By Gary Lloyd
We weren’t off to a promising start in New York City.
The hotel I had a reservation with since last summer put us in a closet of a room with non-working electrical outlets, unable to charge our cell phones, turn on the TV to check the weather or switch on the two lamps. Oh, and the old bed came equipped with two hairs on the sheets and one of the pillows.
I told the night manager this was unacceptable, and the look of concern on his face suggested I had just told him my favorite color was blue. He told me and my fiance, Jessica, to ask the security guard, who was outside puffing on a cigarette, to come check out the room
. I guess the night manager was too busy that close to midnight, probably playing on Facebook. The guard said he’d come up when the cigarette was ready to flick into the dirty street. Well, then.
When he came upstairs, he turned every switch in the breaker, undoubtedly cutting off other guests’ TVs, lamps, hair dryers. None worked. We were told the hotel was booked full, and that we may have to jump from room to room for our stay. We did stay in a different room our first night, and the bald night manager who knew as much about customer service as I do advanced chemistry called us at 12:45 a.m. to explain that we’d have to be out of that room the next afternoon, since it was scheduled to be renovated. We had driven from Birmingham to Pensacola, flown to Chicago, then to Newark, and ridden in a pickup van to the Big Apple already that day. We were tired.
New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of, Alicia Keys sings. More like a nightmare. I felt like a fly heading toward the bug zapper, distracted by the bright lights, and then burned.
We spoke with the Russian owner of the hotel the next morning, who upgraded us for the rest of our stay.
The rest of our trip went well — Jessica and I saw the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry, walked Wall Street, reminisced at the World Trade Center site, gripped tight to a pole on the subway, rode a red double-decker bus through the city and Brooklyn, made our necks sore looking up the Empire State Building, walked what felt like a million miles through Central Park, ate famous hot dogs, avoided riding in yellow cabs at all costs and dodged people yakking on cell phones who have never heard of Southern hospitality.
It wasn’t as much a vacation as it was an exploration. We had fun, though, touring and snapping pictures. I struggled coming up with what exactly to write about from our trip.
Until we got back to Pensacola, and the South in general.
There were tall pine trees, actual houses, Milo’s sweet tea, an appreciation for even Alabama interstates considering how torn up the New York pavement is, and Brantley Gilbert’s “More Than Miles” slipping through the 102.5 radio dial.
Ah, sweet home Alabama.
Contact Gary Lloyd at news@trussvilletribune.com and follow him on Twitter @GaryALloyd.