Lexington Revisited -

The Hotel

Please bear with me as this series of posts

will necessarily be a bit disjointed.

It is difficult to write the post independently

of the pictures,

which has to be done when one is without the Internet.

Secondly, if I were to attempt to simply write one

post about our long weekend in Lexington,

the post would be just that - long.

If all that were not enough,

I have been very busy this week,

getting ready for the family gathering

that will be at our house this upcoming weekend.

Now that we have gotten that business out of the way,

let's get this show on the road...

After leaving Lynn's and Louisville,

we headed east towards Lexington.

And there's our destination -

Griffin Gate Resort.

Looks the same as it did last year.

I attempted to reserve another room with a balcony,

but no such luck.

However, this time,

instead of overlooking the parking lot,

we are overlooking the golf course.

So I guess that is a decent compromise.

See, the golf course and the swimming pool.
Much nicer than the parking lot.

I always rearrange the room after settling in.

Not to worry though;

as I always put things back the way I found them.

One of the first things I noticed upon entering our room

was a liter bottle of Fiji™ water

with a card around the neck stating that

“A $5.00 charge will be added to your account upon consumption.”

It is a safe assumption that the bottle will remain unmolested during our stay.

The Foodie Daughter has many aspirations in life;

among those is to one day own a luxury resort.

To that end,

she has enlisted my help in plotting out some of the more mundane details,

such as room décor,

restaurant types and menus.

As such and given that we often stay in nicer places

for my husband’s Masonic ventures,

I do have strong opinions on proper hotel management.

To wit:
Internet service should always be complimentary.

Honestly, I would rather you charge me for breakfast.

In this day and age I can go to a McDonald's

and get free WiFi,

so why can't a fancy hotel pony up the free Internet service?

There is always a “Do Not Disturb” tag on the door,

so why not have one side read

“No House Keeping Needed - Please Leave Clean Towels”?

A mini fridge is essential in every hotel room

and should be provided free of charge.

A nice-sized ledge for toiletries in the tub/shower area

would be greatly appreciated.

(How many times have you had to pick up your tiny

travel bottles that fell off the tiny tub ledge?)

Extra towel racks would come in handy for those

who don’t mind using a towel more than once.

Have a built-in night light in the bathroom.

Have a second sink outside of the bathroom.

(Have you ever tried to travel with two or more women,

both of whom are trying to get ready at the same time?

Enough said.)

Do not make the guest have to jump through hoops

just to find the regular TV channels on the remote.

I don’t want to have to wade through two pages

of pay-per-view services just to find the free channels.

Don’t make me angry when I just want to watch

my Food Network shows.

Guests should not be the ones who have to report problems

with the room to the hotel management.

Get your staff to spend a moment while in the room each day

just verifying that everything is in working order.

Nothing is more annoying to a guest

than to find that there is a problem with the plumbing,

heating or a/c or electrical systems.*

*But more on that later.

The morning sun shines through the tree.

I discovered this little terrace and fountain.












Lovely.











Potted hibiscus standard


under-planted with sweet potato vine


and petunias.








Hibiscus bloom.

Pigeons around a skylight.

The pool area at night.

*I promised you a story, didn't I?

The evening we arrived,

my husband and I went out to eat dinner

with another couple (which will be covered in the next post).

We returned back to the hotel and went our separate ways.

Eventually my husband and I found our football tailgate friends

(and another 33rd Candidate couple)

at the Valley of Fort Wayne’s Hospitality Room,

so my husband and I visited with them for a bit.

Eventually we wandered down to the Valley of Indianapolis’ HR

and said hello to our friends in there before retiring for the night.

Oh, if it were only that easy.

I felt like I was caught in the Edgar Allan Poe story

“The Tell Tale Heart.”

Unfortunately,

the toilet was running and running and running;

and I was fair exhausted from chasing it around the room all night long.

Rim shot, please.

*Crickets*

Okay, be that way.

I even got up in the middle of the night to see if I could fix it.

The float arm was resting too low,

allowing the water in the tank to rise too high,

thus flowing continuously into the bowl.

After a couple of attempts to fix it with nothing more than a dime

(hey, I’m on vacation here;

I don’t bring my tools with me!),

I gave it up as a lost cause

and finally resorted to covering my head

with a blanket to drown out the noise.

The environmentalist in me couldn’t help but cringe

at the thought of all that water being needlessly wasted, though.

Before I went to breakfast Friday morning,

I informed one of the nice people at the front desk that the toilet was running

and was assured that someone would be heading up to fixing it very soon.

After breakfast I headed back up to the room,

passing a maintenance worker in the hallway.

The maid had just started in the room when I returned

and I asked if the maintenance man had looked at the toilet

as I could still hear it running.

She said that he would be back to fix it.

I spent the next bit of time

watching the men out on the golf course,

figuring out their ploy

(they only play golf so they can drive the golf carts is my theory)

and writing this blog post.

The maintenance man came back

and attempted to fix the toilet but to no avail.

Heh, if I couldn’t fix it, it wasn’t able to be fixed.

He needed to leave to get a new part to replace the broken piece.

An hour or so later, we had a mercifully quiet toilet.

All is right once again in my world.

My daughter will be so proud of me:

I went down to the fitness center and did 32 minutes on the tread mill.

The nice thing was that the fitness center

has small TV screens hooked up to each treadmill

with a place for headphones to plug in.

I happened to have a pair in my purse,

so I turned on the Barefoot Contessa

and walked as she turned the volume up on her old recipes.

And thus concludes the bulk of our hotel experience,

as the rest of our time was spent attending

meetings, tours and banquets.

Tune in next time to read about some of that.