How your hotel room turns into a place where you question all sanity.
We have all been there, checking into a new hotel room. It looks nice and you are happy, then you go out for dinner and return when it is dark. And then the dance begins when it is time to turn the lights on, and then off again when it is bedtime.
Sometimes it feels as if you are as dumb as a brick trying to work out what button does what. You see the master switch, perfect, like hitting the nuclear button.
Then you try to turn on the side lamp next to the bed, and the whole room lights up like a Tivoli. Sometimes it is hide-and-seek to find the right button.
Have they hidden it in the bathroom. Time to put on your Sherlock deerstalker to find out. Spoiler alert, it is a combination of three buttons in the right order, and only the electricians know the right combination. After fifteen minutes you get it.
Great, you figured it out, and then suddenly a voice declares it is 23.00. The alarm clock next to you lights up like a happy child ready to play. You unplug it. It is still happy. Then you look for the batteries. Bingo. Getting the urge to throw them around the room. But you are civilised and put them back in the morning and plug the thing in again for the next guest, with an evil smile on your face, he he he.
Not airplane dark, of course, since airplanes are never dark. Think more of that tiny position light on the wing that blinks all night.
You finally get every light in the room off. Victory, you think. Then the AC control on the wall lights up in the dark like it has something urgent to tell you. “Warriors, come out and play.”
You have been here before. You hunt for the stationery, fold the paper and try to attach over it. It helps a little, but the glow still finds its way out, just to remind you who is in charge.
Amanzoe in Greece (main picture) replaced our home-made shades with proper wooden ones to cover the bedside light panel. That panel lit up the whole room when the lights were off.
The Berkeley in London gives you a red light in the ceiling as soon as you step into the bathroom in the middle of the night. If you were not one hundred per cent awake before, you are now.
Rosewood in Phuket had the perfect room when it was newly built, and all the switches made sense, halleluja! We were so happy until we turned the lights off.
Then the disco started. A router above the bed just hidden behind the ceiling cornice went bananas. Green, red and blue lights sent beams across the ceiling, of course out of reach.
The smoke detector with a tiny LED that blinks all night. One small red flash, every five seconds. You lie there waiting for the next one. And the next one. And the next one…
So you wake up in the middle of the night and need nose drops to breathe. You remember they are in the rucksack in the closet. You guessed it, as soon as the door opens the light floods out of it like “beam me up, Scotty”.
Bedside lamps that only work through an iPad that is out of battery. Nightlights under the bed that turn on every time you breathe. Bathroom mirrors with built-in LEDs that refuse to shut up. And, of course, the classic, the minibar light that glows like it is hosting Eurovision every time you open the door for a bottle of water.
The black tape is the antidote for hotel room designs. We always forget. We always miss it.
OK, it does not solve all the problems, but most of them. It is going to be our new best friend and probably yours after reading this post when travelling.
But that one is on you. You head downstairs before your wife is ready for dinner. She is still in the bathroom, and without thinking you pull the card by the door and cut the power to the whole room. An almost guaranteed sleep-on-the-sofa moment.
Champagne at dinner might save you, but do not count on it.
If you have your own hotel light horror story, you know where to put it.
