maj

Ah. I'm right now sipping a glass of excellent California Chardonnay in the dimly-lit, piano-music-laden, cowboy-art-infested, wired lounge of the Driskill Hotel in Austin Texas. It's been about 70 degrees outside all day (I tend to do temps below 10C and above 35C in C and everything in the middle in F... go figure). My daughter was able to play outside with out tights, long johns, socks, boots, mittens, a hat, gloves, a turtleneck, snow pants and a jacket (plus a layer of vaselin on her cheeks when it's below -10C)... I was in a sleeveless shirt drinking beer in the shade (!) of a tree at 5pm. I have had Mexican food 6 times in the last 4 days, and a waffle shaped like Texas too... Last night I kept trying to turn the AC down even more. I mean, at home we have to PAY for a room to be 70 degrees! And we've got a fan and amazingly high ceilings in our 'historic' room, so kill that cold air! If I wanted cold air I would have staid home...

We arrived in Houston to a warm night (though I heard other people around us complaining about the cold...). We spent one night at a Best Western out by the hotel, a nice enough generic hotel but no where you'd plan a vacation around. Everything else in town seemed booked up -- we finally found out that it's rodeo season which explains a lot. We decided to high-tail it to San Antonio since we couldn't even get our airport motel for the next night. We broke the 3 hour drive with a stop for Mexican food and Texan beer in some middle-of-nowhere town (which IMHO describes pretty much everywhere in Texas that isn't Houson, Dallas, or Austin).

In San Antonio we staid at just about the nicest Quality Inn I've ever been in. It may be my favorite generic motel ever (which excludes that crazy place outside of Durago with the neon cowboy boot outside). The room way huge to start-- a suite for the price of a room, and it was very well laid out, everything brand new, super nice staff, quiet, and just a 10 minute drive into town. You'd need a car to stay there, but you need a car everywhere in Texas. We had dinner on the Riverwalk, always a treat. I know it's like the Fishermans Warf of San Anton, but it hasn't lost it's charm for me yet.

The next day we headed to Austin, stopping (sensing a trend?) for Mexican food along the way. We got into Austin around 3pm with Amita out cold in the car seat, and checked into the Driskill Hotel, ready for a treat.

The hotel experience has been a little uneven. We kinda splurged to stay in the grand old historic hotel-- it just seemed to have so much more cache than the generic Holiday Inn/Courtyards/ect. But historic also seems to mean "bad plumbing." In an interesting twist on a common hotel issue, we found ourselves with no *cold* water. Usually this wouldn't be a biggy, but you can't give a baby a bath in scalding hot water, so AJ went without (for the second day in a row!). It was actually hard to brush my teeth. We tried to get it fixed while we were at dinner but it didn't happen.

We called the desk again and they said 'sorry,' which doesn't get the baby any cleaner. They unfortunately decided to call us back about the matter around 10:30 after the baby was asleep. They said they'd come up and check things out first thing in the morning, at 8am. We made sure to all be up at 8, but no one showed up. We got a call at 8:45, by which time there was suddenly cold water again, so we told them not to bother. Of course tonight, at bath time, it was all hot water again. I figured they were going to send us through the same thing again, but the guy at the front desk managed to get someone up to our room in under 5 minutes. He poked around and figured out the problem quick enough, but it would require removing the wall behind the shower to fix-- not something we were up for after a long day and with a sleepy baby. So they're going to fix it tomorrow afternoon after naps. So we decided to get ready for bed, only to realize, once we settled down, that we had front row seats for whatever volumous event was taking place in the ballroom just below us.

I can't decide if we're being overly sensitive or just had too-high expectations for booking a fancy hotel (and making the reservations 4 months in advance-- something we never do...), but things have just been a little rough around the edges. At this point we've been told to call the front desk first thing tomorrow to see about changing rooms. I'll be surprised if they have anything given that it's SxSw, but just the suggestion that they would try went a long way to soothing my ruffled feathers. It really doesn't take much to recover from the usual little problems that come up running a big, historic, hotel. A fruit basket, a discount at the bar, even just a sorry note can leave you with the feeling that you've been taken care of instead of taken advantage of.

Anyway, I hope I don't spend the first day of the conference getting repacking us and changing rooms, but it may be for the best, since we're here for 4 more nights. On the other hand, another glass of this wine may resolve many of my problems.