We have come to realize that as working parents in the busiest city in the world, the only real way to get away and spend quality time with our girls is to literally get away, to go and stay in a hotel. No laundry, no dishes, no food shopping, no catching up on chores that I haven't had a chance to get to during the week. Just us, laying around and spending time together.
These weekends began last summer out on Long Island. We would stay at a Hyatt right smack in the middle of the island and even though we were only a mere five minutes from the expressway, we felt like we were in a totally remote and foreign spot. We never went anywhere near the expressway and only did things that were local and believe me, there wasn't much of anything local but that is exactly what we loved about it. We felt so far away from home and all the craziness of the city.
After our first stay as we headed home, only then did we realize how close to the expressway we actually were and how easily we could have been at any number of restaurants during our stay, instead of taking the thirty minute jaunts we had to take until we finally learned more about what eating establishments (central to us having fun is being well fed) were around the hotel.
The Long Island Hyatt is virtually a one-stop shop. It has an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, a playground, a tennis court, a basketball court, a volley ball court and a small playground for the kids. It is also situated on an 18 hole golf course and has a spa.
Last year I booked every weekend in the summer and would just cancel when we were not able to go. We would joke and call it our summer house. It would take us all of forty-five minutes to get there door to door. My children are now ruined for future long car rides, as they think every fun destination is only forty-five minutes away. And would you even believe, ten minutes into any car ride they take now, they ask, "are we there yet?"
This year however, I have not been able to get a room in our Long Island hotel for ANY weekend the entire summer and I started making reservations back in February! So instead I found another Hyatt forty-five minutes from the city in Greenwich, CT. And what this Hyatt lacks in outdoor activities (it does have the one essential though, a nice pool) it makes up for in beauty and charm.
(I am hoping that you can tell that the quality of my pictures have vastly improved from my previous post last week. The settings were all messed up on my camera and I think I finally figured that out and then figured out how to fix it, mostly by just pressing lots of buttons.)
This is the outside of the hotel and underneath and inside those arches, is the lobby. The lobby felt like an outdoor garden. There was a huge skylight that covered the entire lobby (pictured below), so it was covered but still gave you the feeling of being outside.
This was part of the restaurant in the middle of the lobby.
In addition to the restaurant there was a huge garden running through the lobby. I took these photos around 9:00pm so there wasn't much light, but I think their beauty still comes though.
These little statues below filled the garden.
There were tons of rooms and banquet halls everywhere and throughout the lobby there were all of these giant floral arrangements.
I will still try to get my Long Island hotel by hoping for cancellations, but this hotel is totally my backup.
