city snapshot 2: afternoon at The Plaza

It was the coldest Saturday afternoon of the season and we had a mission: Operation Move the Bags. It is likely that we would not have been as excited to Move the Bags were we not moving them to a suite at the Plaza Hotel.

I admit to feeling more than my fair share of entirely unwarranted smugness as we walked past all the gawking, snapping tourists craning their necks to see further inside the storied establishment.

We found our way to the surprisingly unostentatious check-in counters and without much adieu landed in a small-ish ornate elevator that took us away from the craning crowds. The carpet in the hallway was thick and had such a lovely design I couldn't stop looking at the ground. It was quiet.

We're sure we were being spied on as we made our way to the last room on the left because just as we entered, a butler popped up out of nowhere and asked us for permission to enter to “Explain The Room” to us. And would we like tea or coffee? I was so distracted by the carpet again, the graceful pheasants on the matching chairs, the fine magazines on the credenza, the elegantly designed tile formation of the bathroom and all the toiletries, that I said No Thanks.

We learned a lot. Like that the bathtub takes 40 minutes to fill and 19 or so to drain. That if we so requested, the butler could be available to wake us up gently at our requested wake-up time. Too bad he didn't know that we were merely the Bag Movers and would not get to enjoy the fine services he was so attentively describing.

We think there was a changing of the guard, as forty minutes later, after we had explored as much of the hotel as we were interested in, another butler popped up out of nowhere and offered us tea and coffee again. I'm pretty sure he was faking an English accent, but who was I to judge? We enjoyed some fine tea and coffee and left to go eat at Whole Foods at Columbus Circle where the stars were lit up for Christmas.