Hotel memories

A recent getaway had me reminiscing about accommodations. My first stay in a hotel was when I was in 6^th grade. We drove from Buffalo to New York City on our way to Long Island to visit family. About the vacation I remember the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, the automat and a bus tour of the City that went through Chinatown, and my cousin’s house with 2 indoor staircases to the second floor. What I remember about the hotel was the noise outside and the shower. The only other shower I’d seen was at summer camp for back then homes had only bathtubs.

Since then, because of music, work, and wanderlust, I’ve stayed in monasteries, bed & breakfasts, people’s homes, lavish individual hotels, rural lodges, and major high- and low-end chains in nine countries around the world. I am grateful for each business trip and vacation and consider my life blessed to have had such opportunities.

My first lengthy stay was at the Madison Hotel in Madison, New Jersey when AT&T tapped me to work on a yearlong taskforce to plan for and monitor the breakup of the Bell System. We could go home every other weekend, and on my second trip home I packed up some of my sheet music. After that I was often found playing the piano in the hotel lobby. The taskforce created two pilots of what the post-monopoly service center would be like, one in St. Paul and the other in Omaha. From my New Jersey home away from home I also established a base at the Thunderbird Inn in Omaha and was at the St. Paul Hotel when Torvill and Dean earned their perfect 10s skating to Ravel’s Bolero.

Just a couple of years later I was one of four consultants who for months drove from Chicago to Ft. Wayne, Indiana on Sunday night and returned on Friday afternoon after a week of facilitating team building at the new General Motors plant. We stayed at the Marriott, where the staff let me store empty milk gallon jugs in a janitor’s closet so I would have them to do water aerobics in the swimming pool. Later that decade, while working on a project for the Alaska pipeline, I was at a hotel in Anchorage where the rooms included a small kitchenette. For other work assignments I’ve spent a week at hotels in Toronto, Galveston, Calgary, Denver, Istanbul, Tulsa, Dublin, and Howey-in-the-Hills. Such assignments accumulated points that resulted in free nights in Oahu, Seattle, and Auckland.

As a female traveling alone, I have gently reminded many front desk clerks not to announce a room number but to write it on the card they were giving me. I learned to request a room above the ground floor and that it is ok to ask for a room change if something is not satisfactory, particularly before most rooms were converted to non-smoking. Yes, I once got burned with scalding water and in Ireland had to call to have the water turned on. I have been irritated with a gazillion pillows on the bed and disappointed with mediocre room service and non-responsive porters. I have complained about noisy neighbors next door, kids running unsupervised in the hallway, or the lack of adequate heat or air conditioning.

I came to appreciate when something novel, like mints on the pillow or built in blow dryers became the norm. I found that most staff are helpful and want to make your stay in their establishment memorable only in a good way. But overall I am grateful for the scores of hotel rooms I cannot recall. For those with a comfortable bed, adequate water pressure with enough hot water, and whose construction ensured quiet. And, having been a maid at a Howard Johnson’s for two summers during college, for those that met expectations of cleanliness.

If you travel this holiday season perhaps your own hotel memories will surface. May they make you smile.

Marilyn