Travels with Tish Girlfriends’ Getaway Guide

My sole purpose in making this particular trip to Las Vegas was to see Elton John perform at his The Red Piano concert at Caesars Palace Colosseum. And he did not disappoint! He was definitely worth waiting a lifetime to see!

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How About a NYC Room with a View? Penthouse, Please!

You just can’t beat a penthouse view of the New York City skyline. We checked in to an Upper West Side boutique hotel, On The Ave Hotel, not expecting a penthouse suite — but we did book a room with a terrace (at an unbelievable special rate!) Imagine our delight when our room key opened up to a penthouse suite with this spectacular view!
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If you want to save money, but waste valuable time, take the Super Shuttle from La Guardia to your Manhattan hotel. My time in NYC is always limited — there’s way more I want to do than my time will allow. So when 3 hours of my time is totally wasted in transit, I get steamed. So would you … Read the rest of this entry »

Manhattan hotels that accommodate 4 adults (or even 6) are very hard to find. When gals get together for a getaway, they usually like to room together — more fun, less cost. I’ve done some online research and have come up with a list of hotels that can work out well for a group. (Haven’t stayed at any of these, but they look pretty decent. I’d suggest you check out the Web sites and then visit TripAdvisor.com to see if there are any reviews.)

Upper East/West Side

• 1871 House– a B&B at 62nd & Park Avenue near Central Park
• Buckingham Hotel — 57th St. & 6th Avenue in Arts District
• Affinia Gardens — 64th & 2nd Avenue (up to 6)
• Surrey Hotel — 76th St. between 5th & Madison near Central Park (can take 6)

Midtown — Times Square/Garment District Areas

• Tudor Hotel at the U.N. — 42nd St. & 2nd Avenue
• Courtyard Marriott Midtown East — 3rd Avenue & 53rd St.
• Doubletree Guest Suites NYC — 47th & Broadway near Times Square
• Murray Hill Inn — 30th near Lexington.
• Hilton Times Square — 42nd Street near 7th.
• Hotel Metro — Midtown 35th & Broadway (can take 6)
• Radisson Martinique — 32nd & Broadway
• Belvedere Hotel – 48th Street near Times Square.
• Eastgate Tower Hotel — 32nd St. between 2nd & 3rd (can take 6)
• Shelburne Murray Hill — 37th & Lexington (can take 6)
• Affinia Manhattan — 7th Avenue at 31st.
• Affinia Dumont –34th and Lexington
• Affinia 50 — 50th & 3rd Avenue

Lower Manhattan — Convenient for Chinatown, Canal Street, Little Italy, Ground Zero, SoHo, Greenwich Village, Staten Island Ferry, Battery Park

• Embassy Suites NY — Lower Manhattan near Financial District and Battery Park
• NY Marriott Financial Center — Lower Manhattan on Albany Street near West Side Highway — just south of Ground Zero area.

TIPS:
1) Private Bath or Shared? This is NYC — don’t forget to ask before you book whether or not your room has a private bathroom. All of these hotels I’ve listed do have private baths, but at least one or two offer both options.

2) Choose Your Hotel Location Around Your Plans. If you have a firm agenda, it makes sense to select a hotel nearby the majority of your activities. You can probably walk to more of those places. But if your agenda takes you all over town, location doesn’t matter — the subway can get you around town efficiently. Or cab it at night.

3) Don’t Try to Sneak In an Extra Person. If you book a room that normally accommodates 2 or 4, don’t try to sneak in a 3rd or 5th person. It can backfire. Hotel policies and fire codes may come into play. Some friends planned to put 3 in a room for 2 in midtown last spring. The hotel caught on quickly and requested they upgrade to a suite. You can always ask if a rollaway bed can be added. But because Manhattan hotel rooms are famously tiny, many double rooms just don’t have the floorspace for one.

4) Don’t Overlook Savings with Group Airfares. For New York City, 8 is considered a group on Midwest Airlines. Check out how this works. Going with a small group to NYC can be very fun and give each person more flexibility to see different things with one or two of the other gals. You can also use this deal to spend just one day in NYC if you’d prefer not to stay overnight. (You can get a lot done in NYC in just one day if you plan your itinerary well!)

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Going on a shopping getaway? Save yourself a lot of anxiety: pack lean and light – and save lots of room for those knock-off (replica) purse bargains!

I’m often torn: 1) Do I want to have a wide range of clothing to choose from on my trip; or 2) Can I make do with a few basics and leave room for new purchases? The more I travel, the more I’ve learned that packing lean and light makes good sense — even if I’m not on a shopping trip.

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Let me use a 2-day New York trip in the fall as an example of what I take along.

• 1 pair of black or neutral casual pants. Can be dressed up or down. Maybe even great looking jeans instead.
• 1 substantial jacket (leather, corduroy, wool).
• 3 shirts – long-sleeved, lightweight cotton knits. Maybe 1 turtleneck if the weather will be cold.
• 1 sweater that will go with everything.
• 1 lightweight outer jacket (preferably water resistant).
• Underwear.
• 2 pairs of comfortable shoes.
• Makeup/hair care products. The smaller (and lighter) the containers the better. Don’t take everything, just what you’ll absolutely need. Most hotels have hair dryers, so don’t pack that.
• Socks, hosiery.
• Large canvas duffle bag (folded up in suitcase) with travel tag on it.

Wear the pants both days. Just press out if needed. Switch off shirts – maybe dress up with a bit of jewelry or a scarf. Layering clothes gives you flexibility for appearance and weather.

Suitcase Size. Choose a rather large suitcase if you plan to bring back purses, clothing and other bargain finds. Taking only a minimum of clothing lets you save lots of room for those treasures. I prefer packing all my clothes in plastic travel air-tight bags – the kind you zip seal, then roll up tight to push out excess air. Keeps my clothes clean and organized, plus I have no worry that a security agent might be touching all my things during a routine bag search. I also pack a canvas or nylon duffle bag, complete with travel tag, just in case my purchases require a second piece of checked luggage.

A Carry-On Bag. I prefer a light carry-on, probably the tote I’ll take with me shopping. I only carry on my map and itinerary info, jewelry and my small purse (that fits inside the tote). Makeup and all gets packed in checked luggage. Saves me time and trouble at Security.

TIPS:
1) Check out my NYC Recap post. Tips on hotels, transportation, shopping and more.

2) Travel in a Small Group — and SAVE! Consider inviting a few more friends to join you on your getaway and get a group airfare. Wondering how it would work with a larger group of gals, read my 3 posts about how easy and fun it can be.

3) Be Prepared for Unexpected Deals. Make sure you have enough extra luggage space for those unexpected deals that can pop up almost anywhere in New York. I found a table of high quality sheet sets along a Madison Avenue curb in midtown. $10 and $20. 400-thread count, packaged. Who can resist? Another table vendor we discovered in SoHo was offering expensive designer jeans for $75. I passed, but women were crowding the table to take a peek and grab a pair.

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Is it clean? I’d like to know before I get there. You’d like to think that any hotel at all that is rated with a star or diamond or any rating system has at least passed the basic “clean” test. By that I mean that the linens were changed since the last guest, the bathroom has been cleaned and sanitized, the towels are fresh and the room has been somewhat deodorized from previous guests. Beyond that, I’d like to think that the higher the rating, the cleaner the hotel room — bedspreads washed/drycleaned frequently, the mattress/mattress pad are cleaned and sanitized often, the carpets and floors are shampooed or washed and so forth. But is that always the case? Not necessarily.

Betsy’s Experience in Dallas
A 24-year-old friend of mine booked a hotel through a popular online low-fare travel site for a 3-day getaway. The hotel had 2 stars, was inexpensive (about $71), but many hotels on the list were in that price range. She booked it and left for Dallas. Upon arrival, she found her room to be dirty — still not cleaned from previous guests. She asked the desk clerk for a different room. No problem, the clerk said she hadn’t had a chance to “check” that first room. But Betsy’s second room was even worse — can you believe it? Here’s her list of what was amiss in the rooms:

Room #1:
DIRTY!
-urine and hair on toilet, and something floating on the bottom

Room #2:
-door didn’t lock when you shut it
- vomit on toilet (and down toilet sides) and stuff floating in it
-hair on bathroom counter and floor
-stain on pillow and hair on sheets–did they even change them?
- mold in tub and ceiling in bathroom
-mold/water stains, cobwebs on bedroom ceiling
- no internet access as promised
- floor/carpeting had not been vacuumed
-unpleasant odor in general
-massive yellow stain on corner of bedskirt, that was totally visible
- sticky dresser top– spilled drink or something
-ALL walls were dirty, scratched, had holes in them
-non-smoking room, but there were cigarette burns in the blanket
-fire safety sheet on door hasn’t been updated since June 1999.
-”Do Not Disturb” door hanger filthy with visible crud.

Betsy could not even consider staying there another minute. She called home and had her folks book another room for that night and subsequent nights in Dallas — a nearby Hilton Garden Inn that proved to be clean, fresh and affordable. But now she had two hotel bills for the same nights. She has been trying to contact the popular booking site, but has not yet received any response. She is in the process of disputing the payment through her credit card company.

How Can You Avoid a Hotel Nightmare?

• Visit the Hotel’s Own Website. A start, but not always reliable. Betsy did check the hotel’s own Website. It sounded okay. Pictures looked okay. Nothing special. (What she didn’t “see” was that the pictures were “canned.” Too many photos of the Dallas skyline, not enough of the hotel amenities. But in this case, the hotel pix were probably from the day it was built.) Anybody could make that mistake.
• Look at Prevailing Room Rates on the Hotel’s Site. I’ve often used this as a guide to what I may be paying on any discount site. But in this case, the hotel’s site listed its regular rates quite a bit higher, giving the impression it was a more deluxe hotel. But beware — it is usually true that you get what you pay for.
• Hotel Description Might Be a Clue. This hotel’s description focused on the area, talking about its close proximity to a convention center and hundreds of restaurants — not on its own amenities. Like the photos, the description was vague.
• Don’t Go By an Impressive Name. Don’t make the mistake of associating a luxurious-sounding name with quality. Ritz, plaza and other similar copycat names are just “puttin’ on the ritz!”
• Check Any Available Reviews. Don’t skip this step. Read all the reviews provided on the online travel site. They were mixed for this hotel, most not good. (I checked the other major online travel sites: 1 prominent site did not list this hotel; 3 others did with 1 and 2 star ratings and bad reviews. Doesn’t anybody check on the hotels they sell to unwary travelers?
• Check TripAdvisor.com. This site offers forums on various cities. Tap into the city forum you need, search for a hotel you’re interested in and see what people have said. Or add your own question about the hotel and someone will answer. It’s a very active forum and I’ve found its recommendations accurate.
• How to Get a Refund. Betsy is working on that. Various Internet comments seem to say that it’s very difficult to get online travel sites to respond. She can dispute the charge through her credit card company. Beyond that, she can check with the hotel itself, even though she purchased through an online service. With the complaints she had about this hotel (and accompanying photos she took in the 2nd room), she can contact the Dallas Board of Health, the Dallas Convention Bureau, Better Business Bureau, Dallas Chamber of Commerce. She can put her experience on TripAdvisor.com and other similar travel sites that accept comments.

NOTES:

• I did not include any of Betsy’s numerous and well-detailed photos — they were just too gross. But she ought to send them along to the online travel site and all the other places she will contact about this hotel.

• Quikbook.com. This site offers a Customer Care page. It gives you 3 e-mail contact addresses plus phone and mail contact options plus an online contact form. This hotel search site actually gives you a point-by-point guide to using their site and a invitation to contact them if your hotel is not as expected. Check out the positive press Quikbook has gotten from travel experts. That’s why I chose to offer my readers hotel choices through Quikbook. Good prices, ability to change or cancel reservations and no upfront payment for most hotels. Plus customer service stands far above the others. And Quikbook assures me that they fully stand behind all hotels listed on their site as Quikpicks. Look for the Quickpick symbol on the hotel description. By the way, Quikbook is on my site as a service to you — no commission or remuneration comes back to me if you do business with them.

RATINGS — Do you see “clean” mentioned?

• USAToday.com. Traveler’s Aide article on ratings.
• USAToday.com. Rating chart definitions for Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia.
• Orbitz. Rating system defined by Orbitz.
• Mobil Travel Guide. How Mobil rates hotels.
• AAA. Diamond rating system explained.
• Zagat. Survey and rating details.
• NewYorkTimes.com. Practical Traveler: Sorting Out Stars. Excerpt: “In interviews, representatives from Hotels.com, Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity said they not only took into account Mobil and AAA ratings when coming up with their rankings but also did their own inspections (at least in major cities) and considered customer feedback.” My comment: I don’t believe that onsite inspections take place very often; if they did, this particular Dallas hotel would not be on anybody’s list.

Conclusion: Without a personal recommendation or sterling reputation (like Hilton, for example), choosing a hotel can be a gamble. Do some homework.

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