Part II.....Warm woolen mittens, skeezy hotels, free dinners, and smoke filled rooms...
I woke up bright and early on my first Friday morning in Baltimore, and headed out towards that ghetto housing the Board of Nursing. Turns out, they make things easy for nurses in this state. The board is located in a strip mall, and 5 stores down is the finger printing "store." I was wondering to myself how they possibly have enough traffic to have their own business. I didn't have to think about it long and it made me uneasy when I had to use the ATM next to it for my finger printing payment. Now, ordinarily I'd love to have my important errands of the day take me to a mall. This mall however had no Sephora. It did have a lot of weave stores, and scantly clad dark skinned mannequins. By this time I was ready to high tail it out of this place, I'd seen enough of this Set it Off type movie set called Baltimore. None of the women I saw looked like Vivica A. Fox or Jada Pinkett, and while the person I almost hit in front of a strip club did resemble Queen Latifah, I got the distinct feeling this Queen would have shot me had I not slammed on my breaks.
Off to Bel Air I went. I found our apartment without a hitch. It's old. I mean really old. I suppose being from a college town where there are at least 90 different apartment options I kind of expected that here. Our apartment complex was built in the 60's I'd say. It resembles a compound. It is huge, block style, and drab. The girl at the front desk was nice, and since she didn't make a fuss when Toby peed on the apartment floor she showed me, I decided I wouldn't complain. I should have seen this mishap as the foreshadowing stuff I learned about in eighth grade English class. At this point I had to find the Extended Stay my travel company was putting me up in for the night. (As the plan was Saturday morning Matthew and I should be able to move into our drab apartment.) This is where my super fancy I-phone internet went out and the Extended Stay just happened to be on a road that was "new" to my GPS. After a few minutes of tyrannical screaming I decided to take a deep breath, and reset my smart phone. My idea was it would reset the internet stuff thus allowing internet to work again. It did. What the blasted phone also did was erase all my contacts. More screaming followed. I was alone, frustrated, and completely mad at my dog. My husband was somewhere near Savannah at this point and thus unavailable to talk sense into my rage, or direct me to my hotel. I somehow found it, and it was right smack dab next to a Ruby Tuesdays (which I'm not a fan of, but I knew they'd have wine...or whiskey).
I checked into my very disappointing hotel. No vending machines, no free coffee, no computer room to start my blog about this retched trip/hotel/city. Things brightened up in a scary way about 40 minutes later when two incredibly intoxicated men twice my age bought my dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. All I wanted to do was sit at the bar, eat, relax, and read my book. Next thing I know I'm conversing with these two gentlemen (I use that word lightly, the one most certainly was not) because I thought if I completely ignored them they would attack me on the way back to my scuzzy hotel, and I came here with no mase, and my gun was in my glove compartment. @#*&. Turns out, these gentlemen woke up in what the one referred to as, "one of those moods where you decide to be nice that day." His mood led him to telling the bartender his friend was paying for my dinner. Obviously I protested. I mean if I hadn't they'd probably follow me into the hotel instead of attacking me taking my unspoken protestations as an invitation of some sort; at this point I believe I had also said "my husband" more times than most wives say in a year, I believe they thought I was making him up. Maybe they were just nice old drunk men, but really, that's always a little creepy, no matter how nice you are. Eventually, they got cut off, the nicer of the two (the guy who paid) apologized for his friend, and they left. I ended up with free dinner but, I waited until I was positive they weren't lurking around the parking lot before going to my 'hotel.' (Really, Microtel's are nicer than this place Crystal.)
Matthew and Tess finally made it safely, and luckily were too tired to see the condition of the icky motel. We checked out early Saturday morning and checked into the Candlewood Suites....with free coffee, a computer room, marble counter tops, and a blissfully large clean bathroom. Good thing too, since when I called our apartment about picking up our keys I was told my company had not made any reservations of an apartment for us. (More yelling ensued here.) So here we are myself, Matthew, 66 lb Tess, and 67 lb Toby all living in a hotel room with two huge plastic bins of clothes and our bikes strapped to Matthew's car. We continued this way for 5 more days. On Wednesday we got our keys! Rushed to our apartment to move into our new nomadic life.
Ten minutes later we were thanking God we were nomads and didn't have to live here forever and wishing we could go back to the marble counter-topped Candlewood Suites (that I had to pay for because my company didn't pick up the tab).
Our apartment smelled like an ashtray. Seriously. When I called to let the nice girl at the office know...she already knew. We spent our second weekend in Maryland with sinus infections. Yankee Candle Company was the second store we went to here. We've since stopped bleeding out our nasal passageways but still have sneezing fits so intense most people probably think we have epilepsy.
At this point you're thinking,"I'd hate to be a traveler...this is why you guys shouldn't have left...come home..." However, we have a few marvelous things making this all worth while.
We have Box. We have Wegmans. And, we have snow.
So take a minute and just sit right there, I'll tell you how we become the king and queen of Bel Air.
Off to Bel Air I went. I found our apartment without a hitch. It's old. I mean really old. I suppose being from a college town where there are at least 90 different apartment options I kind of expected that here. Our apartment complex was built in the 60's I'd say. It resembles a compound. It is huge, block style, and drab. The girl at the front desk was nice, and since she didn't make a fuss when Toby peed on the apartment floor she showed me, I decided I wouldn't complain. I should have seen this mishap as the foreshadowing stuff I learned about in eighth grade English class. At this point I had to find the Extended Stay my travel company was putting me up in for the night. (As the plan was Saturday morning Matthew and I should be able to move into our drab apartment.) This is where my super fancy I-phone internet went out and the Extended Stay just happened to be on a road that was "new" to my GPS. After a few minutes of tyrannical screaming I decided to take a deep breath, and reset my smart phone. My idea was it would reset the internet stuff thus allowing internet to work again. It did. What the blasted phone also did was erase all my contacts. More screaming followed. I was alone, frustrated, and completely mad at my dog. My husband was somewhere near Savannah at this point and thus unavailable to talk sense into my rage, or direct me to my hotel. I somehow found it, and it was right smack dab next to a Ruby Tuesdays (which I'm not a fan of, but I knew they'd have wine...or whiskey).
I checked into my very disappointing hotel. No vending machines, no free coffee, no computer room to start my blog about this retched trip/hotel/city. Things brightened up in a scary way about 40 minutes later when two incredibly intoxicated men twice my age bought my dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. All I wanted to do was sit at the bar, eat, relax, and read my book. Next thing I know I'm conversing with these two gentlemen (I use that word lightly, the one most certainly was not) because I thought if I completely ignored them they would attack me on the way back to my scuzzy hotel, and I came here with no mase, and my gun was in my glove compartment. @#*&. Turns out, these gentlemen woke up in what the one referred to as, "one of those moods where you decide to be nice that day." His mood led him to telling the bartender his friend was paying for my dinner. Obviously I protested. I mean if I hadn't they'd probably follow me into the hotel instead of attacking me taking my unspoken protestations as an invitation of some sort; at this point I believe I had also said "my husband" more times than most wives say in a year, I believe they thought I was making him up. Maybe they were just nice old drunk men, but really, that's always a little creepy, no matter how nice you are. Eventually, they got cut off, the nicer of the two (the guy who paid) apologized for his friend, and they left. I ended up with free dinner but, I waited until I was positive they weren't lurking around the parking lot before going to my 'hotel.' (Really, Microtel's are nicer than this place Crystal.)
Matthew and Tess finally made it safely, and luckily were too tired to see the condition of the icky motel. We checked out early Saturday morning and checked into the Candlewood Suites....with free coffee, a computer room, marble counter tops, and a blissfully large clean bathroom. Good thing too, since when I called our apartment about picking up our keys I was told my company had not made any reservations of an apartment for us. (More yelling ensued here.) So here we are myself, Matthew, 66 lb Tess, and 67 lb Toby all living in a hotel room with two huge plastic bins of clothes and our bikes strapped to Matthew's car. We continued this way for 5 more days. On Wednesday we got our keys! Rushed to our apartment to move into our new nomadic life.
Ten minutes later we were thanking God we were nomads and didn't have to live here forever and wishing we could go back to the marble counter-topped Candlewood Suites (that I had to pay for because my company didn't pick up the tab).
Our apartment smelled like an ashtray. Seriously. When I called to let the nice girl at the office know...she already knew. We spent our second weekend in Maryland with sinus infections. Yankee Candle Company was the second store we went to here. We've since stopped bleeding out our nasal passageways but still have sneezing fits so intense most people probably think we have epilepsy.
We have Box. We have Wegmans. And, we have snow.
So take a minute and just sit right there, I'll tell you how we become the king and queen of Bel Air.
wegmans is the mecca. enjoy.
ReplyDelete