We arrived at the hotel, unpacked and quickly dressed for an event that could either be indoors or outdoors.

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When we arrived at the hotel where I was staying the driver again completed the order with my drop-off time and took my credit card using the tablet.

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Once we arrived at the world of Universal, I discovered that the Loews Portofino Bay Hotel looked strikingly like Portofino, Italy, with its Necco-wafer-colored Italian-ish buildings jammed together in front of a piazza with hollowed out Vespa scooters bolted to the ground.

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The night I arrived, we dined with four delightful expat friends at a nice hotel restaurant, where I learned, among other things, that in 1992 a construction crew working for Ross Perot illegally blew up a coral reef so that he could moor his yacht, the Chateau Margaux, at his doorstep.

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