Everyone’s your friend in New York City*
We should have guessed. We should have guessed when we got an email saying the room wouldn’t be booked until each of us had provided details of our air tickets into JFK. We should have guessed when the next email arrived saying we had to pay for the full weeks accommodation, in cash only, on the day we arrived. Or when the next email said that we weren’t to tell anyone that we were paying to stay in the apartment, but that we were simply “friends” of Mary K. Renting an apartment in New York is a much cheaper form of accommodation than the hotels. Some apartments are all yours, some are B and B type affairs with friendly hosts and some, like ours, are a place to sleep.
It didn’t really dawn on me what we’d signed up for ten or fifteen minutes into our stay. The first eight minutes after we’d knocked on the door, were spent standing outside the door, while Mary finished her phone call. We then commenced the guided tour, which consisted of a detailed reenactment of how to close doors quietly, how to turn off the heater, which she was sure we wouldn’t need to turn on anyway, and which dim bulb would be left on for us when we came in at night, which we were then to turn off immediately. We progressed through to the kitchen where she showed us how to microwave a cup of tea. Bec hesitantly said perhaps she’d prefer coffee but couldn’t she decide in the morning, rather than twelve hours before. No, said Mary stoutly, she would make the coffee before she went to bed and she didn’t want to be making coffee that went to waste. After showing us where at the table she sat, the head, and where we would sit, (our seats had towel covers over them) she said, Well, I expect you’ll be going out now won’t you? And in spite of the fact that it we’d spent twelve hours in transit, that there was a snowstorm outside and what I really wanted was a nice cup of non-microwaved tea, out we went. Because you don’t come to New York to stay in your hotel room. You come to see the sights,
and the Christmas lights,
and to meet the people.
*This is a “They Might Be Giants” song” which was playing in my head the ENTIRE trip replaced only intermittently in the Subway stations with Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl”!
Tags: Travel, USA
