Coffee Juggling

We’re in Austin for a short visit, staying in one of the hotels in the downtown area. In these circumstances, one of my spousal duties is to get up first and go down to the service area and get two cups of hot coffee for us. This crucial responsibility inevitably requires me to employ the fine art of coffee juggling.

Coffee juggling involves a few important considerations, and a few even more important skills. The considerations involve exercising judgment on how full to fill the cup from the self-service coffee station, and what additional items, if any, you can reasonably bring along with you and the two cups of coffee. A banana, for example, can safely be carried in a pocket, but a muffin would be crushed in a pocket and therefore must be carefully balanced on a coffee cup lid. This dramatically enhances the coffee juggling challenge, so the question becomes: is a tasty muffin worth it? (The answer, incidentally, is always “yes.”)

The skills kick in after you fill your cups and make your additional food selection. The first skill is properly affixing one of those plastic lids to the brimming cup of java, and making sure it is fully engaged, so it won’t fly off on the return journey and lead to hot coffee armageddon. The next skill is figuring out how to shift the full cups of hot coffee in your hands so that you can safely stab the elevator button, and then do so again when you reach your room and have to fish the room key out of your pocket, unlock the door, and then use one hand to open the door knob while precariously balancing two cups of coffee with the other. The fact that the piping hot coffee has fully heated the paper cups and is probably burning your hand by this point just adds to the challenge.

But if your coffee juggling skills remain sharp, and you make it into the room without a drop or a spill, you can start your morning with a welcome feeling of first thing in the morning accomplishment. With the knowledge that you’ve capably performed your first important task and a hot cup of coffee for fuel, you are ready to face the day.

The Hotel Paisano

We’re in Marfa, Texas, on our way to Big Bend National Park for a short visit and some hiking. At our stop in Marfa we are staying at the Hotel Paisano, a famous old hotel. I’m a huge fan of grand old hotels–and the Hotel Paisano definitely qualifies.

The Paisano was built in 1930 on one of the main streets of Marfa, a town that springs suddenly from the vast, dusty, empty plains of west Texas. The hotel was designed by Henry Trost, an architect who was responsible for many of the notable historic buildings in the towns of west Texas, such as Marfa, Marathon, and Alpine. 

The hotel is an elegant structure with classical lines and all kinds of beautiful flourishes, like the entrance courtyard with its large fountain, shown above. The foyer of the hotel, shown below, provides an especially warm welcome for the weary traveler, with its wooden beam ceiling, Spanish-style tile floors, stuffed heads, and western touches. It’s a striking introduction to the hotel, and leads gracefully to a seating area with a large fireplace and the entrance to the hotel bar and restaurant. 

The Hotel Paisano was the headquarters for the cast and crew during the filming of the 1950s movie Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean, and large photos from the filming are found throughout the hotel. It’s interesting to walk the hallways where those Hollywood legends once trod. That bit of history just adds some additional luster to this fine old hotel. 

Flye Point, July 2, 6:30 a.m.

Last night we spent the night in one of the rustic cabins that are part of the Lookout Inn, an old hotel and lodging spot on Flye Point, near Brooklin, Maine. Flye Point is considered by many to be one of the most scenic parts of Maine. Regrettably, we weren’t able to enjoy the view to its fullest, because the fog was heavy and prevented us from seeing far out onto the water. The tide was out, the air was redolent of the well-known scent of the waterfront, and to get down to the rocks you needed to walk down a mossy wooden staircase. In short, it was a classic Maine scene.

The Lookout Inn is a pretty place that has been a Maine lodging option for decades. That’s it to the center left of the photograph below. It has extensive and beautiful grounds that were puddled and dew-soaked when we ambled around this morning, after an evening rainstorm. If you stay in one of the cabins, don’t count on getting wireless or being able to catch up on email, incidentally. That’s one of the advantages of the place, in my view.

When Hotels Hit The Road

For a period of time I had to travel regularly to San Francisco for work. On most of those trips, I stayed in a hotel in the Embarcadero area of town, close to my ultimate work destination, and would walk around town when the work day was over. I ate great food, watched seals frolic on rocks, enjoyed looking at the Golden Gate bridge and the views of the bay and Alcatraz, and never had a problem. San Francisco, in my view, was one of the rare cities in America that had a unique feel and vibe, all its own.

Obviously, something has changed since my last visit, which probably was more than a decade ago.

The latest evidence of that is the decision by a huge hotel real estate trust, Park Hotels & Resorts, to abandon its interest in two enormous San Francisco hotels: the Hilton San Francisco, which has a staggering 1,921 rooms, and the Parc 55 San Francisco, which offers a more modest (but still enormous) 1,024 rooms. Park Hotels & Resorts decided to stop payments on a $725 million loan backed by the two properties and is simply walking away from them.

In announcing its decision, Park Hotels & Resorts cited “record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand and will likely significantly reduce compression in the city for the foreseeable future.” For these reasons, Park’s CEO said “we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges.”

San Francisco has been strongly affected by the decline in business travel and the drop in downtown workers that occurred during the COVID-19 shutdown period and that haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, but as Park’s statement suggests, there are other factors at play as well. Several retailers have shuttered San Francisco locations due to a surge in shoplifting, and what Park referred to as “street conditions” relates to an increase in the city’s homeless population and related issues, like on-street drug use, public urination, graffiti, and aggressive panhandling. All of these conditions have led some businesses who planned San Francisco events to cancel them, exacerbating the problem.

Park Hotels & Resorts isn’t getting out of the hotel business. Its holdings include 46 hotels and resorts with 29,000 rooms. It has simply decided that two gigantic San Francisco hotels that used to be filled with tourists and business travelers just aren’t worth it any more. When hotels hit the road like that, it tells you something.

The Upside-Down Hotel

During our brief visit to Asheville, we’re staying at the Omni Grove Park Inn, an historic hotel that was opened in 1913. It’s a charming, interesting place that includes lots of terraces, balconies, and even waterfalls on the property. A visitor can definitely expect to get his or her steps in while exploring the sprawling footprint of the hotel. It’s been visited by many historical and cultural figures during its more than a century of operations, and you can see their photos as you walk along the hallways.

Like many vintage hotels, the Grove Park Inn has its quirks. The main one, in our view, is that its configuration is upside-down. The hotel is built into a hillside and features two wings that extend out and down the hillside. As a result, when you check in on the ground floor lobby level, most of the guest rooms require you to take the elevator down, and when you are leaving your room to get back to the lobby level you need to go up. It takes some getting used to.

Also like other old hotels, the Park Grove Inn is supposedly haunted, in its case by a kindly spirit called the Pink Lady. We haven’t seen her or experienced her presence during our visit–perhaps because she went in the wrong direction on an elevator.

Hotel Room Un-Art

You never know what you are going to get from hotel room artwork. Black velvet paintings, bad landscapes, out-of-focus photographs of unknown landmarks–the standard American hotel room tends to be a repository for weird, often disturbing images that would never be hung in a person’s actual home.

My expectations for hotel room decor are understandably low, but even so I was struck by this piece of artwork found in my room at a hotel in San Marcos, Texas. It’s not a mirror; it’s just a frame around nothing. It wasn’t clear to me whether the nothingness of the piece is by design, and is intended to be a clever commentary on the grim obliviousness of generic hotel rooms, or whether (more likely) the photograph or art that was within the frame fell out or was taken by a prior guest and never replaced.

Either way, it was a thought-provoking wall hanging in an otherwise undistinguished hotel.

Making The Bed

A stay in a hotel reminds you that there are different approaches to making a bed. At home, you might simply do a few quick tugs here and there to make sure that the sheets and blankets are reasonably straightened, and return the pillows to their position at the head of the bed—but hotel bed-making is a much more rigorous exercise.

The maid in our hotel in Tucson apparently belongs to the precise, Army basic training/a quarter must bounce off the sheets school of bed-making. The sheets are stretched so taut and have been cinched so tightly under the mattress that it takes a few good heaves just to loosen the sheets enough to actually get into bed. It looks neat, but is kind of a pain in the keister—although you’ve got to give the maid an A for effort.

Have you ever wondered why the act of arranging the sheets is called “making” the bed?

One Pillow, Two Pillow

Lately I’ve been experimenting with different pillow combinations, trying to find just the right form of headrest for a good night’s sleep.

My pillow use history has been pretty vanilla, frankly. I started off my cognizant life with one pillow, because I’m sure my parents would never have thought of their kids having more than one on their beds. I stuck with one pillow through college, but at some point–I’m not sure exactly when–the notion that there could be more than one pillow per person swept the nation, like disco during the ’70s or big hair during the ’80s, and we ended up with multiple pillows on the bed. At that point, the question was squarely presented: do you continue with one pillow, or try multiple pillows?

I quickly decided that the choice boiled down to one pillow versus two pillows; more than two pillows seemed over the top and was uncomfortable, besides. I initially found it hard to get comfortable with two pillows, so I continued on the one-pillow track. This meant that, when traveling, I had to hurl many pillows off the bed in every hotel, because in hotels the beds sprout pillows like the ground sprouts mushrooms after a spring rainstorm. But recently, after long hours of driving, I rolled into a hotel late at night, exhausted, pretty much collapsed onto a bed with two pillows, and got a good, if abbreviated, night’s sleep–which made me think I should give two pillows a try, again.

Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. One pillow is what I’m used to, and seems to provide all of the head support I need. Two pillows, however, afford the luxury of quantity, and therefore provide more options you can flip to get to the cool side on a warm summer night. Two pillows, though, can fall into disarray during nocturnal movements, leaving you with a crick in your neck in the morning. On the other hand, one pillow can develop that dent in the middle that requires you to bunch up the pillow in a futile attempt to provide additional support.

One pillow, two pillow? It sounds like a Dr. Seuss book, but the experiment continues.

Paying For Points

I belong to many different airline and hotel rewards programs (which I am sure the rewards program pros would say is not a good approach, by the way). Lately, it seems like I am increasingly being offered a chance to buy points or miles in those programs. That happens whenever I check in for a flight on one of my rewards program carriers. Similarly, one of the hotel programs recently sent an email announcing that I can get “free” miles by buying points and then having the hotel chain match the points I’ve purchased.

The notion of buying points or miles seems incredibly weird to me–like using real money to buy Monopoly money. Sure, points can be used to buy certain things, but there always are conditions, limitations, and strings attached. Why would you want to take money that can be used unconditionally, to purchase whatever you want, and convert it into something that can be used only to buy one thing, with restrictions? My inherent cheapskate tendencies rebel against that notion. At least some people who profess to be proficient in rewards programs agree that, except in very limited circumstances, paying for points or miles doesn’t make sense. And the exceptions kind of prove my point. You need to spend a lot of time with rewards program provisions to figure out whether your circumstances justifying buying the points or miles–and who has the time to study rewards program fine print?

There’s one other thing about the buying points or miles that bugs me: the program sponsors are being paid for doing nothing. It’s no wonder that prospect of purchasing points or miles is raised so frequently. And it also seems to distract from the businesses’ attention to their core activities, too. Rather than figuring out whether they can entice me to spend money on points or miles, I’d rather that the hotel chains focus exclusively on providing clean, decent rooms in good locations, and the airlines focus on offering safe, on-time, uncancelled flights.

The Shape Of Things To Come?

Staying at a new hotel often can give you a glimpse into the future. If the hotel has recently been constructed or refurbished, the rooms are likely to involve new design configurations, furnishings, fixtures, and space-saving approaches that look to summon the future rather than reflect the past.

I’m staying in a new hotel in Washington, D.C., and the future here looks . . . well, square. Everything in my room is very angular and cornered, from the desk, chairs, and lamps, to the bed frame and, finally, to the bathroom sink and toilet. In my room, the hotel vision of the future involves a lot of right angles and sharp edges.

I was especially intrigued by the square commode, pictured above, that thoughtfully includes both right- and left-handed toilet paper dispensers. After decades of using standard toilets and training new generations of humans in their operation, can square toilets be in our future? Fortunately, this one works like the others. The only real difference is that the square design provides a lot more of a seating area.

You Know You’re In An Old Hotel When . . .

I love old hotels. When I saw this sign in the Hotel Bennett in downtown Charleston, I knew I’d found one.

Music Gives You Wings

Most hotel artwork is pretty generic, but this piece by artist Paul Villinski in the lobby of the Van Zandt Hotel in Austin is pretty cool. Those birds flying from the old Victoria are made of all kinds of old, reshaped records—including one by Townes Van Zandt.

Austin Athirst

It’s fair to say Austin has a healthy thirst for adult beverages. The downtown area features two significant drinking areas—Sixth Street and Rainey Street—where you can wet your whistle at countless bars, cocktail lounges, and saloons, many of which are blasting recorded music or featuring live music. But that doesn’t really give you a clear picture. Here are some vignettes that help to illustrate the point:

• When we checked in to our hotel, the Van Zandt, on Friday afternoon, the clerk asked if we would like a beer or a water. I’m pretty sure the beer was mentioned first.

• One of the bars on Sixth Street is evidently so popular that, as the sign above indicates, people are willing to install the “LineLeap” app and pay for the privilege of jumping to the front of the line—something I’ve heard of for amusement parks, but not bars. How do the other liquored-up people in the line like that?

• When I was taking the above photo at about 2 p.m. two guys who had gotten an early start came up to me and one, with breath that could stop a rhino, challenged me to “rock, paper, scissors, two out of three!” I politely declined.

• We walked down Rainey Street at a little after noon, where I took the picture of the sign below. The bars were already filling up, and it was clear that the cocktails would be lonely no longer.

• When we later returned to our hotel a little after 9 p.m., Rainey Street was packed with people. The music being pumped out by one nearby bar was so loud that the bass reverb was distinctly heard and vibrating the windows in our room on the 12th floor.

Wanted: COVID Concierge

Back in the days when we regularly used hotels, the concierge desk sure could come in handy. If you were in a faraway city and needed directions, recommendations about restaurants or sightseeing opportunities, or reservations, the concierge desk was the place to go. In fact, the good people staffing the concierge desk seemed to know everything you might need to know about the city you were visiting.

We all could use a “COVID Concierge” these days.

We’re at the point in this pandemic, and in the governmental responses to the pandemic, where the rules being applied are becoming a bit overwhelming and hard to process. In Columbus, for example, we’re currently subject to a curfew and regulations imposed by the State of Ohio, plus a stay at home order issued by the county government — and for all I know, the City of Columbus has added an additional layer of regulation. The average person confronts a lot of questions as they go about their lives. How do you know for sure if you’re permitted to walk the dog at 6:23 a.m.? Can you visit your elderly relative at a nursing home, and if so, how? What’s the latest development concerning in-school and stay-at-home learning in your child’s school system?

And if you want to take a trip somewhere — hey, a fellow can dream, can’t he? — you’ll have to figure out the state, county, and local rules and regulations that apply to travelers at your destination, the rules and regulations for any states where you will be spending the night on your journey, and the rules and regulations of your home state and home town that will apply upon your return. Do you need to be tested to enter the state? If so, what documentation must you carry? Has your home state been put on a restricted list by the state of your destination? Will you be required to quarantine for a time period upon your arrival, or upon your return? What are the masking and social distancing requirements at your place of destination? How many gallons of hand sanitizer do your need to bring? And all of these rules can and do change, from day to day, so you need to stay up to the minute on it all.

That’s where the COVID Concierge comes in. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a COVID Concierge to help you navigate through the welter of different regulations and directives, tell you precisely what test you need to take and what documentation will be required, and make the reservation for you? And if you’re looking for a place to vacation because you just can’t stand the thought of being cooped up in your house for another day, the COVID Concierge would be a ready source of information and recommendations about which states would be the most painless to visit right now.

This is a sure-fire business plan in today’s environment. But I am offering it to the public, free of charge, so that anyone can put it into effect and set up their own COVID Concierge service. Just promise to send me the COVID Concierge phone number, will you?

The Last Of The Little Bottles

Once, not too long ago, I had an extensive bathroom collection of little bottles — the kind that hotels give (or used to give) to guests that contained small portions of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and hand lotion.

I had dozens and dozens of the little bottles stored in various places in our bathroom.  I would go on trips for work and faithfully bring the unused bottles back from from my travels so I could use them at home.  Waste not, want not, my grandparents taught, so why go out and spend good money on a bottle of shampoo when you can supply your needs through the little bottles the hotels hand out?  It’s not like my grizzled mane needs the kind of luxurious concoctions featured on shampoo commercials, anyway.

When I was traveling regularly, bringing home more bottles every week and month, it seemed like the vast collection of little bottles would supply my shampoo and body wash needs forever.  But over time the little bottle collection shrank a bit, as hotels transitioned to big push dispensers of shampoo and conditioner to protect the environment from plastic bottle waste, and then the coronavirus pandemic hit, all business travel vanished in the blink of an eye, and the opportunities for replenishment of the little bottle collection abruptly ceased.  And now, after going almost half a year without any business travel of any kind, we’re down to only a few of the little bottles left — a mere fraction of what the collection once was.

This coronavirus period has been strange, for sure, but one of the interesting things about it is how quickly we can adjust to and accept the “new normal” of masks, and spending more time at home, and steering wide of people on the street, and the other changes in behavior that become accepted.  You’re going along, living your life in the new way, and then something — like some little bottles in your shower stall — reminds you of just how much things have really changed.