When the throbbing subsided, I tried shoving some of the junk out of the way. Later I managed to cram a few random chairs into a closet outside the bath and heaved the sofa against a wall.May 14, 2009 During two decades of work-related travel, I have done time at the Connaught and in roadside motels with parking-lot pools.

The point is not so much that you are a new person in a hotel room but that the place holds no record of the old. Yet while hotel rooms may liberate the traveler from reminders of his own past, they saddle him with those of persons unknown. You feel like you're all potential, waiting to be rewritten, like a crisp, blank sheet of 8 1/2-by-11-inch white bond paper. Housekeeping, as I recall, was not displeased by the heft of my tip. I have worked myself into a lather attempting to think of something, anything, for my personal butler at the Manele Bay, Lanai, to do. They're acts of exorcism--which instant water heating faucet Suppliers is why, whenever I check into a hotel, my first act is to perform some rituals of my own. The midrange Avalon in Manhattan had a pet-friendly policy when it first opened that accommodated even a zookeeper's boas." One claustrophobic Waldorf guest had a coromandel screen propped across the doorway and guards posted in the hall for the length of his stay. They're all there, always. Flop on the bed and dial room service.

I have stayed in vast suites at the luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, where the service is so attentive as to induce paranoia. Cleaning and freshening are not only a matter of sanitation. A friend of mine, a recovering alcoholic, calls ahead to ensure that no tempting little bottles of vodka show up in the mini-bar. The modest room had two beds, two chairs, two tables, and barely enough space to move around. First, sweep the horizontal surfaces clear of stuff. Of course not everyone wants to spend precious vacation time moving chairs, and not everyone travels to places where such behavior is encouraged. It can be tough putting your imprint on a room, for instance, when everything is bolted to the walls. "He had issues with dust and germs. "We have really big bathrooms," explains general manager Daniel Melendez. "I like hotels," wrote Koolhaas, "because in a hotel room you have no history, you have only an essence. This fact alone may account for any number of ill-advised acts undertaken by traveling salesmen.

This left me with a view of Palm Trees by Moonlight, obviously painted by someone's brother-in-law. That also made it simple to grant one guest's wish to have his bed placed alongside the tub. What Koolhaas may be referring to subliminally is absolution, since if there's anything the neutrality of a hotel room expunges, it's sin. I have spent the night (sleep was out of the question) in a cheap Santa Monica motel where the mattress was draped with a dirty velour bedspread and the dresser drawers were lined with scribbled Manson family-style screeds. It was then that I got busy, taking down all the dreadful paintings, collecting errant ashtrays, assembling a heap of generally unwelcome stuff. After I had some of the extras cleared away, I settled in quite comfortably. Such practices are not necessarily limited to high-end hostelries.