Sleeping in the City that Doesn't

[fauxklore]

Usually, when I go to New York, I stay at my mother's house. That has several disadvantages, however. While the comfort level has improved since she finally replaced the mattress in the guest room (i.e. my old bedroom), the noise level has not. And, of course, there is the Mom drives me nuts factor.

But the single biggest factor that sometimes drives me to stay elsewhere is the sheer inconvenience of staying chez Mom. The Long Island Railroad runs only hourly on the weekends and then it's still nearly a mile to her house from the train station. So every so often I go up and stay in the city.

My favorite hotel experience there was at The Library Hotel. The gimmick there is that the rooms are themed by the Dewey Decimal system and each one has a large collection of books that match its theme. It's normally beyond my budget, but there was a mixup with another hotel and I got to stay at The Library at the rate I'd have paid for a boring chain. There's something inherently charming about being asked "fiction or nonfiction" when checking in. If I could afford it, I'd stay there regularly, choosing either room 900.006 (travel biography) or 800.005 (fairy tales). Room 800.006 (mysteries) is also a possibility.

More often, I deal with the expense by using the hotel points from a mixture of business travel and stays in cheaper places. The Doubletree Guest Suites in midtown has a perfect location for theatre going and is conducive to those times when I actually go to two shows in the same day. This trip involved a Hilton Garden Inn in Chelsea, which was simply what was available when making last minute plans. Since I was just there one night, the proximity to Penn Station was handy. I also thought of agedwiz and his "Out My Hotel Window" photo series when I looked out mine and saw The Empire State Building.

I've been thinking about getting a very compact digital camera that I can carry in my pocket. That view would have been a good reason for doing so.

Comments

[agedwiz.livejournal.com]

My father has a pretty decent camera that fits in his shirt pocket, a Fuji Finepix Z1. It has a bit of a purple fringe problem but post-processing handles that nicely. It's certainly better than most cell phone cameras which produce largely (to my taste) unacceptable pictures for anything more than informational purposes.

I sympathize though. I carry my gear (see icon) in a backpack which also has a place for my laptop. It can be heavy.

I'm sorry you couldn't take the picture. :)