Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need (17 page)

Staying in Hotels

Y
our hotel is your “home away from home,” and as such you expect it to provide you with the comforts and conveniences you have in your own dwelling, such as privacy, security, a warm bed, a clean bathroom, a hot shower, Anthony Perkins standing just outside the shower curtain holding a knife the size of New Jersey, etc.

Of course we are just pulling your leg. Despite the widespread recurring nightmares created by the movie
Psycho
, the truth is that, of the millions of guests who stay in the nation’s hotels each year, only about 3 percent are ever actually stabbed to death while in the shower.
¹
A far higher percentage are stabbed to death while talking really loud in the halls at 2:30 in the morning. If you’ve ever stayed at a hotel, you have heard these people. They stagger up from the bar, then they stand directly outside your
room and, in booming voices, have conversations like this:

FIRST LOUD PERSON
: Well, it’s about time to turn in!

SECOND LOUD PERSON
: I guess so! What time is it?

FIRST LOUD PERSON
: Whoa! It’s 2:30
A.M.!

SECOND LOUD PERSON
: Whoa! It’s time to turn in!

FIRST LOUD PERSON
: I’ll say it is!

SECOND LOUD PERSON
: Two-thirty
A.M.!

FIRST LOUD PERSON
: Whoa!

SECOND LOUD PERSON
: It’s definitely time to turn in!

FIRST LOUD PERSON
: I’ll say it is!

SECOND LOUD PERSON
: You can say that agAAAAAAIEEEEEE
(sound of both loud persons being stabbed to death by pajama-clad hotel guests who have lunged out into the hallway wielding shrimp-cocktail forks obtained earlier from Room Service)

There is no need to concern yourself about this. At your better hotels, the bodies will be picked up within hours. Other signs that you are in a quality hotel include the following:

1. You can never be sure which floor the lobby is on
   . A quality hotel will have about six Mystery Floors where the lobby should be, identified on the elevator buttons only by code letters such as G, P, M, LL, and Ph.D. Guests from hotel-deprived regions such as Mississippi
   will sometimes become disoriented and ride the elevator for days, surviving on complimentary pillow mints donated by other guests.
   

2. You have to tip roughly a dozen men just to check in
   . The instant you arrive at a quality hotel, at least two friendly men dressed in nicer outfits than you wore at your first wedding will bustle up, open the car door for you, and say: “Welcome to the Hyatt Sheraton Hilton Crowne Royale Majestic Princess! Let us assist you with your luggage!” Even if the airline lost your luggage and your total possessions consist of a package of Tums, these men will snatch it away from you and assist you with it. The instant you tip them, they will hand your luggage to other uniformed men, who will pass it along to still
   other
   men, until you are being assisted by roughly one uniformed man for each actual Tum.
   

3. The bellperson will not leave you alone in your room until he has given you a briefing lasting at least as long as your sophomore year in high school
   . This will include such helpful information as:
   

• Where the bathroom is.
  

• Where the windows are.
  

• Where the bed is.
  

• Where to find the complimentary bathrobe that you are welcome to take with you, in which case they will be happy to add a charge of $298 to your bill.
  

• Where the bathroom is again, in case you forgot.
  

• How you operate the television.
  ²
  

• What the bellperson’s name is
  ³
  in case you need anything.
  ⁴
  

  The only thing the bellperson will leave out is the part about how you will have to get up at 2:30 a.m. to kill the loud hallway talkers, but this is because he doesn’t want to spoil the surprise.
  

• 4.
  There will be a choice of six in-room movies,
  ⁵
  all of which you have already seen except for the dirty one.
  However, we do not recommend that you watch the dirty movie, because it will go on your hotel bill, which could cause embarrassment when you check out the next morning and the desk clerk, in a hearty voice that echoes all over the lobby, says: “We certainly hope you enjoyed your stay at the Hyatt Sheraton Hilton Crowne Royale Majestic Princess, Mr. Penderson, especially your in-room viewing of
  Big Hooter Mommas.”
  

Also every hotel, no matter what level of quality, is required by state law to have a little framed
document in every room with the following notification:

NOTIFICATION

In accordance with sec. 3.409583 par. 2343.4, be advised that the operator of this hotel is not responsible for any loss, theft or damage to any jewelry, money or other valuables that you may sustain because of carelessness, burglars, or anybody else sneaking into your hotel room in the dead of night armed with guns, knives, cattle prods, deadly poison black mamba snakes or whatever you better just give them whatever they want because the owner is not going to get involved even if they tie you to the bed with the belt from your complimentary bathrobe and torture you by pouring your complimentary hair conditioner into your eyes you can go ahead and scream all you want because in accordance with sec. 3.409583 par. 2343.4, be advised that ha ha the operator of this hotel does not have to do shit
.

Of course sometimes you get sick and tired of staying in big, modern hotels, where all you are is an impersonal room number, and nobody ever talks to you, and you never have to share a bathroom with total strangers. For a change of pace from this kind of stifling uniformity, you want to stay at a quaint little country inn.

The best kind of quaint country inn is the kind that’s owned and operated by a couple named Dick and Marge who’ve been married for roughly 158 years and are bored to death with each other
and consequently are thrilled that you have come out into the country to give them somebody to talk to and eavesdrop on and study the personal habits of.

“Don’t mind me!” Marge will say eight or nine times just during breakfast, which you eat at a table located approximately four feet from where she is working in the kitchen. “I know you two are here for a romantic weekend, and I don’t want you to even notice I’m here! Although Dick did want me to ask you to please not flush any more condoms down the toilet like you did twice last night, because sometimes they mess up the septic system. We had one couple from New Jersey, the Floogermans, and they were using the Trojan lubricated condom with the reservoir tip, and they flushed
four
of them on one night, let me see”—she consults her records—“it was the night of June 12, 1987, and the next day we had raw sewage in the azaleas, and Dick—Dick loves those azaleas—he had a fit. He even—get this—he even got out his old machete and sharpened it up. I said, ‘Dick, what are you gonna do? Chop off their heads just because they flushed some condoms down the toilet?’ Ha ha! I had to give him one of those shots to calm him down, and he still carries a little piece of paper in his wallet with the Floogermans’ home address. He LOVES those azaleas. But listen to me chattering on! You just never mind me over here. Do you want some more waffles? I didn’t even realize you could
have
waffles, if you were diabetic, which I’m assuming you are from those
pills in your toiletries case with your Valium. Lately I just can’t seem to get Dick to take his medication, and I really wish he would because he’s started talking to his snakes again. I wish we didn’t even have those things in the house, after what happened to those people from Ohio, the Fweemers. Although I understand that a lot of the time those paralysis things are temporary. But listen to me! Here I am talking a mile a minute, and you two lovebirds are trying to have a quiet breakfast alone! I do tend to rattle on so, and sometimes Dick—I’m sure he’s just kidding—sometimes Dick says if I don’t shut up, he’s gonna put me down in the basement, with those things he ordered from
Soldier of Fortune
magazine. Don’t go down there, whatever you do. But you just make yourselves totally at home here, and enjoy your time together, and do whatever you want and just forget that we’re even here. By the way, that light fixture over your bed is just a light fixture. It is
not
a camera. Here comes Dick now! What’s the matter, honey?”

Camping:

S
o
far we’ve discussed many exciting travel destinations, but all of them lack an element that is too often missing from the stressful, high-pressure urban environment most of us live in. That element is: dirt. Also missing from the urban environment are snakes, pit toilets, and tiny black flies that crawl up your nose. To experience these things, you need to locate some Nature and go camping in it.

Nature is located mainly in national parks, which are vast tracts of wilderness that have been set aside by the United States government so citizens will always have someplace to go where they can be attacked by bears. And we’re not talking about ordinary civilian bears, either: We’re
talking about
federal
bears, which can behave however they want to because they are protected by the same union as postal clerks.

You also want to be on the lookout for federal moose. I had a moose encounter once, when my wife and I were camping in Yellowstone National Park, which is popular with nature lovers because it has dangerous geysers of superheated steam that come shooting up out of the ground, exactly like in New York City, except that the Yellowstone geysers operate on a schedule. Anyway, one morning I woke up and went outside to savor the dawn’s everchanging subtle beauty, by which I mean take a leak, and there, maybe fifteen feet away, was an animal approximately the size of the Western Hemisphere and shaped like a horse with a severe steroid problem. It pretended to be peacefully eating moss, but this was clearly a clever ruse designed to lull me into believing that it was a gentle, moss-eating creature. Obviously no creature gets to be that large by eating moss. A creature gets to be that large by stomping other creatures to death with its giant hooves. Clearly what it wanted me to do was approach it, so it could convert me into a wilderness pizza while bellowing triumphant moss-breath bellows into the morning air. Fortunately I am an experienced woodsperson, so I had the presence of mind to follow the Recommended Wilderness Moose-Encounter Procedure, which was to get in the car and indicate to my wife, via a system of coded horn-honks, that she was to pack up all our equipment and put it in the car trunk, and
then get in the trunk herself, so that I would not have to open the actual door until we had relocated to a safer area, such as Ohio.