gas.

At the airport, I handed a taxi driver the address (Timoleontos Vassou 22) of our destination–a 4.5 star luxury boutique hotel called The Angel Suites. It took the man a while to maneuver the city center, given that many streets were packed with screaming maalox-painted demonstrators. (When we initially drove passed them, in my foreign affairs ignorance I chirped, “Oh look, a street fair.” Hopefully the cabbie thought I just had a very dry sense of humor.)

I wasn’t familiar with Athens but, after a while, it seemed as if we were driving in circles. And why was the driver looking from the hotel information to the buildings and back in confusion?

He pulled the cab to the side of the road in front of a Best Western. “I’ll be back,” the Greek Arnold said with a nervous smile and then hopped out of the cab, taking our email confirmation paper with him. Phil and I looked at each other and shrugged. We had been traveling for 12 hours. Slathered in plane grease and exhaustion, he could have said he just needed to run in and smash some plates and we would have thought it a reasonable pit stop.

Five minutes later he returned, popped his trunk, and removed our luggage.

“Excuse me, sir? I don’t think this is our hotel. Our hotel is called The Angel Suites,” I said.

He again flashed me that nervous smile. “Yes. Talk to the lady. She will tell you.” He dropped our two luggage pieces inside The Best Western and was back in his cab driving away before he finished the sentence.

Inside, The Lady informed us in broken English that this was indeed the correct address, but that the hotel we reserved in August the following year was bankrupted in September. The Best Western replaced it in January and The Angel Suites, The Best Western, and our travel agent all assumed one of the previously mentioned parties would catch us up to speed. It was now June, at 4 am our time, we had been up all night, and had nowhere to stay.

“Well, do you have any room at this inn?” I asked, lip trembling. The Lady did not.

Long story short: After a soggy breakdown in which I whined, “But this is our honeymoon” at a pitch only dogs can hear; a two hour nap on The Best Western lobby sofa; several angry emails to our travel agent; and a spanakopita (spinach and cheese filled pastry); things were sorted out and we really enjoyed the rest of our trip.

A year later, swap a kalimera for a bonjour and a spanakopita for a crepe and Phil and I had some Pepe le Pew style deja vu.

On this trip across the Atlantic, we were scheduled to stay in a woman’s Paris apartment, who we would learn didn’t understand the critical value in being at the apartment when we arrived. We called her from a payphone and were greeted by voicemail. After waiting with our luggage in front of a closed door for fifteen minutes, we went forth to find Internet, thinking maybe she emailed us about being late.

Manhattan is designed like college campuses with Emergency Call Boxes– from any given Starbucks, a caffeine seeker can locate her next source of skinny vanilla lattes. I hoped Paris had been inspired by our ugly consumerism, so we dragged our luggage down the street, searching for a Starbucks, American’s favorite Wifi hot spot.

Voila! A Starbucks! Oh, but the Internet is broken today. Where is the nearest Internet cafe? Around the corner! Magnifique! Oh, but it’s closed.

Feeling desperate, I walked into a small hotel across the street from the Internet cafe. Behind the desk sat a woman with a bun tied so tight that I worried, if undone, her face might fall off.

“Excuse me, do you have Internet here?”

“Yes. But only for customers.”

“I have nowhere to go. I need to get in touch with the person I’m staying with. Can I pay you to use the Internet for ten minutes?”

“No. There is Internet across the street.”

“It’s closed.”

“So?”

“Okay well, do you have any room here?”

“No.”

Madame Meanie needed to pull the baguette from her basket.

We dragged our feet back to the apartment. Still no answer.

A woman with a cloud of white hair appeared from nextdoor. She said something in French, we said something in English. She motioned inside of her apartment. Peeking into the doorway, we found a dog the size of a small horse and enough clutter to qualify her for a segment on A&E. We smiled and said merci but no merci. We’d rather not be murdered.

Having failed our journey to find Internet, we embarked on a separate but similar quest for a telephone. This odyssey ended half a block away at a hostel masquerading as Practic Hotel, which I assume was short for practically a hotel.

We walked into the dark lobby and, behind a mahogany desk, sat a thirty-something man who looked like a spy movie villain that was fated to be outwitted.

“Excuse me, do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

“Would it be possible to use your phone?”

“Yes, but you must first wait,” he said, as this were obvious and we had just violated hotel policy. He gestured into a room across the hall, where we found a bored looking bald man sitting in an uncomfortable chair. We rolled our luggage across the hall and…. waited.

The doomed villain shuffled some papers around. He looked out the window. He tapped his fingers on the desk. A smudge caught his eye, and he polished it with his sleeve. He glanced at his watch.

“Okay, come in,” he said, and the bald man did. (We would come to find that this was the villain’s signature move. No matter how simple our question, he would find some pencils to organize so that we could spend our due time in the waiting room before he answered it. Talk about a Napoleon complex.)

Long story short: We called the apartment owner again and again got voicemail so, with nowhere else to go, we spent the night at the Practically-a-Hotel Hotel. We schlepped our luggage up five flights of a winding staircase and slept in a room big enough for a king size bed and nothing more, equipped with a bathroom so tiny that my knees banged against the wall when I sat on the toilet.

I regress into a tired child when exhausted by travel. Everything around me looks yucky, but all is better after a nap and a snack. After we passed out in the Pratic Hotel and woke up to have a crepe, the apartment owner reached us and the issue was resolved the next day. The rest of our week was a prixe fixe meal of romance slathered culture served with a side of nutella.

In conclusion, I now know myself well enough that, when planning a vacation, I need to double book for the first night, or at least pack a waterproof sleeping bag fit for an international alley.

You Shouldn’t Snort at The Waldorf

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This past weekend, thanks to an obvious glitch in their system, Priceline reserved us a room at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City. (Have you ever used the Priceline Name Your Own Price feature? Try it— it might surprise you). How do Phil and I feel about reaching the height of fanciness at the ripe ages of 25 and 29? We feel great.

Leading up to the stay, we were giddy with anticipation:

“Should I get my haircut?” Phil asked the night before.

“No, leave it shaggy. People will think we must be famous to look like that at The Waldorf.”

“Check my teeth,” I said, a block away from the hotel. “I can’t have anything in my teeth at The Waldorf.”

As 49th Street met Park Avenue (because of course The Waldorf is on Park Avenue), we stopped and gazed at its gold-leafed entrance with the type of reverence we usually reserve for that initial moment when you open a pizza box and the steam pours forth.

“Valet parking,” I whispered, like a prayer.

We pushed through the revolving doors (which were also gold—I’m 85% sure that the hotel architect was Scrooge McDuck) and walked through the Park Avenue lobby, slowly, gazing up at the ornate moldings, chandeliers, and paintings of Romans or Greeks enjoying themselves (they live at The Waldorf, so of course they are enjoying themselves).

(There are multiple lobbies at The Waldorf. The Park Avenue lobby was originally designed so that woman could wait there while their husbands paid the bills because, at the time, it was considered inappropriate for females to witness the exchange of money. I suppose not too much has changed in this case because, although I paid for the room, Priceline and Visa protected me from the dirty dealings.)

We followed the mosaic-tiled floor and passed chinchilla fur coats, meeting rooms named after oil tycoons, and not one, not two, but three grand pianos, until finally arriving in the main lobby.

The main lobby of The Waldorf looked as if Grand Central Station and The Palace of Versailles drank a little too much Dom Perignon one night and conceived a bouncing baby hotel, complete with plush carpeting, pillars, and a 9-foot, two-ton bronze clock. While we waited in line in the bustling lobby dripping with elegance, Phil read the clock placard and remarked, “It was commissioned the year I was born.” The placard date read 1893, but Phil reversed the middle two numbers. Innocent mistake, I know, but the idea of Phil being 119 years old made me snort-laugh, which made me elbow Phil for causing me to snort-laugh in the middle of The Waldorf.

After a few minutes in line, as I pondered that a salad with walnuts and grapes— two decadent food items that are often too expensive for us to buy— was named after this living museum, a uniformed bellhop with gold tasseled shoulder pads escorted us to the next available receptionist.

“Reservation for Dillon,” I said with a proud smile. The lady nodded and clicked her keyboard.

“All right, it says here that the room is prepaid through Priceline?” she asked.

She said it perfectly nicely, without a hint of judgment, but this was The Waldorf, and I knew she was just being polite.

She issued us our room keycards, which had to be used to access the elevators, and we bumbled onward, still in awe of our surroundings, trying not to look like the Beverly Hillbillies, or the Wald-Oafs. (Sorry, I had to.)

The wonder continued in our room (which had a doorbell that I rang only three times). I stood in the bathroom, a luxurious little world of white marble, and was disappointed by a smudge on the mirror. As I rubbed the discoloration to remove it, the area flashed, and the local news came on. It was a television. Embedded. Inside. The. Mirror.

“Phil, Phil!” I screeched, shaking my hands like a child who doesn’t know how to express excitement. He peeked his head around the corner, seemed frightened for a moment, and then approached the image with the apprehensive curiosity of a dog navigating a vacuum. He looked around the room, attempting to identify the source of this motion picture. Then he waved his hand in front of it, presuming it was projected.

“No, it’s coming from inside,” I said, sounding more like a cavewoman discovering fire than a guest at The Waldorf.

The Waldorf insignia radiated gold on every surface.  It was emblazoned on the soap, robes, and pillows—even on the toilet paper. I imagined that, right before we arrived, a man in a tuxedo patrolled the room carrying The Waldorf stamper, and branded every object that had an edge.

In the main area of the room, I approached the desk and opened a thick leather portfolio, revealing an extensive display of Waldorf stationery (cards and card envelopes, paper and letter-sized envelopes, postcards). I read online that every President since Herbert Hoover has enjoyed these lush accommodations. As I admired the regal selection of writing materials, I envisioned a President of the United States sitting at that mahogany desk, composing an important correspondence on the thick linen paper (which of course glittered with the golden Waldorf insignia). I sighed at the beauty of this image, and then stuffed the stationery in my purse.

After surveying the room, we flopped down on the Italian linens, read the Guest Directory, and learned some very important facts about The Waldorf. For instance, after 6pm the hotel kindly requests a business casual dress code in the lobbies. Since Phil and I were wearing jeans, and didn’t bring a change of pants, we would be kindly declining that request. Also, there weren’t ice machines on the floor.  Ice was delivered to the room and, a few hours later, we would learn that it was literally brought on a silver platter. Lastly, every Friday and Saturday night at 7pm, The Waldorf offered a magic show by Steve Cohen, The Millionaires’ Magician. However, if the time was not convenient, Mr. Cohen was also available for private in-suite appearances. At this news I just about died, picturing a wealthy couple who had a previous engagement at 7pm, sitting on their bed wearing ballroom attire, looking severely unimpressed while The Millionaires’ Magician pulled 100-dollar bills out of his silk sleeve.

That night, we slept in an official New York landmark— which is even cooler than when I peed at the New York Public Library. Now I just have to decide which of my family or friends will have the honor of receiving the following note on Waldorf letterhead:

“Hello. I’m writing from the Waldorf, and it is fabulous, darling.”

Blogger’s Note: I am aware that I used “The Waldorf” nineteen times in this post (Twenty-one times if you count this blogger’s note). That is also an accurate representation of the phrase-count in my conversation this past weekend. Every time we saw something grand, or something quite the opposite, or really anything and everything in between, we crooned “The Waldorf.” And 75% of the time it was in a British accent. I just thought you should know.