I love hotel bars. Not all of them, obviously. Some hotel bars appear to have been designed specifically for exhausted salespeople to eat club sandwiches while staring sadly at their laptops. I mean beautiful hotel bars. The kind with low lighting, velvet chairs, polished brass, absurd flower arrangements and bartenders who somehow know that your martini should arrive approximately six seconds after you decide you need one. Hotel bars are inherently romantic because everyone is temporarily somewhere else. Nobody quite belongs there. The couple beside you might be celebrating an anniversary. The elegant woman drinking champagne alone might be waiting for someone\u2014or happily waiting for no one. The man in the corner might have flown in from Paris that afternoon. There are suitcases upstairs. Planes leaving tomorrow. Secrets everywhere. I find this enormously sexy. <\/p>\n
A neighborhood restaurant knows too much about you. A hotel knows nothing. You can walk through those revolving doors and become whoever you feel like being for the evening. This is why “meet me at the hotel bar” is one of my favorite invitations. It already sounds like the beginning of something. Imagine it. You arrive first. This is important because I enjoy making an entrance. I walk through the lobby wearing something elegant enough to make you sit up a little straighter when you see me. Nothing ridiculous. Nothing trying too hard. A beautiful dress. Bare shoulders, perhaps. Heels. Perfume. <\/p>\n
You stand when I reach the table. Yes, I notice. Women notice these things. You kiss my cheek and your hand lands lightly on my waist for just a moment. Also noticed. We order drinks. Mine will probably involve gin, although champagne is rarely a tactical error. And then we talk. Hotel bars encourage lingering. There is nowhere you’re supposed to be. Nobody is trying to turn the table. Nobody brings the check with the desperate optimism of a restaurant that has another reservation arriving in seven minutes. So we settle in. Maybe you’ve just returned from somewhere interesting. Maybe I have. Travel stories are excellent date conversation because they reveal people accidentally. Are you the man who plans every minute? The man who misses the train and laughs? The man who insists on finding the best restaurant in a strange city? The man who learns five words of the language and confidently mispronounces all of them? I want to know. <\/p>\n
I also want to know where you’re taking me next. This is entirely hypothetical, of course. Probably. I think one of the loveliest parts of romance is imagining things together before they happen. We could go to Paris. Too obvious? Fine. Tokyo. Buenos Aires. Capri. A tiny inn somewhere on the California coast where the fog rolls in at night and there’s a fireplace in the room. We could order breakfast at noon. We could get spectacularly lost. We could dress beautifully for dinner and behave badly enough to make it interesting. This is how a drink becomes two. Two becomes dinner. Dinner becomes, “Should we have one more?” One more becomes midnight. And suddenly the hotel lobby is almost empty. This is where the atmosphere changes. Nothing dramatic happens. That’s precisely why it works. The conversation slows. Eye contact lasts longer. You notice my perfume again. I notice the way you’re looking at me. Perhaps your knee touches mine beneath the table. Neither of us moves. There is an entire language spoken in those moments, and the best part is that nobody has to translate it. <\/p>\n
Eventually the bartender asks whether we’d like anything else. This is a very complicated question disguised as a very simple one. Do we? Maybe we order another drink. Maybe we don’t. Maybe we walk outside into the night. Maybe there’s a car waiting. Maybe we stand together beneath the hotel awning for a moment, reluctant to say goodnight. Or perhaps you happen to be staying upstairs. Well. Hotels do have rooms. I’ve heard rumors. But I don’t think every romantic evening needs to rush toward its conclusion. Sometimes the sexiest ending is a kiss that promises another evening. A good kiss should create more questions than it answers. Then I get into my car. You watch me leave. And somewhere between the hotel and home, my phone lights up. “When can I see you again?” Now that is room service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love hotel bars. Not all of them, obviously. Some hotel bars appear to have been designed specifically for exhausted salespeople to eat club sandwiches while staring sadly at their laptops. I mean beautiful hotel bars. The kind with low lighting, velvet chairs, polished brass, absurd flower arrangements and bartenders who somehow know that your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n