Scaredy Cat Travels

Finding hotel rooms overseas on a budget with two opposite gender, mostly grown and mostly tall kids is a challenge. Keeping in mind that we would be spending 22 nights together in closer quarters than we’ve been in quite a while, I wanted to be strategic in which hotels and hotel rooms I booked. My goal was to limit the number of times one of us is sleeping on a couch and make sure that we had times that we weren’t all sharing the same room. And to appease Rowan, who doesn’t really want to go on this trip at all, I needed to make sure to book as many rooms as possible with giant bathtubs. His legendary crankiness is only assuaged by a long soak.

As you may have guessed, I am not a person who considers a hotel a mere place to lay my head at the end of a long day of traveling. For me, the hotel is an integral part of the trip. I try to seek out interesting hotels. Instead of counting sheep on a sleepless night, I browse random hotels on my phone and have developed a long bucket list of ones that I want to visit. If one looks good enough, I’ll book entire trips based around it. Or I’ll book my stay in Tucson, Arizona in August when it’s 115 degrees because that’s when I can semi-afford the Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain. In fact, the Kyoto and Fuji stops were on the itinerary originally because I wanted to stay at the Hoshinoya Resorts in those locations. Long before I had researched anything about the area. Unfortunately, those resorts were not made for a party of three and booking two rooms there would have been cost prohibitive. But someday! 

Despite the two chains just mentioned, the hotels don’t have to be expensive. I love it when a hotel mirrors the character of the area and offers unique décor or amenities. This can hinder the planning process because I become so set on whatever I picture that I can’t see anything that doesn’t match it. And just because it’s in my mind doesn’t mean it actually exists. 

To attempt to keep the budget in line, I mixed and matched. We’re staying in the Conrad in Tokyo (mainly because we got a great deal on it – otherwise it would have been out of our budget no matter how I figured it) but a Sheraton at Disney. Sometimes we have two rooms in a less expensive hotel like the Aloft in Seoul or one at a nicer property like the Josun Palace in Gangnam. We also have a mix of familiar chains and local rentals. If we were staying in the US, I would have thrown in a couple of Courtyards but didn’t want to waste a night in Asia in a room that looks like it could be in Mesquite.

 In Japan and Korea, you can often choose between a room with Western-style beds or a traditional (as in their tradition not ours) style room, which means the room will usually be set with a small coffee table-height table and low chairs during the day. At night, the staff (or you depending on the service level) will set out plush bedding on the ground. The positives to this are that you have more floor space during the day, and there is more flexibility in how the bedding is arranged so you may be able to accommodate more guests in your room. This originally seemed like a good solution for us, but because my back does not like to sleep on even semi-hard surfaces, I did not book any of these style rooms. If you ever do, be sure to book the correct number of guests in your room. Hotels in Asia are strict about the number of guests per room, charging more per person above two most of the time.

One other difference I noted in Japan is that many rooms have two twin beds instead of two doubles or queens. But some hotels offer rooms with three or more twin beds which are a perfect option for our family. I don’t remember seeing this in Korea but finding hotels there was easier, so I didn’t look around as much. 

I believe I made a statement previously about not looking back once I make a decision. That hasn’t been true, in the least in this case. I have booked and rebooked multiple hotels in almost every city. I don’t know why. Probably because I said that. 

I will note my pain and indecision for your reading pleasure in the extended location posts coming up next! 

Fun Fact – the featured photo is my happy, hot place, the Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain.

Niki