An Ode to Hotel Living

Hotels are portals to magical places. Strange places where time seems to stand still and very little changes other than the people who are inhabiting them. Over the past year, travel is one of the many things that we've missed out on. Confined to our homes and workplaces, we may now crave the anonymity of a hotel room that looks exactly like every other.

As mundane as most of them look, they're still places of magic. Long hallways painted in nondescript colours and hung with artwork that may either be mind-numbingly bland or tastefully local. Rooms painted in muted colours and beds with crisp, clean sheets. Hotels are places to escape, to think, to dwell and, for a few days, to live. They're a pause in time, a breath in the periods of our lives, and a stillness in the different chapters that we all go through.

I love existing in hotels. I love stepping into their clean, pristine embrace and losing myself. Losing myself in the hallways. Losing myself in a room that is different to the ones that I ordinarily inhabit. Lose myself in the communal areas, watching as people come and go. Lose myself in the nooks and crannies that most people may overlook.

I love the waiting, and the sliding into the well-made bed, and the hunting the room for the hotel's branded items. I love the smell of cleanliness. I love to dwell on who was there before me and who will check in after me. I love to crank up the air conditioning and make myself comfortable in bed. I love to make a hundred cups of tea and drink them while staring out of the window and down to a city that I may never have seen before. I love to find that one public bathroom that's tucked away in a back corner of the hotel, the one that's rarely used by visitors but is open to everyone. I love to see what's in there and love to water any little plants that may have been slipped onto shelves. I love to talk with the staff and find out a little about them.

Everything feels a little different when you're in a hotel. Your perception of time becomes slightly skewed with the change in day and night sometimes being the only indicator. The streets around you may look the same but somehow feel different. Shops will be different, street names will be different, even the height of the curb will be different. Everything is there to be explored and stored away as future memories.

For me, there's nothing more delightful than leaning against the window of a hotel lobby and watching it rain. Even the rain seems a little different in places other than your own. Raindrops seem to pool differently on the pavement. The smell just before it rains may be a little stronger. The sound of rain on the window or road has a slight change in timbre. Everything is just a little more relaxed and the days stretch into the evenings with a pace that we'd love to live at. Gone are the hectic schedules that we're used to and replaced with something that seems more natural, more fluid, and more... normal.

Hotels have been missed and I know of so many people who are just aching for those few days of relaxed existence. Whether you're travelling for business or pleasure, we'll get there eventually.

Rachael collects stories, especially those from living people. All of her work can be found at www.roswellpublishing.co.uk