Sunday, May 20, 2007

The Hostel Weekend


February 24, 2007: NYRR Al Gordon Snowflake

Racers: Nancy, Shirley, Kathy, Alka, Lyle

We decided to be adventurous and try out a hostel this time. Mary was actually the one who picked this one after looking at ratings and reviews. She happened to be in the city the weekend before and personally inspected it. She called to reassure us on the day of our trip that we had “made a good choice.”

The NYRR Al Gordon Snowflake, a 4 mile run, was scheduled for Saturday. We decided to go down for Friday and Saturday night, and to try taking the train in from New Jersey. We arrived at the hostel around 9 or 10 pm. It wasn’t what I had expected, but I figured, how bad can it be? Everyone else was not as optimistic. However, I was way too tired to go looking for another place to stay at this hour.

The staff was friendly but completely incompetent. We had reserved a 6 bunk room with its own bathroom. Initially there had been six of us planning to do this trip, so we would have the room to ourselves. Instead they said the 6 bunk room was unavailable and put us in a 12 bunk room. This room was trashed. It looked like people were living here. When we first walked into the room, there was a woman on a top bunk who said to us, “Oh good. I’m glad to see some other normal people.” The bathroom was trashed too—full of dozens of shampoo bottles, spilled makeup, and hair. We couldn’t even find 5 clean bunks to call our own and had to go down and get the front desk people to remedy the situation. Once we figured out where we were sleeping we went and had a late supper at Carmines, an Italian restaurant with great atmosphere, great food. It was a nice respite from the hostel.

Then we returned to the hostel. The door lock didn’t work. The furnace pipes clanged all night. I kept my purse in my bed. Some of us slept in our clothes. We think a couple of women that were staying in the room were working as prostitutes. It was like a nightmare that kept getting worse. It was horrible. When I awoke the next morning, I made a decision that we were moving out of this hell hole as soon as we finished our race.

The morning was brilliant but COLD. It was 20 degrees and windy. We were absolutely frigid as we waited for the race to start on East Drive in Central Park. We warmed up quickly when the race finally started and we trotted counterclockwise around the park. It was so cold that the cups of water had ice on top. But I felt good, and enjoyed my second tour of Central Park.

After the race, we booked a room at the Beacon Hotel, showered and checked out of the hostel. We walked into the lobby of the Beacon, and it was as if we had gone from one universe to another. There was a collective sigh of relief. Our two room suite was like heaven. We could finally relax and enjoy ourselves. We decided right then and there that we loved the Beacon and that we were going to stay there every single time. Period.

We spent the afternoon exploring the city. After lunch we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and enjoyed their Tiffany exhibit. We then took the subway south and meandered through Greenwich Village for awhile. We stopped in a Mexican restaurant for margaritas and sangria.
Our group was pretty inefficient in trying to buy subway tickets from the machines and swiping them through the turnstiles. Some of us were more challenged with this task than others. We finally realized toward the end of the weekend that we should each buy a Metrocard with multiple rides on it so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the ticket machine every single time.
After a nice relaxing happy hour in our beautiful hotel suite, we then went out for a late supper at a nearby Indian restaurant. The next morning we headed home. Two down, seven to go!

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