Anytime we move, a hotel stay is usually figured into the mix. There have been a couple of moves that allowed us to move directly into the home we were renting, but I’m not sure I was fully prepared for what hotel living was going to be like. Since we stayed in a small hotel – family owned, not that many employees – we got to know almost everyone who worked in the place. We only didn’t know one person and she worked one day a week so it makes sense that we didn’t really know her. The rest of the employees we consider friends, we see them regularly, and a couple have even helped us by tutoring our children.
When you spend that kind of time in a hotel, it becomes your home. You need to do whatever you can to feel comfortable in your space. The first room we occupied was the hotel’s apartment. This hotel has one two-bedroom apartment and unfortunately for us it was only available for a short time before it had been booked by someone else. This was a great introduction to our stay. The apartment was spacious, the windows here must all be double paned because despite being on a busy street we heard nothing from outside, there is a computer in the apartment, a stocked kitchen (not food but pots, pans, kitchenware, etc.), and what I think is really high up on my list of best things about apartments here – rolling window shades that are on the outside of the window and create a pitch black room. Seriously, these are amazing and wonderful and I wish we had them in the US. Actually we do, they are the same type of shades used on some storefronts, those pull down things that protect windows from being busted out. The difference is that these are widely used here on home and apartment windows and storefronts.
This is the master bedroom, taken around 11AM and okay it’s a little cloudy outside and the picture makes the light look a lot brighter/more than it is. Really those are very thing slits, if the blinds were fully closed the room would be pitch black.
Maybe we lucked out and we were able to find this small, not too many employees hotel. Maybe it was luck that everyone working at the hotel is so nice, and they offer really great customer service. And I’m okay with that. I walk around the city now and I see other hotels that I contacted and though I’ve never stayed at any of them, I know we made the right choice. But even better, I know we were able to trust the recommendation from others who stayed there.
My tip is this: be nice to the hotel staff and they’ll be nice to you. Will every hotel have nice staff? No, probably not. And some days those nice staff people will have a bad day. And some days you will. But being nice can get your luggage out of your own space, it can get you to be the last room to be cleaned so you don’t have to rush to get your kids out the door, it can get extra smiles when you are just sick and tired of washing your clothes at the laundromat and you just need your own bed. And it can get you a group of people who can help you with schools, restaurants, best places to hang out at, and more.
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