The Big Apple part 2 - accommodation

When you plan a visit to a place like New York City, it's all about location. Location, Location, Location, and what a better location that a block away from Times Square? The first thing that pops into your head at that moment must be something along the lines of "wow she must have a lot of money", my instant response would be an uproar of laughter and much to your disappointment tell you that I just got lucky. For pretty average accommodation pricing I managed to find a double en suit bedroom. So to give you an idea or picture in your mind, let me just remind you that you get what you pay for a block away from Times Square.

Upon arrival, the manager was incredibly helpful and gave us a few tips as to how to get around and what to see and when to see it. He had someone carry our bags up to the fourth floor, up about 4 or 5 flights of very rickety stairs and let us into our room. The room was uhm as I said, you get what you pay for. The old carpets made it look a little shabby and gave the room a slight dirty feel. The room was spacious enough, but the bathroom was something else. I could swing a cat without extending my arms and it would easily make full contact with all four walls. But it was a shower and a place to freshen up.

The next morning, we woke up quite hungry and we were rather keen to see what the included breakfast had in store for us. We slowly made our way down the uneven stairs to the spare empty hotel room with a few small tables in it to find, bread, bagels, croissants, muffins, corn bread and some other random pastry looking things. For the healthy portion of our breakfast, there was a bowl of bananas, some orange juice, and then of coarse, tea, coffee and hot chocolate. After all that starch in the morning I thought we would be okay until lunch time.

I think one of the most important parts of being open to staying in a "cheap" hotel is that you have to keep your sense of humour very close by. After deciding to save our shower till the next morning, we were really desperate to get the city off us before we tackled another day of it, only to find that there was no hot water. Oh joy! Not only were we gross and in serious need of a shower we also needed to wash our hair. So after much debate to the manager about the fact that the water he called "hot" hardly came close to luke warm, he gladly offered us another room so that we could have a "hot" shower. This time I would call it bordering on luke warm, closer to the colder side than hot I might add.

Overall I was fine with the accommodation, good location, safe enough, hot water if you showered in the evening we later found out, a comfy, clean bed, free wifi for any last minute details we needed to figure out and most importantly, I didn't see a single roach. I was happy enough and I would stay there all over again. . . maybe ;)