Our time in the Sheraton

I should have known when I entered the hotel room and the windows looked like this:

I should have switched rooms right then. The windows are covered over with an opaque film because right outside the window is this:

What doesn't show in this picture is the construction elevator. But we heard it first thing when we walked in to the room. "Should we switch rooms" Ken asked, straight away? "If you want to" I replied. I know, it's kind of weirdly passive aggressive. Not that I had anything against switching rooms. But I dread all things confrontational- even asking the front desk for a room that doesn't suck. I was confident that construction would be confined to daylight hours and since no one goes to New York City to sit in their hotel room we would never even notice the noise. So we stayed. It was the weekend and construction was pretty well limited to daylight hours. Monday morning Ken had an early pick up and he was up by 6 am. So was the construction. Seriously. 6 am. So I got up and ready for the day and took the train to Connecticut to visit a friend. That night we were exhausted. After dinner we went back to our room and were surprised to hear construction noise alive and well at 9 pm. There was hammering, drilling, and that blasted elevator. It quickly became apparent that not only were we in the wing of the hotel that was under construction, but those dusty boot prints in the hall leading in to the room next door and the hammering revealed that the room next door to us was being renovated. Around 11:30 we were dismayed to hear the elevator still running, At midnight we called the front desk to complain. around 12:30 I fell asleep with that elevator still running. Guess what woke me at 6:30 am? That's right!

The elevator! I was so mad I had to document my poor puffy eyelids. I actually look much better in this photo than I felt. I was ready to rip some faces off. I inquired at the front desk about a new room and was told that the hotel was full. Wednesday we were able to switch to a different room. As we were moving our suitcases the elevator was swarmed by high school banders settling in to rooms on all sides of us. They were so much quieter than the construction elevator! Other than not being able to walk through the throngs of tuba players in the lobby they were not so bad. Thursday morning was check out. We got our bill under the door addressed to Ken Jennings, Wheel of Fortune. hee hee. Then at the bottom of the bill was info on how to buy their bedding so you could duplicate the restful slumber of the Sheraton at home. HA!