How my Hotel Stays have Changed my Life!
That magical moment when you check into a hotel. There’s nothing quite like it. The hotel is a place of great mystery, of role play and escapism; something naughty, something new. Like a Madonna fashion phase, I have re-invented myself – and my hair-do – countless times against the backdrop of a plush (and not so plush) hotel.
I’m pretty sure my first hotel escapade without my parents would have been the exotic heights of Wembley with my college mate, Georgie. Aside from discovering Prince really was a short arse as he ‘conveyor belted’ onto the stage of the arena, and not managing to convince Georgie to buy herself more than one new pair of stripes from The Sock Shop (is it even still going?!), the most memorable part of that trip was the Brian Blessed look-a-like at the breakfast table with his mountain high pile of toast and his jar of icky vomitesque style sandwich spread.
Fortunately my hotel experiences got better.
My wild and free(ish) early twenties ‘business’ trips were full of corridor bombing (of the two-legged drunken variety) – and sometimes crawling, stomachs gripped to quell the snorts of laughter as you realise the Klimpt repros lining the walls really are photos of your boss. The smuggling of the guy into the lift, trying not to imagine said boss in the room next door with her toothbrush cup pressed against the wall waiting to hear the fireworks. Failing that, the barman and the staff quarters round the back… The trick phone calls to work colleagues in other rooms, fumbling around in the mini bar for the miniature whiskeys – anything to help a 22 year old ‘talk shop’ at the Old Fogies dinner in half an hour. Then of course there’s the Scooby-Doo phenomenon of the antique Roman bust being deposited outside your room. But can your tipsy self discard of it outside of your male colleagues’ door before the Italian police arrive? How will you explain your night in the cells to said boss (once again)? And who could forget the case of the director who should have known better than to invite his female posse up to his penthouse suite of the Frankfurt Marriot – impressive though the view might be, because it is now 5.30am, the jungle drums have already beaten these revelations back to the UK, and your client meetings will re-commence at 9 sharp.
Thankfully the customers always seemed to stay somewhere else… at least I hoped… but perhaps my antics explain some of the sudden changes in buying patterns. And thankfully (for my husband and kids) I left most of that wild child behaviour behind!
By my late twenties, the hotel was the first place I learned to breakfast alone, to lunch alone, to coffee break alone. To be alone. That priceless happy ‘me’ time on my own. Yes, the hotel in my late twenties became my salvation, my therapy, my rejuvenation. The hotel in my late twenties made me stronger. Oh, the gratitude I have for that Paris hotel where I hatched out my escape plan from an abusive relationship and finally followed it through.
And so as I approached my thirties, what was hotel empowerment all about then?
Well, extravagance, what else?
I ate lotus flower topped porridge at £15 a bowl, I arrived in a rickshaw to stay at The Savoy (much to the exclamation of the doorman), I pina colada’d my way through The Waldorf New York’s clean cocktail shakers, I dined on lobster at the Burj Al Arab, I stared in amazement at my bird’s eye view of the Sydney Opera House from The Four Seasons (whilst sipping on one of their signature banana cocktails, of course), and pre-kids, I was lured back to the country chic of Gloucestershire’s exquisite Cowley Manor again and again and again. Ooh, I can still smell the orange and geranium infused shower gel.
Then I fell in love, had a baby, got married, had more babies.
And Paris did it again, harbouring me in the loving arms of one of its residences, bolstering me, beefing me up, giving me the courage to leave the career that was no longer working out, and to set up my own business.
There’s something about those hotels in Paris.
Hotel trips may have gotten sparser, but oh are they ever savoured… just maybe not the times when the fire alarm goes off at 3am causing your pregnant self to sleepwalk to the window as you reassure your sister that you can easily climb out of the spa hotel in just your knickers and a blanket on an icy cold winter’s night.
Yes, there’s definitely something very empowering about a hotel, yet no matter how many times I have stayed in one on my own, still I can’t quite bring myself to dine on my own.
I guess I have Brian Blessed to thank for that.
