I recently traveled to another country. And no, not one that doesn’t speak English, and not one that I’ve never been to before, that’s a completely different topic for a completely different article. I traveled to England and, for the first time there, I stayed in a hotel and not with family or friends. This hotel was in a big city, close to train stations and major attractions, and had beautiful, clean facilities. That said, I did notice some differences from staying in typical North American hotels.
The first thing was that the room used all its space very well. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. Instead of a headboard, they had used giant framed artwork that doubled as a headboard and visual focal point for the room.
Since it was going from one electrical voltage to another, I had brought an adapter plug, but found that I didn’t need it to charge my phone as I could simply use the charging station on the wall. But here’s something that struck me as odd, the bathroom was separated from the main room space only by a sliding glass door. It didn’t lock and didn’t even go all the way to the wall, so there was always a gap. In North America we are trained to go to the bathroom, close the heavy wooden door, lock it, and then go about our business. It wasn’t like that there, and as a friend pointed out, there was no extractor or window either. The toilet also had two flush options, I’ll leave that to you to find out.
Then there was the supply of tissue, or lack thereof. In North American hotels there are usually tissues both in the room and in the bathroom, not on the other side of the pond. If you travel there, bring yours!
The cutest difference I found was that there was an umbrella assigned to each room, right there in the closet. The note said that you could use it during your stay, but leave it in your room when you left. I’ve never seen that before in an American hotel!
It was a lovely hotel, in a great area in a busy European type of city. The trip was wonderful, the beds comfortable and the sweet little differences. Even the staff were as helpful as could be.
