Grace Hotel

Crap. These posts are getting lazier and lazier. There's really no excuse, except tonight I have a good one. My good friend Katie Lime has just gone full-time jewelry designer and she's hosting a party tonight to celebrate in Brooklyn. As it turns out, my boss left early today and I can scoot before 7pm. With a 45 min train ride ahead of me, I need all the time I can get!

Real quick, though. I had an amazing adventure last night! Possibly the best since I've been in nyc. It all began with the text, "pool party?" from my friend Oren at 6:30pm. Did I mention it was 34-degrees last night? Intrigued, and understanding how rare pools are in manhattan, I said yes.

After that I went home, collapsed on the couch for twenty minutes, made some broccoli pasta, and managed to find a second wind. When he told me to meet him at 11 in Times Square, it crossed my mind that maybe the whole thing was be some kind of hillarious, initiation joke. Times Square? Really? Images of myself, bikini-clad in a trench coat, bathing in the bright-as-day lights, alone in Times Square flashed through my head before I brushed them away and hopped on the 1 train.

We met up at Oren's apartment in Chelsea and took a cab uptown to the Grace Hotel on West 45th Street. "It's really amazing," Oren told me as we walked through a deserted Times Square. I could tell he was excited by the way he jumped from one description to another, from tall, black swimsuit models to the best way to sneak three friends in for the price of one.

When we got there, the pool was deserted. It sits at eye level in a room off the front lobby of this tiny, boutique hotel. You'd never even notice the Grace Hotel unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. I'm not even sure we would've found it were it not for the round, orange sign illuminating the sidewalk outside.

By the time we got there, whatever sort of Wednesday night "party" was happening was pretty much over, but the bartender let us have free reign for the rest of the night.

Pink and yellow lights illuminate the seductive-looking pool as soon as you enter through the bar. There is a flat wall behind the pool, used to project movies on the weekends, and a stadium-style lounge area with neat towel pyramids and oversized pillows. At the top of the lounge area are three glass rooms; a steam room, an open shower room, and a sauna. Since the sauna was barely warm, we turned the steam up as high as it would go in the first room and spread our towels out facing one another. Within two minutes, the steam was so thick that the whole room was a cloud and I couldn't see a thing.

I'll let the photos speak for themselves, but the place is terrific. I think it only cost $5 to get in the pool and though the drinks aren't cheap, it's more than worth it for a couple hours of swim time, dance beats, and sauna soak in the middle of December. Who knew Times Square could be so relaxing?