On Saturday, we woke and had our free breakfast, packed, and
checked out to head to the next hotel. The doorman hailed a cab for us, asked
where we were going. We said The Waldorf Astoria. His eyes lit up. “Woah, nice!”
A short $5 cab ride later, we were at the Waldorf drop off
spot inside. We left the bags with the doorman down there and made our way
through a series of hallways to the front desk. Check in was a breeze, even at
noon. The clerk upgraded us for the honeymoon and found us a ready to go room
on the 25th floor and said the bags would be up in 15 minutes.
We went immediately from the front desk to the room to wait
for the bags. Oh, My, God, this room was nice! So nice that we barely left it
for the next two days, so this will be my shortest entry. The bed was made of
unicorn hair and angel feathers. The television was bigger than both of ours
put together.
The only hiccup was the bags took more than an hour to
arrive. When we called down to see what was going on, they said we weren’t in
the room when they came by, which I don’t see how that’s possible, but
whatever.
The bags arrived, and we took a short tour of the hotel. The
starlight room, the grand ballroom, the gift shop where ordinary tweezers cost
$22. I saw more fur coats than could be supplied by French Canadian traders.
Wife ordered a movie on the television, The Big Year, which
was just ordinary enough to be a nice diversion. I was ordered to go find food
at the sushi place near Rockefeller center. As I headed there, a couple blocks
away, I saw a bunch of people looking up at a building behind me. I turned and
saw this year's version of this thing begin.
Unfortunately, the sushi place was closed for Christmas Eve.
So I headed back to the hotel, and came across another sushi place. Yay! I got
what seemed good, but turned out to be OK sushi. By the time I got back to the
room, an hour after I left, Wife was sure I had been killed. On the plus side,
the hotel had sent us a complimentary bottle of in-house champagne to enjoy on
our honeymoon.
Other things we did: Tried to find the Marilyn Monroe subway
vent, but while it was on our map, there was no visible marking on the street. Ate
Christmas brunch at Oscars, which was not good. Watched the Christmas episode
of Doctor Who on BBC America, when it aired!
One last anecdote. Life among the 1% for these two days was
a strange trip. Wife would talk to cleaning people like there were human, and
you could tell hardly anyone ever does that. But here’s the real story of what
happened to me.
I came back with some food on Sunday, and I waited for the
elevator with another guy. We got on and two more people got on as well. They
pushed floor 23. And I swear this is what went through my head as I pushed the
button for 25.
“Huh, only floor 23.”
I became a douchebag for being two floors higher through no
fault of my own. What the hell! But then I got out-douchebagged, since the
first guy that got on looked at the buttons, and as the doors shut, he said “Oh,
this one doesn’t go to floor 31.”
He rode up to my floor and took the elevator back down.
Ugh.
On Monday, after packing and repacking to make sure our bags
were both under 50 pounds for the flight, we took the supershuttle to the
airport through a lot of backstreets while wife chatted with another passenger,
used our groupon coupons for the Delta Sky Lounge where they had free internet
and free drinks, and made our way back to the cities. I had feared the day
after Christmas for the reputed congestion at airports, but it was much better
than I had imagined. At this point, we
were near the end of our budget, and worried we would have to spend 70 bucks
for a taxi to Plymouth. This was the only part of the trip Wife hadn’t planned,
because in the back of her mind, we weren’t going to get this far. This day
would never come. However, we came across a supershuttle booth at the airport,
and got home for $40. This time I remembered my bag.
Wife has been watching 30-Rock ever since, dreaming of the
day we will go back.
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