The After-Party
Well heck. It's been awhile. We've been traveling all over the place - Nate went to Indiana and came home for a day before I headed to girls camp, which I left a day early so we could fly to Georgia to see my family for a week and a half. It was all a great time and we came home ready to get back to normal life. We'll post GA pics soon, but since they're on Nate's computer and these are not, we'll start at the end of the story.
Sunday night we went to the airport to head home from vacation and between the plane getting there late, being tiny (so the big guys took precedent over us) and being rerouted for weather, we missed our connecting flight in Houston. And the best they could do was give us two toothbrushes to split between the four of us and reschedule our flight for 9:00 the following night. Luckily, Nate sweet-talked the lady into putting us up at the Sheraton (with a little help from our toddlers whose bedtime had come and gone hours before but who had done remarkably well the whole time).
We were grateful to have a place to lay our weary heads that night, and decided to make the best of an unplanned vacation extension the next day. Nate would try to log half a workday and we'd explore the city a little in the afternoon. All in clothes that we'd traveled in the day before because our luggage was already home.
I have a few things to say about the Sheraton, and perhaps expensive hotels in general. The room we stayed in went for $400 a night for four people. And it there was nothing better about it than any Super 8 or Motel 6 I've ever seen. In fact, there was no refrigerator, you had to pay to watch anything on tv, including PBS, and you had to pay for internet. Lame. On the upside, however, it had cool airplane pictures in the place of the normal landscape ones you see everywhere else, and Addison was thrilled to sleep under them. We improvised a fridge for our precious cargo, blueberries that we'd picked personally a couple days before.
At the normal check-out time, though, all the power in our room went out for a few seconds and then came back on again. And then it did the same thing again. And again. And again... Somehow it didn't affect the lights so we were good there, but poor Nate was trying to work, and needed functioning internet. So he tried to call the front desk to see what was up. But you guessed it, our phone wouldn't work. So he used his cell, and the hotel's front desk phone didn't work either. I started freaking out slightly when Nate opened the door to just walk downstairs and all the lights in the hall were flickering on and off. And then he came back and said the elevators didn't work so he was going to take the stairs. But then he came back and said the stairway was pitch black. And he smelled smoke. Nice. So we packed up everything (couldn't leave the blueberries to burn) and decided to all hold hands and head down the stairs together.
About the time we got to the stairs the lights started working again, and a nice housekeeper said "it's ok." So the kids and I sent Nate down while we stood and waited with all our stuff. Suddenly another cleaning lady came around the corner looking alarmed and started off in rapid-fire Spanish to the reassuring one. I took three years of Spanish in high school and could only understand the looks on the ladies faces and "no alarma?" No one bothered to translate for me either. But the kids and I high-tailed it down all five flights of stairs and to the lobby where we found a small mob of guests demanding that somebody get the fire department there because there was a fire on a 9th floor roof. And no, we never even got to hear any whooping from the alarma. And I saw several crickets on their fancy floor. Not impressive. Anyhow, the fire department came and took care of it and we headed back up to finish napping. And then caught a bus to downtown Houston.
They have cool underground tunnels there with shopping and restaurants and we talked to a crazy old man, which was a plus. Then Nate navigated us to this awesome park, where a certain member of our party who may have eaten too many blueberries realized that she wasn't sure how she was going to survive a flight home without asking that her seat be changed to the lavatory.
We got to share some of our blueberries with a man who didn't have anything to eat at the bus stop, and we made it back to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight (and for Nate to search the entire airport for a store that not only sold Imodium but had it in stock, for the above-mentioned member of our party). And we made it home in time to squeeze in a little sleep before Tuesday started.
Sunday night we went to the airport to head home from vacation and between the plane getting there late, being tiny (so the big guys took precedent over us) and being rerouted for weather, we missed our connecting flight in Houston. And the best they could do was give us two toothbrushes to split between the four of us and reschedule our flight for 9:00 the following night. Luckily, Nate sweet-talked the lady into putting us up at the Sheraton (with a little help from our toddlers whose bedtime had come and gone hours before but who had done remarkably well the whole time).
We were grateful to have a place to lay our weary heads that night, and decided to make the best of an unplanned vacation extension the next day. Nate would try to log half a workday and we'd explore the city a little in the afternoon. All in clothes that we'd traveled in the day before because our luggage was already home.
I have a few things to say about the Sheraton, and perhaps expensive hotels in general. The room we stayed in went for $400 a night for four people. And it there was nothing better about it than any Super 8 or Motel 6 I've ever seen. In fact, there was no refrigerator, you had to pay to watch anything on tv, including PBS, and you had to pay for internet. Lame. On the upside, however, it had cool airplane pictures in the place of the normal landscape ones you see everywhere else, and Addison was thrilled to sleep under them. We improvised a fridge for our precious cargo, blueberries that we'd picked personally a couple days before.
And I bet a regular middle-class hotel does not have such a talented fire alarm.
Oh, speaking of the fire alarm, Nate again used his silver tongue to get us a few extra hours before check-out so we could get a little of this action going on.
At the normal check-out time, though, all the power in our room went out for a few seconds and then came back on again. And then it did the same thing again. And again. And again... Somehow it didn't affect the lights so we were good there, but poor Nate was trying to work, and needed functioning internet. So he tried to call the front desk to see what was up. But you guessed it, our phone wouldn't work. So he used his cell, and the hotel's front desk phone didn't work either. I started freaking out slightly when Nate opened the door to just walk downstairs and all the lights in the hall were flickering on and off. And then he came back and said the elevators didn't work so he was going to take the stairs. But then he came back and said the stairway was pitch black. And he smelled smoke. Nice. So we packed up everything (couldn't leave the blueberries to burn) and decided to all hold hands and head down the stairs together.
About the time we got to the stairs the lights started working again, and a nice housekeeper said "it's ok." So the kids and I sent Nate down while we stood and waited with all our stuff. Suddenly another cleaning lady came around the corner looking alarmed and started off in rapid-fire Spanish to the reassuring one. I took three years of Spanish in high school and could only understand the looks on the ladies faces and "no alarma?" No one bothered to translate for me either. But the kids and I high-tailed it down all five flights of stairs and to the lobby where we found a small mob of guests demanding that somebody get the fire department there because there was a fire on a 9th floor roof. And no, we never even got to hear any whooping from the alarma. And I saw several crickets on their fancy floor. Not impressive. Anyhow, the fire department came and took care of it and we headed back up to finish napping. And then caught a bus to downtown Houston.
They have cool underground tunnels there with shopping and restaurants and we talked to a crazy old man, which was a plus. Then Nate navigated us to this awesome park, where a certain member of our party who may have eaten too many blueberries realized that she wasn't sure how she was going to survive a flight home without asking that her seat be changed to the lavatory.
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