Boring travelogue, Part 7: Limping towards the finish line, plus this place is way too nice

Let me just throw out there to start that we maybe fucked up and made this trip a little longer than we should have. At this point, we've been gone 2 weeks and we still have 2 more days and I think we'd both rather be home.

On the other hand, this hotel is kind of ridiculous. We're staying at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Va., and it's so over-the-top what with the marble and the stained glass and the employees all addressing you by name and the unbelievable indoor pool and the hotel bar that looks like the lobby of a Very Expensive Bank and everything else that we keep having to remind ourselves that it wasn't that expensive. A little less than what we paid for a broom closet with a surly staff in New York. Of course, in Richmond, you can live like a king on $40K a year, so there you go.

We're here because I used to live here long ago and wanted to see how the place had changed. Short answer: not all that much. One humorous anecdote: on our first day here, I dragged The Wife to my old regular hangout, the Bamboo Cafe. Walked in around 4 pm. The place was populated entirely by guys between like 45 and 65. And ONLY guys. Like 10 of them. So I'm talking to The Wife and I go "Well, this place sure has changed." And she was all like "OK" and finally I mention later that I was a little surprised it had become a gay bar and she goes "WTF are you talking about?" And I say "Well, look around" and she goes "None of those guys are gay."

Oh.

(Side note: No idea why it's called the Bamboo Cafe. There's no Bamboo, it doesn't have any kind of even vaguely tropical theme, there's no Asian food involved, nothing. It could just as easily be called "Mort's." And it looks exactly the same as it did 20 years ago.)

(Second Side Note: Maybe all those guys were the same regulars from when I used to go there. That would explain a lot. I remember all the regulars being a lot younger.)