Hotels after my own heart

When we travel, one of the things my husband is most concerned with is the size of the hotel room. Even if we're going to spend almost every waking hour outside of the hotel, Jim wants walking around room, breathing room, living room. None of this having to walk sideways to maneuver between the bed and the closet. None of this "everything within reach".

When we're traveling together, I'm down with that, too. Nothing will drive me nuts faster than listening to him carp about the size of the room.

And I will admit that we've stayed in a couple of hotel rooms that were just too damned small for two people.

One, on Achill Island in the west of Ireland, was so small that you had to go through some odd crouch-on-the-bed contortion to open the bathroom door, and the bathroom was so small you had to sit on the toilet sideways. (Size was not the only problem we had with this place. It hadn't been rehabbed since - maybe - 1954, had damp nylon sheets, and our room looked out on a small field that contained rusting appliances and a braying donkey. Achill Island, however, was quite beautiful, and I do believe that the hotel gave us a better sense of the Real Old Ireland - pre-Celtic Tiger prosperity - than most of the places we've stayed have.)

For Jim, one of the best things he can find out about a hotel room is it's square footage. A lot of hotels seem to provide that now, which is great for Jim.

Left to travel on my own, however, I'm all small is beautiful.

I have, in fact, stayed in hotels where the rooms were scarily large.

Once, in Cleveland, I stayed at a suites hotel that was as big as our condo. It had a living room, dining room, full kitchen, and bedroom. There were two separate entrances, which I barricaded with the dining room chairs. I also think I was the only one staying on the floor. The hotel was perfectly nice, but I found this all pretty creepy.

Another time, in Atlanta, I was put in the living room portion of the presidential suite. It must have been about 2000 square feet, with all sorts of socializing areas and wet bars. The bed was a pull out couch in a sunken living room. I got into bed with a bag of M&M's and a book and read myself to sleep, completely wigged out by the wide open spaces around me.

As a solo traveler, I'd definitely be a candidate for the new small-is-beautiful hotels that are emerging. According to a recent article in The Economist (November 17), European hoteliers are taking a page from those Japanese capsule hotels and coming up with versions of their own. The new hotels are quite a bit larger than the Japanese hotels that aren't much bigger than the drawer in a morgue.

But they are tiny: bed (maybe even a Murphy bed), flat-screen TV, shower and toilet. Add wi-fi, and what more does anyone need or want?

There's one in NYC, too, the Pod Hotel. One third the size of a standard American hotel, but a complete steal at $89 for a single - although I think that means with a shared bathroom. The prices I saw were more in the $150-190 range. But, still, those rates are well within steal range when you consider New York heading into the Christmas season, and when you think of New York overrun with exchange rate rich Europeans who think nothing of paying $600 for a room - chump change!

If and when I take my next solo trip, I will keep the minimalist hotels in mind. As long as a place is quiet, clean, and safe, to me size doesn't matter.

I really like the look of the Pod, although from the pictures I am definitely older and extremely less hip than their clientele - so I'd have to worry about the quiet. (I'm probably more a candidate for the hotel they used to be: something quaintly called the Pickwick Arms.)

______________________________________

My affinity for small, cozy spaces apparently goes back a long way. My mother used to tell me that when she was in labor with me, the doctor told her that I was apparently trying to move in the wrong direction in the birth canal. Hankering for small places, or first indication that I was never going to have much of a sense of direction? You decide.