I love that even though the Yucatan has very few roads, and I’ve been down there more than a dozen times, there are still some roads I haven’t been on. Such as the road between Valladolid and Izamal, which passes through the village of Uayma. Where there’s this:
I also had time to poke around bits of Valladolid I hadn’t had time to see before–like the portrait gallery on the second floor of city hall.
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This past winter, when we were in Bangkok and staying at the totally fabulous Hotel Atlanta, I realized there’s a very particular kind of lodging I like.
For want of a better term, I think I’ll call them “vintage hotels.” [Edited in 2014 to add: Now we have a popular common reference point, thanks to Wes Anderson: The Grand Budapest Hotel, circa 1968.] “Antique hotels” might also work. “Nostalgia bivouacs” are what they really are. And the funny thing is that Peter, he of the Edison bulbs and steam trains, thinks I like these hotels more than he does. Maybe he’s right–I sure have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes one of these hotels exactly what it is.
These hotels must be old-fashioned. But not self-consciously so. Certainly, the owner may have a “things were better in the old days” attitude, but he can’t be out scouring yard sales for old telephone switchboards and other doohickeys to create a “ye olde” decorating scheme. No–that old telephone switchboard has to just be left over from the old days, hulking behind the reception desk.
These hotels usually have old and cranky owners. Years of watching standards slip all around them have strengthened their resolve to do things the right way, even if the desert sands are blowing in, the drunken yahoos are crashing into the bars next door or the country in which they’re situated is finally shaking off its colonial shackles.
But enough generalizations. Perhaps it’s easier to explain the concept with some examples.
In Cairo, Pension Roma is the quintessential vintage hotel. The owner is a French woman (despite the fact she was born in Egypt and will die in Egypt), and she rules the place with an iron fist. The sheets are crisp, the furniture is shiny, there is no dust in the corners, and she even sews little cozies to cover up the propane tanks for the hot-water heaters. Of course there are chandeliers and a rattly open elevator.
I don’t have a picture of the Roma, so here’s a photo from the extremely vintage Cairo Agriculture Museum instead:
In Bangkok, the aforementioned Hotel Atlanta is at the end of one of the main Sukhumvit sois for sex tourism. The facade of the hotel is covered with cranky “no sex tourists!” signs, but inside, the crankiness is dispersed into all kinds of details: a book full of cynical travel tips, drink coasters with mean-spirited quotes from the previous owner, and a theoretical ‘guests only’ policy in the hotel restaurant. This would all be oppressive, except the writing desks have little fans in the bottom, to keep your legs cool, and there’s a giant swimming pool ringed with photos of it being used in more glamorous times. The rooms are nothing special, but that barely matters, when you’ve got counter help this charming:
In Campeche, Mexico, my absolute favorite hotel in the world is the Hotel Colonial. No one’s very cranky here, fortunately, but there is an old patriarch who sits in a chair dozing all day, and the business cards look like they haven’t been reprinted since 1964. The rooms may be slightly smaller than they used to be, because they’re covered every year or two in a fresh layer of glossy paint in Easter-egg colors. And eff Frette–the sheets here are the best ever for hot weather: crisply starched and almost rough like muslin. The owner buys them from somewhere special in Mexico City. Rooms cost less than $20 per night.
Here’s a montage I made last summer, after my at-least-fifth visit:
Finally, I have to give a shout-out to Garden City House, also in Cairo. Long, echoing hallways with patterned tile floors, rooms with high ceilings, dreary salmon-pink paint and enormous bathtubs, and of course the requisite old telephone switchboard–but overall a little too ratty to count as a proper vintage hotel.
Then, the day I checked out, I was sitting by the desk, chatting with the guy there, and the chintzy plastic phone on his desk rings–this little horrible made-in-China ‘tinky-rink-rink’ noise. He answers the phone, nods, and then gets up and walks around the desk to the switchboard…where he casually moves the plugs around to transfer the call to a guestroom!
My eyes nearly fell out of my head.
Damn. If I had known, I would’ve been giving people my phone number there right and left! That’s why I made sure to sit at the writing desk in the Atlanta and write some postcards. Vintage hotels are like museums you get to live in.
Do you like these kind of hotels? Have any recommendations for me?
Here’s 3,000 kilometers in Chiapas, Tabasco and Campeche states, from my August trip: Peter at the wheel; Huichol Musical on the soundtrack.
Some notes:
00:05–Hi, sheep!
00:16–Yes, that’s a tuk-tuk! They’re all in the mountain villages where pedal-power triciclo taxis are too tough to manage.
00:22–Downtown Tapachula, with the “uno x uno” (‘one by one’=four-way stop) traffic sign.
00:36–Puente Chiapas, the huge long bridge across the huge wide river/dammed-up-lake between Chiapas and Tabasco. You can’t see it, but the back of the truck in front of us is filled with those rebar rocking chairs I love.
00:52–Villahermosa’s cathedral is unfinished–those spires are the most impressive part. Also love old Bug/new Bug in the same street.
01:04–Those are banana trees hiding behind the hedges. Acres upon acres of banana plantations, in Tabasco.
01:11–Don’t assume Mexico is all humid and hot. It was chilly in the mountains, even in August, and there was lots of fog.
01:17–That sign says “Slow down in the rain.” We didn’t take any chances.
01:40–I only took this clip because Peter seemed to be driving so fast. But through the miracle of video compression, we seem to be speeding along crazily in pretty much every clip.
02:03–I doubt Nissan tested the truck gate to hold the weight of four men….
As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve got this little strip of suburban plastic at the southern end of Astoria. One of the bigger tenants is an Applebee’s.
And that Applebee’s has a big ol’ freakin’ apple on top of it.
When I saw this, I immediately thought of Campeche, Mexico. Like many Spanish colonial towns, Campeche didn’t have street signs at first. People referred to corners instead, and named them for objects or animals, which were marked with a drawing or a figure. In Campeche, the corner known as “el rincon del venado” is still marked by a somewhat battered statue of a deer (which I can’t find a photo of, unfortunately) atop one of the buildings.
This isn’t unique to Campeche. Most of medieval Europe used this same navigation, and it was handy in colonial towns where new streets were built and named quickly (and unmemorably–the Spanish just used numbers).
So the Applebee’s sign makes sense here in Queens–the streets here are also unmemorably numbered, and there is certainly a polyglot population.
But the bad aspect of medieval signage is that it was really adopted because no one could read.
Is that what’s happening now? It sure seems like it.
Especially because it’s not just Applebee’s.
Chili’s is probably even more thorough in this than Applebee’s is–most restaurants have the gigundo chili on it. And with its logo, Chili’s has gone so far as to take all but one of the letters out of its name:
When I was in Chicago in January, we passed the Weber Grill restaurant. This has perhaps the most medieval look of all, the way it’s sticking off the building:
I can practically hear someone saying, “I’ll meet you at el rincon del Weber…”
I was on the Upper West Side last week, and saw that Dunkin’ Donuts is following the trend too, by affixing a giant coffee cup to its awning. I didn’t get a picture of that, but here’s another version, out in Brooklyn:
What’s funny about this one is that there’s still lettering on the cup. Dunkin’ Donuts is basically admitting that it doesn’t “own” the takeaway coffee market–but it’s hoping that if it just makes its own logo big enough, it will suffice. (And can I add that it’s just plain sad that the more obvious symbol–duh, a doughnut!–is not even an option, due to health concerns.)
I knew standards in the U.S. were slipping–we’re more like a third-world country than anyone wants to admit. But if we’re going back to the illiterate Middle Ages on top of it all, it’s worse than I thought.
Any signs of diner illiteracy near you?