Delhi and Agra

Even though we’re home, I haven’t told you about the second part of our trip. We didn’t have many chances to write in India, when our days were busy from end to end; but now that we’re back at work, well, gee, I have all the time in the world! Not.

We flew from Bangalore to Delhi on an evening flight in the middle of the second week, taking the local five-star airline called Kingfisher. I’d heard of it, but until I went to India I didn’t realize that Kingfisher was also the name of a popular beer. Airplanes and beer: Both enterprises are owned by the same company.

Delhi is the capital of India. It’s also called New Delhi, but not by anybody over there, so let’s dispense with that. Delhi is both a city and a state. We didn’t see much of it except for a lot of traffic, but we did get the sense that it’s less crowded than Bangalore. We stayed in a neighboring city called Noida and saw little of it as well. Our days were planned to the hilt.

The first day we met with a company. The second day we traveled to Agra, a five-hour trip through the countryside. We passed villages, palm forests, and fields of sugar cane and mulberry. Mulberry is used in the making of silk; silkworms feed on mulberry leaves and produce the threads that are made into fabric.

Agra is the location of the Taj Mahal, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. That’s why we were going. I figured the Taj Mahal was out in the middle of nowhere, never dreaming that Agra was a full-blown city.

We drove into town on a sunny Friday afternoon, passing all kinds of street activity. Agra is a vibrant city that, unlike Bangalore, invites you out into it. We didn’t go, but instead found our hotel—a Sheraton. The man who greeted us outside should be doing commercials for the hotel; he was perfect in a bushy mustache; turban; red, white, and gold uniform; and even those Aladdin shoes with the curled-up toes.

We toured a couple of forts after we arrived. One, the Agra Fort, had a view of the Taj Mahal. I should first tell you the story of the man who built the Taj, if you can endure my cryptic version.

This man and his wife had 14 children, and with the 14th the wife knew she was going to die. She asked her husband to make her three promises: (1) not to remarry; (2) to take care of the children; and (3) to build a memorial to her like the world had never seen.

It took 20,000 workers 22 years to complete the Taj Mahal. It sits on a bank of the Yamuna River, within sight of the Agra Fort (or Red Fort). The man who built it was eventually imprisoned in the fort by one of his sons, and he could look out and see the Taj Mahal in the distance.

We planned to see the Taj on Saturday morning, arriving before sunrise--meaning that we would leave the hotel at 5:00 a.m. There were plenty of other people with the same idea. I’d been told we would ride a donkey cart part of the way, but in fact it was a bus. We were let off near a high wall with a gate. The women had to line up on the left and the men on the right. In a little while the gate opened and all of us had to go through security, which was the reason the men and women had been separated. The women were patted down in a curtained area by a female security officer—more of that whole thing about women being covered up, I suppose.

But let’s get to the best part. There are grounds and walls and structures on the property, but they pale when compared to the real thing. To see the Taj Mahal, you pass through an archway in a high, thick wall—a different wall from the one we’d entered from outside. This second wall with its arch is exactly opposite the Taj Mahal, and the moment you enter it you see the Taj, which looks like an apparition coming right out of the sky.

The Taj Mahal is made of translucent marble, which means that its color changes with the light. The sun hadn’t risen yet, and the sky was gray. So was the Taj. I got chills.

It dominated the landscape, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I took dozens of pictures. At first the whole building seemed undefined. I kept trying to adjust the focus on my camera to bring in the detail, but only the changing light would do that.

In the sunlight the Taj Mahal was yellow. Some days it looks blue or green. We went inside it, to the one small room that was open. It was almost dark. There were the tombs of the man and his wife, and the details of hand-carved marble on the walls, flowers and leaves put in one petal at a time. Guides shone tiny flashlights on the marble, and the flowers lit up.

They say that when you enter the archway to the Taj Mahal, if you stare at one spot the Taj will seem to come toward you. I tried it, but mostly I just stared at the whole thing—stared until we had to leave, turning again and again for a last look.

The Taj Mahal was the highlight of my trip to India. I hope you like the photo.

And now we are home. The trip back was very long, as expected. We hit turbulence coming off the Atlantic that lasted until we reached northern Ohio. The plane landed at 4:15 p.m. on Sunday. I’d had the same clothes on since Friday, as we left our luggage in Delhi and I’d forgotten to take a clean outfit to Agra. It was good to be back in Cincinnati, on the ground, and to have my suitcase in the same city as I was.

This is the last entry for my India trip. Thanks for reading my blog!

A Dose of Truth

It’s time to put to rest a few of the rumors Sally and I brought with us to India, because many of them weren’t true—at least, not for us.

Let’s start with something easy. “The Unwind Island,” our hotel in Bangalore, wasn’t new. I wrote that it was before I knew the truth: That we weren’t staying where we’d expected to stay. That other hotel--the one we didn’t even see--was the new one. So, if you’ve been picturing us in paradise, you’re only partly right. “The Unwind Island” is an imitation of paradise for sure, but just so you’ll know, it’s a tad rundown.

Sally was caught by a piece of packing advice in the book we read before our trip. This book advised against jeans, so Sally didn’t bring any. As it turned out, we did some touring, rode go-karts, climbed onto a donkey cart, sat on airplanes for hours at a stretch, and just hung out when we weren’t working. Jeans would have come in handy. We saw them everywhere, although I will say that most Indian women wore their native dress instead. Sally wished for her jeans more than once.

There are two other bits of packing advice that may not be true for everyone. First, the monastery scarf. All the travel books tell women to take along an all-purpose scarf when traveling abroad because they will not be allowed in churches without it. Generally it’s good advice. So I lugged a scarf to India and had it with me every day in case we went somewhere that required us women to cover our heads. Even though we toured a few temples, I didn’t need it once.

I also took a shoe bag I didn’t use. It is very common for tourists entering palaces, churches, or even someone’s home to be asked to remove their shoes. To prevent theft, the book advised, just put your shoes in a shoe bag and carry them with you instead of leaving them outside. The idea that my new walking shoes could be stolen spurred me to take a bag for them. Well, that didn’t work. We had to check our shoes and it was too much trouble to go against the tide.

We’ve already shot down the rumors about using the left hand, but here’s one more story. After we arrived in Delhi we were sharing a meal with representatives of a company there. So far, no one had jumped up from the table and shouted “Unclean!” at Sally or me as I had feared, but I decided to test the theory on them. I mentioned the rumor to the man seated next to me at the table. “If using the left hand were unclean,” he said, “I would have been unclean from the day I was born because I’M LEFT-HANDED!” Power to the lefties!

The rumor about never looking an Indian man in the eye is past its prime, at least with the people we met. One day at the office I took a walk after lunch. There were three of us walking, one a young man. I decided to run my eye-contact story by him. He was so surprised by it that he ended up staring quite pointedly at ME as though to say, “Where did you get that one?”

No doubt there are some men in India who’d make something ugly out of a woman’s look. Sally and I took pictures every day during our commute in Bangalore, to capture the crazy traffic as well as life on the sides of the road. It’s hard to do in motion, so sometimes we lowered the car windows to get a better shot. In those moments I glimpsed a few faces I was glad to be passing quickly in a vehicle. These would be the male faces we were warned about, very different from our office colleagues.

India is teeming with people, all kinds—dirty and clean, wealthy and poor, male and female. Every village holds a thousand pictures, if you could only take them all. How can anyone easily say what is true or false when going another mile can change everything?

There was a TV show called “The Naked City” that most of you won’t remember. At the end of each episode the announcer would say, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”

I figure the person who wrote the travel advice book was telling her truth, but her experiences were different from ours. Someone who backpacks through a country with one outfit from home will have a different journey from that of a business traveler protected from even walking alone on the street. The point is that everyone’s trip isn’t the same—and that’s the best part.

Airing the Dirty Laundry

The other morning I washed some tops and underwear in the hotel sink. I used my Magellan’s travel laundry kit, which consists of a flat rubber sink stopper, a tube of laundry detergent, and a flexible clothesline with a loop on each end. I rolled the wettest garments in my featherweight Packtowl to absorb the extra water and hung everything in the bathroom, the shirts on hangers and the underwear suspended from the clothesline. I strung the line across the doorway by hooking one loop to my towel rack and the other to the robe hook on the back of the door.

It was only after walking in on the cleaning person one afternoon that I realized a man was cleaning my room, and that he would be walking into the bathroom through a curtain of wet lingerie. But I needed clean clothes; I couldn’t worry about appearances.

The hotel has a laundry service, so why would I go to the trouble of washing my own clothes? It could have been someone saying the previous night, while bragging on the high quality of the service, “You can see the women washing the clothes right in the river, beating them against a rock.” More likely, it was my spirit of adventure.

Something comes over me right before I travel: A primal urge to buy travel gadgets and new clothes. My favorite clothes are the ones designed to be tough; they dry fast, don’t wrinkle, and have the advantages of technology woven right into the fabric. These clothes can take what you dish out—in my case riding in a car, shopping, attending meetings, and sitting at the computer.

The main reason for my reluctance to turn my clothes over to strangers was that many of them were new. For my trip to India I bought four pairs of quick-drying travel underwear, a knit top, two blouses, a pair of slacks, and a sock wardrobe (to go with my two new pairs of walking shoes).

There was another reason for my hesitation. With all of my traveling, I’d never had my clothes cleaned by a hotel staff. The idea made me anxious.

The clothes I washed myself didn’t dry in a matter of hours; in fact, some weren’t dry by the next day. In addition to that, we had little time of our own during the work week and I didn’t want to spend it squeezing the suds out of garments. It was time to give “The Unwind Island’s” laundry service a chance.

Here’s the laundry routine at the hotel. They put a cloth bag labeled “Laundry” in the bottom of your closet. When you have a load of dirty clothes, you put the filled bag on your bed for pickup, and your things are returned clean within one day. But here’s the hitch: They can’t return your clothes unless you are present to sign for them; so, the minute anyone in the hotel sees you cross the lobby to go to your room, word spreads. You’re back.

The first time I left a bag of dirty laundry on my bed, I didn’t hear anything until the next morning. The phone rang at 7:00 a.m. A male Indian voice said something ending with “Joe.” I didn’t understand; was my brother, Joe, trying to get in touch with me? No chance. He didn’t even know where I was staying, and anyway we e-mailed every day. I figured the early phone call was a wake-up call, and I explained that I hadn’t asked for one.

At 7:02 the phone rang again and the same voice said something I still didn’t understand. I explained again that I had not asked for a call and to please stop calling my room. We hung up.

At 7:05 the phone rang for the third time, same thing. I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” and hung up. I called Sally, who said she had asked for a wake-up call and didn’t get it. This is what I figured; the desk had made a mistake.

I started to worry that the persistent man on the phone would come to my room in person and knock on the door. I was undressed, just about to get into the shower, so hearing a knock would be an unsettling event. I’d had little sleep, my body still adjusting to India time. There was no knock, but in my mind I responded, covering myself long enough to open the door and shout into the startled face, “Did you think the three phone calls didn’t do the trick? And why would I need a wake-up call in the first place? I’ve been awake since MIDNIGHT!”

That evening my phone rang, and it was Sally. “I just got one of those mysterious phone calls,” she said. Neither of us had any idea what message was being sent, but we found out when a hotel staffer showed up at each of our doors with our clean clothes. They were making sure we were "home" so that they could bring our laundry. Now when they call I just say, “Thank you.” I figure I’ll find out what it’s about if they show up at my door.

Once I had my clean laundry, delivered folded in a bag, I was afraid to look at it. Would my socks now fit my five-year-old granddaughter, Annie, instead of me? Would I be wearing high-waters on casual Friday?

The laundry was fine. In fact, sending my laundry out has become habit forming. It’s very inexpensive and fast: I put the laundry bag on the bed when I leave for work in the morning, and that evening I have clean clothes! That has never happened before in my adult life; usually I’ve had to play a part.

So, that’s the latest installment in the tale of life on The Unwind Island. Until next time.

The First Week

We’ve now been in India for one week. And where have I been? Once we started working, it became harder and harder to write this blog. We would spend all day in the office and then go out afterward on some nights. Factoring in the traffic, an after-work trip can take the whole evening.

One night we went to Garuda Mall. This modern, multi-level shopping mall is located some distance from the office and from our hotel. It was fun to go out shopping, and especially to see the Indian stores with their colorful fabrics and distinctive styles. The salwar kameez is a popular outfit for women, and we see them everywhere, each more beautiful than the next. Salwar Kameez, which is a set of drawstring pants and a long dress-like top, is a typical work outfit here.

One store Sally and I wanted to check out was Fabindia. We’d read about it in our pre-trip book. The author said she took only one outfit when she came to India, then went to Fabindia and stocked up on beautiful clothes at very reasonable prices. Fabindia was fun—clothing for men and women, a few beauty products, and some items for the home. Mostly it consisted of shelf after shelf of folded tops and pants in wonderful cottons and silks. I bought a printed shirt. The store has a website; check it out at http://www.fabindia.com/.

One night we were scheduled to meet some of our Indian colleagues at a restaurant called Barbecue Nation. That’s right. I would have loved to try it, but we didn’t make the dinner. Right after we left our hotel, we got stuck in a traffic jam and moved only a few blocks in an hour. I actually preferred that pace to the usual frenzy, but eventually we had to call our friends and say that we had no prayer of making it to Barbecue Nation on time.

This past Friday we sponsored a team outing for our Indian colleagues. All of us left the office at 2:00 for a go-kart track. Fortunately they have casual Fridays in India, too, and all of us had dressed for the occasion. The track was over an hour from the office, in the opposite direction from our hotel. When we arrived the team spent several hours taking turns speeding around this track in low gasoline-powered karts. The course was lined with stacks of rubber automobile tires for safety.

Most of the karts were made for single drivers, but a few were double, meaning that one driver and one passenger could ride together. That’s what I did, rode shotgun (on the left) with a highly competitive driver in charge. I had a steering wheel, but it was mostly for looks. I had no gas pedal or brake—helpless is the word, I believe. We took off and screeched around the first of the curves. My colleague kept accelerating, taking the turns wide and passing other drivers when the opportunity arose. My role evolved quickly to this: While he maneuvered the go-kart, I screamed, “Slow down! Slow down!” like some Grandma, which I am.

Each driver got a few laps and then was directed back to the pit. Upon returning, I was relieved to shed my helmet and get back to the observation gallery, but at least I had gotten out there with everyone else.

After the racing there were some games and songs, then a buffet supper. By then it was dark, and when we got home the clock said 10:30 p.m. Saturday was going to be an early one; we were meeting a group at 7:00 a.m. to tour some palaces in the city of Mysore, several hours south of Bangalore.

Mysore was very cool, especially when we drove up a high mountain and were able to look down on the whole city. At the top was a tall, beautifully carved temple. We removed our shoes and socks in the car and made our way past vendor stands to the main attraction. Men selling fans, wooden boxes, and all manner of souvenirs followed us—especially Sally, who must have appeared very nice after the rest of us growled “No!” three or four times in their faces.

Thank goodness two of our Indian hosts were with us; they led the way through the ceremony of seeing the room for the deity, located in the center of this temple. We bought flowers, made a donation, and had red powder put on our foreheads by a priest in a toga before peeping around a barricade to see the little room that was causing such a stir. Oh, what can I say without sounding unappreciative; maybe that my eyesight isn’t that great and I would have loved to step forward and actually enter the tiny room, study the beautiful walls, and find out what all was there.

I brought two big manuscript envelopes with me so that, when I visited sites like this temple, I could take the brochures and mail them home to myself instead of weighing down my luggage. The trouble was, there were no brochures, which is why I’m so vague about what I saw.

We ate lunch in the Palace Hotel, which is a large, absolutely elegant, genteel, and lovely hotel near the palace of the Maharaja, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. This place was on the order of the Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia—first class. The tablecloth was lace over velvet; the walls were Dresden blue and white with carvings accented in gold. The ceiling of the dining room was high, with domed skylights. Two musicians played in the background as we ate, and the food was wonderful.

I’ve been asked to provide photos with this blog. You may be thinking about now that a photo or two would help. I agree; that’s a great idea that would be easier if I knew how…or if I had the time to know how. Maybe it will happen when Sally shows me how to post a photo; but that won’t be today. More on today after I tell you about the Maharaja’s Palace. (Later note: As you can see, I did figure out how to post photos. The one at the top of this posting is the temple at the top of the mountain in Mysore.)

This was the big one, the largest palace in Mysore for the top dog. “Maharaja of what?” I asked, and “Mysore” was the answer.

The palace is yellow on the outside, with acres and acres of grounds around it. We had to check our cameras at the entrance to the complex and take off our shoes and socks to go in. The Maharaja actually lives there, in one area—naturally, it’s the part where we weren’t, but we did see his Golden Throne. They bring it out once a year, so our visit was well timed. They also had a wax figure of the Maharaja outside one of the doors, and several portraits throughout the palace. But it wasn’t like he was going to stroll out to get a snack or check the weather.

It rained hard while we were inside looking at the totally elaborate, expensive, one-of-a-kind palace halls with their carved doors and ceilings, precious metals, scrollwork, imported tile and marble, and gigantic doorways (I think for the elephants, which are kept on the grounds). There really are structures that go on top of an elephant so the Maharaja can ride. The elephant has a gold faceplate, and its tusks are decorated. Everything is the way you might have seen it in a fairy tale—at least according to the pictures we saw.

The palace has a long terrace where the Maharaja comes out once a year or so to speak to the people, and there’s a parade. I should stop now, before I’m telling complete lies. As I said, no brochures were given out; but I did buy a 2009 calendar for 50 Rupees, or one dollar US.

We got home late from Mysore, and that brings us to Sunday. Today, for me, “The Unwind Island” has been this hotel room. I picked up some sort of bug yesterday, commonly known as Delhi Belly. It means, "Because we aren't used to Indian food or drinks, our tummies might get majorly messed up." Whatever I consumed, my travels have taken me only into the bathroom and back since last night. I feel better now but have had nothing to eat all day.

You know, I started several blogs this week, none of which are included in this posting. I wanted to tell you about our hotel and about my experience doing laundry. I wanted to address some of the rumors Sally and I read about before we came. Maybe I’ll still get a chance to finish those blogs, but this one is off the cuff because the week has flown by and I have hated not keeping up my blog.

We have two more days in the office here. Next Wednesday we fly to Delhi, and from there we’ll go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. That day we’ll leave at 5:00 a.m. in order to catch the Taj at sunrise. It will be a rare experience, one I couldn’t have had without these wonderful business connections. Our hosts have been unbelievable in providing us with transportation and things to do.

We leave for home on the 26th. I think we also arrive on the 26th, but I can’t swear to it.

Until next time. As the singer Perry Como used to say, “Keep those cards and letters coming in.”

Honk If You Love Near-Death Experiences

Here’s a view of Bangalore traffic from the perspective of business travelers staying in a man-made tropical paradise and commuting to an office every day with the car windows rolled up.

We leave The Unwind Island every morning at 9:00 to arrive at work by 9:30. We go down to the hotel lobby, where a driver is waiting to take us. He (always a he) sits on the right-hand front seat, which is the driver’s side. Think opposite; in India the cars stay to the left side of the road, too, so the oncoming traffic is on the right. Some of the roads are divided by medians. Most have many lanes, but no one pays attention to those. In contrast, some of the back streets are unmarked and hardly seem wide enough for two-way traffic.

We pull out, and Bangalore is all around us, bright and noisy and diverse. It rolls by on all sides like a movie as we make our way through a chaotic convergence of cars, trucks, automated rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, pedestrians, and the occasional donkey cart, all vying to gain the next foot of ground or break in traffic.

All along the road there are little pictures of life in this city: a woman carrying a stack of box cardboard on her head; a shirtless man pushing a bike laden with bright, printed pillows encased in plastic; a brown-and-white cow resting on a traffic island. Yesterday we saw two men urinating and a little child crossing a bridge alone. We passed rows of shanties and rundown shops on our way to the gated office park where Sally and I would be welcomed with bouquets of flowers.

No speed limit signs are posted on these roads, but speed bumps regulate the pace of traffic. Therefore, the way to drive is to reach the highest speed possible before you have to stop again, and then hit the brakes at the last second. We could practically kiss the taillights of the car in front of us.

Turn signals and brake lights mean nothing here. The horn is everything. Signs on the backs of trucks read, “Sound Horn,” and everyone does. The main message conveyed by this universal honking is, “Look out, here I come!” Flesh and metal are close enough to touch, but somehow don’t, as the individual players miss each other again and again by the tiniest of margins.

Accuracy is paramount, for with all of the lanes filled and the cars so close together, there is nowhere to swerve. Sally and I just sit in the back seat and try not to scream.

Even with a driver, it’s hard to relax when you are looking straight-on at a set of truck headlights barreling your way; pedestrians cross the street like cops on TV, weaving in and out of the moving vehicles; and whole families ride the same motorcycle. I hope I still have teeth when I get home; so far I’ve caught myself grinding them every day in the car. You can bet that when we return to The Unwind Island, we’re ready to unwind.

In spite of the craziness of traffic here, serious accidents are rare—especially when you consider the odds with such a crowded population jamming the roads. You do see dents in quite a few of the cars, which should be no surprise. After all, this is BANGalore.

A Slight Interruption

Good evening--or in my case, good morning. It's 3:00 in Bangalore, and I'm typing that sentence way too often. As it turned out, being awake in the middle of the night was perfet for what I needed to do.

I've lost some work time and haven't posted to my blog in a while because of computer issues, namely that my computer couldn't find the Internet. Maybe it was jet lag--the rest of us certainly had it--or possibly revenge for having to make the trip to India stuffed inside a suitcase. Yes, I'm kidding.

At 2:30 this morning I realized that the most likely culprit was an altered internet protocol address. Well, let's be honest; Sally had figured it out earlier. The story of how it happened would bore you, but the beauty of it all was the time difference between Bangalore and Cincinnati.

As soon as I realized what time it was, I also realized that our Help Desk would be open in Mason, Ohio. It was 5:00 p.m. there. So I got out my Blackberry with its newly added international calling capabilities and dialed in.

Tom, who's my newest hero, walked me through the process of restoring my IP settings in just a few minutes, and I was back on! I've missed having this connection with all of you. Thanks for the nice notes you've posted. I'll get back on track.

In the meantime, it's time for sleep if sleep will come.

Thoughts in the Middle of the Night—but Whose Night?

Here’s what woke me up. Before we left America, Sally and I went shopping for presents to give to our Indian friends. We bought candy, books, and postcards, but knew we wouldn’t have room for them in our luggage. Luckily we had the address of the hotel in Bangalore ahead of time, so we dug it out and had the box of presents mailed to Sally in care of that hotel—a brilliant strategy if we were actually staying there.

Last night our Indian friends joined us for dinner. Incidentally, they ate with both hands. In fact, they mopped up their vegetables with a piece of flat bread and invited us to do the same. I think the left-handers are in the clear.

Anyway, during the meal we must have been commenting on the tropical theme of “The Unwind Island” when Sally asked, “What IS the name of this hotel?” I was glad because I could never remember the name they’d sent us. The answer was surprising--nothing like the name I remembered. That’s because we were in a different hotel.

So, in the middle of the night, the significance of that came to me: Sally and I had sent the package to the wrong hotel, and we were going to have to go get it.

With that jump-start, other thoughts came to mind, too—random thoughts, thoughts that made no sense, thoughts that seemed monumental at 2:00 a.m. but might not be so amusing or important in the light of day. For instance, you might have heard of Bollywood, which is not a real place, but the name for the thriving movie industry in India. Well, in addition to Bollywood, there’s Bangalore and Mangalore. We’re off the subject of movies now and onto Words That Sound Alike. As a fan of vampires, I was thinking at about 3:00 this morning that Fangalore would a terrific name, too. And that was before the coffee.

Being an early riser at home, I’ve had to make a rule for myself: Never make the coffee until 4:00. The idea behind that one is that first I should try to sleep. Last night I couldn’t; I was wide awake. So was the person who vacuums this hotel, or else my refrigerator was really loud. My little travel clock said 3:05.

After two days of trying, I’ve learned to figure out the time difference between Bangalore and Cincinnati. First, you add 2.5 hours to the local time, which would be—oh, let’s round off to make it easy—3:00 a.m. Then you simply change a.m. to p.m., or vice versa. At 3:00 a.m., Bangalore time, it’s 5:30 p.m. at home. But now you won’t have to rely on me for the correct time.

Sally is a whiz with technology. She has on her blog site a World Clock that tells the time in both Cincinnati and Bangalore. Check it out; the blog address is in an earlier post. And here’s more good news: Sally didn’t send our package to a hotel at all; she sent it to the offices of our host company. Smart.

Yesterday was Sunday and we took advantage of the facilities and cuisine here at the hotel . Today we work.

If I don’t stop writing NOW, I’m going to be late for the breakfast buffet. Note to self: The gymnasium (what we call a fitness center) is in the Basement.

Signing off.