Any hotel that’s about to get a pool is pretty cool, especially when
a major holiday, with the requisitely over-the-top party attached, is on approach.
Were we ready to celebrate? Our ceiling-testing fir tree and handsome menorah were the traditional and much-loved additions to The Wilfair lobby come the wintertime.
A sparkly miniature locomotive and bulbs strung through the Ferris wheel had
made their debuts earlier in December as well.
But when the New Year’s Eve
decorations arrived, The Wilfair’s seasonal froofery zoomed into the shimmery stratosphere.
Colorful
streamers and flashy twirlers and kaleidoscopic ornaments and mirrored gimcracks
and mirrored chandeliers and mirrored everything dotted the Faraway Passageway
and Moonbeam Threshold and the ballroom and the 500 Dip Bar and the revolving door and the front
entrance to the hotel.
Where there were no
mirrors, slightly stale gumdrops and gingerbread still reigned. The displays served as
a sugary reminder that the Christmas season does not make its exit until it has New Year’s Day to
walk it home.
Even the lobby’s flower spray, a bouquet typically crowded with grim blooms the size of my brothers’ heads, had traded its funereal air for a
festive mien. Poinsettia petals reddened up the bud-bedecked proceedings, and red carnations burst like fist-sized fireworks.
And holly held court near
the spray’s center, surely frightening the vase's other denizens with its pointy-pretty leaves. Not to mention its impressive ability to draw blood from any
unsuspecting holly admirer who drew too close for a sniff.
Usually me.
Out the hotel's
back entrance, a pair of porters craned atop ladders, their clippers busily snipping the tippy-tops of the citrus topiaries. We didn’t have a midnight ball drop at The
Wilfair, but we did have snooty shrubs shaped like pineapples and swans.
Shaped ridiculously, and yes,
marvelously, though where the balance between those two views sat I could never be sure.
A glance beyond the citrus topiaries told me that the hotel’s nearest
neighbor was not dressed for the occasion, unless you counted the clump of
multi-colored lights sagging over the motel lobby. It was the same string Monty always
remembered he had to take down after the holidays but always forgot he didn’t.
Something about the sight of the saggy lights, as seen through the freshly manicured topiaries, knotted my insides like an old string of Christmas bulbs, the one you can never seem to completely unravel without turning to a carton of nog to guide you through.
But the end-all, be-all of The Wilfair's tinseled-out transformation? There was glitter swirled into the maple dip I ordered for breakfast, and when I asked the server
about it, he blithely informed me it was edible.
“Edible glitter,” I
repeated, dipping my fingertip then dabbing it at my bottom lip. Then, after staring at the reflective
foodstuff, I stuck my finger in my mouth, with caution.
It wasn't bad at all.
Could I apply it as a fancy and fragrant lip balm? Would the 500 Dip Bar employees take note and shake their heads? Should I surprise the person I knew I'd see later with my new slightly sticky shimmer maple dip gloss, as not seen in the pages of every trendy fashion blog and make-up magazine?
1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. Yes.
