Friday, September 28, 2007
STAYING IN NICE HOTEL ROOMS
Everyone has a few vices. One of mine is a fondness for luxury hotel rooms. One of the nice things about traveling in the off-season is that those luxury hotel rooms are sometimes affordable.
On this recent trip we happened onto one quite by accident. The Ontario Building at the Best Western is located on Lake Huron at St. Ignace. Our third floor balcony overlooked the water, with Mackinac Island in the background. There were ducks and Canada geese squawking below. Instead of going out for dinner, we got a pizza and ate it on the balcony while the world got dark and the geese lined up single-file to parade down to the water. There must have been a hundred of them. The sunrise over the lake was worth getting up early and freezing our buns off out on our balcony in our pajamas in the early morning chill.
This is the only hotel room I've ever seen with a floor-to-ceiling bay window large enough to accommodate two chairs, a table, and a lamp. That window coupled with the patio doors made the room bright and homey. The bathroom was big enough for a party, and the bedroom must have been at least twice the size of my livingroom. The bed was so comfortable that I'm thinking about a new mattress for the bed at home. I took souvenir pictures of the hotel room, and I'm saving the brochure just in case I ever get back to St. Ignace.
I learned something from this hotel room, though. That big bathroom has its downside. No matter what I wanted in there, it was out of reach. Hey, nothing's perfect.
The following night we ended up at a Knight's Inn with double locks on the door, a mattress with a serious mid-torso sag, and everything movable nailed down--just to keep things in perspective, I guess. If I ever get to Heaven, I may seek a conversation with the Boss about contrasts and shocks to the human system!
