Reservations

I love that word as a title. It could be about Second Thoughts, or about a bunch of very quiet people. Or Native American land, some of which we’re going to see next week. In this case, however, it’s about hotel/motel reservations. As in Making a Ton of them. I think it’s all I’ve done for the last week. Besides work. Work and make reservations.

I’ve made reservations in Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Boise (some little town right nearby, actually), Portland, Redding (CA), San Francisco, Bakersfield, Flagstaff, and Santa Fe. I’ve made reservations for a Friday evening train ride we love in Santa Fe. I’ve plotted and planned and tried to keep the driving-per-day reasonable, although we’re in for a long haul between ABQ and Salt Lake City. And I worked in three Walking Days—days when we spend a day walking around in a city we like. That means I have to arrange two nights in those places, of course. And then there’s the choice of where to stay. We almost always stay at La Quinta’s when we travel. They’re generally (not always! well, not always by MY standards) clean, usually easy to get to, we earn points we can use later for free stays. Etc. Larger cities have multiple locations, though, and you have a choice:  larger nicer room for more money; smaller, older room for less. So on the nights where we’re going to be getting in late, crashing, getting up early and heading out again, I picked the very cheapest. In ABQ, that’s $35 a night. Pretty good, huh?

But if we’re going to spend two nights there, like in San Francisco, then I try to find one that’s still reasonable but not tiny. In SF we stay at the airport, which is affordable and has a shuttle to take you to the terminal, where we get on BART and ride into the city. It’s excellent, easy, stress-free.

And then in Santa Fe we stay here. Without the damn snow, thank you very much.

We love this place. The larger rooms have windows that open onto the Sangre de Cristo mountains, and with a little rearranging of the furniture, I can sit in front of the open window and have coffee. The first time we went, The EGE discovered the jigsaw puzzle table on the landing, where he subsequently spent a LOT of time. He loves jigsaw puzzles but hasn’t been able to have them around since, oh, gee:  since we got taken over by CATS. Cats and jigsaw puzzles are not a good match, in case you hadn’t ever thought about it. Oh, sure:  we tried various systems for storing the pieces and keeping them out of reach, but all that made it too much trouble to work the puzzle. They’re best if you have them lying out on a big table and can pass through the room and pause and find a piece. Which is how it is at this hotel. And late one night he met a woman from Colorado, one of the first female attorneys in the state, who’d driven to Santa Fe in her vintage (!) Porsche. She was in her 70’s, and she loved late nights and jigsaw puzzles, and she and The EGE spent many hours out there.

Imagine how happy he was when, the next year, same weekend, he went out to check the puzzle and found her there again, working away. We keep hoping we’ll run into her, but I think she’s there for the weekend of the Buckaroo Ball. Alas.

And if all that weren’t enough, I felt compelled (all into the Reservation-Making Mode, I guess) to go ahead and book the room for New Orleans at the end of July, for Satchmo SummerFest. We stay here, in a room with a balcony overlooking Orleans Street.  And you have to stay through the weekend so you’re there for the last bit on Sunday evening when Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers bring down the house. Or, well, since it’s outside. . .bring down the walls.

Still two more to make—in Shreveport and San Antonio, but those will have to wait. I’m tired of the planning and plotting of routes, the measuring and googling of maps, the changing and re-adjusting of dates and times. Whew.

Time to go run errands.

What are y’all up to?