Hey, guys! I'm writing a trip report for a travel forum and thought maybe you all would like to read it, too. It's broken up by day so as not to be too long. Enjoy!
St. Louis Day: Got up in Cape, ran some errands, got me some new sunglasses because I had broken mine the day before in a freak acetone incident, had lunch at My Daddy's Cheesecake, and were off for St. Louis! Due to my work schedule and our previous track record of being too tired for anything our first night in Vegas, we stayed up all night Sunday night. Needless to say, we were both suffering some pretty bad highway hypnosis on the way to St. Louis. We switched off driving a few times, though, and were OK. We were supposed to meet Nikki and Chris for dinner that night, so we were looking forward to that.
About a month or two before, we had made reservations at the Doubletree Inn at Westport through (I think) stayandpark.com so we could leave our car there and take their shuttle to the airport. That was the plan, anyway. We arrived at the hotel at about 2:30 or so, only to discover they didn't have our reservation. The guy tried convincing us we were at the wrong hotel. So we produced the printout of our confirmation. We weren't in their system, but they did honor our rate. We got up the room and it was very nice. I called Nikki to let her know we were there and got directions to the restaurant she had chosen; sadly, Chris couldn't make it. I hung up the phone we had just started getting unpacked and settled when the desk phone rang. It was the reservations manager telling us that they were going to be doing some work on the water system on that floor, and they could move us because it was going to be noisy. For our inconvenience, they'd give us free breakfast. I thought this was fine, but as it turned out, breakfast didn't begin until after our shuttle left in the morning. So they said they'd give us $15 each dining credit for tonight. OK, then!
The reservations manager came upstairs with new keys and we went to our new room. As soon as we opened the door, we could tell the room had been smoked in. It was not a smoking room, but you could tell that the last person didn't care. Trace has allergies, so this wasn't going to work. We called the front desk and they told us to come back down. When we got there, they said, "Oh, so-and-so just went up to try to catch you guys. Oh, well, here are your dining certificates and new room keys." We got upstairs just in time to see a woman coming out of the room. She tells us that she's going to have to get us a different room because the AC was broken in that one. What the? Off she goes. But she did give us two more $15 dining certificates. I call Nikki to tell her plans may be changing. The woman comes back up with new keys and finally we were able to settle into a fully-functioning nonsmoking room. Ahhhhhhhh……
Called Nikki, and due to time and geography, decided to skip dinner with her. Used our $60 for the first room service of both of our lives, and had a really good dinner. Trace got steak and a beer and I got pork tenderloin and a glass of white wine. The portions were huge! I thought we were about to fall into a deep sleep, but boy was I wrong. It was a little hot in the room, until I finally got up and turned down the air. I didn't realize that was the problem, though, because I'm usually freezing at night. Couldn't get the sleep timer on the radio to work, so I set the one on the TV instead and it woke me up when it turned off. Little noises kept me awake: people talking in the hallway, etc. Couldn't really complain because we'd gone to bed really early, so it's not like it was late. We had a wake-up call at 5 a.m. At about 3:30 I got up to go to the bathroom, only to discover the toilet wouldn't flush. Thinking maybe something was wrong with the chain, I tried to fix it and only broke it further. That'll teach me to do amateur plumbing at 3:30 a.m.! However, in the morning, it was flushable again. The chain was still broken, but they must have been doing work on the whole hotel's water system or something. Good to know. Next up: Day One in Vegas!
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