There's always been some concern about the voyeuristic taste at The Hotel on Rivington (THOR) with its all-glass, see-through showers facing the street for all of the Lower East Side and peeping Toms with binoculars further uptown to see.
However, just because the free world may peer at hotel guests doesn't mean guests aren't spying back. From a tipster:
My friends took showers in Thor's standard glass showers (only 3/4 of which are frosted). The girl had a problem and waited until daytime, but my guy friend put on a show for some random neighbor smoking on her fire escape. We also had a prime view down into the lounge, to see people eating breakfast.
Is it wrong that we are slightly jealous of that smoking neighbor on the fire escape? Anyways, have no fear those of you with body image issues. THOR does provide "privacy paper" if you'd like not to put on a show. Those of you eating breakfast, well...you're outta luck.
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.
On a day when every hotel you're looking at booking starts to sound the same, a bit of out-there technology can help you make your mind up. Travel + Leisure Australia recently put together a list of their favorite hotel gadgets and gizmos, and there are a few hotels on their list that we would book just to check out their new technology.
They've got the Peninsula Tokyo on their list, not just for the nail dryer and ultra-portable phone but also for the three mood lighting settings; speaking of lighting, the Tarraleah Lodge in Tasmania has "chromatherapy" lighting in the bathtub so the water will glow the color of your mood.
There's more than just cool lighting to be had, though: the T+L story mentions Tokyo's Four Seasons at Marunouchi because of its hi-tech warm toilet seats with multiple spraying functions to take the place of toilet paper, for example. There's also the Park Hyatt Seoul in South Korea which has gadgety non-fog mirrors inside their rain showers. Yes, we admit it: we're hotel geeks who would choose a hotel just for the non-fog mirror. Sorry.
While we were showing off our mini-hotel guide to Brussels, the TheNotoriousMEG was dropping off shots of her stay at the Sheraton Brussels in the HotelChatter Flickr Pool. While she has plenty of shots of the suite, we liked this snapshot of the bathroom. You gotta love those antiquated European hair-dryer systems.
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 Claire fantasizes about the best place to do her makeup. Enjoy.
The only thing worse than sitting in our cubicles all day, surrounded by fabric-covered makeshift partitions and bathed in fluorescent lighting, is making the dreaded walk to the lavatory. Between the empty soap dispensers, the stiff paper towels, and the woman from HR with the grunting problem in the next stall, tending to our human needs becomes a trying task.
That's why when we see images of pristine bathrooms, like the one in the Wynn Las Vegas, we feel a surge of jealousy. What we wouldn't give for a flat-screen panel TV, his and her sinks, and one of those lighted magnification mirrors that make our pores look enormous (imagine Robin Leach telling you this, it just sounds fancier when he says it). The "Hotels Of The Rich & Famous" website this year announced that in a survey of Vegas hotels, visitors ranked Wynn the highest.
Once again, we are stalking the #1 rankings on TripAdvisor to find what they have ranked as the top hotels in cities throughout the nation.
This week our obsession took us to Seattle, where not only did we learn that the top property is the Grand Hyatt, but that the way to a guest's heart is a great bathroom. Case in point:
The bathroom was huge (almost bigger than the actual room). I absolutely loved it!
The room was a good size, but the bathroom was amazing!
The bathrooms are massive with a separate frameless shower and extra deep soaker tub with a waterfall faucet.
So hotel developers take note: it's not all about location, location, location. Although, we're sure that can't hurt. Afterall, who can soak in a tub while staying in a bad neighborhood?
Water falls from a light fixture in a guest bathroom at the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim, thanks to another guest on the floor above. Not quite the water park these guys were probably looking for.
We apologize if we are a little heavy on the NYC area hotel stories today but this Hotel Hell is not to be missed.
Doobielicious69 checked into the ever-dirty Park Central Hotel and found a bit of a leak in the bathroom. The hotel's answer to fixing it? Placing a wet towel with a dirty shoeprint on the ground.
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by juliana
