DavTravels

For my own safety and security, I usually don’t post in advance any information about the places I’m traveling to. If I do post, I never give out the dates of when I’m going to be there. I hope I’m not being overly cautious, but I’ve learned that often times, people are crazy. If I posted half the things that I happen to see when I’m riding some sort of public transportation, I’d have to start questioning my own sanity.

Most of the hotels for my work layovers are rather nice. They are nicer than anything I would ever pay. Not that I can’t on occasion afford them, I’m just far more frugal than that, when it comes to the bed I’m going to sleep in. My personal room requirements (whether I’m paying out of pocket or I’m there for work) are the following:

1. The bedsheets must be clean. The first thing I do when I get to a room is pull down the cover on the bed. If I see any marks, hairs, or even signs that someone had been in that bed, I’ll call down to the front desk and request a new room. Years ago, when I was a new flight attendant, I pulled back a blanket and found a condom wrapper. Should I just be thankful that I didn’t find the condom? New room, please.

2. The room may not smell like smoke. Not only do I hate that smell, but I don’t want it on my clothes the next day. Most importantly, I don’t want to get blamed for it. Many hotels charge anywhere from $200 to $500 for a cleaning fee if they think you smoked in the room. New room, please.

3. The shower has to be clean. We used to stay at one hotel in Las Vegas (which no longer exists) and on two seperate occasions, I found loose dirt in the bottom of the bath tub. LOOSE DIRT! That tells me that they didn’t even TRY to clean the tub. That could have been hidden by simply running the water for a moment. New room, please.

Other than that, I’m not very picky. Don’t get me wrong, I love the nicer hotels and I love well-planned decor, but those are just extras. I love a good fitness center, but I don’t include it in my must-haves, because I don’t work out as much as I should.

The other night, I found myself in College Park, Georgia. My airline put me up at a Renaissance Hotel right next to the ATL airport. This is one of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed in in quite awhile. So nice, that I took some pictures to share, including that picture of my dinner (Geechy Boy grits, done up right).

Travel should inspire!

Tonight I’m in Denver. Even though I’m based here, work has me staying at the Westin DIA tonight. Yet another beautiful hotel! Earlier, I took the train into downtown Denver to walk around and have dinner at The Avenue Grill. This is a great restaurant downtown that I used to come to, when I would get Denver layovers years ago. I hadn’t been in about 5 years, so it was good to get back.