Days 22, 23, 24 – Washington Square, Gansevort & The Peninsula

104 days of summer vacation is not something to laugh about. I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms in the air and yelling ‘Freedom!’ when our three treasures finally went back to school. It’s hard to sit writing in hotel lobbies with three children buzzing around. Now, the summer gone, I could begin hitting the hotels again and by week’s end another 10,000 words had poured forth onto the iPad.
In brief, here’s how it panned out.

Day 22 – Washington Square Hotel
103 Waverly Place

Bob Dylan lived at this little hotel in the early 60’s in room 305, when it was the Hotel Earle. I popped in and walked through to the very casual café at the back, and asked the server for a coffee. He said to help yourself. Tres casual, I thought. Very airport hotel vibe before you catch a shuttle. I grabbed a coffee and a bagel for good measure and set to work. A couple of hours later I tried to pay, and the server asked if I was staying in the hotel. No, says I. Oh, says he, genuinely bemused. Seems the café (and goods within) are just for the guests of the hotel and free of charge. Laughs all round. Not wishing to besmirch my good-natured Australian reputation (I’d just been praised for my honesty, you see), I offered a $5 tip and said, I’d be back tomorrow. Great laughs!
Do try it sometime at the Washington Square Hotel. They’re very pleasant there.
Daily word count: 2935

Day 23 – Gansevort Hotel
18 9th Avenue

Uber hip Chelsea digs. Not far from the Standard and the markets and with cobblestones on each side. Coffee and pancakes, sitting beside a large plate-glass window with the sun streaming in did wonders for the hourly word count, which ended up being the best I’ve ever done. It’s got a fabulous pool on the roof too (but of course I didn’t get to see that).
Daily word count: 2870

Day 24 – The Peninsula
700 5th Avenue

Another Beaux Arts hotel on Fifth Ave directly across the road from the St Regis (which is also a very nice place to work). Wasn’t as productive a morning as usual as I got talking to a chap from Switzerland who was in town to oversee the production of the second series of a tv show. This fellow also ran an orphanage in India and had done all manner of extraordinary things in that country, so I got distracted. But that’s one of the risks the author-at-large faces in New York. You keep running into amazing folk.
Daily word count: 2069

Total word count to date: 58, 427