vip in the city

I would drive 500 miles

…but I didn’t have to, because J took the wheel for the entire road trip. (Thanks!)

About last night’s hotel: I’d never walked away from a hotel before, and as of this road trip, I’ve now left two. Our Cincinnati hotel was far from fancy… or even, well… clean, but we probably would have stuck it out if S had not pulled back the sheets of her bed to discover a bedbug. A bedbug — eee! She’d read enough horror stories about these highly insidious, notoriously difficult to elimate critters to know that we should not stay.

On the bright side, it was the smoothest hotel check-out ever. The man at the front desk merely shrugged, before processing our bill almost wordlessly, leading us to suspect that we were not the first to have had this issue.

Within half an hour, we were in our new, much improved (i.e., infestation-free) digs at the Sheraton “North Cincinnati,” actually, “Sharonville.”

We got ourselves an early start; we had a lot of road to cover today. Hours and hours of driving later, I had my very first meal at Cracker Barrel. How I managed to avoid this chain on those New York City-Austin treks will remain a mystery; there are a staggering 550+ restaurants spread over 41 states – almost all along interstates (and none in New York City or on the West Coast.)

I don’t even know where in Ohio we were when we finally stopped for lunch, but here we are. (Go, Buckeyes!)

One of the last opportunities for “a glass o’ sweet” and “vegetables” like Monday’s special “cornbread dressing.” (Yes, I had both.)

Sweet tea in New York!