New York City part XXIV

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Op donderdag 10 november 2005 11:21 schreef Jaguarized het volgende:

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Ik ruik een NYC meet volgend jaar.

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Op zaterdag 12 november 2005 15:40 schreef Jaguarized het volgende:
www.ticketmaster.com, zie ook het vorige deeltje.

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Op dinsdag 15 november 2005 12:41 schreef Razer het volgende:
Ik heb zelf 10 dagen in Carter geslapen een jaar geleden, toen geen problemen gehad. Was allemaal wat ouder en zag er niet geweldig uit, maar voor er alleen te slapen en snel onder de douche te springen heb ik geen problemen gehad.

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Op dinsdag 15 november 2005 16:25 schreef Jaguarized het volgende:

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Een hostel onder de 170 euro per nacht is niet te vinden? Volgens mij is de jeugdafdeling van het Waldorf Astoria erg snel volgeboekt ja.

Nee maar dat vind je natuurlijk makkelijk. Kijk eens op www.hostelworld.com en www.hostels.com

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Op dinsdag 15 november 2005 11:01 schreef 430n het volgende:
Damn! Cool topic. Ik ga zelf eind november naar New York, en dit gaat zeker van pas komen.

Ik heb alleen wel problemen met een hotel/hostel te vinden onder de 170euro per nacht. Ik heb dat Carter hotel gezien, maar ik heb daar wel heeel erge horror-verhalen over gehoord. Is het echt zo erg als ze zeggen? Of kan je daar prima blijven als je er toch zo weinig mogelijk wilt zijn?

Ik zoek alleen maar een kamer voor 2 personen. (Lieftst private badkamer) en een goeie ligging. (Midtown/theatre district)

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What Do You Expect for $99.23 a Night?
It was about 4 p.m. when something crawled on the carpet. A large insect of unidentified species made its way across the hotel lobby, and a group of European tourists tracked it with a cheerful curiosity until a gray-haired man in a baseball cap waiting to check in stomped on it.

No one else noticed the dead bug. The lobby - a sensory overload of neon, mirrors, bright lights, televisions, yard-sale furniture and pay phones - was too distracting. Guests streamed in and out with befuddled stares, mild complaints and curious requests. A woman asked a worker for bug killer after finding a roach in her bathroom. She was handed a spray bottle of kitchen cleaner and sent on her way.

In the rooms upstairs, tales of lodging woe unfolded. One guest said his television played the sound from one channel but showed the picture from another. A couple in Room 500 said they were surprised to discover that they did not have a closet. And a businesswoman from Ukraine on the 23rd floor found that she liked her room better in the dark. "If the curtains close, light is off, it's not that bad," she said.

People have been saying for years that the old Times Square - the seedy, lowbrow ancestor of what is now a largely sanitized, Disneyfied tourist haven - is dead. But those people have never spent a night at the Hotel Carter. The 615-room hotel at 250 West 43rd Street offers travelers a cheap room in an expensive city, and something more: an adventure. In the middle of Manhattan and at the neon-bright Crossroads of the World, the hotel has been a little-known source of grimy hospitality, low-budget accommodations and equal numbers of satisfied and dissatisfied customers from around the world.

As a guest of the Hotel Carter, you may or may not have your room cleaned. You may or may not find the multicolored, multipatterned carpet on the floor and the walls agreeable. You may or may not have a working television and telephone. You may or may not have a smooth check-in, since the front desk keeps track of reservations without the benefit of a computer system.

In short, you may or may not have an enjoyable stay. The answer depends on which room you get - the top floors have numerous large recently renovated rooms with splendid views - and on your answer to this question: What do you expect for $99.23 a night?

The Carter, a tan-brick 24-story hotel on a busy stretch of West 43rd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, is popular with foreign travelers, students and tourists on a tight budget, and recent guests either loved it or hated it.

Tran Truong, 73, the co-owner of the hotel, and his assistant, Elaine Nguyen, said they tried their best to provide safe, clean lodging at a low price for travelers. Mr. Truong, a Vietnamese businessman who lives in the hotel, bought the Carter in 1977. Ms. Nguyen said they did not have the money or the staff of the big corporate hotel chains, but she defended the hotel's customer service and cleanliness. The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene conducted an inspection for rodents in July and found no cause for action, according to the report.

"We're not a four-star or five-star hotel," she said. What they are, she said, is "the best bargain for the location."

A two-night stay at the hotel last week illustrated the benefits and the drawbacks of bargain lodging in Times Square. The hotel can be humorously disorienting. People have stood on the sidewalk outside the hotel and tried to decipher, without success, the meaning of one of the hotel's slogans, displayed above its bronze-colored awning: "You Wanted in Time Square & Less."

The lobby is a 24-hour people-watcher's paradise. It can feel, in a narrow room that resembles a cross between a D.M.V. office and a Las Vegas disco, like Saturday night on an early Wednesday morning. At one moment, two elegantly dressed women in evening gowns and high heels appeared. At another, a man sat down and drank from a can of Budweiser. "The best show on Broadway," a former guest wrote on one travel Web site, tripadvisor.com, "is the lobby of the Carter."

Room 1105 was not so much a room as it was a place to lie low. It took eight paces to walk from one wall to the next and 21 paces to get from the door to the window. The telephone was dead. It sat on an old desk, its drawer broken and placed on the stained carpet, a copy of the Manhattan white pages, 1994-5, among the contents inside. The room was lighted by a bare bulb on the ceiling, and the headboard of the bed was a rectangle of blue carpet nailed to the wall. There was a big moldy splotch on the ceiling above the bathtub.

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Op maandag 21 november 2005 16:19 schreef 430n het volgende:

Ik heb van iemand een tip gehad; Het schijnt dat je s'middags voor hele lage prijzen tickets kan krijgen voor theater voorstellingen. Ze schijnen dan in de buurt van Times Square deze voor dumpprijzen te verkopen... (van die avond dan) Heeft iemand hier weleens van gehoord?

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Op maandag 21 november 2005 16:19 schreef 430n het volgende:
Nou, ik ga de gok wagen... Ik heb 4 nachten geboekt in het Carter Hotel. Ik ben iig voorbereid op het ergste, dus we zullen het wel zien. (Ik zal hier wel posten)

Ik heb van iemand een tip gehad; Het schijnt dat je s'middags voor hele lage prijzen tickets kan krijgen voor theater voorstellingen. Ze schijnen dan in de buurt van Times Square deze voor dumpprijzen te verkopen... (van die avond dan) Heeft iemand hier weleens van gehoord?