Hotel oddity #23
byIn the most staid of Dubai’s many elegant hotels, the most conservative and sedate, the Jumeriah Emirates Towers, provokes a little smile. This after…
Hotel Oddity
Delights, disappointments, surprises, and just plain odd discoveries in hotels around the world.
Hotel Oddity #22
byThis very cup, holding this very fine pen, sat on a desk in our room. The coffee cup was from the hotel’s restaurant. The…
Hotel Oddity #21
byI have no idea what this thing is. It’s on the floor in the carpet, in front of a window. About an inch and…
Hotel Oddity #20
byOur hotel room in Paris had these gorgeous bathroom doors. Each door is made of one large plate of thick translucent glass in a…
Hotel oddity #19
byYeah, we know already, like “leave a message after the beep.” But this is odd… “A towel on the rack means ‘I’ll use it…
Hotel oddity #18
byChina World Hotel, Beijing— Very nice room. In an effort to think of every detail, there’s a little glass shelf installed on the bathroom…
Hotel oddity #17
byI have to say, there’s something rather cozy about a warm toilet seat. Definitely got used to that in Japan. I came to expect…
Hotel Oddity #16
byI stay in a lot of hotels, some of which are the best or most unique in the world. This one in Hong Kong—not…
Hotel Oddity #15
byThe Wellington in Madrid is a lovely, old hotel full of charm, the official temporary residence of visiting bullfighters. Our room was large and…
Hotel oddity #14
byOkay, this is priced in Canadian dollars, but still. $6.49 for a bottle of water? No matter how elegant it looks on the nightstand,…
Hotel oddity #13
byHotel hypocrisy. This is certainly not unique to the Delta hotel in Newfoundland, but that is where I was struck by the pretense and…
Hotel Oddity #12
byPasted onto our Reykjavik hotel bathroom tiles: Yes, we came out of the shower quite rancid-smelling—and the fragrance lasts. I imagine the locals: “You…
Hotel oddity #11
byWhat could be the purpose of a motion-detector inside a hotel room? Is this a new trend? This one, in our room at the…
Hotel Oddity #10
byWhat is this? Anyone have a clue? It was mounted on the inside of our Westin Hotel room door. I know, I could have…
Hotel Oddity #9
byI don’t think a plugged-up hotel bathtub or sink is terribly odd. The number of them we run into though, is. Why doesn’t housekeeping…
Hotel oddity #8
byEver stay in a hotel that tried to make you feel guilty about using the amenities? The beautiful Excel Hotel Tokyu at Tokyo’s Haneda…
Hotel Oddity #7
byWhat’s that spray bottle hanging in the closet of our Tokyo hotel room? It wears a gold necklace from which its explanation dangles. “Resesh”…
Hotel oddity #6
bySee anything wrong with the chain lock on this door at Miami’s Radisson Mart Plaza Hotel? It’s mounted backwards! Upside-down. It’s useless this way…
Hotel oddity #5
byThe Hilton Tokyo-Bay, aka Japan’s Disneyland Hilton, was shockingly behind the times when we visited. Our paper electronic room keys had our room number…
Hotel Oddity #4
byWe checked into a hotel last month and plodded through the tedious check-in procedure in a daze. It was a Millennium Hotel, but I…
Hotel oddity #3
byOn the wall under the shower head, three feet above the floor, this pipe drained water after every shower. Not one of the nicer…
Hotel oddity #2
byWe had a large and beautiful room at the Corinthia Lisboa Hotel in Lisbon. The business hotel’s casual restaurant, Tipico, is excellent, and features…
Hotel oddity
byTo wash, but not to dream… A full-length, fully-opening glass window in the marble shower allows me an expansive view while washing. I can…