I would like to humbly suggest that European hotels take a fraction of the money they spend on towel heaters, and instead enclose the shower just a tiny bit.
This is now the third hotel room on this trip alone that I’ve created a small lake in the bathroom, just by taking a normal fairly quick shower.
Do Europeans shower differently than Americans? Do you somehow make sure the water just goes down instead of splashing around?
Also why in the hell do hotels need towel heaters? They replace the towels every day anyway. It’s such a weird luxury. In the last two trips I don’t think I’ve seen a bathroom in Europe in a hotel or in a friend’s house that didn’t have a towel heater. They seem to be mandatory.
Ive always wondered about this. American hotels, particularly high end American hotels, are starting to do it as well. I have no idea why or what the obsession is with a half enclosed shower. Does it have something to do with keeping drunk people from crashing through the backhalf if they have to vomit in the shower or sleep in the tub?
Hotels want to do away with the dated looking curtains. Which get dirty and are harder to clean, and don’t look as modern. Ok, so now you want to install something like a glass pane. Well, if you do a half-pane, then you don’t have to pay for something that requires a door system. So materials/installation are now significantly less.
Some Vegas hotels have this with a walk-in shower (no tub) and it’s annoying because you can’t turn it on without getting hit by cold water. Some places fix this by having a hole in the glass to reach through or putting the handle somewhere not close to where the water goes.
Yah, I see towel heaters all over Europe, but don’t think I’ve ever used one except when I washed some socks and needed them to dry quickly. I don’t particularly care if my towel is toasty or not.
I have a stupid question - aren’t those “towel heaters” just radiators? When I was in Italy in April the hotels we stayed at just described them as heaters for the bathroom.
Any good quick suggestions for decent cheap/value hotels in NYC at end of this month?
My elderly mother decided she wants to hit NYC when she comes to visit soon. We’re looking at Met Museum of Art - it’s her main request, but I’m assuming a decent subway location will work anyway. Pure touristy visit (bucket list type).
Lower Manhatten somewhere? For Statue of Liberty type purposes as well. I dunno.
Hoping for 200’ish or so per night type price (optimistic?). Bit more $$ for being nice would be fine.
Any advice or suggestions…?
Spent time googling but wtf; so many. I’ll trust suggestions here more than all the random gopgle/sponsored/random whatever links I just been looking at.
I can’t make any specific recs, but if you haven’t already, you might take a look at Hotels.com for a search. They’re formally apart of Expedia now, but I’ve had largely very good experiences using them and limiting my options to anything over an 8.0 on the user rating scale (the higher the score and the more reviews the better obv). The site also has a map option where you can get pretty specific about where in the city you might want to stay.
I just looked and there are a bunch of good options in the 200’s for the end of the month. Some are neat the museum too but I wouldn’t be too worried about location if you find a place in Manhattan (downtown of 96th St) or in Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge, bc you’ll mostly navigate with the subway and will never be very far from anything you’d want to visit.
I’ll use 3rd party sites to research, but always book direct with the property.
I’ve stayed at the Pod Hotel in Murray Hill and found it to be clean and reasonably priced. They’re not actual pods but the rooms are tiny. Maybe not great for an elderly person or more than one person in a room, but for solo travel it fit all my needs.
That’s not even a bad shower by European standards.
I’ve stayed at many where there’s no glass pane and no mount for the sprayer on a rope. I guess you’re supposed to take a bath only, or lay down in the tub and get sprayed off like an animal.
Or others where the whole bathroom is the shower and there’s a drain in the middle of the floor.
The US is kinda unique apparently in that we consider bathing a comforting, indulgent activity. Most of the world considers bathing a chore. I guess like many things it boils down to us being vain, narcissistic, and not giving af about the environment (using lots of water, heating the water to be very hot, central HVAC, etc).
Bucharest was pretty mediocre in Romania, but Brasov has been much better. Charming little city nestled among the mountains.
Went to Bran Castle, supposedly “Dracula’s” Castle (in reality has little to do with him or Vlad), but it was pretty terrible, I wouldn’t recommend it. Peles Castle on the other hand, was surprisingly awesome. Both are in between Brasov and Bucharest. Over the coming weeks we’ll be able to visit more of the small cities in Romania like Sibiu, Sighisoara, Alba Iulia, etc which are the real highlights of the country.
