Unplanned Staycation in 221

We recently had to spend 2 nights in two separate hotels due to some unplanned maintenance work in our home. Coincidentally we got the same room number in both places: 221 and that inspired me to write this post. On both nights, we did not know whether we can go home or not until late, so we used hotels tonight late in the evening (around 8 pm) to book these hotels. It worked out pretty great. We have not used them before but clearly, they are good for this type of usage and offered nice discounts.

We used this opportunity to think about what we like or dislike about traveling and random hotels.

• We appreciated that this was unplanned, random, spontaneous and it allowed us to experience things in a new way. It is usually a good idea to have a plan but allowing for occasional surprises and deviations from the plan makes traveling more interesting.
• Both places offered breakfast. This is another thing we appreciate as it gives us the energy to start our day without spending joyful morning hours searching for places to eat. One place had a much better breakfast but it did not matter much after all. The important part was that there was breakfast.
• Normally we do not watch TV. It is too tempting in the hotels though, the big screen just near the bed. And TV is exactly as we remembered: nothing interesting. With the exception of back to back Star Trek series, I am a fan of those!
• Both hotels were within the same price range. And after trying both, the cheaper one was way better. Lesson learned: within the same price range cheaper does not necessarily mean worse.

It was also a good chance to look at our hometown with a tourist’s eye. The bottom line is we would not really visit this town if we were not leaving here. However, staycations might be a good idea. It was a good experience getting out of our daily norms and trying out something new. Change in routine itself felt good.

It was a strange feeling that we could not go home even if wanted to; really did not feel great at first to think about not having a place we can always go back to. Later on, we concluded that home is wherever we are really. As much as we like the familiarity of a place it is us, our loved ones and friends that make a place home.

Hope you enjoyed this post! If you have any tips about staycations please share with me!