After yesterday's excitements, what could we add to an already thoroughly enjoyable holiday, I mean some holidays are advertised as full board but it seems that we went for the overboard option.
Thanks to a wonderful phenomenon called Jetlag, last night, we manage to meet Mr Sandman pretty quickly and sleep, but things that night got a bit more complicated...
But first let's roll back in time and let me introduce you to my wonderful, best friend the infamous Nicolas!!! Nicolas and I met about 28 years ago, we were both attending the same elementary school both aiming for the same studies with majors in modern/abstract art and heavy metal.
Needless to say that we hit it off straight away and the rest is history. I mean we were born 6 days apart, lived for the best part of our lives 2 houses apart. We have the same taste in music, food, complicated/dodgy girlfriends and strangely enough we 99% of the time think about the same thing at the same time...
So what could go wrong last night you might ask? Well let's just say for the sake of the argument that it all started when Nicolas decided to store blankets on my bed!!! Our lovely room at the Chelsea International Hostel came with beds stacked onto one another and obviously he and I had to be on the same level... above... leaving the ladies the ground floor.
Jetlag helping we were all asleep 21:30 sharp, temperature was high so the blankets stayed on my bed for the best part of the night, but as night temperatures dropped and Nicolas felt cold, grabbed one of the blankets, accidently dropping mine 2 meters below...
New York is great and calling it "the city that never sleeps" is an understatement especially when your hostel is located in front of a police precinct and garbage is due for collection that night.
So anyway feeling the cold myself and having noticed Nico going for his blanket... I naturally went to grab mine but if you read the above, you already know that my blanket took the plunge. All I was left with was one of our well deserved "Gracious Home" towels which thankfully was dry by then and was now my backup.
Although I had the option to climb down my bed to grab my blanket, I forgot to mention that my bed was located next to a stack of metal lockers (yeah Hostel not Hotel) and that the slightest move from my part translated into an unbearable rattling, which tended to annoy the little lady residing below me.
So what to do? Using towel to keep warm, grabbing blanket and getting shouted at by angry sleepy woman? Well at 4 O'clock in the morning making life changing decisions like these is tough and I opted for the quiet option and kept the towel... but this would prove to be the least of my worries.
Because let's be honest here, Nicolas snores, I mean big time... and even now with a towel in hand to fight the cold, I was yet facing another challenge, getting silence to allow me to fall back into sleep...
Well sadly that never happened, despite my best efforts...
I tried everything: whistling, clapping my hands, talking to him... the guy is a locomotive and he means business, sleeps like a baby.
So after an hour of not sleeping nor making any towel grabbing noise, whistling, hand clapping talking, I finally resorted to use my only possesion at the time, the towel, as a weapon to fight the unbearable symphony of the night...
To start, I set myself a rule: "If snoring gets insanely noisy then throw towel to wake up ennemy" this formed the basis of my attack strategy and it had to be justifiable hence the insanely...
But Nicolas's clever, even in his sleep, snoring, he knows when I'm about to attack... He would go to an almost acceptable level of snoring, I would aim and then he would go quiet again and I had to retreat.
But thankfully after 5 or 6 unsuccessful attempts, he finally went into symphony mode again, hitting all the right notes and so the towel went... flying... it felt like minutes before it hit him right in the face, you know like one of these movies where everything goes in slow motion during attack sequences but it was a perfect shot.
It took Nicolas the best part of 5 minutes to fully realise what was happening...
But sadly when he realised the situation, all I got in return was the towel thrown back at me, with no blankets attached and snoring coming with a vengeance!!!
I had to make a stand, even now with a major setback in my war on snoring, I could not give up, I needed to sleep!!!
Thankfully the towel throwing had its little effect and I only needed to pronounce a few words for him to wake up: coffee and croissants!!!
And so we went, 6am Manhattan, looking for a french bakery, challenge extended... challenge completed... Another day in NYC, tonight bring on the earplugs.
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