I still love hotel bars
Beautiful dawn on this 31st of May. Birds are chirping away and if one listens you can hear the sqwaks and squeaks of new arrivals demanding food. Nature does her thing if we let her be. It’s about 6:30 a.m. and I’ve been up since 5:30 a.m. or so.
I am starting to travel again. I will only fly into airports located in places where there is a strong belief in science (apparently this is something one questions in the 21st century). This narrows my choices significantly. Essentially I can fly from SFO to IAD/DCA, to Newark (such bad food options in that airport) and maybe to ORD (great food both in/out of the airport). My reasons for flying again are threefold: 1) most of the people I care most about don’t live in the Bay Area, 2) I miss and need the anonymity of travel and 3) my desire to maintain 1K status on United is legit. So I am back at it — wisely and respectfully.
This past week I reintroduced myself to the hotel bar (see related threads below). Experiences were for the most part positive. There was one outlier and we shared our thoughts with management (who sought it out) but overall hotel bars remain my happy place when solo business traveling.
A few observations:
Hotel bars are finding their rhythms again but the service, food and beverage options still made for smart eating.
Clientele seemed business travelers primarily but given the weekend I was in DC there were parents celebrating the graduations of their loved ones.
They still feel like a place where I can get what I desire with invisibility.
So as we enter June, I am thinking of a trip a month. My aims are to keep my travel skills sharp, stay connected to those I cherish, give my darling husband a reprieve from all that is me and steady progress towards 1K on United.
I am who I am, as I have always said. I need deep relationships, I need to be stimulated by the multiplicity of truths you so often come across in travel and I love miles.
Related Threads:
This blog was written on May 31, 2021
About The Author:
Jara Dean-Coffey (jdc) is Founder and Director of the Equitable Evaluation Initiative and the Founder of Luminare Group. For the past twenty-five years, she has partnered with clients and colleagues to elevate their collective understanding of the relationship between values, context, strategy and evaluation and shifting our practices so that they are more fully in service of equity. For more about musings + machinations click here.
