Apr 3, 2023 3 min read

I have been traveling a lot lately, and I keep ending up in different hotel rooms. Not in the sexy, fun way, but in the “What’s cheap on Priceline?” kind of way. Hotel rooms can be confusing.

Getting into the room can be a challenge. If you’ve ever struggled with a key card, you’ve felt my pain. I’m flapping the card in front of the electric eye mechanism, waving it like a flag in a Fourth of July parade, yelling, “Let me in!”

In New Orleans, you needed your key card to be slotted into the air-conditioning unit for the air to run. I woke up in my underwear (don’t picture it), drenched in sweat at 3 a.m. in a boutique hotel on Bourbon Street, wondering why there was no air. It was New Orleans in June. It was 90 degrees at night.

I am mostly confused by the bathroom, especially in the shower. Every faucet of every hotel is different.

I’m standing there, naked (don’t picture it) and I’m waving my hand under the shower head as the water goes from shooting out ice chips to full-on lava flow.

One time in Seville, Spain, I swam up to the side of the pool and drank numerous glasses of Cava until my friend said, “We better get ready.”

We have reservations for dinner and a Flamenco show.

Realizing I had too much sparkling Spanish wine, I stumbled to my room, drunk. When I got there, I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the light in the bathroom. I looked everywhere and couldn’t find the switch.

I called down to the lobby, and the front desk clerk said, “Hola,” and I realized that my Spanish-speaking friend was off showering in her own brightly lit bathroom. I quickly hung up the phone and staggered into the pitch-black facilities and showered in the dark. There I was lathering myself up, blindly (don’t picture it), laughing. I thought, “Well, at least I know where all my parts are. I just hope I don’t trip in here and die,” which produced continual giggling. I thought, “What kind of person gets into situations like this? Usually, persons named Lucy Ricardo or Laverne DeFazio.” I almost collapsed onto the tile floor, chortling excessively. It was a near-literal “Rolling on the Floor Laughing” incident.

For the record, I was able to get down to the lobby and meet everyone in time for the show.

In a Howard Johnson’s in Las Vegas (Yes, Virginia, the HoJo’s is still there), I was showering in a hotel room when the faucet broke right off as I was adjusting it. I had called down to the lobby, naked, dripping wet (don’t picture it), screaming, “Help!”

I nearly flooded the joint. The next morning, I checked in to the Venetian, where the much more expensive faucet handle stayed on.

Is it weird that I need hotel rooms to come with instructions? As long as they’re printed in English, I should be fine.