Ritz Raff

Every now and then we breathe rarefied air.

Fortunately we have kids to bring us back down to our rightful places before we let the staff at the Ritz Carlton allow us to believe that we actually deserve to have our ski boots whisked away and replaced by slippers. Slippers!

Now let me explain.

We just got back from a fabulous family vacation to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco. While in Tahoe, we met a family friend for lunch at the brand new and, at the risk of being redundant, totally fancy, ski-in-ski-out Ritz Carlton at North Star. Mind you, we were just there for lunch, we were not hotel guests. But these Ritz Carlton people have a way of making you feel not just like you are on vacation, but that you are in fact a whole different person. In my case, even though I had both Peapod and The Edge with me, for a short while I forgot that I had frozen boogers on my right shoulder and poop bags, little green socks and a pink plastic necklace in my pockets.

The lobby looked like a cross between a ski lodge and a spa with throw pillows more expensive than my whole couch. When we arrived at the restaurant, they made our stroller disappear and replaced our skiers’ boots with slippers.

Halfway into The Esposo’s bloody Mary, Peapod asked him if he would take her to the potty. We continued our chatter in their absence about how gorgeous the restaurant was – weren’t the exposed wooden beams so pretty and wasn’t the etched glass something?

Then they came back and Peapod made her big announcement about the bathrooms.

“Hey guess what? The bathrooms here are really clean. Nobody wrote on the potty!”

The whole table cracked up, of course. Sure, it’s fun to be fancy, but it’s even better not to forget where you come from.