Observations: On Hotel Lobbies
So, I write these blog posts from the various coffee shops and semi-public locations I frequent.
Semi-public places are fascinating, as people seem so at home in a place they could so quickly be removed from.
So, today, I’m at the Marriott Renaissance Dupont… which is actually closer to Foggy Bottom or West End than Dupont. But, I’ll let it slide.
The hotel, conveniently located on New Hampshire Ave., is but a few blocks from my apartment, work, and school. My parents — of the lifelong Marriott faithful — have frequently stayed here in the last decade of my sister and I living in D.C.
It’s a cozy hotel with a nice lobby. I once saw the entire U.S. women’s national soccer team here and wished Hope Solo good luck. Little did I know, she needed more luck off the field than between the goalposts.
I’ve always been obsessed with hotels.
It’s kind of strange, but, as a child, I always savored hotel stays in different cities. Employees greet you with a smile, friends catch up at the bar, the unemployed awkwardly interview for jobs with strangers in earshot.
Back home in Philly’s South Jersey suburbs, I found friends with a similar enchantment.
Underage, uncool, and underwhelmed, we would often drive to different suburban hotels and explore the omnipresent oddities.
The Cherry Hill Crowne Plaza was a particular favorite.
On a good night, there would be an Indian wedding. The wedding parties would parade into the lobby in lavish outfits and the onlookers would ogle mouths agape like they were being whipped with a foreign culture. We’d watch and clap to the music, occasionally sneaking in to watch the festivities from an adjacent room.
On a bad night, we’d have to make our own fun. We’d race up the stairs, taking things from one room, putting them in another. We’d occasionally grunt our makeshift Gregorian chants in the echoey stairwells. We once lifted a ficus from the lobby and delivered it on our band director’s front porch.
A few hotels tried to be hip and had dance floors near the bars. Those were fun. We’d find pianos in many of the nicer places, and have ourselves a good time there.
Whatever the reason, I’ve always enjoyed hotels. Nowadays, I do homework… I blog or edit or write or read.
But, as I write this, I’m distracted by a group of French tourists berating the bartender.
All is well.
