Louisville Travel Guide
Tags: Anti-View / Art Hotels / Hotel Bathrooms / → All Tags
(Bath)Room With an Anti-View: We're Not Sure We're Okay With This
This could be a Killer View, we suppose, depending on how you look at it. This is the view from the urinals in the public men's room at 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. And those are real people. And they could be you!
Alright, we get it. 21C is an art in a hotel that dually functions as a public art museum but its "gender-specific latent exhibitionist fetish features" within the lobby bathrooms are a topic we've discussed before, and now that we're seeing a real (read: non-PR) shot of the view from in the little boys' room, we're not so sure we're okay with this.
Allow is to explain what's going on here:
The men's restroom has a two-way mirror that allows users of a long urinal to contemplate passers-by outside the restroom. Both the men's and women's restrooms have tiny LCD screens displaying a multitude of different, open eyes in the mirror above the sink area that make washing up or primping a communal affair.
Dudes peeing in urinals while looking at us. Does that not make you a wee bit uncomfortable? Think about it. Really.
Anyway, rooms here start around $185 if you're interested in booking your own private bathroom without these exhibitionist features.
[Photo: gregverdino]
Tags: Kentucky Derby Hotels / Hotel Rates / → All Tags
The Only Derby Hotel We Will Be Staying In is The Couch Hotel
Whether you're headed to the Kentucky Derby tomorrow to actually watch the races or just to don a silly hat and stalk Paris Hilton, you'll be happy to know that there are hotel rooms open. But they will cost you a pretty penny.
For instance the Embassy Suites is charging $450 a night. Granted, it's a suite and you can fit four friends in there easily but still, are people really going to shell out that much for the Derby? Similarly, the Hilton Garden Inn is now charging $579 a night. And The Brown Hotel is asking for $1,333 a night. Um. Ok. If you say so.
Your best bet for affordable Derby hotels continues to be budget brands outside the city center. Louisville doesn't have that much of a boutique hotel scene to begin with and the existing rooms have been sold-out for a long time.
If you're not celebrating the Derby in New York, then we say just wear a crazy hat from the flea market, make your own mint julep and plop yourself down on the couch to watch the races instead.
[Photo: Flickerized]
Tags: Cubicle Dreamin' / Kentucky Hotels / Historic Hotels / Literary Hotels / → All Tags
A Bourbon-Soaked Stay in Kentucky
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven Katie K visits Kentucky...in her mind. Enjoy.
Lately I’ve been in a Great-Gatsby-decadence-craving sort of mood (as recessionary escape?). So dress me in my nattiest frock and hand me a bourbon tumbler, because I’m headed to the 1905-built Seelbach Hilton in Louisville, Kentucky, blueblood haunt and one-time writing muse to F. Scott Fitzgerald (penned into immortality as his backdrop for Tom and Daisy Buchanan's nuptials).
Tags: Kentucky Derby Hotels / Hotel Rates / → All Tags
Only Rich Folk Will Be Attending the Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby will be held this year on Saturday, May 2 and it's sure to be less glitzy than other years thanks to the economy and well, the loss of Anna Nicole Smith. Her absence is still felt two years later. Oh well, there's always Heidi Montag or Lindsay Lohan to step in.
But despite these tragedies, hotel room rates are not coming down. Even though, hotels are moaning about the loss of business and empty rooms for Derby weekend, you will be hard-pressed to find any mildly respectable hotel brand that is not going for less than $200. In fact, most room rates are averaging about $350.
We checked rates on our own Hotel Rates Search Engine and found the Hyatt Place Louisville for $449 a night. The Hilton Garden Inn was $579 a night and the Hyatt Regency Louisville was $1,130 a night. The uber-cool 21C Museum Hotel was sold-out.
These rates turn us off entirely and we can only imagine that rich folk are spending that much money for a Derby hotel room. Perhaps as the weekend gets closer and hotels realize they aren't selling out will the rates come down. But we won't bet (har, har) on it.
[Photo: Flickerized]
Tags: Jock Jam Hotels / Louisville Hotels / Hurricane Hotels / Hotel News / Ryder Cup Hotels / → All Tags
Ryder Cup Golf Nuts Filling Up the Hotel Rooms in Louisville, A City Without Power
Just in time for the arrival of thousands of Ryder Cup attendees, Louisville, Ky., lost power Sunday. About 75% of the city lost electricity --including yours truly.
We were without news until we could get to civilization Monday (the office) where we learned the power company estimates a 10-14 day period with no power. That's no internet, no TV, no air conditioning, no lights, no appliances, zilch. What's a high-maintenance girl who dislikes showering by candlelight to do? Move into a hotel.
But wait.
There are all those pesky tourists in town, and not a hotel room to be found. On Sunday night a few hotels offered price breaks to the in-the-dark locals but when the high-spending golf fans hit Louisville that was all over.
The few hotels left with rooms available have ratcheted up the rates to take advantage of the big event, never mind the quarter million people without power. We'll stay in the dark, thank you, before we pay almost 200 bucks a night for the luxury of light at the Howard Johnson Express Airport.
Let's just hope the power comes back on before the rooms open back up.
[Photo: Courier Journal]
Tags: HotelChatter Reader Deals / Tablet Hotels / Art Hotels / Louisville Hotels / → All Tags
HotelChatter Reader Deals :: Funky Louisville Hotel With Clean Bathrooms for $129 a Night
Crazy/Sexy/Cool Art Hotel in Louisville
$129 a night
The21C Museum Hotel is one of the funkiest hotels we know of in the U.S. It's both a modern boutique hotel and a contemporary art museum with somewhat scary things on display. But it also has clean bathrooms. Tablet Hotels is offering $129 room rates at the hotel plus a complimentary sweet at check-in from now until August 31st.
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Have a hotel deal you think we should consider? Or have a destination and date where you want us to check for hotel rooms and rates for you? No guarantees on either, but you can try your luck by hitting us here: tips@hotelchatter.com. Please include "For Reader Deals" in the subject heading.
Tags: Haunted Hotels / Waverly Hills Sanatorium / Louisville Hotels / Hospital Hotels / → All Tags
The Ultimate Haunted Hotel :: A Former Sanatorium Will Reopen as Hotel
Add another to the list of haunted hotels: A former Ford employee purchased the abandoned, vandalized 30 acres of Waverly Hills Sanatorium in south Louisville for $225,000 in 2001, and is now determined to turn the spooky property into a first-class hotel complete with spa and business center.
Currently this gutted old hospital for tuberculosis patients, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, hosts paranormal camp-outs for $100-a-head and was the subject of a six-hour feature on the Sci Fi Channel. Even wikipedia-ing this place will give you the heebie-jeebies. So will night-vision goggles and thermal sensors be part of the mini bar?
Tags: Odd Hotels / Hotel Bathrooms / Louisville Hotels / Hotel Art / → All Tags
21C's Bathrooms Worthy of Exhibitionists, Fetishists and the Title of America's Best Restroom
Things that do not come to mind when we think of the scene of one of our most pleasant, if not religious, bathroom experiences: many pairs of eyes upon us while we do our business, one-way mirrors and a red breed of Billy Madison-esque giant penguins.
And yet! The funky-fab (if not a bit creepy sometimes) 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, featuring all of these unsettling delights, has been named one of ten public bathrooms nominated for the honor of America's Best Restroom.
It's a cool bathroom and all -- and yes, we get it, it's art in a hotel that dually functions as a public art museum -- but imagine taking a pee in an environment with "gender-specific latent exhibitionist fetish features" such as these:
The men's restroom has a two-way mirror that allows users of a long urinal to contemplate passers-by outside the restroom. Both the men's and women's restrooms have tiny LCD screens displaying a multitude of different, open eyes in the mirror above the sink area that make washing up or primping a communal affair.
Tags: VIP Hotel Reviewer Series / Deidre Woollard / Hotel Ghosts / Hilton Hotels / Louisville Hotel Reviews / → All Tags
Ghosts, Bourbon Cocktails and Hootie and the Blowfish at the Seelbach Hilton
We now present you with our VIP Hotel Reviewer Series in which we hand-pick experts in the travel and media worlds and beyond to tell us what are their favorite hotels and why. Once a week, we'll feature a hotel review from said VIPs about their favorite leisure or business hotels. Pay attention: These VIPs are experts at what they do and they don't mess around when it comes to their hotels.
The next VIP in the series is Deidre Woollard, the founder and head writer at popular luxury blog, Luxist.com. Despite writing about what's hot in the luxury world, Deidre has spent time in a Super 8 Motel. Of course, she would never stay there again. Instead the next time she visits Louisville, Kentucky, she'll probably hit up the Seelbach Hilton. Enjoy.
[Photo: Caprig]
For a couple of years while getting my MFA through Spalding University's limited residency program I spent a lot of time in Louisville, Kentucky.
Each semester we spent 10 days in a hotel in Louisville. For the inaugural session of the program they put us in a Super 8 hotel. Not just any Super 8 Hotel, but one that happened to be located near what appeared to be a crackhouse.
It was noisy, loud and scary but both the visiting professors and students bonded as we chaperoned each other from elevator to room for security's sake. It was the last semester the program ever stayed there.
For the rest of my time in the program we stayed at the Seelbach Hilton, the grand old hotel downtown which was built in 1905. It was quite an improvement from the Super 8.
Tags: Louisville Hotel Reviews / Art Hotels / Pableaux Johnson / → All Tags
The Hautest Bathrooms in Louisville?
Could it be? The New York Times may have finally found a great hotel worthy of writing about in its weekly Check In, Check Out feature. The 21c Museum Hotel is in the heart of Louisville, and it's chock full of fancy contemporary art.
Artistry isn't limited to the Chuck Close hanging on the wall, though. The rooms sound nice, too:
Our river-view king room mimicked an efficient live/work loft space: a feather duvet and locally woven throw blanket covered luxurious 500-thread-count sheets; exposed brick walls played against brushed steel and neutral gray carpets. Road warriors will welcome the well-designed workspace with Herman Miller Aeron chair, wireless Internet service, a cordless phone and an anodized aluminum desk. Less productive types will flop down in the comfortable reading chair to unwind with the in-room iPod.
The 21c also has top-notch restaurant in Proof--it's got 60 whiskeys on the menu, though not all of them can be had through room service. Knock back a couple, and you'll have a ticket to the first floor bathrooms, which according to a bellman, have some of the best art in the place.
[Photo: NYT]
Related Stories:
· Check In, Check Out [NYT]
Tags: Odd Hotels / → All Tags
Like Living in a Museum
Last week we picked the 21C Museum Hotel as your 2007 Kentucky Derby stay. While guests were raving about the hotel's hip technology, blogger Crooked Timber gives us the scoop on the hotel's somewhat freaky artistic pieces.
Upon entrance, you almost have to step on the projection of two people sleeping in bed to get to the receptionists and/or the elevators to access your room....Big plastic red penguins are scattered across the building, not just in the designated museum section, but also in the hallways. I didn't care for some of the installations (like the film about a woman and a man having a seemingly pleasant dinner judging from their facial expressions despite the fact that mice are walking all over their food), but some of it was neat (like the falling letters on a screen where the viewer becomes part of the image)....The visit was much more fun than your usual hotel stay and it made me wish more hotels would put some interesting twist on the experience.
We also found a picture of this "interesting" sculpture that is found in the hotel's gallery. Normally, we would probably not want to see red plastic penguins and the birth of critters in our hotel but when you are stuck in Kentucky, this could give you something to do.
Related Stories:
· Heatherturnbull's photostream [Flickr]
· Planning for the 2007 Kentucky Derby Already? [HotelChatter]
· Museum Hotel [Crooked Timber]
Tags: Kentucky Derby Hotels / Destination Hotels / → All Tags
Planning for the 2007 Kentucky Derby Already?
When Saturday's snail mail delivered up Travel & Leisure's Hotels Issue we got a bit overexcited--yeah, welcome to our lives.
The issue is chalk full of good glossy hotel info, but when we read the Viewing Rooms piece on 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, we realized this brand spankin' new hotel might just be worth of destination hotel consideration. Hotels that combine art and hospitality always pique our interest. Throw in the fact that this project is part of a larger, and judging from the photographic evidence on Flickr, rather successful revitalization of downtown Louisville and we were in.
21C Museum hotel just opened in April, but already guests are raving about the service and the 42 inch flat screen plasma televisions. Let's be honest, giant plasma televisions help guests forgive most beta hotel service hiccups anyway. Now that the Derby is a thing of the past it shouldn't be all that difficult to snag one of the 90 rooms here if you are set to travel to Louisville in the near future. If you do go, take some photos and share them with us, will ya?
As for us, we are seriously considering booking a HotelChatter trip here for the 2007 Kentucky Derby. Despite Barbaro's horrific and tragic injury, which was really hard to watch, attending a Triple Crown race ranks fairly high on our to-do list. If you are thinking along the same lines, the cool girl at 21C said to call back "late summer" when they would begin accepting reservations for next year's Derby (May 5, 2007). Stay tuned.
Related Stories:
· 21C Hotel Reviews [TripAdvisor]
· Louisville Hotel Coverage [HotelChatter]
· Travel & Leisure Hotel Issue [T & L]
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