Traveling is great and I'm usually the first to say yes to any proposition to leave town but I'm starting to feel like everything is the same everywhere you go. This week I went to Seattle and then to San Antonio, two places that couldn't be more different, and yet, as soon as I stepped into my room at the Hotel Contessa in San Antonio I had the feeling that I was in my room at the Hotel Vintage Park in Seattle that I had just checked out of that morning. At first it was little things, like the rings that hold up the shower curtain, and the lamp shades, all the same. And then as I explored some more I found even more obviously similar things.
I photographed this phone in the lobby of the Hotel Vintage Park in Seattle:
And I photographed this phone by the elevator bank at the Hotel Contessa in San Antonio:
Same phone, different color. The brand is even the same. And this got me wondering, is there one store where hotel decorators buy this stuff? I mean, one chain of stores that service hotels all over the country? Whatever the answer is, I'm still gonna keep searching out new places. And I'll keep writing about them.
I was mesmerized by this painting in the lobby so much so that I even stopped texting. And isn't that what a great hotel is supposed to do - stop us in our tracks? For about five seconds I was transported to a small town square where this Mexican woman was dancing by moon light to a few tables full of cigar smoke enveloped men and women, just content to watch her swish around the thick night air with her skirts. For just about five seconds I was farther away than I had travelled.
