Like most grown-ups, all I ask of a hotel room is that it’s clean, convenient and relatively quiet. Over the years, Ted and I have stayed at some truly spectacular hotels: Jasper Park Lodge; the Banff Springs and the Harbour Castle – to name three. We enjoyed every moment of our stay. We have found equal enjoyment in the no-tell motels that beckon seductively from the seedy side of cities and from the mom and pop motels with hand-stitched Biblical verses on the wall and real breakfasts in the lobby that manage, against all odds, to thrive in small towns.
Just after 9/11 Ted and I, our three grown children, their partners and our two grand-daughters stayed at a very elegant hotel apartment in downtown Chicago. Because we were next door or next door but one to the Sears Tower we were virtually alone in this vast and lovely place. The Sears Tower was rumoured to be the target of the next terrorist attack, but we adults assumed that because of the attention being paid to our surroundings, we were probably registered in the safest hotel on planet earth. At ages 3 and 2, the girls had the kind of hotel experience that Eloise had at the Plaza in New York.
This weekend we brought our two oldest children and their families to Winnipeg with us for a Mother’s Day weekend—our treat. Ted and I booked three rooms at the Inn at the Forks, a place we’d stayed at before and liked very much. The Inn at the Forks is a fine hotel – the location is great: a market that sells everything a 12 and 10 and ½ year old girl could dream of owning is a stones’throw away, as is a Children’s Museum, a Children’s Theatre, a skateboard park (where truly cool boys can be spotted at any hour of the day). There are also kid-friendly restaurants with names like Muddy Waters BBQ and The Spaghetti Factory and antique shops and, of course, the drama of the meeting ‘at the forks’ of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers.
From our window we (and more importantly our four year old grandsons) could watch the construction of the new Museum of Human Rights. There was much discussion about how cranes and back-hoes operate and whether any grandchild of mine would ever work 15 stories in the air operating a crane. They voted ‘yes’, but I had the final vote.
The girls luxuriated in bathing in the splendid bathrooms, using every toiletry offered up for their beauty needs and marveling over the terry towel robes.
Yesterday our kids and their kids took the train back home. Ted and I moved to more austere digs: the dormitory at Canadian Mennonite University. Our place is clean, quiet and convenient. It costs $90.00/night (towels and toilet paper included). We are content, and contentment is always worth five stars.