Last week - we visited Fort Lauderdale to have a family gathering. Really - Drew was there for a convention - so all 6 of us stayed at the W Hotel to spend some time together. The W Hotel was having its grand opening. It is a luxury hotel that normally would be too rich for my tastes at $375 a night. Luckily - we were able to land some rooms at the government rate of $118 a night.
It seems that the W Hotels cater to folks in their 20s and 30s. The decorations were pretty - maybe a little too trendy. The help was over the top with being so nice - maybe a bit too nice for me. Everyone was asking if there was anything they could do for me. They refused to allow me to park my own car - it sometimes was a pain waiting for them to get it for me. At $30 a day - I was tempted to try to find a meter on the streets - at least I could just put the key in and drive away.
The center piece for our family was the pool - and a beautiful pool it is. First off - the water was heated to almost hot tub temperature - about 98. It was fun swimming in the bath tub temperature water anytime day or night. Jack - our grandson simply loved it. He is used to taking a bath with Drew - and this was the next logical step. It was almost a fight - with everyone wanting to hold Jack in the water.
The pool is maybe 80 by 80 feet and 4 feet deep all over. Around the whole edge was an overflow. To me - it was an engineering feat to construct a pool so level that the water would overflow evenly in all directions. But the "center piece" of the center piece was the grand stairway in a glass tunnel going right down in the middle of the pool to the living room lobby. There were also windows in the bottom of the pool that gave new meaning to the words "floor show" for the people in the living room.
Almost all of the rooms had glass balconies - except for 4 rooms out of maybe 300. Guess who got one of the 4 rooms? Yes - we did - must have been the government rate room :-)
Glass dominated the whole hotel. In the guest rooms - the showers had glass walls - both on the bathroom side and the bedroom side. Yes - you could take a shower in plain view of everyone in the room. Our room had shutters to close off the shower - but Drew's room had nothing to close off the shower - nothing.
On the negative side - each room had a fully-stocked bar - refrigerator - and snack tray. During the whole visit - the kids were pretending they were snacking on these highly priced items. Not funny.
We found plenty of places to eat all along the beach. We also brought our bikes along to cruise up and down the parkway. There were plenty of budget-priced hotels along the strip that were relatively cheap - had free internet - and you could park your own car - for $69. Yes - they did look like the motel where Nancy and I spent our honeymoon in 1971 for $8 a night.
It was sad taking Keith to the airport - and even harder to put Jack down to load up the van and drive home. We broke the 10-hour drive home up with an overnight stop in Orlando - where Nancy had a presentation at the FLA Convention - Florida Library Association.
We can hardly wait for Jack's big one year birthday party. It will be held in his new home in Providence RI - where Robin will do her doctoral internship at Brown University. The sun has made its one year trek through the heavens and will be back to its highest point in the sky. Another summer will begin - and Jack will start his second time around the circuit. The next 40 days will fly by like lightning until we all gather for that big event. Is there a W Hotel in Providence?
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