Posts tagged as "hotel"

Through The (Boutique Hotel) Window

There are many things I've learnt through staying in hotels in Berlin. Firstly and most importantly, I miss my family terribly. Secondly, whenever you see a hotel described as boutique it seems to mean interesting interior design that you might like to see in a magazine but which you probably wouldn't want to live with and bathrooms where the key feature seems to be that they don't need walls and you can literally roll out of your bed and straight into the shower; literally and hopefully not by accident. Thirdly, I never seem to tire of the sight of Berlin's Fernsehturm or TV Tower.

Through The (Where) Window

After a year's break, I'm back at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference, now rebranded as simply the Where Conference. This year, the conference has slipped north from its Valley roots and taken up residence in the Marriott Marquis hotel in the heart of downtown San Francisco. The view from the window of my room on the hotel's 25th. floor is simply ...

[gallery]

... geographically stunning.

More on Where, plus a write up of my session's talk in a later post.

A Hotel Bath Robe Too Far

This is the ninth "through the window" type of post I've written and is definitely the last for the year. It's the view of Atlanta's Midtown skyline, from the Palomar Kimpton hotel, late at night, after everyone's gone home and just the buildings and lights remain. There's something completely compelling to me about these night time scenes; maybe it's because you just don't tend to see views like this in and around London.

Atlanta Midtown Skyline

But this isn't the main reason for this post. This post is about hotel bath robes. You know the sort of thing, a generally white, toweling affair that nice hotels provide for you, together with a helpful notice that a large sum of money will be added to your hotel bill should you feel compelled to take the robe home with you. The Palomar, which is a nice boutique sort of hotel, has these bath robes. But in no way can they be classified as white or in any way ordinary. Oh no ...

A Hotel Bath Robe Too Far

.. there's also a tiger skin effect number hanging up in the wardrobe in case fake zebra skin isn't your style. You'll hopefully be relieved to hear that I just couldn't bring myself to put either of them on.

Through The (Magnificent Mile) Window

By my reckoning, this is the eighth "through the window" post I've written. Mostly the view through the window is the same, day in, day out, but sometimes it gets interesting. Like this night-time view of Chicago's Magnificent Mile.

Through The Window; The Freezing Cold Chicago Edition

Taken from the window of my room on the 17th. floor of Chicago's Intercontinental Hotel, this is high rise, downtown America at its best. America is always a culture clash to me and no more so than my room in the Historic Tower of the Intercontinental. This wing of the hotel is a 42 story rework of the Medinah Athletic Club, built in 1929 just before the Stock Market crash later that year. When the building was converted into a hotel, most of the original floor plans had been lost, resulting in over 175 different room layouts and sizes over the 42 floors of the building.

Of course, a building built in 1929 wouldn't really class as historic by European standards, but walking through the hotel is like stepping back in time and given the building's checkered history, I think for once the "historic" appellation is well and truly merited.

Photo Credits: Gary Gale on Flickr.

Through the Window Redux

The view from my window has changed a lot of recent. Through my office window there's been St. Giles and Covent Garden in the snow ...

... and Hanger One on Moffett Field, one of the world's largest free-standing structures.

Through my hotel window I've seen the Chrysler Building in New York at sunrise ...

...  and Silicon Valley on a cold, foggy and damp morning ...

But of all the view I've seen through my window, I think I prefer this one most of all, because it's home.