2025, animals, education, pets, Theatre, Travel, Uncategorized

Home Away From Home

31 Comments

Last year our local college terminated the Theatre, Music, and English departments. There is a rather fine auditorium at the college that has remained pretty silent and unused for the last while. It is in the main building on campus and is surrounded by the library and classrooms. There are multiple ways of accessing the other rooms and hallways from the auditorium.

The Badlands Opera Company is putting on Into The Woods in a couple of months. They often use our church sanctuary for their productions, but this time they are using the college auditorium. Last week the Opera Company folks paid a visit to the auditorium to scope out the place and see what they would need to do to get it up and running. There is a loft above the stage that was used for costumes and props. It was left in incredible disarray by the theatre faculty as a sort of “screw you” to the college administration. Much to the Opera Company folks surprise, they noticed a cat sticking its head from out of the loft ceiling. They also noticed a litter box and the personal effects of someone who had been squatting in the loft.

They phoned the police and campus security, who secured the auditorium and found another cat. Both cats were taken to the city animal shelter. They also figured out who had been living in the loft and had him get his stuff out. I don’t know how long the guy had been living there. The college is upping its security. The Opera Company folks decided that they would only go to the auditorium in groups of three from now on. It was interesting that public comment indicated more concern about the welfare of the cats than the fact that someone had been living in the theatre loft. I hope they are comfortable in their new digs at the animal shelter.

What is the most memorable hotel you ever stayed at? What hotel would you like to stay in if you got the chance.?

31 thoughts on “Home Away From Home”

  1. Sounds like someone could write (or has written) a good mystery from that scenario, Renee.

    We’ve stayed at the St. James Hotel in Red Wing, for an anniversary decades ago. And not necessarily famous, but old: the Trempealeau Hotel across the river. Talk about simple lodging – right out of the TV westerns! The adjoining restaurant is very nice…

    OT: Don’t miss last night’s trip back in time to a 2010 Trail post by Steve.

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  2. We’ve stayed in many hotels, motels and B&Bs including the aforementioned Trempealeau hotel, many of them memorable for one reason or another but usually the accommodation is not our destination— only a necessity.

    Our single most memorable stay requires me to circle back (for the third time on the Trail) to our fated visit to Groundhog Colorado. Most of you know the story by now.

    For anyone who hasn’t heard it, I recounted it last in the comments on December 7, 2019.

    Our New York Trip

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    1. Old Norway had similar beds, too, which were demonstrated at the Volksmuseum in Oslo. My understanding is that N. European cultures developed those to allow warmth to build around the sleeper.

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  5. I stayed in a hotel in Honolulu when I was about 15. My parents took us to Hawaii for Christmas that year. It was the first (only) big vacation we ever went on as a family. The world was safer, cleaner, and easier then. Mom and Dad had a room, my brothers had a room together, and I had a room with a lanai. It faced mountains, and every day around 11 a.m., I could see clouds gathering. It would rain for about a half hour to an hour, then stop, and the sun would come out again. I have a clear memory of the view from the lanai, and the spicy, floral smell in the air.

    On the other end of the hotel spectrum was an emergency stay in the Motel 6 just off I35 in Duluth. I had been up in Grand Marais and got back down to Duluth in a snowstorm. I had my dog, Bailey, with me. I decided to stay one night and go home in the morning. I knew that Motel 6 allowed dogs, and that they were cheap. I found the place, and I guess the exterior should have alerted me, but it didn’t. It was nice that they allowed dogs, but I really wouldn’t recommend that motel to anyone at all, dogs or not. The people were friendly but that’s the only positive thing I can say about the place.

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  7. Better Late than Never, Baboons,

    I don’t enjoy motels/hotels much. I really do prefer traveling by using rental properties. That style did exist prior to the huge marketing campaign that Air BnB did about 10 years ago. I like being able to shop for groceries and cooking several meals in the rental, then only eating out once per day. We have had some lovely lodgings traveling that way–and a few clinkers.

    That said, I think my favorite hotels are in Europe, especially Venice. There we stayed in a room with padded, tapestry walls. They served a morning breakfast with wonderful European coffee and Venetian pastries. Although it was considered a luxury hotel, the building was ancient and located right on a canal. There was not a straight hallway nor an even floor anywhere in the building. It was maze-like, and I was lost more than once trying to find our room.

    In Stavanger, Norway we stayed in what was advertised as an adult hostel, but it was very much like the hotels in Norway. It provided the same breakfast where we first ate the delicious Norwegian Rye Bread–brown loaves covered in pumpkin seeds–that I learned to make when we arrived back home. The owner took a liking to us because we were Americans and gave us a tour of the city, narrating it with his regret that Norway remained neutral during WWII. He was not over that! He had lived in Houston, TX for a period before he moved back to Stavanger to open his hostel. Although that facility was not luxurious in any way, I enjoyed it so much because we had opportunities to interact with so many people there.

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    2. Norway was most definitely NOT neutral during WWII. It was invaded and occupied by German forces on April 9, 1940 and controlled by them until May 8th, 1945.

      King Haakon VII and his prewar government fled to London and formed a government in exile. The Germans installed pro-Nazi Norwegian puppet regime headed by Vidkun Quisling, and that government did cooperate with the Nazis sending Jews to concentration camps in Poland. After Germany’s defeat, Quisling was arrested and tried for treason, was found guilty, and executed by firing squad.

      The Norwegian resistance movement was quite active for the duration of the war, and there’s a museum near Akershus Fortress dedicated to it.

      Denmark, too, was occupied during the war, but unlike King Haakon, the Danish King Christian X remained in Copenhagen as a very visible symbol of Danish resistance to the occupation. Sweden remained neutral during the war.

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  8. As a newcomer to the Trail, I enjoyed Bill’s Groundhog story–thank you for sharing it!

    My scary hotel story pales in comparison, but it was bad enough. When the kids were little, we drove to St. Louis. Husband had to go there for business, and I came along with the little ones for a change in scenery. I don’t remember how or why we booked the hotel. This was in early days of the internet and there were no hotel websites or reviews.

    We drove through the day and arrived in the evening. The place was so filthy I couldn’t using the tub to bathe the kids. I can’t remember how we got through the night–probably used blankets from the car so the kids to sleep on top of the bed. I didn’t get any sleep. We checked out at daybreak and managed to find a much nicer place where we spent the rest of the trip.

    Another memorable hotel stay was in London in 2019. We were staying most of the week in an apartment but had a hotel room for the first night. After arriving midday we did our best to fight off jet lag, but ended up falling asleep early. About 3 a.m., we heard someone at the door and suddenly, there was a man in the room. If there was a safety latch, we must have missed it in our fatigue. Husband jumped out of bed and the man said something garbled and left. We didn’t get back to sleep and in the morning asked about the incident at the front desk, thinking the intruder must have been an employee, but they didn’t know anything about it.

    We’ve had good experiences, too, like the sadly departed Lutsen Lodge and our favorite family-run resort on the North Shore. It would be fun to someday stay at a chalet in the Alps or a bungalow on a beach.

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  9. Evening all. I’ve struggled with this question all day long – it’s almost impossible for me to separate a hotel from the destination where it is located. To that end, I’d have to rate the safari “camps” as the most amazing with their luxurious oversized bathrooms, open-air showers and the most incredible decor, not to mention being in South Africa. And also to that end, I’d have to include the TravelLodge in Mason City, Iowa. YA and I ended up there when our car broke down; she had a great time in the pool and we discovered the Bil Baird home/museum by accident. A fortuitous break-down if ever there was one!

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    1. Well, I am still dealing with some sciatica issues, I have a low grade fever, and I am irrationally worried about some administrative issues at my agency. I made a baked risotto recipe today. On the whole, I am doing ok.

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  11. I don’t remember any hotels very clearly. Mostly I didn’t stay in the rooms very much. The thing I remember about the hotel in San Antonio, which was proably a Marriot or a Hilton, was that it was on the Riverwalk. You walked out of the lobby and the river was right there.

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  12. I remember, way back in 1990, we were traveling around Scotland and one of the places we had chosen to stay was a B&B in the town of Killin. Our hosts were the Mudds, an older couple in a home of some considerable antiquity. The Mudds had met in India, where she was a nurse and he had been some sort of civil servant. They had two dogs. Mr. Mudd belonged to a local historical group and he regaled us with stories of the region—how the McNabbs, for whom Killin was the clan seat, exacted revenge on the MacNeishes, who had attacked their steward and stolen the Christmas goodies he was transporting, and all about Black Duncan of the Cowl, a particularly ruthless and acquisitive Campbell, and how Duncan had secured from the Earl of Breadalbane a plot of land upon which to build a small fortification, Finlarig Castle. He also gave us directions to the untended castle ruins, which were just outside of town.
    In the evening, after we had returned from our adventures, the Mudds invited us to sit with them and their dogs while Mrs. Mudd served us tea and “biscuits” and we watched reruns of Perry Mason together.

    You don’t get that in a hotel.

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      1. No. For some reason I remember some of our hosts from that trip particularly clearly.
        We were driving around Scotland without any prior arrangements as to where we would stay for the night. It was in March and some places hadn’t opened for the season. At the end of one day’s touring, we found ourselves in the town of Badachro in the coastal highlands. At the Badachro Inn, we inquired about lodging. There was some hesitation but the proprietors, Fred and Sheila King finally agreed to take us in. The room we were given was obviously their son’s bedroom, he being away at college, and it was apparent they were not officially open for the season.
        Badachro was a fishing community and the downstairs of the Inn was a tavern. The tavern was half below ground, so the windows were basically at ground level. At one end of the room was fireplace fueled with peat. I sat at the bar talking to a teacher who, as a scoutmaster, was about to take a group of boys in an ocean-going canoe across to Ireland.
        At the end of the day, the tavern would fill with fishermen. Fred King told me he had something special for me. He presented me with a fresh-caught raw scallop on the half shell with a dollop of orange roe nestled beside. I think he was testing me. I didn’t have too much trouble with the scallop but the roe was hard going.

        In the spirit of the place, I asked for a scotch. Sheila, behind the bar, put the soundtrack from Local Hero on the stereo. Then I knew they were toying with me.

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  13. Hans and I stayed at an AirB&B in Chicago when we drove down for Tia’s mom 100th birthday party. Due to a navigational error on Hans’s part, we arrived a couple of hours later than we had told out hosts we would. When we got there, they quickly showed us the lay of the land, and rushed off to a dinner with friends in the city, leaving us in charge of the house and their old dog.

    It was a comfortable but pretty unremarkable house with a lovely back yard. When our hosts returned from their dinner, we all sat down and had a glass of wine and a chat before calling it a day.

    The following day we went to the 100th birthday party. We returned to the AirB&B around 8 PM with a selection of homemade Polish cookies for our hosts, a gift from Tia. Again they invited us to join them in their den for a glass of wine.

    Turned out they had both grown up in South Africa, and he had attended boarding school in England. We chatted and exchanged stories until about midnight, it was like visiting with old friends. Turns out she was a wine buyer for a large US hotel chain, and his family owned vineyards in South Africa. They were lovely people, and very generously shared their wine with us.

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