I embraced my inner Eloise at the Plaza
I am 36, not six. Nevertheless, I arrive in New York with my favorite book, Eloise, packed carefully in my hand luggage. At the airport I hail a taxi, shove my bags in the back and ask the driver to take me to the Plaza Hotel. Talk about exciting. Eloise, for anyone who has not had the good fortune to encounter her, is a fictitious six-year-old girl who lives at the Plaza. In the books by Kay Thompson, Eloise’s mother is conspicuously absent (“she knows Coco Chanel”), her nanny permanently exhausted (“Nanny gets up feeling tired, tired, tired”), and Eloise spends her days terrorizing the long-suffering hotel staff (“I am
