INTRODUCTION
(originally appeared in August 2012)
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Claridge's, London
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Welcome to Frank Pleasants’
hotel musings. This is NOT a site to reserve a hotel or to look for
travel discounts. It’s just a place to reminisce about hotels and
restaurants within them, and sometimes just about life, my life. I have a passion for hotels.
I kind of collect them. I collect impressions and experiences. I like to
know about their history and about the people who work in them.
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Raffles, Singapore |
When personnel in the best
hotels and restaurants are really good, they can attain a kind of genius.
I used to dream of being the maître d’hôtel at the Ritz in Paris or the
concierge at the Gritti in Venice; but if I have one exceptional quality,
it is my lucidity. I know that, to say the least, genius is missing. So
I enjoy observing from the sidelines.
A word about myself. I am an
American, resettled in Europe over 40 years ago, briefly in London, then
Paris; so I’ve lived a lot longer out of America than in. I’m not
exclusively riveted to grand palace-type lodgings, but to be fair, when
given the choice, I do tend to prefer them.
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The Biltmore, Los
Angeles |
If not out-and-out poor, I
have never had more than modest means. Which is to say, dining at the
Ritz and sleeping at Raffles have always meant a bit of saving and
budgetary planning, and have never become routine.
Even though I have stayed at a
few of the world’s finest, and lunched or breakfasted at many more, the
majority of my experience is limited to the deliciously rewarding pastime
of strolling through hotel lobbies.
In sum, I am a collector of
memories, and I enjoy sharing them.
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Hotel Normandy,
Deauville |
You will find on the top
right of this page “MY HOTELS,” a growing collection of hotel photos.
I’ll be adding to them periodically, and writing about some of them. To
enter, just click on the thumbnail. The same applies to “HOTEL LOOS,”
where you’ll find some of the snazziest toilets you’re ever likely to
see. The third gallery, “SCRAPBOOK,” is a more personal collection of
hotel-related snapshops, mainly friends and family over the years. Have a
look, you might find yourself there.
I’ll post stories from many,
though not all, of these hotels in the coming months. You are
cordially invited to drop in every Friday. These musings are most
often made up of snippets from my life, bits and pieces of past
experiences going in and out of hotels.
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The Shangri-la,
Paris |
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Gritti bar,
Venice |
Those early days were a time
that are now reduced to floating impressions, not always making a lot of
sense. They may not even be entirely accurate, but they are all that are
left of my memories.
I recently read L.P. Hartley’s
“The Go Between,” and its first sentence appeals to the almost-old man
that I have now become: “The past is a foreign country. They do things
differently there.”
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The George V Four
Seasons, Paris |
[Photos are mine, unless otherwise credited]
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