Refugees - Day 2 and the novelty is wearing off!!

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Mon 29 Oct 2012 14:18
Having spent the whole day stuck in the hotel, one of the big excitements is food. We had managed, by getting up late, to make breakfast last until 11am, we both read the paper cover to cover, and drank copious amounts of coffee, and then set about waiting for lunch. In the meantime we made good use of the hotel wifi and, as I said, I finished John's scarf, photos will follow. After a visit to the gym and a short rest it was dinner time, my, how time flies when you're having fun!!!
We got down to the bar about 7.45pm and were just scaring ourselves even more by watching the coverage of the high tide in NYC, when the power went out. Whether the power went off because it was cut off due to the 'Grand Plan' that cutting off the power would make it easier to restore later or not, I don't know.
John had brought a torch down to dinner which I had taken great delight in deriding him for, but he definitely had the last laugh.
After a bit of faffing about, the staff got the emergency generators running and the bar service resumed but on a more limited level - at least the beer was still cold! There was however no food, but not for the obvious reason that there was no way of cooking it, but because the electronic till was not working. Apparently, the staff in the kitchen can't cook anything that doesn't come though on an electronic order - imaging that!!
In an attempt to stave off hunger pangs John rushed to the lobby shop to buy a sandwich, yum yum!! Meanwhile, having spoken to one of the bar staff about our plight, (there were to be fair lots of others in the same situation), we managed to appropriate a plate of the staff buffet food, rice, chicken and steamed veg, perfectly good. We had to eat this in secret though!!
At 8pm, we were one in about 8.5million homes/buildings without power due to Sandy. The hotel has generators which fortunately runs one of the three lifts - did I mention we were on the 10th floor?? When we got back to the room it was unbelievably dark - normally there is some light and your eyes can adjust, but not this time as there were no lights on outside, we were very glad of the torches as without them it would be impossible to do anything, even go the bathroom!
From about 8pm Sandy was in full force, the wind was howling and the whole hotel was vibrating and it was a long and very noisy night. Sleep was barely possible, partly due to noise and partly as we were so worried about the outcome and what tomorrow would bring.


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