No Sleep Till... Manhattan

Is there a place where you sleep better than you do in your own bed?

I have two places like this:

1) The inner chambers of a ship.

I discovered this unexpected awesome-sleep phenomenon during my senior-year-of-college Spring Break when I went on a Caribbean cruise. My friends and I shared the cheapest kind of room you could get -- one with no windows that's situated in the bowels of the vessel. I don't know if it was the hum of the engines' motors, the ever-so-slight rocking of the waves, the utter pitch-blackness that comes from having zero natural-light sources, or some combination of those three, but after taking several more of these types of trips in my 20s, I can confirm that I've never slept better than I have on a cruise ship. Ever.

2) Miss M's pull-out couch.

Although my cruising days are most likely behind me, the good news is that I will be revisiting one of my most cherished sleeping spots this coming Thursday and Sunday. When I used to work for The Man and traveled frequently to NYC, I would stay at my friend Miss M's apartment in the West Village and would sleep on her pull-out couch. Now, most pull-out couches are not that great, I will admit. And it's not like M has some crazy futuristic model that makes it superior to the other hideaway options out there. But for whatever reason, I sleep like a frickin' baby when I am at her place. My guess is that it has something to do with the temperature and sound level in her unit, the bed and pillows, and the fact that even when I was there for work, I still associated staying at M's with "vacation." And this weekend's trip IS DEFINITELY for vacation, yippee!


A close runner-up would be Miss M's guest room at her parents' place in the Hamptons, which is where we'll be Friday and Saturday night. My annual visit out there is one of my favorite, if not my #1 favorite, weekends of the year. It's one of about only three places in the world where I've ever truly, 100% relaxed. (Those reading this who know me are aware that it's pretty tough for me to fully chill, even when on vacation.)

So what does all of this mean? That I have FOUR DAYS OF GREAT SLEEP coming my way in the very near future. After a week of freakish storms that kept my dog pacing and crying all night, followed by a weekend of a dog-sitter staying at my upstairs neighbor's condo and letting their puppy run around wildly from, oh, 1 AM - 4 AM, I'd say I'm ready for some shut-eye.

- e