Hotels

A Few Notes on Hotels

Yes, I am in San Antonio to visit a friend. But they have a pretty full house, and I think staying at hotel is a real treat. Totally worth the money.

***

My Dad is not of this school of thinking. "All I'm going to do is sleep there," he says.

That's not all I do in a hotel.

I unpack my/our bags in a hotel room.

I bathe there. Put my contacts in there. Do my makeup there.

I walk around barefoot in a hotel room.

I watch TV there. I--and I'm not kidding anyone now--read there.

I write there. Here.

And, yes, I do sleep in a hotel room. Of all the things I do every day, sleeping is the third most important. So let's not undersell the activity of sleeping when considering how nice a room we'll get.

***

This room is nice. But moderately priced. The breakfast was positively elaborate.

The linens! The linens will make or break a hotel bed. This place went the European route: down comforter inside a duvet instead of coarse blankets and a polyester bed spread. Ahh. . .

***

Part of what makes a hotel room inviting is that it is so neat and tidy when you walk in. And the bed is made.

A few months ago, I got to talking with a group of friends about whether they make their beds each morning. They all did. (!)

I've never been a bed-maker. Never.

In college, I straightened the comforter each morning out of consideration for my roommate, and because it's hard to get any work done in a messy room and a room can't look un-messy if the bed is un-made.

But since then, I've never made my bed.

Until that conversation with my friends. I decided to try it for a week. And it has revolutionized my life. Not exaggerating, folks.

Coming into my bedroom after a full day didn't used to be a noteable experience.

But now, coming into our bedroom where the bed is made, I feel. . .a transition time. A "your responsibilities have been fulfilled, it is time to relax" time.

I am a better-rested person now that I make my bed each day.

***

I made my own hotel bed before sitting down to write this, though I could have waited for the maid. 

Why? Can't get anything done in a messy room!

***

I don't do the soap trick. (I first wrote "I am not a soap-hoarder" but there seems to be a judgement in that term.)

Bryan does do the soap trick. But he uses them at home. And when he helped his parents move, he took their massive collection of soaps--I guess they did the soap trick, too--and put it under our bathroom sink.

I cannot remember the last time I had to buy soap at the grocery store.

I was tempted to do the trick last night, though, when I saw the mini-toothpaste. Crest, no less! Because the single mini tube we've been using to take onto airplanes for the last year is almost gone.

Taking home 2 mini tubes would be quite a nice supply. We could get another 3 years out of them, at least.

***

Some of you get onto a lot more airplanes than we do.

I don't think I'd like having to fly a whole lot more than a few times a year. Even if the hotel room at the other end was a 5 star.

***

I was thinking last night that a hot shower in a hotel room after a day that includes flying feels better than a hot shower at home on any other day.

That first shower after arrival feels like the real start of your trip. The grunge of your travels washes away. You are clean. Ready to be the best version of yourself in a new place.

It called to mind that scene in Lawrence of Arabia, where Lawrence is travelling back across the desert after taking Agriba, and his young servant is at his side.

He says to the Arab boy, as they journey through the hot, dirty, exhausting land, "Have you ever slept in clean, white sheets?" He promised they would, when they reached the city.

What a delicious promise. I too, as I watched it, wanted so badly to sleep in clean, white sheets.

***
A note on Lawrence, the real one, not the movie one.  He wrote his autobiography.  Had the stack of typewritten pages in a valice and was taking it to his publisher.

Somewhere in the train station, somehow, someway. . .it vanished.  The whole stinkin' thing.  Gone.

He re-wrote it from memory, maybe from some notes, though they may have been in the briefcase, too. 

But that first manuscript. . .  Is it still out there?  I have the thought now and again, "Won't it be such a thrill for the person who one day finds it?  And realizes what she has?"

Not that this manuscript is any particularly important or grand work.  I wouldn't know.  Never read it.  But it is a famous book by a very peculiar and impressive person.

So much action packed into just one life.  Action that made the promise of clean white sheets seem far more dramatic than it ever could to me.

***

It is later now.

Last night, my friend dropped me off here, in my very nice room.  She and her two sons -  ages 2 and 8 - left, and the next I heard from them was Saturday, late morning.

But at the end of the elevator ride down, after dropping me off, the 2 year old had pressed his hand against the elevator door, and did not move it when the door opened.

It slid into the pocket, and acted as a door stop for the enormous pressure of the door.

He started screaming.
His brother, concerned, started screaming.

My friend tried pulling the door out, but it would not budge.  It is not set to.  It's sole goal was to open all the way, but it couldn't, because something was holding it open. . .

A hotel staff member came running, and stared at the situation in panic.

Two men came running, too.  Not staff members.  Just two men.  They put their hands to the door and pulled it open with ease.

The 2 year old's hand came out and swelled to triple its size.  But x-rays followed.  Nothing broken.  Nothing even hurt the next day. 

The brother asked my friend later, "Do you think those two men were God's angels?" 

Well.  Sure.  They may well have been. 

***

And to think, as all this was happening, I was upstairs in my swank room, enjoying the quiet, enjoying my little laptop, simply looking forward to a good night's sleep in some lovely linens.