We had a nice New Year's Eve in New Orleans.
First, we went to a good Argentinian steakhouse in New Orleans called "La Boca", which somehow squeezed us in at 9pm despite it being New Year's.
Then, we watched the New Year's fireworks at midnight from the warmth and comfort of our 25th-floor room at Harrah's, without having to deal with the crowds or the cold. Benjamin especially enjoyed them.
Here was the view we had. The fireworks were to the right of the building, over the river. We had a clear view of them (they hadn't started yet when this picture was taken):
We went to sleep by about 1am, and woke up at around 10am to the sound of banging... and not the good kind of banging.
It sounded like banging against pipes. "Oh, there must be a plumbing problem somewhere", I thought to myself.
Awakened by the noise, we got up and walked into the bathroom.
And we saw this:
That's right. Black sewage was filling our shower, and it was also bubbling through the drains of the sink and bathtub.
Apparently there was some plumbing problem in the room next door, and the plumbers didn't realize that their attempt to fix it would affect our room.
It got on some of our clothes that were hanging on the side of the bathtub. It also seeped through the wall and got the floor wet next to one of the beds, also getting clothes wet/dirty.
This was the day before we were returning, so I totally didn't feel like packing everything up and moving rooms, but I had no choice.
They moved us to a nice suite, but it wasn't worth it for all of the hassle. I talked them into a $150 food credit for the trouble, but again, it still wasn't worth it to me, given the grossness of the situation and the fact that we had to pack and unpack an extra time, just one day before our vacation was ending anyway.
Just in case Harrah's thought I hadn't experienced enough fail on the first day of 2014, one of their affiliated restaurants on Fulton Street (Grand Isle Seafood) also hit me with a shocking and unexplained computer addition error!
Look at this receipt:
The subtotal came to $131.85, but that was wrong! Add it up yourself and you will see that it should have been $127.85. I still can't figure out how a computer could have made such an error. Was this a case of the Grand Isle "Superman III"-ing their customers?
You'll see at the bottom of the receipt that they charged off $4 after I caught it and complained. Nobody could explain how it happened.
Great start to the new year!