HotelChatter

Cubicle Dreamin' / Puerto Rico Hotel Reviews / Warm Weather Hotels / → All Tags

Cubicle Dreamin': Hix Island House

Where: HC-02 Box 14902, Isla de Vieques, Puerto Rico

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 Annie007 let's us know what city girls dream of, when they dream about destination hotels. Enjoy.

Commotion. Pollution. Exhaustion. Agitation. Noise. Frenzy. Crowds. Lines. Insanity. And that's just getting to the cubicle.

New York City has it all. But it can get old, really fast. Thus - the perfect hotel has to have it all, too. Just the opposite qualities. Like tranquility, transparency, cleanliness, intimacy, comfort and ease of access.

My pick would have to be a Hix Island House on the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico. It's close enough so we can fly out of the little strip on the water known as LaGuardia and be there in just a few hours. After all, living in New York City gives you Attention Deficit Disorder, and we tend to get so easily distracted. So...what were we talking about, again?

The rooms are decidedly modern, the architecture spare, clean and empty - just like I want my mind to be after months of over-stimulation. The rooms have no windows, they open right onto the outside. The breezes blow in, so do the butterflies and hummingbirds. In New York, I have to shoo the filthy soot-covered pigeons off the window ledges.

There are no phones and no televisions in the rooms. They use solar panels and recycled water to feed the guava, banana, lemon and papaya trees. Now that's a heck of a lot nicer than spying cigarette butts and used condoms in the street as you dodge 18-wheelers and sanitation trucks.

It's not a major chain but a boutique hotel, so we won't have late-night parties and screaming kids (and couples) but rather a mellow atmosphere of massages, yoga, and meditation. You certainly can't get that on 37th Street.

In the afternoons, we can drive our rented jeep around the island and check out one beach after another. In New York, it takes an afternoon just to get across town on the bus.

[Photo: BrennanNYC]

Related Stories:
· Hix Island House reviews [TripAdvisor]