Having spent almost 30 years in regular (reimbursed) travel, most involving stays in "Big City Name Brand" hotels, along with the a few annual vacation trips to Europe eating up a lot of hotel points in "US Brand" hotels in larger European cities, now, a lower level of travel, almost all for pleasure or my wife's watercolor shows/schools, plus our continued annual trips to Europe, has been an eye-opener in comparison.

In Europe, we've moved to smaller "no names" drawn from reviews and recommendations of others. I didn't realize how much fun and pleasure (and occasional pitfall, some memorable, but almost all more humorous in retrospect and hardly desperate) there were to find. From Toledo to Olomouc (and in big and little cities in between), I can send you around corners and up narrow back streets to better and more rewarding lodging than you've paid a premium to experience.

Here in the US, I find more comfortable, more "ergonomic" rooms and more pleasant and responsive staff "downscale" than I usually in the big city towers. In recent years two chains have stood out, La Quinta (as long as it's one of the "recently renovated" or new properties) and Marriott's Springhill Suites. My favorite "airport" hotel is a relatively nondescript HIX near DFW. No, they are not "Downtown", but then most of the US is not "Downtown" in a big city sense. I no longer feel the need to spend much time in fancy hotel bars (especially now that I'm surely paying for the drinks), and dinner in big hotel restaurant has become a "been there, done that!" experience.

I never realized just how much BS I put up with for so long and so often, and just how coldly impersonal so many of the big hotels are (and perhaps have to be). Now, I can quickly determine which room locations I don't want, and have no qualms in turning down a room which doesn't look or feel right. Even with late arrival, I've never been "walked", and only once recall an embarrassed desk clerk telling me that all he or I had was a choice between a handicapped bathroom or a strangely decorated and equipped "bridal" room decorated and furnished for foreplay. There's usually an amazingly varied (and admittedly often unrewarding) group of nearby dining choices, and now even beyond pizza, multiple choice "room service" delivery is often available in all but small towns.

I'm one who can claim to have been better served and lodged on the edge of Amarillo than on Pennsylvania Ave. and to have learned from having been so.