Sleeping in airports

Sometimes you have a long connection ….. a really really long connection.  So what are you choices?  You can walk around the airport for hours looking at the different shops and duty free items – all rather overpriced if you ask me.  You could go into one of those lounges where you pay for admission and can only be there for a maximum time of, I believe, four hours.  Really when you are in the lounge you just get a seat to sit in, maybe some comp food and drink – but nothing that amazing.  Sometimes the lounges are so full that it can be hard to find a seat and especially difficult to find something private.  I don’t know about you but I am a bit paranoid about just having a sleep in an airport in a public place.  Also it is pretty hard to grab a quick kip when there are announcements, lights and lots of talking around you.

The best option is a day room.  Used to be quite hard to find a day room.  In the old days many of the hotels would be located outside of the terminals of major airports but in the last few years there are more in terminal airports – still quite hard to find a day room.  You usually have to check directly with the hotel although there are some sites that specialize just in day room bookings.  And then there are hotels and …. hotels.  A friend who just booked a day room at the Miami airport told me that it was pretty mediocre and, well, just felt “grubby”.  Not cheap either.

There are more choices these days and on this trip I had a long layover at Amsterdam airport so decided to try out the Yotel.  Quite a good little operation.  They call the rooms cabins – no windows to the outside world – very small and snug – but private bathroom with a shower and tv, free high speed internet and free coffee and tea available from Mission Control – that’s right – not reception 🙂

So we checked into the Yotel in a premium cabin.  Now it is interesting because my assessment and my husband’s assessment were completely different. I thought it was great.  I loved that everything was modern and clean, crisp sheets on the bed, rain shower in the bathroom.  He found the room a bit too claustrophobic and didn’t like the shower.  I guess he had a good point – there was no distinguishable difference between the floor of the shower and the floor of the bathroom so perhaps a slight lip might have been helpful.

Now the room is designed that the bed actually looks like a sofa and the controls are on the side of the bed to operate a sliding system to open the bed out.  I guess these people didn’t read the instructions – take a look at the video.  It could have been us.

Hi tech bed antics at Yotel

We checked in at 9 am and checked out at 4 pm.  I took my Jammie’s in my carry on so was able to get really comfy and slept for hours.  The room was really quiet and dark.  Worked perfectly for me.  Up at 3 pm for a shower, into fresh clothes and I was ready to go.

UMMMM –  until I got to the gate and saw my flight was THREE HOURS DELAYED ….. aaaargh – but that is another story.  The journey to Morocco continues.