Yesterday, I posted this poll on Twitter:
Based on those two responses (and assuming that the rest of you had cut out of work early and were already at happy hour), I decided to wait to blog. However, what I failed to mention in that tweet was how exhausted I was, and that the likelihood of me staying up after drinking even two glasses of wine was slim to none. In fact, I went to bed at 8:30pm (which, with the time change, is 7:30pm back in New York), and woke up at 7:30am, for a glorious 11 hours of sleep. It’s amazing what being overtired and then knocking yourself out with wine will do! Best part is, I still have half a bottle of wine left over for tonight. Honestly, as long as you make sure you drink plenty of water before and after, I think a few glasses of wine (or a few beers) is the best way to get a good night’s sleep the night before a race – it ensures you’ll get to bed early, sleep soundly, and not be awake and stressing about your race.
A big part of the reason that I was so overtired was that yesterday I had to again get up at 4:30am to catch a flight. Fortunately, this time it was to the beautiful island of Bermuda! I’m here until Sunday to run the Bermuda Marathon, and it is so stunningly beautiful and amazing, I can’t get over it. As a bonus, this trip is a bargain vacation for some pretty stellar accommodations!
First of all, I found a pricing mistake on airfare – $178 (with taxes) roundtrip from NYC. And on my preferred airline, Delta! While I have medium-level status on most of the airlines (United, American, Delta), I have a slight preference for Delta’s service. Plus I like their Biscoff cookies 🙂 Because, you know, liking a 25 cent pack of cookies is good enough rationale for picking an airline with which to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on airfare.
When it came to finding an actual place to stay, it was a little bit more tricky. Most places in Bermuda seemed to be fairly expensive (and after arriving here, I see why – they are all gorgeous and super high end), but I managed to find a highly-rated property called The Reefs that was only $99 on Orbitz (despite being $299 everywhere else). I booked it, and then a few weeks later, I got an email from Orbitz – ruh roh. They said that they were sorry, but the hotel was actually undergoing renovations and so they wouldn’t be able to accommodate me in my single room or offer me any restaurants/food outlets on site… so to compensate, they were moving me to a 2 bedroom oceanside condo and crediting me $30 a night to use for grocery delivery! WOW!
When one of my former coworkers from when I worked in airline pricing offered me some buddy passes (aka cheap tickets) for friends to come, I tried at the last minute to see if I could get any takers, since I have so much extra space, but everyone was tied up… bummer. And so it is that I have this incredibly gorgeous and massive luxury condo all to myself, for cheap. I swear, I feel like I’m on the set of Revenge or something. For example, here’s a shot of the living room:
Last night was spent lounging around in my hot tub (why yes, I do have my own personal hot tub on a balcony overlooking the ocean), drinking wine, and watching The Bachelor (because nothing goes better with this multimillion dollar beach condo than a $10 bottle of Barefoot Muscato and some trashy reality TV). Honestly, though, it was exactly the night that I needed, and I adored every minute of it.
Today: headed to the gym to lift (arms only; saving legs for tomorrow’s marathon), then cooking lunch in my gorgeous condo kitchen (dual ovens! Sub zero refrigerator! Wusthof knives! Can I move here?), and heading over to the race expo in the afternoon. It remains to be seen whether I decided to stick around for the official pasta dinner or just head home to cook again (I can’t get enough of my condo), but I think either option is a good one… as long as I make time to finish that wine before bed 🙂
if there was ever a good reason to delay a blog post – WINE is that reason. 🙂 Have fun!