Peering from his 10th floor hotel room, Rick Bennett spotted a white Cadillac festooned with four American flags.

Painted on the car was the Web site www.pantsonfire.net. Towed behind it was a trailer on which stood a 10-foot-tall George Bush dressed in a space suit.

“These are the sorts of scenes everyone is accosted with here,” chuckled the state senator from Maine. “I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to mean.”

Bennett, a delegate to the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden, is staying at the aptly named “W” New York hotel, trendy digs at 50th Street and Lexington Avenue.

The name of the lodgings was likely coincidental, he said. With every hotel room in the city booked, “Some of us were bound to land at the “W.”

Despite news reports of more than 100,000 protesters in New York Sunday being held at bay from conventioneers, Bennett said he saw plenty of sign toters and button wearers during his first 24 hours in the city.

Jogging through Central Park on Sunday, he saw protesters calmly soaking up the sunny summer day, he said. Later, they greeted him and other Maine delegates as they left the theater of a Broadway show where Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke, Bennett said.

“They were very much part of the scenery,” he said.

Oliver Wolf, a Maine delegate who is starting his junior year at Bates College, said he saw a few protesters, but had no interaction with them and did not find them intrusive.

The delegates spent their first night dining on scallops and chicken at Trattoria del-Arte, a restaurant near Carnegie Hall. The event was hosted by Peter Cianchette, Maine chairman of the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.

Cianchette fired up the group with talk of handing President Bush a win in Maine, along with GOP sweeps in the Maine House and Senate.

Monday night, Wolf and other Maine delegates planned to dine at a New York steak house at a dinner hosted by Susan Collins, one of Maine’s two Republican U.S. senators in town for the convention. Afterward, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are scheduled to address the convention.

Delegates had two sessions of mostly housekeeping business, said Bennett who was appointed whip of the Maine group, a leadership position.

Although police have pushed back New York souvenir vendors from the streets surrounding Madison Square Garden, Bennett said delegates have not gone wanting. Along with their credentials, they were given a bag full of Big Apple memorabilia. Political paraphernalia are easily gotten at the convention site, he said.

Security at the convention was tight, as expected, Wolf said. He was required to show his convention pass and ID and had to walk through a metal detector.

“I feel very safe here,” he said.

Wolf, 21, said Monday that all the parties and festivities over the next couple of days should be fun and interesting. But he is looking forward most to Thursday when Bush is expected to accept the party’s nomination.

Delegate Stavros Mendros, a Lewiston resident, had a last-minute change of plans due to personal reasons that included a funeral last week. He may go to New York later this week, he said Monday.