Night in Newark

On my recent trip back from The Netherlands, a storm in Moncton led to my spending the night in Newark, New Jersey. For those who don't know, Newark is one of the poorer and crime-ravaged cities in the U.S. I was a little nervous about leaving the airport to go to a hotel, but fortunately I found a couple of friendly strangers to accompany me. We booked ourselves into a major chain hotel, so I thought that it would be no different than any other of these chain hotels in any other city. WRONG!

First, there was a football game going on in the hotel bar, which meant the lobby was overflowing with rowdy football fans. Dead center of the lobby was a homeless looking fellow who was just standing there alternating between mumbling to himself and shouting to anyone who might be listening. My room was on the 8th floor, though, so I figured it would be away from all the craziness and at least be quiet (ha!). My second sign of the classiness of the hotel was the elevators. The doors, both inside and out, looked like they had been kicked repeatedly. Awesome. Then I got to my room and saw the broken door handle.

I walked into my room, put my bags in the shower while I checked for bed bugs. (Compulsive beg bug checking behavior is not irrational if the threat is real!)

I noticed a pile of flyers that had been shoved under the door, which let me know that a) The room hadn't been cleaned in a while, and b) They let random people wander the halls of the hotel. Awesome.

There was also a pile of crayons on the floor leading me to wonder if the room had EVER been cleaned. The decor was not much better with chipped and dented furniture and a ripped up boxspring. I have stayed in random motels on the side of the highway that were better maintained than this place.

Fortunately, there were no signs of bed bugs. I still left my bags in the shower just to be sure.

My room just happened to be right next to the elevators. I think that the hotel had no insulation because not only could I hear every groan of the creaky old elevators going up and down, I could also hear every footstep in the hall, including the children that were running up and down shrieking and laughing. The final level of awesomeness was the positioning of my room in the corner of a sort of U shaped part of the building. This allowed for the winds to whip very loudly and scarily past my window. Also, the windows weren't sealed very well because I could feel the wind coming through them. All in all it was shaping up to be a long, loud, scary night. Fortunately, I was still on Amsterdam time, and after distracting myself with some phone calls, I was able to fall asleep fairly quickly and slept soundly the whole night!