The Hotel Mela was billed as a four star hotel in the theater district. Sounded too good to be true for that price, but I figured it was only for a night, so why not. It was actually a pretty good deal! The hotel was on West 44th Street, literally a half a block from Broadway and Time Square.
Our room was tiny (which I'm sure had to do with us booking through Hotwire for half the rack rate), but very clean, comfortable and better than the hotel we got in February through Priceline. We had a queen sized bed, two nighttables and a small wardrobe. That was it. Room was too small for a chair or desk. For sleeping it was fine. Not sure if I'd stay there more than a night unless I was staying by myself or paid more for a larger room.
We got to the city around 10 AM, checked our bags at the hotel and set off on foot to explore Hell's Kitchen and the midtown waterfront. After walking down to the pier to see where the ship would be docking the next morning (and figure out the best way to get there from the garage near the hotel) we stopped at Five Napkin Burger at 45th Street & 9th Avenue for a late brunch. We split an order of deep fried pastrami, dill pickle and sauerkraut (sort of a hot pastrami sandwich, deep fried) then moved on to NYC's best burgers. I had the brunch burger: a 10 oz ground chuck burger with cheddar cheese, ham, 5N sauce and a fried egg. Who would have thought of putting a fried egg on a burger. YUM! Jeff had the original 5 Napkin burger. Having fully stuffed ourselves, we headed back to the hotel to rest, but not before stopping at Walgreens in Time Square to pick up some travel-sized toiletries that we had forgotten to pack.
A couple days before we left, I managed to get two tickets to Next to Normal at the Booth Theater. The show is about a bipolar woman (played by Alice Ripley who won a Tony for the role this year) who is having difficulty accepting the death of her 18 month old child (17 years ago). It was directed by the same guy who directed Rent and produced by the same person who did Wicked. I'd heard lots of comparisons to Rent and it was very much like that show. We had our typical theater seats -- last row of the uppermost balcony (we're cheap) but like most NYC theaters, there aren't any really bad seats in the house. It's not like sitting in the top row of the amphitheater at Philadelphia's Academy of Music.
The theater was full to capacity and the show was wonderful. My only disappointment was that we had an understudy for the role of Gabriel (the deceased son). The actor who created the role is already off for the summer and being replaced by Kyle Dean Massey for the summer, but Kyle wasn't appearing that night, so the u/s was performing. He was great though. Coincidentally, one of the articles in Playbill that night was about all of the now-famous actors/actresses who started off as understudies: Megan Mullaly (understudy for Rosie O'Donnell in Grease) is the one that comes to mind right now.
After the theater we were hungry, so we decided to do the touristy thing and went to Junior's in Time Square for a bite to eat. Almost $50 for two BLTs, an order of fries and two shakes seemed excessive until we got the food. There must have been a pound of bacon on each of those sandwiches. Good toasted thick cut challah bread, lots of mayo, lettuce, ripe tomatoes and tons of bacon. We could only each eat half of the sandwich and brought the rest back to the hotel for breakfast the next morning, so actually it was $50 for a late dinner and breakfast.
Exhausted, we slept well that night and were up early for our cruise the next day.
You write a heck of a blog, Russ. Can't wait to read more...
ReplyDeleteBethAnne