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The wisdom of never leaving your hotel room
- 0n34n7 7y agoIm sitting here in a hotel room in Leipzig for the past week and can totally relate.
- whitepoplar 7y agoHow's Leipzig? I've been meaning to visit for ages, for reasons I'm still unsure.
- dansky 7y agoI'm doing walking videos when traveling. Here's one of Leipzig: https://youtu.be/udrqN2QArHo https://youtu.be/udrqN2QArHo
- whitepoplar 7y agoCool!
- jhbadger 7y agoIf you are into Bach at all, it is a must see. There's a museum, the church where he worked and his tomb. Also a Mendelssohn museum. And a preserved Stasi headquarters if you haven't seen one elsewhere in the former GDR.
- whitepoplar 7y agoThanks, good to know!
- gameshot911 7y agoSounds delightful. After years of staying in Marriott chains for work trips, I wasn't even aware hotels lkke these existed. Anyone have suggestions for locating hotels like the ones in the article? I'm not even sure how I would find one out of the hundreds that'd show up on any city hotel search query.
- plouffy 7y agoSounds dreadful. I don't think I've ever heard someone complain about green spaces in a city before: "I find this city too full of nature and open spaces, too vast for a long city walk, and way too dark at night" I would not like to meet this person.
- criddell 7y agoI love meeting people that see the world in an entirely different way than me.
- eaenki 7y agoMaybe when you’re debating weather the progress of tech is slowing down or accelerating. This is shit
- orbifold 7y agoMoreover this article is basically content free.
- conjectures 7y agoConsidering it's about not venturing from your hotel room, I think the author does about as well as is possible. But yeah.
- dijit 7y agoI guess the author and I are polar opposites. I detest light drenched streets and much prefer controlled spats of nature that you see in cities. I also prefer things being dimly lit, with many low luminance lights scattered around. However I do prefer sticking around my hotel room rather than spending a lot of energy being in public. Navigating crowds drains me emotionally and I usually need time to recover from a vacation. Conversely I don’t like being the “lazy” type of tourist that just stays on the beach and eats. But that’s my personal prejudice. :/
- c17r 7y ago> Each comment costs a little ETH cryptocurrency to post First time I’ve seen something like this. I wonder if it drastically cuts down on comments made, which could be a good thing.
- _Microft 7y agoIt reminded me of Amazon. They noticed that even the smallest amount of shipping fee, in the order of a few cents, made people order less than when shipping was completely free.
- justinclift 7y agoOr increases the output of low quality articles, trying to draw them? ;)
- titzer 7y agoI'll be downvoted for this, but this is so astoundingly tonedeaf and entitled I have trouble finding words. Fly around the world to lounge in a room all day. In a world of climate crises, most of which arise from overconsumption and CO2 emissions at all time highs, we need fewer people doing this. Please, just stay home. Or at the very least, find a hotel in your area and pretend.
- sunkenvicar 7y agoHe’s the most efficient tourist I’ve come across.
- mikeymz 7y agoYeap and he called it "wisdom"
- ikeboy 7y agohttps://popula.com/2018/08/08/honestly-yonatan-raz-portugali-kinda-does-a-shitload-really-in-one-day/ https://popula.com/2018/08/08/honestly-yonatan-raz-portugali... looking through previous posts by the same author
- codazoda 7y agoThis blog post reads like a public journal. It's kinda interesting. I wonder if any of his posts were meant for such a large audience. Yet, they seem to be, as he requires some Bitcoin for comments.
- groundlogic 7y agoThis is what "blogging" used to be like 15-20 years ago. I liked it.
- mxwsn 7y agoThe little charms of everyday life are what I find most interesting about staying in a different country. I would find a hotel room too anonymous though, too stifling. I'd recommend Airbnb instead, which forces one to participate in the local neighborhood a bit more. This past summer I spent a couple weeks working out of an Airbnb in Paris. The room had a modest collection of art selected by the local owners, and I quickly acquainted myself with a local patisserie for a daily almond croissant and cappuccino.
- archagon 7y agoAs a kid, I would go on vacations with my parents and wonder about the lives of people who lived in all the strange little houses around Europe. As an adult, I was fortunate enough to actually find out through a year of Airbnb hopping. Best travel experience of my life! Hotels are time and culture frozen. I don’t think I’d ever want to stay in one again.
- epx 7y agoIt is a bit extreme but it is a valid counterpoint to vacations where people plan to visit 65535 places per day
- human20190310 7y agoI was prepared to disagree with the idea after reading the title, but the author makes a pretty good case in the article.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- phamilton 7y agoGrowing up in Southern California, the annual day at Disneyland had an incredibly packed schedule, full of strategies for when to go on a particular ride. We still enjoy Disneyland today, but I've learned to just slow down. Look at the colorful brickwork of the castle, eat at a sit down restaurant in New Orleans square, watch a parade. Maybe I skip riding Pirates of the Caribbean if the line is too long. Maybe we head back to the hotel when the lines get long and enjoy the pool. It ends up being a much more enjoyable day, something closer to what I supposed Walt Disney imagined so many years ago. Sometimes you do get more by doing less.
- devit 7y agoOn the opposite side, I wish there was an efficient hotel market for people like me who don't care at all about the aesthetics or size of the hotel room, room service or amenities but do care about having a single room, pitch black and silent during the day, and with a comfortable bed.
- ravenstine 7y agoMotel 6?
- devit 7y agoGenerally most hotels fail on the pitch black during the day requirement because they only have curtains (only roller shutters, aluminum foil on the window or having no window can block all light), they aren't very good at being silent (no soundproofing, room service with carts at morning, road in front without properly insulated windows, etc.) and you generally don't get an high-quality mattress and bed unless you go for an high-end hotel (with lots of useless amenities) and often the bed is not even acceptable (too small, no wood foundation, bad mattress, sheets that aren't big enough to always stay tucked in, or even sheets that can't be tucked in at all).
- kweinber 7y agoYou might be interested in checking yourself and a bed into a storage facility. It fits your requirements perfectly.
- noodlesUK 7y agoI don’t know if this is a serious suggestion, but I’m quite confident you can’t just live in a storage space in most parts of the developed world, it’s definitely not legal.
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- croisillon 7y agoConstant snacking is also my solution to not fall asleep while driving long distances.
- eaenki 7y agoThis article is the weirdest shit I ever read. I would rather jump off a cliff than do what’s described there- not an exaggeration. Dude!
- matt-attack 7y agoSame. I kept wondering if the whole thing was younger in cheek. Was he trying to make a commentary on people that actually do this? No, I think the author was serious. Strange indeed.
- lisper 7y agoMy sentiments exactly. I honestly can't tell if the article was intended to be serious or satire.
- vvpan 7y agoYeah... So, where's the "wisdom"? And what's the take-away?
- sterileopinions 7y agoPlease don't make light of suicide to display your confusion with the article. It's not constructive and it's pretty juvenile.
- huhtenberg 7y agoIt's a common figure of speech that conveys an established sentiment. Don't nitpick on trivialities. It's not constructive and it's pretty juvenile.
- sterileopinions 7y ago>It's a common figure of speech Only for certain audiences of a particular age group. It's not globally common. It's commonality doesn't remove the other characteristics of it which ruins the entire point of drawing attention to how often it's used. Please don't be disingenuous when the conversation needs to be more constructive in the first place.
- maltelandwehr 7y ago„I find this city too full of nature and open spaces“ I feel kinda sad for the author. How can one come up with a concept line that?
- jwmoz 7y agoThis was the point I thought it was a parody but then by the end I realised it was not.
- jvm___ 7y agoIts also too dark, they prefer Tel Aviv with its "stadium lit streets". Not my cup of tea either.
- phendrenad2 7y agoI'm also perplexed by it, but to instinctively assume that your perspective is better makes me sad for you. </irony>
- phendrenad2 7y agoAhh too bad I can't delete comments after N minutes. I always feel bad when one of my comments gets downvoted, and I realize it was unnecessarily hostile and/or vapid. Maybe I need to make a Hacker News proxy which lets me post things and then change my mind later...
- groundlogic 7y agoBerlin is really spread out. I agree on that part. It's like a complex of cities rather than a city. I can see the virtue of that as a resident but as a visitor/sightseer it's annoying.
- areoform 7y agoWhen I'm rich enough to afford it, I want to live in a hotel. A beautiful, luxurious hotel, where I don't have to worry about interior decorating - other than switching out the bland art for more tasteful pieces. Or cleaning. Or, keeping the fridge stocked. Or scrounging up healthy food in the morning. Or getting a good meal at any hour. Or paying the utility bills. Or worrying about the electrical wiring of my house. Or dealing with water storage in a drought. Or dealing with water at all. Or dealing with the home owner's association. Or thinking about home security. Or procuring the subtle furnishings that make a home a home. Or dealing with hiring the occasional cleaning lady or service. Or doing home repairs etc etc. No, I want to outsource all of that. I want to be able to wake up. Get to work on a dedicated high-speed internet connection. Yawn a bit. Go down to the lobby in my pajamas. Grab a good healthy breakfast buffet. Sit down next to the pool. Pull out my Kindle or iPad, read a textbook or Iain M Banks. Get a work out in by swimming around after I'm bored. Go back to my workstation in my suite. Do a few emails. Shower in the gorgeous bathroom. Dress in something comfy. Sit down, get some serious hours in. Have a keto snack or two brought to me for when I'm peckish. Go down for dinner. Enjoy the hub hub of people. Go behind the bar (something no one else can do). Pour myself a small drink. Talk to the chef about what he's into that night. Have a tiny portion of that for dinner. Go to swim in the pool again. Go back up, read a book, and then fall asleep. It's a seamless frictionless lifestyle. And when I have enough money that I don't have to worry about money. That's what I want. I don't want fancy cars or planes and stuff — just a life where I can think about the better things in life. Having your own house is overrated. I would settle for a good suite at the Ritz.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoIs this tongue in cheek? Because it reads as more worldly and self aware but is largely about living a more extravagant, expensive and luxurious lifestyle.
- jsty 7y agoTo be honest, it sounds like quite a lot of big 'luxury' blocks of flats (gym, pool, cafe / restaurant, concierge) with a slightly higher class of building management than usual (the centralised cleaning and interior decoration). Heck, this is basically the modus operandi of most luxury student accommodation in London.
- gregoriol 7y agoIt seems to me that the person who wrote this article might be too much tired and not in a good healthy environment in their everyday life: that would explain why they enjoy the calm and order of an hotel room, they don't have "free" space in their mind to discover new stuff, they just need to rest and quietness... This is a bit sad.
- graeme 7y agoCgp grey does this, he talks about it occasionally on the Cortex podcast. I've frequently done a version of travel working. I find it best for writing, though it could serve to work on a single project as well. I usually choose an airbnb though, and while I do get outside a lot, it's often more the neighbourhood trips the author mentions. I find it deeply satisfying to get a brief glimpse of daily life in a foreign country that way. My most productive times have been in cuba, where their local airbnb equivalent ("casas particulares") includes the option to buy breakfast and dinner. So you effectively have zero daily chores or maintenance or commute and effective have 2-3 hours freed up in a day.
- dorfsmay 7y agoThis reminds an article I read years ago about airport blues, explaining that you are baby-sat the minute you step in the airport (more so back then when you had to to talk to humans to check in), guide to your gate, have restaurants and shops right there, welcomed on the plane, served food, told where you are and when you'll arrive regularly, etc... But the minute you land, they want you out of the plane and there's nobody anywhere to even answer basic questions, your all alone and better hope there are signs to the luggage carousel.
- Ftuuky 7y ago"The places I find ideal to encamp at are the luxury hotels of yesteryear, built around the end of the 19th century for train travelers, shabby and dated, thinly staffed and clinging on mainly through inertia. They are easy to find, just search TripAdvisor reviews with the words “needs urgent renovation!” Another sure sign of a Once-Grand Old Hotel is that the bathroom is larger than the main room. This architectural choice encourages repeated baths, which also help in the battle to stay awake." Exactly my "strategy"! They usually also have nice underrated views from their balconies.
- petercooper 7y agoI enjoyed this! It's the first time I recall reading an article about travel that obsessed over the local neighborhood of the hotel (including the hotel itself) rather than jetting here and there across the wider city. I find so many delights in becoming familiar with a single building and its surrounding mere few blocks, with their quirks, people, shops, and eateries, than to hop around all of the busy "top" attractions. This has huge benefits if you tend to visit smaller cities too, as you are less likely to get bored if you engage in tourism "in the small" and don't need or want large attractions or spectaculars to satisfy you. Being autistic and generally obsessed about the details of things rather than the big picture may have a huge role in my thinking, though. Clearly the majority do want to hit all of the attractions, and that's okay! :-) Only vaguely related, John Carmack also seemed to make a habit of going on work-trips to hotels. You can read about it in his famous .plan files. He would drag a workstation to a hotel a reasonable distance from home and work for a weekend or an entire week without distraction.
- eternalban 7y agoI recommend Chelsea Hotel (nyc) for a pretty vacant vacation. It's not exactly Hotel California -- some manage to leave -- but it is pretty close.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoThe website dedicated to the people that build mobile apps to enable an asocial shut-in lifestyle has an article about asocial shut-in vacations?
- surfsvammel 7y agoI actually do this once a years. Inspired by John Carmack. I leave my kids and wife at home—or wherever they want to spend that particular weekend—and lock myself into a hotel room. I bring food, my own coffee grinder and a laptop and just spend the whole weekend programming, playing chess, read or write. It’s the best weekend of the year and I spend the rest of the year looking forward to it.
- pablasso 7y agoWhere can I read more about this Carmack?
- Sinidir 7y agoNot reading, but he just did a joe rogan podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udlMSe5-zP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udlMSe5-zP8
- GuiA 7y agoIf you can post on HN you can surely use Google/Wikipedia :) The particular anecdote GP is referring to is here though: https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2110408722526967&id=100006735798590 https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=211040872252... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16518726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16518726
- cgag 7y agoHe did Joe Rogan's show a few days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udlMSe5-zP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udlMSe5-zP8 I've heard a lot of good about this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFNL0 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBFNL0
- kryptonomist 7y agoAnd Bill Gates wrote the first code of the FAT system during a 5-day stay in a Albuquerque Hilton hotel.
- Arete314159 7y agoSome people are saying that this sounds like a parody. It's not. I totally understand where the author is coming from. Also, bear in mind that he is a writer, and writers need very specific things to function. Many writers do great work in hotel rooms. JK Rowling famously checked into a hotel room to finish Harry Potter. Maya Angelou used to check into hotel rooms for weeks at a time to finish her books. There is something very helpful about removing all of the known objects of your life, each with its own history in your brain, and replacing the functions (bed, desk, bathroom) while clearing out the connotations. Now you can focus on your interior story without having it compete with the running to-do list that, say, seeing your drippy faucet might spark.
- perl4ever 7y ago"Writers in hotel rooms" makes me think ineluctably of Barton Fink. And The Shining.
- tramadol12 7y agoI believe one big benefit of the hotel is the lack of items in the room compared to the average house. I keep a room in my house completely empty (save some yoga matts and fitness balls) and it does wonders for stress relief.
- nilkn 7y agoMy partner and I have went on several trips where we spent a good chunk of time in the hotel room. For those skeptical, I recommend trying it before knocking it too hard. We decided to try it when we realized that whenever we traveled, we’d sometimes stay in a hotel that offered so much but we’d completely ignore all of that in order to be outside in the city. We thought it would be interesting to take a trip where we planned nothing and didn’t even particularly care about the destination except the hotel. It turned out to be incredibly relaxing. It’s not really a replacement for a normal trip, but a new variation that I totally recommend on occasion. It’s actually great for working some too, which obviously goes against the norm for vacations.
- criddell 7y agoYou might like a cruise.
- techsupporter 7y agoBut the hotel stay comes without being terribly bad for the environment and (some of the) negative worker conditions.
- esotericn 7y agoIt's always interesting how people differ. I pretty much have this experience. I mean, I don't indulge in most of the luxuries, I usually go for lower end places like Airbnb, but I don't really have to, at least not in the medium term, it's just a personal preference because I don't like having servants. I've discovered, over the last few years, that I need some sort of struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Yeah, there are programming projects, I can learn a new (spoken) language, etc, but ultimately, because it's kind of 'unforced', it doesn't give me the same level of drive. What I actually want, and am working towards, is a stable home, on a bit of land that's mine, that I have dominion over. Gardening, building small structures, working on the house, learning how to provide shelter for myself basically. I actively don't want everything to be done for me. I think the ultimate limiting case of that is basically to be wired in to an IV drip, with a VR headset or something, and just wither away into nothing. In the grand scheme of things it's no more or less pointless than anything we do, but it doesn't sit right with me.
- djmips 7y agoYeah, having slaves is nice isn't it. I'm sure that's why they've been popular throughout the ages.
- coldtea 7y ago>Like any great invention, I stumbled upon the idea of the hotel-room vacation by accident, nine years ago, after Toony and I arrived in Chania, Crete, for our honeymoon. The “magical Venetian town” I’d read of in a British travel magazine turned out to be a maze of souvenir shops, Irish pubs, and “authentic” Greek tavernas, so described on the doors and menus. Our hotel room, though, was amazing. Souvenir shops and Irish pubs aside, Chania is indeed a "magical Venetian town", that can enchant even Greeks (who're used to all the tourist hoopla). There are also plenty of really authentic Greek tavernas if one looks beyond the tourist strip. And there's a whole island, of great beauty, and tons of places untouched by tourism all around. The rest of the article (which has its merits) aside, that the author preferred their hotel room tells us more about them, than about the place... Some people can find authentic places even in Las Vegas or Times square, and some people wouldn't know authentic if they were hit on the head with it...
- cosmic_ape 7y agoStaying in a hotel room and not going outside... But also telling other people that you are someone else, as he mentions doing. I can understand the phase, a kind of complete isolation. Not sure it should be instead, rather that in addition to, other kinds of activities. I can relate to room service being annoying. Though leaving "do not disturb" on the door usually works, even for 5-6 days in a row. They do not knock when they see that. Just pester you at the corridors if you pass by.
- tomatocracy 7y agoThey’ll call you in my experience after a couple of days to check if you want the room cleaned. Especially if it’s an electronic sign, people tend to leave it on by accident for longer than they meant to.
- MrBuddyCasino 7y agoThis site reliably crashes my iOS browser. Anyone else?
- leoh 7y agoSame -- iOS in both Safari and Chrome
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago> My confinement caused me to enjoy Berlin for the first time: not going out into it, I couldn’t be disappointed, frustrated or cheated. From the hotel room, the city seemed so full of potential for adventure. Through the window, everything looked so interesting! Full of potential for adventures you'll never have. What good is potential if you never act on it? Just stay at home and replace your real window with a TV screen. I'm clearly not the right audience for this—but I don't get it.
- Ayesh 7y agoI'm a full-time freelancer and I travel for about 8 months every year. I can relate to the mindset of the author. As much as we like to _think_ of working at a beach or next to a waterfall, it's not really that practical. Sometimes the wifi doesn't work in the coffee shop, the coffeeshop is busy and loud, or you don't have a power supply to work more than a couple hours. For me, the sweet spot is staying longer in every place I go. I sometimes take multi-day hikes and forget about my work. I come back, order food delivered, and get my work done at the comfort of a hotel room with good chairs and tables. I can focus more, I am more productive, and it feels better knowing that your next adventure is just a few days away. "Never" leaving the hotel room is a strong word, and I think everyone doing it should take some time to hit a nearby local restaurant, a pub, or take a walk at the beach for some fresh air.