AMONG THE RICH

Will and I left this past Saturday to head to Greensboro, GA. Will was there covering ACC Media Days. They hold the conference at a different location every year. This year it was at the Reynold’s Plantation, Ritz-Carlton. Wow! It was very, very nice.

We were met at the door by men wearing knickers and knee socks who quickly got our luggage out of the car and herded us into the lobby. Will just loved their outfits. I may have to get him one.

It was really spectacular there. The service was out of this world. Every single employee spoke to us. And, they tried very hard to say our name, which ended up sounding like, “Vandervet”…but, they did try which I thought was great.

Once we got to our room, which looked like something out of a magazine, we decided to tour the grounds. On the property is Lake Oconee which is very nice and they also have an infinity pool. It looks as if it has no edge and appears to run right into the lake. I just thought it was the neatest thing.

After we toured, we decided to get dinner. We ended up at a restaurant on the property called Georgia’s. We paid for this meal ourselves, and it was overpriced for us, but we figured we may as well experience it.

When we sat down, there were white linen napkins in front of us. I went to put mine in my lap and the hostess quickly took it from me and put a navy napkin in my lap that she pulled out of the air. That blew my little mind.

As soon as she left, I asked Will why in the world I got a special napkin. He didn’t know, of course. So then I became nervous wondering if I was supposed to do something with this thing that I didn’t know about. After much thought, I finally determined that they replaced the white napkin with the dark one because I had on a brown dress and they didn’t want the white one to shed on me. That is the only theory I can come up with. If anyone else has any other ideas, let me know.

Once we got the menu, we realized that we didn’t know what half the stuff was on there. We told our server that we were “country come to town” and didn’t really know what to order. She was very nice and patient and explained everything to us. I ended up with filet mignon, squash, and very classy now…french fries! Will got duck and mashed potatoes.

I need to back up and tell y’all about the server assistant first. Before the main server came, a young Asian lady with a heavy accent informed us that she was our server assistant and asked if we wanted to start with sparkling water, distilled water, or tap water. Will, who is literally half deaf, yelled out, “I don’t like water! Don’t you have coke?” I told the poor lady that tap water would be fine.

I enjoyed my food greatly, but Will did not. The duck was too tough to eat and he wasn’t in the mood to complain. We looked at a dessert menu, but passed. I guess they felt sorry for us so they brought us two little truffles—one milk chocolate and one white chocolate. They were good.

That night we attended a hospitality event held by the ACC. There were a lot of “to-do’s” there and I stood by listening to Will talk about football. At one point, he was talking to one of the bowl president’s and I had no clue what they were talking about, so I was kind of out of it. When it was time to move on, I tried to shake the guy’s hand and tell him it was nice meeting him, but we somehow missed hands and did an air shake instead. It was pretty funny…and very awkward!

We mingled about some more and that’s when I noticed something….Will had a worm on his shirt….a WORM! I do not know how long it had been sitting there, but when I tried to get it off, it started doing that inch thing that worms do and it was doing ninety to nothing toward his collar. Of course, I found it funny, and couldn’t stop laughing. We eventually got it off and decided to head back to the room.

On our way, we noticed a jazz band playing in the lobby. They had a lady singing and she was pretty good. We decided to sit and listen a while and watch the people go by. A large crowd of….um….yuppies walked by. They had that special tone to their voice that some rich people use, the men had their collars up like they were Elvis and they just had an arrogance about them. People that think they are better than those around them are a pet peeve of mine. Well, I noticed that one of them had a very large nose, but I didn’t say anything at the time. They didn’t stay long and we didn’t think anything else of them.

Well, about 20 minutes later, the entire group came back by, but one was missing. So, I leaned over to Will and said, “I wonder where big nose is.” Again, Will can’t hear and the music was loud, so he yelled out, “Big nose?!” Right then, I promise you, Big Nose himself walked right by us and I yelled back, “There he is!” The guy was oblivious to our conversation, thank goodness. It was funny. You had to be there.

Once we got back to our room, we decided to sit out on our patio. In front of the patio was a little patch of ivy or some kind of plant. In order to get off the patio, the ivy had to be jumped. At one point, I wanted to see a building that was several hundred feet away so I vaulted on over. When Will saw this, he said very seriously, “That is just great Cindy. Getting in those bushes. Now you are going to have bed bugs.” I’m not sure if he was trying to say red bugs or what, but it was truly funny.

We finally turned in. One of the things I love most about fancy hotels is turn down service. I just think it is the cutest thing for your bed covers to be pulled back for you. They also left chocolate, a flower, and a bottle of water every night. I asked Will when we got home when he was going to do our turn down service. He said he’d get right on that.

The next couple of days went by quickly as Will stayed very busy with work. I mostly hung out by the pool. It was a hard life. The only thing I didn’t get to do was swim in that lake. I really wanted to.

Overall, we had a great time. If you are ever in Greensboro, I highly recommend this place. Hopefully, Will and I can visit the resort again during their off season…after we sell a kidney.