The Everywhereist

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Every time that Rand and I stay in an old hotel, we have a similar exchange:

Me: This place is nice. Too bad it’s haunted.

Rand: Baby, this place isn’t haunted.

Me: You’d like for me to think that, wouldn’t you?

Rand: Yes. Yes, I would. I would very much like for you to believe that this place isn’t haunted, because it isn’t.

Me: Whose side are you on, anyway?

Rand: Um … logic’s?

Me: SO NOT MY SIDE, THEN.

Or something like that. The point is, I’m rather steadily convinced that every time we stay at an old, remodeled hotel, we’re going to be haunted right out of there, and Rand’s convinced we aren’t.

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Have you ever found yourself doing something and had the stunning realization that you are, in fact, a grown-up?

Like the first time you get behind the wheel of a car by yourself. Or when you put down the safety deposit on your very own apartment. Or when the D.A. tells you that you’re going to be tried as an adult.

The swift punch of adulthood is both terrifying and wonderful, isn’t it? Every now and then it still hits me.

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Some of the replies to last Thursday’s post (via the comments, Twitter, and Facebook) hit me pretty hard. I have figured that several years of blogging would have thickened my skin, so my reaction surprised me (also surprising: when I got teary over an Olympics-themed Visa commercial. These damn steroids have turned me into a moody softy). I curled up into a ball and when Rand asked me what was wrong, all I could mutter was, “People on the internet are upset with me.”

And he had a good laugh, because when the sum total of your problems can be expressed thusly, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR LIFE.

But in the midst of the occasionally-heated discussion, an important point came up: this sort of reservation-mishap happens a lot (a big thanks to reader kokopuff for making me aware of this). Sometimes it’s an intentional scam. Sometimes it’s just an honest clerical mistake (I want to give our hotel the benefit of the doubt). Either way, you need to protect yourself.

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We stayed at the Harbor Court Hotel during our last trip to San Francisco.

Every afternoon they had chocolate chip cookies and popcorn in the foyer. I didn’t really notice much else, because come on – free popcorn and free chocolate chip cookies? I’d sleep in a Ford Pinto and give it five stars if you handed me a collection of treats provided by Messrs. Orville Redenbacher and Otis Spunkmeyer.

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Best. Wallpaper. Ever.

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I don’t get interior decorating.

Hotel Balmes, where we stayed for a few days during our trip to Barcelona last fall, stands out in my memory not for its convenient location nor its seemingly bored-to-tears staff. No. The perfectly-adequate-but-still-lacking-jamon-serrano breakfast does not really jump out at me, either, and our view (of an air duct) leaves no distinct mark on my memory.

What separates Hotel Balmes from so many others that I’ve stayed in is this: it is far and away the smallest double-occupancy hotel room I’ve seen, ever. Of course, “double-occupancy” might just be a silly phrase that we’re supposed to ignore – like “serving size” on a bag of potato chips. In the same bizarre parallel universe where folks only eat 7 Ruffles, two people can fit into a single room at the Hotel Balmes (the two must be related). But in this world, they cannot.

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Dear InterContinental Hotel,

I get the feeling you are trying to tell me something. I just can’t figure out what it is …

If you provide less than three warning labels, a kitten will die.

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Perhaps it will come to me after I’ve finished blow-drying my hair in the bathtub.*

Sincerely,

The Everywhereist

*Oh, calm down. I used a sealant to protect my roots. AND ALSO I DID NOT USE A HAIR DRYER IN THE BATHTUB. Electrocution is not funny. Three warning labels on a single hairdryer kind of is, though.

Forged by Lucifer himself, I'm sure.

I have a brilliant idea for a horror movie. It would begin like this:

A couple – a young man and woman – enter a hotel room. For the purposes of casting, let’s say that the man, dark-haired, bearded and handsome, will be played by Joshua Jackson. And the woman will be played by me (SHUT UP IT’S MY BLOG). They enter the room together, the man tugging a suitcase behind him, his toned arm flexing against his Ted Baker suit jacket, which he’s paired with a dress shirt, jeans, and, oh, I don’t know, yellow shoes. And no one cares what the woman is wearing because by the end of the movie her clothes will be in a crumbled pile in the corner of the room after a gratuitous sex scene.

Ahem. I have completely lost my train of thought.

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