When Hotel Amenities are Useless

I have not posted on my blog for almost three months. Without going into all the gory details—at least not now—let me put it this way. Most people have kidneys that make pee pee. Mine make rocks and little stringy tumors. I'm having my third surgery in 12 weeks on Thursday and, man, I am praying that this will be it for me in terms of doctors for a long, long time.

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In the meantime, I have just attended The Fourth Annual Applied Learning Conference at Missouri Western State University. The conference was lovely, which is not always the case with academic conferences. But enough about that. The important thing is this. I am staying at the Overland Park Marriott in Kansas City. It is the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in.

I travel a lot. I've been to a lot of places. I cross the country a couple of times a year by car, which necessitates hotel stays. I travel internationally often; I've been to 30 or so countries. So I've slept in a lot of unusual places. Hotels are just part of this. I've slept in airports, hostels, jail cells (not what you're thinking—it was a small town in Mexico, and it was the cleanest place in town), on the side of roads, in buses, in trains, in every room and floor of every sort of flat and house imaginable—all kinds of places. And, yes, the Overland Park Marriott in Kansas City is, without a doubt, the nicest place I've every stayed.

Why is this? For me, a hotel during ravel—any sort of travel—is a utility. It's the place I go when I'm not doing something. I use the room primarily for sleep purposes. When I drive across the country, I've usually got a dog and cat with me and I've been driving for 15 plus hours. I'm more interested in a jacuzzi (I always try to stay in places with a jacuzzi) than amenities like, say, coffee makers or high quality towels or concierge service. Or pretty much anything. After 17 hours on the road, I'll take a jacuzzi over a TV and a coffeemaker.

And when I'm out of the country...well, what exactly is the point of staying in a exceptionally nice hotel? I know people disagree with this. But when I hear someone say “When we were in Paris, we stayed in the most fabulous hotel..” I just think...what the hell are you spending time in your hotel room while you're in Paris? I don't get it. When I'm in Paris, I want to spend as little time in my hotel room as possible. I want to hang in ... Paris. I wants to be so dog tired after enjoying myself in the City of Light that when I get to my hotel room, I collapse in joyous exhaustion. And that's exactly what I do.

Don't get me wrong—I don't stay in fleabag places. But it's not hard to find a functional, decent place. I usually rent apartments. Sharing a bathroom with all the people on a floor is not a problem with me. For the record—the last two times I was in Paris, I rented a one room flat in the Le Sentier neighborhood for about $400-450 a week. It's a multi-ethnic neighborhood—lots of activity. Lots of neat little shops. I like to hang with the locals and walk to the metro and bus lines like everyone else. The apartment is small but impressively clean and has its own bathroom. And I have more money and time to spend in the city. Every minute/dollar I spend on the nice toiletries is time away from drinking wine at the Place du Tertre.

Maybe it's that when I travel I like to, you know, travel. I like to live like a local and find out what a place is like for the regular citizens. (Another pet peeve...when people travel to someplace exotic and stay in in an American chain hotel. I heard a woman talking about Chile—a place I've always wanted to visit—and I asked her about it. “I didn't see too much,” she said. “We were staying at this wonderful Holiday Inn Express, and didn't want to leave.” A Holiday Fucking Inn!) I understand that people recoil when I tell them apartment buildings in Ukraine and Russia often have interior corridors that smell like dog pee. Hey, the dogs aren't stupid...the owners want to walk them in zero degree weather, and the dog defeats this plan by urinating in the corridors before they get to the front door. The apartments I've stayed in have always been well kept and tidy—and usually have funny shaped key; another thing I love about staying in apartments. And cheap. In Kiev, I stayed in a beautiful studio apartment—I had a little balcony that overlooked the river, and I was less than 400 meters from the metro station. It was $160. For 12 nights. The TV pretty much only had Ukrainian channels. But—what—am I in Kiev to watch TV?

Anyway, back to the Overland Park Marriott in Kansas City. 40 inch flat screen, marble counters in the bathrooms, huge work desk. Absolutely, positively the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. (So comfortable I actually asked about the mattress—I'm seriously thinking about buying one of these.) And, yes, a fabulous jacuzzi. But I kind of figure I'm enjoying all of this because my University is picking up the tab and Kansas City...well, I live close enough so it's not some sort of exotic destination for me. I'm still looking forward to my next oddly laid out apartment with peculiar looking keys and funny corridor smells in, say, Istanbul.