The Hotels I’ve Stayed In – The Good, The Bad, The Quirky
Being a family man and a salesman at the same time can be tremendously challenging. My family comes first, but I can’t support them without travelling. My wife isn’t happy about it, but she wouldn’t be happy about being broke, either. She constantly says I should find a sales position in my field locally. To be honest, she has a point. It’s just that we’d be losing about $15,000 of income per year, and that’s not a situation we can currently afford. Well, enough about my problems (for now). What I’d like to go over are a few of the hotels I’ve been to around the country. To keep things simple, I have only included three of them: the best, the worst, and the quirkiest.
I’ll stick with the whole ‘save the best for last’ theme and begin with the worst. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to disclose the exact location of this hotel because my friend is a high up for this chain — Comfort Inn — and gets me discounts all the time. I realize I already gave up the name, but not the location. Without getting into further details, it makes a difference. All I’ll say is that it’s located outside a medium-sized city in the south.
Where should I begin with this Comfort Inn in the south? Should it be that the man behind the counter talked to his friend on his cell phone for ten minutes while I waited? Maybe it should be the television that only operates at extremely high or low volumes? How about the opened and used soap on the bathroom counter? The papers left in the drawer from the last visitor indicating the room was never fully clean. If that’s not bad enough, how does being able to feel hundreds of bedbugs crawl up and down your legs when you’re under the covers sound? Yes, I ended up sleeping above the covers (with all my clothes on). If that’s not enough, when I went to get fries at McDonalds across the street, I found police cars surrounding the place. There had been a robbery only a few minutes earlier. I retreated to the hotel, hoping I could go for a swim or workout to eliminate the stress. No pool. No gym. I spent the remainder of the evening listening to a man and woman argue and make some other unique sounds from the next room as I tried to sleep. Needless to say, I will never return to this particular hotel.
The quirkiest place I’ve ever stayed was the Red Lion Hotel in San Diego. It seemed like whoever designed the hotel suffered from multiple personality disorder. I could only imagine what was going through the architect’s head: Upscale. No, let’s go for value over here. Modern downstairs? Okay. Then let’s go country upstairs. Okay, it wasn’t that extreme, but you get the idea. One of the first things that stood out about the place was an upscale Asian-style restaurant being only a few feet from an American sports bar. The people in the Asian restaurant wanting to enjoy a quiet meal could hear the shouts from the sports bar. The second thing that stood out was that there were only balconies on rooms facing the highway and parking lot, but none on the rooms facing the pool. When I got to the pool, I noticed that you had to walk nearly 50 yards from the pool to the hot tub. Not so much fun when it’s barely above 70 degrees. Oh, and the gym was about the size of a large walk-in closet. All that said, I loved the place! There was just something charming and friendly about it. The food was terrific and so was the convenient location. I’d go back in a heartbeat.
The best hotel I’ve ever stayed it is actually a Homewood Suites. It was in Bethlehem, PA. I had just had a big argument with my wife and I was really ticked off. To make matters worse, it was snowing, so travelling wasn’t much fun. Well, from the second I walked into that place, things began to turn around for the better. I hit the pool and Jacuzzi area right away. It was far from the most extravagant place on Earth, but with no one else in there — something you can’t find at hotels in major cities — and the snow falling on the ground just outside the windows, it was truly serene. The location was very convenient. My business needs were minutes away and I made a mental note to come back with the family so we could go to Dorney Park. Seeing all the farms and beautiful country while driving from the airport was an added bonus.
Good hotels, bad hotels, quirky hotels – in the end, I love them all. Why? Because they offer different experiences. They’re also my homes away from home. I’m glad I got to write about them.
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