An Adventure in the Hotels in New York
One of my first encounters with the hotels in New York took place during my college days. I was majoring in theatre arts in Lakeland, Florida, and the college had something they called show-mester. The idea was, about dozen students went up and stayed in one of the hotels in New York for a week, and saw about ten shows. A professor from the English Department came along, and afterwards, we would complete an assignment and then get two credit hours.
Back then, Broadway had shows like Cats, A Chorus Line, and Little Shop of Horrors; so we were excited about seeing these shows. When we arrived, flying into JFK, we caught a cab, and wondered which of the hotels in New York we were booked into. As it happened, we were in a nice one right near Central Park, and very affordable. The thing was, were there over Christmas, so it was pretty cold. Now me, I was a transplanted New Englander, so I didn't mind. My friends, they were all Southerners; so they did not handle it well. As I'd been to New York before, I assured them that hotels in New York had adequate heat.
That first day, it snowed, and we headed out into Central Park to play in it. Again, not something my friends were used to; yet a cheap and fun way to enjoy ourselves. One of them asked if hotels in New York allowed people to bring the snow inside. Seems they were intent on saving the snow and taking it home. I told them that was a bad idea. Instead, we built a snowman and had a snowball fight. As I recall, I caught my friend Amy right in the behind with a slush ball. Oh, she was not happy about that!
Later, we walked passed a string of hotels in New York to get to Radio City Music Hall. We arrived just as the Christmas pageant was finishing, and got tickets for the backstage tour. I could see it going on, and was amazed to see live animals on stage! It was quite the passion play. What I found amazing was how fast they cleared that stage. By the time we had our tickets for the tour, the people had filed out of the auditorium, and we were on our way in. when we got on the stage, it was completely bare. Wow, what a quick strike of a set.
Over the course of that week, we not only say plenty of great shows, but stopped in at some of the fancier hotels in New York. Many of them have gift shops and restaurants right in their lobby. While not cheap places to go, we did find other ways to make our trip affordable. In Times Square, ringed by some of the more expensive hotels in New York is the discount ticket office for Broadway. As we didn't mind sitting by ourselves, we could get show tickets very cheap; single seats are always the cheapest.
We also discovered just how safe the hotels in New York can be. Halfway through our stay, there was a fire in the hotel, down on the second floor! As we were on the tenth floor, we were well away from it, but still nervous. The bells rang, smoke filled the hallways, and a fireman came up to open the windows. Needless to say, some of us were a bit nervous. But, the fireman told us that hotels in New York have excellent fire control systems. They have sprinklers, firewalls, and fire resistant building materials on every floor. All in all, quite the topper to an incredible trip to the city, and a stay in one of the nicer - yet cheap - hotels in New York.
