Mum and I were approaching the Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica. Cruising up Ocean Blvd, we spotted the big white building. On the near side of it was a driveway, attended by three men, all dressed in white shirts, black slacks, black vests, and gray and black ties. They all stood next a booth, which bore a sign reading, "Valet."
Mum and I drove on. Google Maps instructed us to drive around the corner to the other side of the hotel. This only led us to a back alley, which was narrow and intimidating, but didn't give us any indication of where to park our vehicle. I pulled out the reservation as Mum edged the van around a big service truck and called the hotel.
"Thank you for calling Hotel Shangri-La, how might I help you?"
"Uh, hi. I have a reservation for tonight, but I don't know where to park. So, uh, where do I park?"
"Oh, give the car to one our valets. He'll take care of parking it for you. The lot is just south of the hotel."
"Oh. Ok. Thanks."
I hung up and relayed the information to my mother. We pulled into the valet parking lot and were immediately surrounded by eager young men, who opened our doors, unbuckled our seat belts, and grabbed all of our luggage.
Now, this sounds nice in concept. It also looks graceful and sophisticated in old black and white movies. In real life, it is AWKWARD. Let me tell you. You sit there, hands in the air, trying to stay out of the paths of the eager-beaver valet men. You also have to surreptitiously communicate with your mother about where the tip money is and how much to give them... oh, and which of the men to give it to.
Maybe me and mother just have a hard time with people being nice and polite to us, but we had serious issues.
As one of the men drove away with our car, I looked at Mum with my eyebrows raised. "We aren't going to ask for that back... are we?"
She shook her head. "Nope."
We headed into the hotel and did a quick switcheroodle of things before walking - yes, walking - to Mass. It wasn't too far, but I have a feeling we would have walked a considerably greater distance to avoid inconveniencing the valet.
I removed my three inch heels near the beginning of our trek, so as we approached the steps of the church, I stopped to slip them back on, along with a cardigan (leftover TAC shyness about bare shoulders in church). I unwittingly did this in full view of a couple of ushers. When I looked up, they were both staring at me, trying hard not to laugh. Hey, I don't like walking in heels. And I have callouses thicker than cowboy's coffee, so it's not a trial.
Dinner was an either farther walk, which made our total post-dinner, back to the hotel walk nearly three miles. But it was fine. We were in Santa Monica. It was a pretty evening.
When we went to retrieve the car Sunday morning, we forgot to call ahead to let the valet know. He took off running to get our van so we wouldn't have to wait a moment longer than necessary. I called after him to stop running, please stop running!, but he either didn't hear me or he ignored me.
Mum and I had absolutely no control over our vehicle for 18 hours. We acted as though it had been stolen. We walked everywhere. Those valets had stolen our car, as far as we were concerned.
We would be terrible at being rich.
p.s. - on the subject of walking, don't ever trust me to judge the distance between a hotel and the ocean. I thought it was, I dunno, a thousand yards. It was over a freaking mile, people. Over squishy sand, uneven cliff stairs, and a scary overpass thing. Oi. So yeah. Don't trust the girl who lacks depth perception to judge distance, k?
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