Well it’s been a very active summer for Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple. It has been especially busy for Nicole, who in the span of about one month has gone to Vermont, driven to New Jersey, flown to Greenland, come back to Los Angeles, flown to Las Vegas, flown to Santa Rosa (Sonoma), flown back to Los Angeles, taken the ferry to Catalina, driven up to the Eastern Sierras to see Manzanar with me, then returned for a couple days just to end up in Dana Point to use up her Hilton free night. Wowzers trousers!
When one can get a free night anywhere, one typically doesn’t want to use it for a Hampton Inn outside the Albany airport (though that was criminally priced at over $300). Nicole did extensive research and decided upon the Waldorf Astoria in Orange County with a room priced around $1350 per night. It is also an easy drive for us making it the perfect staycation. It was about an hour’s drive down to Dana Point. The weather was oddly humid today as a result of tropical storm Juliette, so despite having not left SoCal, in a weird way it felt like we had indeed gone on vacation.
We arrived at the Waldorf in my 2011 Hyundai Elantra behind various upscale vehicles. The valets fought over who would be lucky enough to drive such a rare vintage vehicle. God only knows the spectacle if we had driven Nicole’s 2003 Volkswagen Beetle. Check-in wasn’t until 4pm and we had arrived around 1pm. Our room was not ready, since the Waldorf Astoria encourages its guests to not get their money’s worth out of their rooms. We walked a bit around the grounds which included a small botanical garden. We had lunch at the attached golf course’s clubhouse which offered mediocre sandwiches for $32.
Eventually we were permitted to check into our room. Nicole, a Hilton Honors Gold member, was upgraded to a King fireside resort room — touted as having a fire pit, a s’mores kit, and bottle of wine. HOWEVER, since we had been upgraded into the room and hadn’t actually booked that particular room, these things were not deemed included (except the fire pit obviously because that is harder to remove).
We were a bit turned off by this since it is a $1350 per night room. What’s $38 to them? That’s just a bad sandwich! Anyway, we were already scheming on how to beat the Waldorf at their own game, but first we wanted to check out the beach. While the resort doesn’t really have a view of the beach, since there’s a big golf course in the way, they do have a tram that runs on various intervals to take people down to the beach. We got some beach chairs and settled in. The beach itself is nestled between some steep cliffs which made it a nice secluded setting.
All beaches in California must be public, but the Waldorf has found a way to make it very inaccessible to commoners. While it is technically public access, there is no parking anywhere nearby so you’d have to realistically park at the Waldorf which costs $35 for a day pass. Finding a workaround to limit access to a public beach is classic Orange County. With that being said, the beach was very quiet and empty for being close to Labor Day.
We had dinner of tacos and summer salad whilst watching the sunset from a more casual dining setting just above the beach. Prices were still at Waldorf market rates of about $32 per item, but I suppose it could have been worse. It was odd in a way to be taking pictures of the same ocean and coastline just 50 miles south of our own beach. Our usual dry and cloudless skies were now speckled with clouds and humidity and it does feel like we’ve gone somewhere much farther away.
We took the tram back up to our room. I thought maybe the Waldorf staff would have atoned for their egregious sins of $38 s’mores and set it all up with a bottle of wine as part of the turndown service, but nooooo. Just a single tiny chocolate on one side of the bed even though they know very well there are two of us. We had to take matters into our own hands.
We collected the Elantra from the valet, drove to a nearby Trader Joe’s, and collected all the fixings to make s’mores, a bottle of wine, and also a Kringle and some maple cookies as a little treat. The Waldorf may be losing a star in Nicole’s review because of their antics, but we will not lose out on our s’mores experience. Eat the rich!, but mostly s’mores. We were denied late checkout for tomorrow because the Waldorf is trying to lose another star. Always resourceful, we will figure out how to make good use of our time here regardless.
passports & pepto bismol 