When we booked our hotel in Paris, I offered to share a room with Sarah. It seemed silly to me to put them in a triple room and me in a single room. Two doubles made perfect sense.
When I got to the hotel in Paris Thursday, I realized I had not requested two separate beds in one of those double rooms. The hotel had been sure to put us in rooms next to one another, so I didn’t bother to ask for it to be changed. It was a pretty big bed by Paris standards; it wasn’t that big a deal.
Then, there was the matter of the bathroom. It was small, which I had expected. It had a shower and no tub, which was also fine. At least the shower had a door. But the door to the bathroom was, well, not suited for the modest traveler. The door slid, like a closet door. Which meant it didn’t latch and provided no significant sound barrier. It also was paneled with ever-so-lightly frosted glass. Which meant it provided no significant visual barrier. It was a little like something out of a bad soap opera, where you could see the silhouette of the person in the bathroom. I cannot say that the designer was going for allure, since the toilet faced the door which faced the bed on the other side.
I should have checked out Patrick’s room before he got there. His had an actual door to the bathroom. Which was especially funny since it faced into the little hallway… which in itself was more private.
One evening when we came back to dump stuff off before going to dinner, our rooms were roasting hot. I had been sure to find a hotel with a/c, which is not a given here. Patrick sweats talking about temperatures over 60 degrees, so he was less than thrilled at the prospect of not being able to sleep that night. (yes, you could open the window, but we faced a busy street so you’d be trading hot air for traffic noise) When we told the guy working the front desk about the problem, he admitted grave concern because our thermostats had little wrenches show up on the display. He said that had happened in other rooms and was a sign of real problems. But that night when we got back, our rooms were cold. Like ice boxes. We found out the next morning that the concerned employee fixed the problem himself. I was so grateful. So maybe the room didn’t provide the most privacy. He’d made up for it.