Here’s another hotel oddity. The Marine Plaza Hotel in Mumbai got it a little wrong. The nice fabric shower curtain is on the inside, and gets soaked. The clear plastic curtain liner hangs on the outside.
Is there some logic I’m not getting? Are all the bathrooms done like this?
I’m not complaining—the hotel was otherwise nice enough. Just… the odd things I find in hotels! It never ceases to amuse me.
A lightning bolt of fear shoots down your spine when, returning late to your hotel room, you see the door is not fully closed. You know you closed it—and checked it.
Pushing the door a little you see that, not only is the door open a crack, but its bolt is thrown so that it can’t close.
This is what happened to my sisters at the Hotel Mercure in a Stockholm suburb. Luckily, it wasn’t the same day that they accidentally left their smartphone on the bed. (The phone was still there when they returned late that day.)
After the physical attributes of a hotel room, housekeeping holds our security in its hands. We can perform our hotel room security check and follow good security practices, but the maids can make our efforts moot.
A traditional hotel security threat has come from social-engineering burglars who enter rooms while maids are cleaning them and pretend to be the room’s occupant. To behave appropriately in these confrontations, hotel housekeeping staff must rely on their training, perhaps balanced by their own judgment and discretion. And anyway, rules are one thing; compliance is another.
Human error is a separate factor. How many times has that housekeeper finished a room, unbolted the door, closed up, and ticked it off her clipboard? Or, oops! Out of shampoo—she’ll just fetch it in a moment…
Mercure hotel management did not seem overly concerned by the security lapse. In compensation, my sisters were offered “a small dessert” at the lobby restaurant. The attitude, apparently, was that if they weren’t claiming a loss of property, well, no harm done!
I usually forsake maid service, leaving the “do not disturb” sign on the door. If you like your room tidied up (and even if you don’t), this is yet another argument for locking up your valuables, either in the safe or in your largest luggage.
The floating sign. As if the preponderance of signs in hotel rooms were not in-your-face enough.
For this hotel in Berlin, messages stuck on walls and set on tables are not loud enough. They have to be SHOUTED, thrust at us, rudely forced forward into our airspace.
And they are everywhere. Poking from the minibar, floating in front of the television, rising above the telephone.
Important messages, like this one: “Have you thought about breakfast?”
Yes, I always think about breakfast in the bathroom. At this moment in the bathroom, I can’t help but think of breakfast. Thank you!
Our hotel in Naples was on the second floor (they call it the first floor). We didn’t notice it had an elevator until the day we left. We usually take stairs when we can and, when we arrived, we were luggageless anyway. Two days later our suitcases joined us and at the end of our stay, we dragged them all to the elevator. It was the first time we’d seen an elevator meter. It required ten euro cents to operate.
ANOTHER hotel getting personal, just trying to help. This one’s in Berlin. The sign’s in the shower, where we’re exhorted to pay attention to our tension.
As a very frequent traveler, I can’t let myself focus on the nightmare of hotel bed bug infestations. I’m queasily aware of the increasing problem, but trick myself into considering all the press merely FUD. Otherwise, how could I deal with 200+ nights in hotels each year?
Kidney bean leaves to the rescue! An ancient practice from Eastern Europe has just been verified, documented, and filmed under a microscope. The bean leaves trap the little bed bug buggers via tiny hooks that catch their achilles heel: thin spots in their exoskeletons at their leg joints.
“Spread bean leaves in a bed bug-infested room.” It sounds like an old wives’ tale, but it’s now proven: the bed bugs get stuck the moment they step onto the kidney bean leaves. See the video.
And if you don’t think bed bugs are super-creepy, read about their alt-lifestyle sexual practice called traumatic insemination.
I’ve suddenly got an idea for my vegetable garden.
3/11/17: Edited to add a great resource, more than you ever wanted to know about bed bugs, on the site of nonprofit org Tuck, which is devoted to sleep.
Built into the wall, this spotlit treasure on display in a glass box with an oval opening. Found in our room in Cologne’s lovely Dorint Hotel.
If I’d had a long string of pearls, I’d have rested them in the bowl overnight.
If I’d had false teeth, I might have showcased them here.
If I’d had some udon, I’d have had an elegant bowl to eat it from.
If I’d had a pet mouse, it would have had a home and water source.
If I had a hammer…
But alas… I came unprepared.
Do you like hearing the sounds of lovemaking from the hotel room next to yours?
I’ve had my fair share of overhearing neighbors in hotels. Not surprising, given the number of nights I spend in hotels each year (average: 240).
Sex sound effects are certainly superior to the sounds of snoring, or worse, fighting. I’ve been kept awake entire nights by both. Yeah, travel is glamorous.
Unlike next-door-snoring- and next-door-fighting-wakefulness, other people’s nighttime sex sounds put me into a sort of dreamy, foggy trance—as long as they don’t go on too long. One night, wakefulness dragged on and on and the neighbors’ lovemaking sounds—loud and dramatic as they were—became repetitive and predictable. I had no urge to tune in, as with a fight or loud conversation. It wasn’t interesting. Still, I lost a night’s sleep.
I can’t help wondering about the noisy neighbors. What do they look like? How long have they been together? Do they always sound like this? Maybe they’re each married to others.
Mornings-after are amusing if I get a glimpse of the couple. Once we got in the elevator together and went down for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I sipped my coffee stealing glances at the two strangers I had intimate knowledge of.
A few years ago we stayed in the antique-filled East Concubine Suite of the five-room Red Capital Residence in Beijing. On its intricately-carved opium bed was a porcelain headrest and a note suggesting that couples take care in their positions so as not to damage the ancient bed.
Soon after we turned out the lights we heard the amorous sounds of our neighbors. Bob was convinced that it was a recording, piped in for realism. Thankfully, the moans and gasps did not continue all night.
What about daytime sex sounds? I hear them about the same way I notice people’s tattoos and rubberneck accidents: with a squeamish fascination of private things exposed. (I know tattoos are not private, but I was taught not to stare—but I want to stare—and at tattoos, I sometimes do, though not without a slightly naughty sense of illicit license.)
On an amusing, tangential note, I used to live next door to a prostitute. While she did not conduct business at home, she did take appointments. Her answering machine blasted each john’s message. “Hey honey, remember me, Jim? I’ll be in Vegas next week. I’m the one who…” And here we were treated to usually unfamiliar, vivid, and sensational details. On beautiful days when her open windows faced mine, it was impossible to ignore the variety of plaintive and seductive messages left by hopeful men seeking Cinda’s services. Compelled to overhear the men’s intimacies, I had this same sense of unwilling spying and illicit knowing.
So here’s my survey, travelers: do you like to hear the sounds of sex from an adjacent hotel room? Yes? No? Comments? If you’ve read this, you have to answer.
Cadiz hotel mystery knobs. What could they be for? They’re way up there, beyond my tiptoed reach. There were no connectors, no hoses—not even a bidet, although they’re de rigueur in Spain.
Any ideas?
Hotels are getting personal.
The Holberg Hotel in Bergen, Norway, wants to be sure its guests know how to do a breast exam.