Hotels, Cocktails and Letter Writing

I've had writer's block for a few days, but now that I have four (4!) followers I feel some pressure to keep the posts coming.  Thanks so much CP Vintage, Mick, storybook ranch, and Jill for letting me know that I am not alone in blogland and writing in vain! I would write anyway, however, since having this blog has been very therapeutic, even though I write of trivial things.


Tonight, I am away from home for work purposes and staying in a hotel.  The Hotel restaurant was featuring 'French' cuisine and my colleague and I had smoked salmon on potato pancakes with sour cream and quail eggs for an appetizer and for the entre we had lobster ravioli in a cream sauce topped with a scallop and sun-dried tomato pesto.  Now that I write this, I'm not really sure that these dishes are really all that French, but they had  French titles!  


Anyway, for an aperitif I had Dubonnet on the rocks with lemon, which I haven't had for years.  I'm reading on the internet that it dates to the mid-1800s and was concocted to hide the taste of quinine, an anti-malarial treatment.  It was given to French Foreign Legionnaires in North Africa.  Then, it was re-popularized as a drink among the jet-set crowd in the 1970s and 1980s with the help of an advertising campaign featuring Pia Zadora.


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There is something quaint and nostalgic about things like Dubonnet cocktails (and cocktails in general), airline travel and staying in hotels. Airline travel is definitely not the ultra-glamorous escape it once was, and frankly, neither is overnighting in hotels.  Particularly in Vancouver, where one must do regular bed-bug checks (beware Olympic visitors!) 


But, I have to admit that I always have a little thrill when I open my hotel room for the first time.  I always have a look at the guest directory, room service menu, and I must check to see if there is hotel stationary with envelopes.  I always wonder if anyone uses it anymore, and how many years that stationary was in that drawer.  When I was doing my graduate research in the archives, because of my topic, I often found letters written in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s on hotel stationary embossed with mid-century font and graphics from exotic locales like Australia and Florida.  The letter-writers were staying there for extended periods of time and wrote lengthy letters of 3-5 pages.  I wonder if their paper was regularly replaced.  Anyway, in honour of times gone by, I often use the hotel stationary for writing notes.  I wish I stayed long enough to justify writing a letter on it.


Does anything thrill you about overnighting in hotels?