#1: The Hotel Room

Okay, I think I finally have some time to write about the reality behind my New York trip. You all have had the chance to read the enhanced Disney version of the events and now it is time to get down to the nitty gritty facts of the case.

I did not have a good time.

Okay, let me rephrase that. I had a good time when I was at the shows...by myself. Except for Wicked the show I went to with my mom and Andrea. I did not have to sit with them since I bought my seats first. But upon discovering where they were sitting, I sat through half the show pissed that my mom managed to find two seats closer than mine through some fluke computer deal.

As this post indicates I will be breaking down the issues about my trip into five different posts, so not to cause my brain to explode from recalling too many horrid memories. There may be some other tidbits thrown in for good measure but the main focus will be the top five things that totally annoyed me throughout the trip.

First up, the hotel. As I stated earlier the hotel was a source of contention long before we got to New York due to the fact Andrea refused to stay anywhere but a certain hotel she always stayed in. What I did not know was when my mom found out how much the hotel was she refused to spend that much on a room. So she did some research on the Internet and found the Portland Square Hotel. Deciding it was reasonably priced (at $120.00 a night Wednesday and Thursday and $140.00 Friday and Saturday, plus all the taxes and the extra person charge I guess that was reasonable for New York) and its location was right near Times Square my mom booked it without checking with me first. So we were staying in a hotel none of us knew and I had not really looked into. But my mom assured me she looked at the pictures on the Internet and it seemed nice. This was when I discovered, after she had paid for the room on her credit card, that we would all be rooming together. Not my ideal situation, but whatever. I have stayed in hotel rooms with two or three other people before and it was okay. Two Queens or two Kings with a chair and a desk and an okay sized bathroom is usually the norm. I was thinking in terms of your average Best Western or Holiday Inn type hotel room. When my mom informed they would be two Double beds I was a bit perplexed. Was that all they had? No Queens or Kings? I would soon discover why the beds were only Doubles.

When I got off the plane and tried to make my way through the crowded airport to the only baggage claim that was not flooded I got a voicemail from my mother informing me they had arrived at the hotel and it was a hovel. Surely thinking she was overreacting, I made my two hour journey by bus with no air conditioning and figured I would calm her down once I arrived and addressed the situation. Pulling up to the front of the building, sweating profusely and tired, I was a bit impressed with the while marble columns and impressive ornamentation on the awning of the doorway. This wasn't going to be so bad after all.

I was wrong.

The lobby, the halls, the doors, everything was dark chocolate brown. Poop brown. Which in it of itself would not have been bad, if there were windows to bring in light. But other than the front glass door, there was no natural light. The lobby consisted of a front desk, two black leather sofas, a glass coffee table and in the back a series of over sized lockers for storing your luggage after checking out of the hotel. The upstairs hallways were narrow and separated but a series of fire doors, all painted brown too. We had to go through three doors just to get down the hall to our end room. Again, no windows in the hallways so it felt like a tomb or coffin. Close, tight spaces, almost airless feeling did not help my claustrophobia. But I figured I was not going to be sleeping in the hall and I would only be in the hotel to sleep and get changed. So I would survive, right?

When my mom opened the door to the room I could not disguise my shock. The room was tiny, barely big enough to fit the two double beds shoved against each wall, with a bout a foot of space between them. Against the wall near the door was a desk with the TV on it, about two feet form the end of the beds. My freshman dorm room in college was bigger than this room. I had no idea where we were all going to put our suitcases, let along all get ready in the minuscule bathroom stuck in the corner. The toilet, sink (with no counter) and tub were all lined up right on top of each other in a bathroom about the size of a broom closet.

There were no amenities, meaning no hair dryer, no soap, even no local phone calls. You picked up that phone and you had to pay! We had to fight to get towels for three people everyday even though we clearly were paying the extra person fee for three people in one room. There wasn't even a phone book in the room, I had to go down to the desk when I needed one to look for a Best Buy store. There was a single cup coffee pot, but no coffee. And we were lucky to have half a roll of toilet paper.

But the worst of all was probably the shower. It was so narrow your elbows constantly hit the shower curtain and the wall while you shampooed your hair. And if the water wasn't trickling out of the shower head it was on full blast and either scalding hot or ice cold. By the second shower I got really good at taking three minute showers, hopping in and out of the water as best I could to avoid getting burned or frozen or hovering directly under the faucet to use every single drop available to rinse off. Since I took two showers a day due to the humidity and the fact I was swimming in sweat constantly, this was not a fun ritual.

But the thing that irked me more than anything. More than the fact that I had no private area to myself (since you could hear everything from the bathroom because the door did not shut completely and squealed horribly when it was opened.) More than the fact I had to sleep with my mother and crawl into the bed from the end, plastering myself next to the weak air conditioner in the only window that blew right on me since my mother and Andrea were constantly "freezing" and I was always so hot. More than the fact that I felt guilty staying out late because I knew they would be sleeping when I returned and there was no way not to wake them up due to the close quarters. More than all of this was the fact the my mother and Andrea did not stop whining, complaining and bitching about the room the entire time we were there. Andrea blamed my mom for not getting a room at the hotel she liked. My mom blamed Andrea for not warning her that her hotel was so expensive so she searched for one more affordable. I was all for joking around the first day of how tiny it was and how we would be stepping all over each other in a weird sort of dance, trying to get ready for the day and then get ready for bed. But it was out at dinners and while walking down the street and standing in line for something...everything circled back to how crappy the room was. Which made me feel suffocated every time I was in there because all they did was grumble. Soon I didn't even want to go back to the room and I even considered just packing up my stuff and charging a room at the Doubletree down the street (at five hundred a night no less) just to get away from the grumpy mumblings of how awful our accommodations were.

Thing is, the room was not that bad. It was clean and suited its purpose as a place to sleep. It would have been a lot better had there not been three of us or if the room was bigger, but hey, we weren't sleeping on the street. And you could not beat the location. It was a lot closer to all the theatres I was going to that I thought and two blocks down from Times Square, right in the heart of it all. I was willing to deal, to make the best of it like my mother said we should.

They were not.