Musings from two hotel lovers

Can we tell you about the places where we’ve stayed?

If you’re visiting our blog, we imagine you love to travel as much as we do. In fact, we love everything about it, and we embark on a travel adventure whenever we can — near or far.

One of our favorite things about getting away is staying in hotels — all kinds of hotels. We have to admit: It’s a lot of fun to enter a hotel lobby for the first time, check in, and then — in anticipation — open the door of a room to discover what awaits us.


If you, too, are a lover of hotels, you might enjoy reading about some of our visits.

Perhaps you’ll find yourself in one of these cities or towns and want a recommendation to stay…or to stay away. We’ll tell you how we found the hotel and what we thought of it. And we’ll share any advice that might be of use.

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Templation Resort ~ Siem Reap, Cambodia ~ March 2017

Before you jump in to any of the links below, here are a few important things to know:

  • We don’t get to travel as much as we’d like (looking forward to retirement for that), so you won’t see a new entry every few days. We add entries as much as our travel schedule allows.
  • With the exception of some quick overnights, most of our hotel choices are the result of a good bit of research. When we travel, we typically arrange two things in advance: transport to wherever we’re going and hotel bookings. Beyond that, we mostly go with the wind. Because we’re hotel junkies (and, we think possibly, hotel snobs), we put in the work to find places we’re fairly confident we’ll like. Therefore, this site is curated to the extent that, with a few exceptions, we only share places we’ve stayed that we think are worth sharing.
  • Beyond our musings, we’ll give you some details about the hotel, but specifics like prices aren’t here. Of course, prices fluctuate a lot, and you can easily get rates through the hotels’ websites or something like booking.com. (We do recommend booking directly whenever possible; it’s good for you, and it tends to be good for the property too.)
  • These opinions are our own. Feel free to share anything here, but please credit hotelling.org.

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ALL POSTS

Asia

Caribbean

Europe

Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway ~ Basecamp Hotel

Oslo, Norway ~ The Thief

London, UK ~ The Curtain

Tetbury, The Cotswolds, UK ~ Oak House No. 1

St. Petersburg, Russia ~ Rossi Hotel & Spa

Mexico

United States

Taos, New Mexico, USA ~ El Monte Sagrado

Key West, Florida, USA ~ H2O Suites

Miami, Florida, USA ~ The Mandarin Oriental

Minnesota and the Midwest

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA ~ Four Seasons

Red Wing, Minnesota, USA ~ St. James Hotel

St. Paul, Minnesota, USA ~ Celeste of St. Paul

La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA ~ Charmant

Chicago, Illinois, USA ~ Virgin Hotels Chicago

Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA ~ The Oxbow Hotel

Chetek, Wisconsin, USA ~ Canoe Bay

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA ~ Alma Hotel

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA ~ The W, Foshay Tower

Wayzata, Minnesota, USA ~ Hotel Landing

Stillwater, Minnesota, USA ~ The Lora Hotel

Etcetera

Pandemic Hotelling

Features to Love

Past Stays and Reminiscences


CHECKING IN…AGAIN

On occasion, we’ll revisit a place we’ve previously written about. It’s always fun to see how experience #2, 3, 4 stacks up to our first visit.

~The Dylan. A flight delay on our way to Northern Italy in late September 2024 meant that we would have an unplanned night in Amsterdam. While we weren’t excited about missing our first day in Como, the disappointment lifted when we were able to book the last room at one of our all-time favorite hotels, The Dylan.

The moment we walked into the entrance courtyard, we were reminded that The Dylan is special. From the guest rooms – this time we stayed in a very unique duplex room with the bedroom and bathroom on separate levels – to the service, The Dylan delivers. In our short stay, we spent time looking out at the Amsterdam rooftops from our top-floor bathroom with skylights, visited The Dylan’s garden for a drink and snacks, and reunited with our favorite concierge from two years ago who helped us with last-minute dinner reservations at Café Verlan where we found a 2001 Barbaresco on the wine list that brought northern Italy to us. Amsterdam is terrific on its own; The Dylan makes it even better.

Read our full post on The Dylan from 2022.

~The Kindler. In June 2024, we checked into The Kindler Hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska, for two overnight stays a week apart. Our first visit to The Kindler was during the height of the pandemic when we road- tripped between Minneapolis and Denver (most air travel was on pause). This time, we were once again Denver-bound and stayed at The Kindler on our way both to and from the Mile-High City. We were delighted to see that The Kindler was still looking new and fresh four years later; it surely is the “class act” in Lincoln and a nice surprise in a college town with otherwise standard offerings. Even more fun, while having a drink at the bar, we realized we had met the bartender Bobby during our first stay. At that time, hotels were just re-opening, and he was one member of the skeleton crew keeping the hotel open. We were delighted to see Bobby again and pleased with our recent stay. Here’s our original post that featured The Kindler.

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