Text 29990, 88 rader
Skriven 2009-10-16 13:20:38 av Michael Loo (1:18/200)
Ärende: the good life 277
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The Sheraton Ferncroft is a remarkably okay hotel in a
remarkably terrible location. For some reason that is now
obscure to me, I needed a room near that terrible location.
What it's near: the Topsfield Fair. What it's far from:
civilization in all its manifestations.

It is hard to get to this hotel. Impossible by public
trans (a bus ride to the Peabody bus depot, then a $30
cab ride up here). Luckily I had a colleague with the same
issue and a car so got a ride from the airport.

Check-in was fine. The room was attractive enough and didn't
smell awful the way hotels often do that are down-and-out
enough to appear on Hotwire at an advantageous rate. It had a
wonderful view of the 50000 sq ft indoor water park next door
(i.e., big concrete building).

Dined upon baby back ribs (of which the menu claims that they
were smoked to perfection, sauced with the special house sauce,
and then grilled to order and that they are fall-off-the-bone
delicious) with rice and vegetables. The ribs were not smoked
and not particularly tender (anyhow I don't care for fall-off-
the-bone), but they were pretty decent, and the sauce was acidy
and not very sweet at all. The rice, so called, was a mess of
formless almost grainless starch flavored with abundant ginger
and scallion. Vegetables: baby pattypan squash and zucchini.
What have I done to you, O Lord? Luckily the meat was abundant,
so I could sort of ignore the stuff I couldn't tolerate.

Prices and quality were competitive with midrange restaurants
offsite: better than, say, Chili's or Applebees; less good
than the Outback or Legal's.

The elevators to the guest floors had a tendency to make
out-of-orderish noises but managed to get me upstairs without
undue delay and anxiety.

The bed was excessively comfy and came with 5 pillows.

=

Another okay place in a horrid location - the Fairfield Inn
Newark Airport. There are 3 Marriott properties in a row
here, and nothing else in this industrialish area just a
mile from the passenger terminal - there are 7 in a 3-mile
radius, and this is the cheapest of the lot, but it offers
free 24-hour coffee, apples, and airport transportation,
free breakfast, and, most important, free broadband. What
it doesn't offer: a restaurant or bar (breakfast is in the
lobby); security. For the former, one goes to the Courtyard
next door (no sidewalk, no street lamps), where a semi-tasty
burger is $11 and a skunky beer is $5.25 or to the vending
machines by the elevator. I became unduly familiar with Chester
Cheeto at the cost of a buck plus a milk pill for 2 oz of
salty crunchy goodness. Also increased my red delicious
intake for 2009 by 66%. No security: I awoke to find ads for
takeout under my door; this isn't so heinous; but as I got
off the elevator to claim my complimentary Jimmy Dean sausage,
egg, and cheese biscuit, I heard this crashbang, shouts, and
the patter of agile criminal feet - what witnesses told me
later was that there were these two white guys in the crowd
milling around for checkout, and suddenly they knocked over
an old Chinese lady, grabbed her stuff, and off they went.
On inspection the old lady was my age, or minus a few years.
Is this sort of thing going to be part of my near future,
I wondered.

Anyhow, the Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich was a greasy biscuit,
some nasty yellow cheese, an egg puck, and a sausage patty that
didn't deserve the brand or the description - it was a soggy, limp,
bland mess of spongy mystery protein. There were also rather nasty
little chocolate muffins as well as dozens of other weird pastries,
a DIY waffle station, hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, fruit (I
stole bananas and apples for later).

The elevators to the guest floors had a tendency to make
out-of-orderish noises but managed to get me upstairs without
undue delay and anxiety.

The room was big. The bed was big but really soft. There were
five pillows, ranging from marshmallow to marshmallow fluff.

Next day, the extremely sullen shuttle driver took me where I
requested, half a mile from the scheduled dropoff spot, which
saved me 15 minutes and an Airtrain ride.
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