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Hotel Review: Overleaf Lodge & Spa, Yachats, OR

For almost a decade, we’ve been spent every Thanksgiving week driving from California to Washington state and back.  We usually do this on I-5, and spend a couple of days getting there, and a day back.  We have pretty much stopped everywhere along the way, so when Mike suggested that we find a place to stop this year, I actually ventured to look beyond I-5.  Behold! Oregon has a long and drivable coast, which we have missed altogether!

It turns out that there are practical reasons to miss the Oregonian coast in November.  It’s cold, rainy and foggy – but the day we spent exploring it left us wanting for a more thorough trip, probably in the summer.

The Overleaf Lodge & Spa is one of a myriad of high-quality hotels that spot the Oregon coast.  It offers amazing views and quality accommodations at a price.  Even the day before Thanksgiving, a night there was around $150.

The hotel itself was both comfortable and nice. The room was simple, but the beds were comfortable, there were plenty of pillows and we slept well.  They had nice toiletries.  Our room was in the first floor, and had a door onto a path to the beach.  The weather wasn’t great when we were there, but the kids enjoyed spending time by the seashore.  It was pretty messy, however!

The hotel has a beautiful lobby, with a small giftshop, a comfy fireplace area and a well appointed breakfast room.  Breakfast had plenty of choices, and focused on whole-grain/natural foods.

When we stayed, guests seemed to be mostly retired people, even though we are in our 40’s, we felt a bit young for the hotel.

Overleaf Lodge & Spa
280 Overleaf Lodge Lane
Yachats, OR 97498
800-338-0507

Hotel Review: Best Western Arcata Inn

Simple and clean accommodations.

Two months after our one-night stay at the Best Western Arcata Inn, I have trouble remembering what the hotel looked like.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  We arrived late on a Tuesday night during Thanksgiving week, and left early the following morning.  What we wanted and needed was a clean, comfortable, hassle-free place to sleep – and that’s what we got.

The beds were comfortable, the pillows, in particular, were great.  The beds didn’t have ugly, unsanitary comforters, which is a big plus for me.  There was basic furniture and a large flat-screen TV.  The bathroom could probably have used more towels, and it was on the small side, but there was good water pressure.

Breakfast was adequate, with a waffle machine, toasters and cereals.  The breakfast area was tiny and crowded, however.

I paid $77 through a TripAdvisor deal.  We stayed mid-week in November, 2014.

Best Western Arcata Inn
4827 Valley W Blv
Arcata, CA 95521
800-568-8520

Marga’s Hotel Reviews

Hotel Review: Holiday Inn Express, Vancouver North / Salmon Creek

We usually spend Thanksgivings with Mike’s family in  Vancouver, WA.  Sometimes we stay with his mother, but more often we stay at a hotel.   This year there were 8 kids 12 and under for the holiday, which I’m sure makes the reason self-explanatory.

We’ve stayed in several hotels in the area, and the Holiday Inn Express is definitely one of my favorites.  It’s closer to the house than the ones near downtown Vancouver, it’s clean, comfortable and hassle free.  We stayed for three nights in November, 2014.

The room we got was clean and comfortable. It had two queen beds, a single desk with a chair, and a dresser with a flat-screened TV, a hidden fridge and a microwave. The room was large enough so that our family of four didn’t feel crowded. The bathroom was fairly large, as was the closet. And there was a little area for coffee, out of the way.
At first I thought the mattresses were lumpy and would be uncomfortable, but I slept very well. The mattress wasn’t too soft, but not terribly hard either. The pillows were great.

My two complaints with the room were relatively minor. Our first night, it was impossible to log into the hotel’s internet. I’m not sure if it was down or too crowded, but I couldn’t get a connection until after midnight. It worked well after that, though I had to re-authenticate at least twice a day.

The hotel was also pretty tight with the toiletries. We got a tiny bottle of shampoo and conditioner each day, sufficient for one person with long hair or two with short, but definitely not for a family of 4. Yes, I could have asked for more, but I never remembered to do so until it was too late. We also could have used more towels. On the plus side, the toiletries are from Bath & Body Works and smelled great.

The hotel itself is nicely appointed and functional. It has a large lobby with elegant but serviceable furniture, we used it for breakfast when the dining room was full, and to read the newspaper (available for free) while our room was cleaned.  The breakfast area remains open during the day, so if you need a table and chairs to work, you can go down there. The pool and gym are open 24-7 (you get in with your room key), and my kids enjoyed them. The water in the pool looked murky, but the kids didn’t complain. There is a small business office, but I didn’t use.

Breakfast was very good for a hotel at this price point. It had the usual continental breakfast items: fruit, yogurt, cereal/oatmeal, bagels, bread as well as a few hot items seating under a heat lamp. These were generally turkey sausage patties and biscuits with sausage gravy (didn’t try them). A couple of the days they had omelets (didn’t try them either) and one day they had bacon (very crispy, but not too bad). They have a pancake machine too. The best part, however, were the hot cinnamon rolls.  In the drink department, they had all the usual stuff – except for hot chocolate.

Check in and check out was hassle free. Traveling in November, I appreciated staying in a hotel rather than a motel (we’ve done the Shilo Inn before), as we didn’t have to face the cold to reach the hotel amenities.

I paid $77 a night + tax in November, by buying it through a Priceline express deal.
Two months after our one-night stay at the Best Western Arcata Inn, I have trouble remembering what the hotel looked like. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We arrived late on a Tuesday night during Thanksgiving week, and left early the following morning. What we wanted and needed was a clean, comfortable, hassle-free place to sleep – and that’s what we got.

The beds were comfortable, the pillows, in particular, were great. The beds didn’t have ugly, unsanitary comforters, which is a big plus for me. There was basic furniture and a large flat-screen TV. The bathroom could probably have used more towels, and it was on the small side, but there was good water pressure.

Breakfast was adequate, with a waffle machine, toasters and cereals. The breakfast area was tiny and crowded, however.

I paid $77 through a TripAdvisor deal. We stayed mid-week in November, 2014.

Holiday Inn Express Vancouver North – Salmon Creek
13101 NE 27th Avenue
Vancouver, WA 98686
(360) 576-1040
http://www.ihg.com/holidayinnexpress/hotels/us/en/vancouver/vanwa/hoteldetail

Marga’s Hotel Reviews

Facebook Posts Photo of My Sister on her Deathbed – And Forces Me to Grieve

Last Friday, Facebook apologized to a grieving father for posting a “Year in Review” on his feed that featured his dead daughter.

Facebook’s “Year on Review” on my brother’s feed.

On Saturday, they posted this photo on my brother’s feed:

It’s a photo of our sister, Gabriela, agonizing on her death bed. She died later that day.

gabibebeGabriela got sick when she was 9 months old.  She got síndrome urémico hemolítico (hemolytic-uremic syndrome– HUS). I was almost four when this happened and I don’t remember ever not knowing those words. I didn’t know their meaning, of course, because at the time nobody did.  A syndrome, I was told, is a set of symptoms that go together without a known cause.  Now we know that HUS is most often caused by e-coli or another bacterial infection.  Not that it mattered, what mattered was that Gabriela got sick.

Ironically enough, I have rather good memories of the three months I spent living with aunt Gladys and Granny while Gabriela was at the hospital.  My aunt and grandmother doted on me, and I enjoyed the visits to the hospital.  The old, immense Hospital de Niños building was located in front of the Parque Saavedra, a huge park with a lake and plenty of green space.  Later, in fifth grade, I would come back here with my class to do a “study” of its ecosystem.  After every visit my aunt would buy me an ice cream bar.  Back then children were mostly put in large wards.  It was probably for that reason that, upon noticing that Gabriela was sick, my parents had taken her to the private Clínica del Niño.  The doctors there didn’t know what to do with her.  I’ve heard the story thousands of times: they kept filling her with serum while she couldn’t urinate until my father, worried, picked her up and took her against medical advice and without having her discharged, absconding with her to the public Hospital de Niños, where they saved her life.  HUS, you see, is a disease of poor children, the Clínica doctors hadn’t seen it before.  It was rare and worrisome enough, however, that my mother and Gabriela got the only single private room in the hospital.  Some years later, it’d be occupied by my cousin Fernando. Those memories are not in the least bittersweet.

I still remember, as well, the names of the doctors who saved her life back then and kept her alive afterwards: Silver and Rentería.  Their names would be replaced by others a few years later.   While Gabriela survived HUS, her kidneys were permanently damaged. By the age of six, they were giving out on her.

The three of us celebrating a doll's birthday, c. 1978?

The three of us celebrating a doll’s birthday, c. 1978?

The CEMIC.  The Center for Medical Education and Clinical Investigations in the posh Palermo Chico neighborhood of Buenos Aires.  It became Gabriela’s home-away-from-home from the moment my parents found out about the possibility of a kidney transplant.  There were so many tests; my father had a different blood type; my brother and I were too young; my mother’s kidney was not fully compatible.  A German drug could work, perhaps, to bring down her immune system and prevent it from rejecting the kidney.  Working with the insurance companies to get them to import it and pay for it.  Getting Gabriela to gain weight so she could withstand the operation; getting my mother to lose weight to make it easier to take out her kidney.  My vacaciones the invierno, winter break, that year were spent in a nice apartment close to the calle Florida, in Buenos Aires.  It was owned by tío Héctor, one of my father’s college friends.  Mamá and Gabriela were in the hospital, papá working and visiting them, I was pretty much on my own.   I strolled the calle Florida, browsed at the toy stores and Harrods, ate the delicious pear jam that tío Héctor’s cousin was working to distribute. I visited Gabriela at the hospital some times.  She was in an isolation room, all by herself.  To enter, you had to cover your clothing, your head, your face and even your shoes.  You had to wash your hands with disinfectant and then put on gloves.  After her death, I discovered a letter I wrote to her while she was in the hospital, telling her about some little dolls I’d bought, advising her to be good to the doctors and nurses.

We celebrated Gabriela's first transplant with an asado for doctors, patients and family members.  1979.

We celebrated Gabriela’s first transplant with an asado for doctors, patients and family members. 1979.

The rest, well, the rest is history. She got the transplant, a year later she started to reject it, two years later we had come to the US in search of a second kidney.  It would take a year, two at the most, and we’d be back home.  That’s what we thought.  Instead, it was six, and I was a sophomore in college by the time it came.  Before and after, well, there were health problems after health problems.  My freshman year in college I wrote a poem about her death, I don’t even remember what particular health crisis she was growing through then.  Peritonitis, convulsions, infections, my mom actually kept count of the hospitalizations, she’ll probably comment and say how many they were.  My mom was with her on every single one.  Every medical crisis presaged her death, but she didn’t die.  Then she lost her second transplanted kidney, around the time I was having my second child; she refused to go back on hemodialysis so we waited for her to die.  At the last minute, when the toxins in her brain were giving her painful hallucinations she consented to be treated, and there she went on until she had her third transplant, this time from a girl she met on the internet.  The Wall Street Journal even wrote about that (years later, my husband would also be featured on a WSJ front page story, on a completely different topic).

Throughout my life I have made my peace with Gabriela’s death so many times that when it finally happened, it came as an enormous surprise.   Truth be told, I believed she would outlive us all.  She gave proof to the adage that death comes like a thief in the night, when you least expect it.

My relationship with Gabriela had deteriorated over the years.  I loved her, I hope she knew that, but we clashed too much.  I won’t speak ill of the dead because it serves no purpose, so let’s just say we did not get along.   In part I was happy to say my last words to her after she died so she couldn’t talk back.  But I think she knew what I would tell her: that I always loved her with all my heart, that I had given her as much of me as I could give her and still remain a person, that I lived every day with the guilty of the unfairness and senselessness that she had been sick and I hadn’t been, that she didn’t get to live a full life, and I did.  As she laid dead, I spoke those words for myself, of course, but I also spoke them for her.

My family back in 1980, Gabriela is at the front.

My family back in 1980, Gabriela is at the front.

But don’t get me wrong, while Gabriela and I were not close anymore, it’s in relative terms.  There is a closeness in my family which I think is very unlike  what I see in others, for better or worse.  When we were young and my brother and I would express jealousy about how much more attention my parents paid to Gabriela than to us, my mom would say that her children were like her fingers.  When one was injured, that’s the one she paid attention to, but the others were just as important and loved.  I think that the five + 1 of us (Kathy, my younger sister, was born two years before I left for college) are like fingers.  Too much part of a one to be individuals by ourselves.  I don’t think I can grieve for Gabriela without grieving for myself, for my brother or for my parents.

And thus we go back to Facebook’s ill-timed photo.   It didn’t appear on my feed, and for that I’m thankful, but it did appear on my brother’s. I understand why it did.  I come from a large family, with tons of aunts and uncles and cousins and second and third cousins.  Gabriela’s death was shared by everyone who lived her struggles.  They couldn’t be there in person, so they were virtually around her.  So they liked the photo, they commented on it, it was significant.  Which does not mean that seeing it again was welcomed.

My biggest issue was not that this photo was posted by facebook on my brother’s feed, he can deal with his own traumas, but that it was posted adorned with bright colored circles and squiggles that look balloons and garlands.  It’s a design that celebrates, that shows joy… at my sister’s agony and death.  How incredibly crass is that? How cruel?

It’s bad enough that they did it, but it’s worse that they did it with full knowledge of the pain this could cause.  After all, just like Friday they apologized for doing pretty much the same thing.  When you apologize for doing something wrong, you are supposed to change your behavior, not do it again and this time with happier designs!

Some good has come of this, for me.  I had been avoiding thinking about Gabriela this whole Xmas season, I didn’t want to break down and cry and I

have now done so, repeatedly, as I composed this post.  I didn’t want to think about the fact that next year, when my whole family comes to my house for Christmas, she won’t be with them, I didn’t want to think about how there is a finger missing from that hand now and it will never be reattached, but I know I did both of us a disservice by avoiding thinking about her.  I’m glad this forced me to and I can say Merry Christmas to the memory of that little girl that Gabriela was once upon a time.

Feliz Navidad, Gabriela!

Christmas 1975?

Christmas 1975?

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