Laying My Head…

​Laying my head on a pillow at night is one sweet delight and likely the greatest unknown when traveling. No matter the photos & descriptives, thanks to travel apps, your imagined “glorious” room is always a surprise.

There’s so much personal in this. For all of us. We’re at our most unguarded, vulnerable, swimming between worlds, our bed and pillow our intrepid ship.

The day’s adventures are the stuff of dreams. And then the fluff of the pillow, no other head from the night before imagined. The soft of the bed. Or stone-hard bed like last night.

Ben’s Place stood out from the start. Her tiny photo so cute (!), the photos of the place, too. Free bike! Her logo on the towels & pillows! Aesthetics! And like a shoebox. I mean tiny home: three rooms in the place, two with bunks and my “deluxe” private room, maybe 5’ x 7’, a fan with that massage table bed. I might give her an A for trying. How can you fit so much cute in so much tiny? The sink, I discover, is outside the back door. I was about to use it when the water quit. Hook, line and sinker quit. C’est le vie. I message. Not much later, she responds: “I am with the children at the camp in the woods. I have called staff; wait there.”

Which I wasn’t about to do. I left the key in the lockbox, locked my room, told her so.

As they say to soldiers: “Always eat, you never know where your next meal will come from.” As with bed when traveling in far parts of the world: sleep well when you can; the following night has no guarantee.


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