The Luxury Midlothian Tenement: A Christmas Tale of Wonder and Delight
It was Christmas Eve. My lovely wife and I had just arrived in Midlothian, VA, a suburb of Richmond (motto: Yes we lost, but we can still kick your butts!). We had come to the very heartland of the Civil War to spend the holidays with our kids, in-laws, and grandkids. We had also decided to stay in a hotel that particular year.
Bad move.
The previous year, we went up to visit at Thanksgiving. We stayed at a nice little hotel just a few minutes away from the festivities. But it wasn’t that great. What we didn’t know then was that the less-than-what-we-had-hoped-for accommodations would seem like a luxury palace in Beverly Hills compared to the hotel I had booked for this visit.
Three words: slightly upscale tenement.
Yes ladies and gentlepersons, old cousin Eddie may have had his Christmas tenement on wheels – that’s a Christmas Vacation reference for you Chevy Chase fans – but Midlothian has its slightly upscale tenement disguised as a beautiful hotel in suburban Richmond.
Recently Renovated Rooms
I say ‘slightly upscale’ because, and this is what convinced me to book, the hotel’s website proclaimed that all of the rooms had been recently renovated. They even had pictures to prove it. Little did I know that the photos were about as real as the pics of all of those ‘hot’ girls on X who follow thousands upon thousands of Xers and just happen to be intrigued enough by my tweets to follow me, too.
In fairness, the room we were shown prior to agreeing to risk our lives for seven lovely days and eight magical nights truly had been renovated. But so what? Had I renovated my bathroom at home, I still wouldn’t have put in a queen size bed and slept next to the open toilet.
Of course I’m exaggerating here. The recently renovated room wasn’t even big enough to hold a queen bed. The double that did occupy the space occupied nearly all of it. So much so that, even moving sideways, Kaia Gerber would have had a hard time making it to the bathroom during a bladder emergency.
The Rest of the Building, Not So Much
“But wait,” you say, “how bad could it really have been?” Worse. Much worse. You see, while the rooms were being passed off as having been recently renovated, the rest of the joint, not so much. The property owner wasn’t even trying to make it look good.
If you’ve ever seen Animal House – that’s a nod to you John Belushi fans – just know that the Delta Tau Chi house was in comparatively pristine condition. Our suburban tenement boasted a blueish carpet festooned with a cornucopia of unidentified stains in the lobby. The front desk looked like the remains of the David Letterman set after being carried to a Manhattan curb on garbage collection day.
As we strolled down the only hall I dared traverse, on the way to our room inspection (by the way, what reputable hotel allows guests to inspect rooms before deciding whether or not to stay?), I had the eerie feeling we were being watched. Guess what? We were.
I noticed upon exiting the room that most of the other guests, by which I mean income challenged renters who paid by the month, were peeking out their slightly cracked doors as we walked by. Gotta get a look at the new neighbors, right?
No Room In This Inn
Needless to say, we declined the invitation to spend our Christmas holidays sleeping with one eye open. But, as we left the suburban tenement and pulled into the busy street out front, we realized it was Christmas Eve and we were without a place to lay our exhausted, just arrived from Florida, heads.
Thank the good Lord he was with us. We managed to find an available room at a much more expensive hotel about 15 minutes away. I was not too plussed by the sudden jump in budgetary excess, but what was I to do? The tenement was out of the question. Worse yet, I knew of no stable in the area where we could bed down next to a couple of goats, a donkey, and an angel waiting for his cue to go on.
