The joys of travelling without ever leaving the hotel
What constitutes a ‘bad’ tourist?
You can fret about your carbon footprint, your hotel’s dubious ‘eco’ policies and your tour operator’s suspected exploitation of the local workforce all you want.
But, few things make the self-declared ‘intelligent’ traveller feel more ‘bad’ and guilty than that gnawing, knowing realisation that they haven’t, or simply can’t be bothered to, show due diligence when it comes to thoroughly ticking off the ‘must see’ cultural attractions of their chosen destination.
It’s enough to make dinner party conversation back home screech to a halt. Cutlery drops onto tiled floors when you admit that, despite being in Barcelona, you didn’t bother popping into the Sagrada Familia. John Lewis plates shatter when you confess to skipping the Whitney when you were in Manhattan. Coats are seized and front doors yanked opened for yet-to-be-ordered Ubers when you concede that, no, we didn’t step through the doors of Harry’s Bar when we were in Venice last week.
If all this sounds familiar then let me tend you dear reader. It’s really OK. Because it’s not just you. It’s about time that we all came clean about one of the most deftly and deeply secreted travel truths: it’s actually really nice to just stay in a hotel and do nothing.
Don’t take my word for it. Listen to those of a Beatle. Half a century ago next month John Lennon and Yoko Ono decided to stay in bed for weeks at a time, albeit with the likes of Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg popping in for company as bedside companions.
The Amsterdam Hilton, and, two months later, the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal became, for a week each, home to the ‘Bed In For Peace’, a honeymoon publicity stunt for the couple who, ensconced atop their king size mattress, recorded ‘Give Peace a Chance’, wore Morecambe and Wise-esque striped pyjamas, ate a lot of room service meals and, as photos from the Netherlands prove, only got out of bed to stand awkwardly while a Portuguese chamber-maid changed the sheets.
Maybe the beauty of staying in a top-floor hotel room wasn’t quite the take-home message John and Yoko had in mind. But their ability to visit Montreal and not feel guilty about skipping a trip to Notre-Dame continues to impress me.
Because, I admit it: not always but sometimes, I adore ordering room service, closing the curtains and wallowing in glorious sybaritic sweet - and suite - inertia.
The most brutal belittlements in this field have long been reserved for those cruise ship passengers who elect to stay on the boat rather than take a whistle-stop day trip of Nassau or Naples.
But why be so mean? If these passengers really were such cultural ignoramuses, surely they’d be spending their money down the local golf club or on new sofas rather than on sailing the seven seas?
There’s something intensely insecure and snobbish about people who insist on adopting a military style itinerary to every day of their holiday, rising at 7am to ‘beat the queues’ at the Louvre.
These are the same holidaymakers who rush their meals, under-tip the waiter, complain about the water pressure, and never consider that hotels might be a ludicrously good environment to have the kind of the kind of garrulous, chandelier-swinging love-making you don’t have enough of, or indeed any of, at home.
Travel isn’t about a slavish devotion to ‘completing’ the must-see picture section at the front of the Time Out guide. For me, on a recent trip to the Caribbean, I found the supposedly ‘must visit’ guided tour and tasting around a spice factory in Grenada ineffective when it came to my feeling better about turning 40. But a couple of days reclining on a hammock on my balcony, reading Paddy Leigh Fermor, drinking martinis as the sun set and racking up a solid 75 steps a day on my Fit Bit? Well, it did me the world of good.
Xavier de Maistre took this notion even further back at the end of the 18th century. An itinerant soldier, while under house arrest in Turin he wrote an entire book about travelling without leaving the house.
Hailing it as ‘a new mode of travelling I introduce into the world’, ‘A Journey Around My Room’ features the following paean to the humble bed:
‘A bed sees us born and sees us die. It is the ever changing scene upon which the human race play by turns, interesting dramas, laughable farces and fearful tragedies. It is a cradle decked with flowers. A throne of love. A sepulchre.’
After reading this, a trip to the nearest modern art gallery feels like overwhelming sensory overload. Why travel to the local botanical gardens when a walk to the mini bar can be an adventure?
So stop feeling so guilty about wallowing in your hotel room in an oversize bathrobe next time you’re on holiday. If it’s good enough for John Lennon and 18th-century soldiers, then, surely, a good session of ‘voluntary hotel arrest’ is good enough for you.
Are you the type of person who could spend an entire holiday in your hotel room? Or would you rather get out and explore? Comment below to join the conversation.