Road Trip!

 Just Sweet Mesquite and I.

We loaded up the party-mobile last Friday at lunch time, and hit the road for New.York.City!

Ta-dah!

The drive was fun--we talked about school and summer plans and life; and before we knew it, we were on the lookout for our mystery accommodations on West 38th Street.

I booked our reservations many months ago using Expedia, and found a place in the Theatre District.  Having been there before using the same planning strategy, I figured we couldn't go wrong.  Boy!  I might have been wrong.

We laughed.

A LOT.

First, because we followed our GPS to our destination, and drove down the street, and didn't see it. 

Anywhere.

We circled around the block and tried again.

Then, we laughed again when we spotted the fancy entrance:

That awning with plastic and duck tape was our 'welcome home' and howdy-do to The Americana Inn.

I know--pretty snazzy.

When we climbed the narrow staircase to the tiny second floor lobby (with no air conditioning), we were met with a busy, sort of ruffled looking fellow behind an unimpressive counter.  He checked us in, gave us our room key, and told us the bathrooms were shared.

I was beginning to wonder if I had inadvertently checked the "hostel" box instead of "hotel" box on my reservation requirements.

 We made our way to the third floor room to which he gave us the key.  We opened the door to find this:

 Sweet, SWEET Mesquite exclaimed with delight 

"Oh look!... Free Stu....." 

when it abruptly dawned on her that the toiletry bag and other assorted personal belongings were NOT free stuff. 

I wasn't even remotely TEMPTED by the cool-looking red shoes.  That's how weird-ed-out I felt.

And I'm thinking "Oh fantastic... we're going to be undressing or slumbering, and someone ELSE is going to come waltzing into OUR room."   It was a tiny bit unsettling.

I wasn't really feeling up for the whole Goldilocks thing.  I laughed again, to protect very very sweet Mesquite from having terrifying thoughts (like her mother) and also because I thought of my traveling Mr. Dub, who would NOT have thought these were suitable accommodations.

I laughed nervously as we shut the door, and, because nervous adrenaline triggers the need to take care of certain bodily functions, we took turns standing guard outside the third floor bathroom with our belongings.  Then we returned to the lobby and told the even busier and more ruffled looking attendant that we needed a do-over.  Our second try was better, and we didn't have to climb any stairs this time.  I think the laughing we were doing at this point was more out of relief to finally plop our stuff down in a private (albeit VERY tiny) space.

At this point in our adventure, Mesquite did have the forethought to suggest that we study the emergency exit plan on the back of our door.  I was all for it.  As we stood there deciphering it, I realized that our designated exit plan was out the window and on to the fire escape.  I lifted the blinds and laughed again (really, sort of hysterically at this point) as I made the observation that we were not in close enough proximity to be able to reach the fire escape.  It was attached to a neighboring room, which we would only be able to enter by navigating three hallways first.  We decided that jumping from the second story window and risking broken limbs would be better than trying to find our neighbor's door and beg for admittance onto the fire escape. 

We had arrived, and we now had a plan.

(...to be continued...)