Travel Annoyances

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Travel as often as I do and things that perhaps were once perplexing surprises grow into pet peeves.

This is perhaps partly due to the fact that the hotel industry seems to have adopted a global copycat approach to doing business. One hotel retires its gaudy polyester bedspreads and replaces them with white, (thankfully) washable coverlets and it seems innovative for about two seconds because blink and suddenly every hotel on earth is doing the exact same thing. Not that I'm complaining, I never liked the synthetic circa-1970s bedding and I've seen enough of CSI to know better than to touch it. That change was a good one. But why have all the wall-mounted streamlined blow dryers now been replaced with bulky blow dryers with long cords, stored in cloth bags with long cords that are tucked into obscure nooks? Now each morning starts with a scavenger hunt for the damn thing followed by a Survivor-style knot-untying challenge all while my hair is dripping wet. Not fun.

Here are my top travel annoyances. I'm sure to encounter more; consider this a first draft.

1. Parents ignoring their children's unruly behaviors in public spaces and vendors tolerating it.

2. Hotels that charge a fee for Internet access. It should be free. Ironically, it is frequently free at cheap hotels, so why not more upscale ones?

3. Turndown service. Don't short-sheet my bed, hide the blankets and pretend it's fancy.

4. Hotel rooms in which the TV, radio and/or lights are already turned on upon my arrival. This is an unnecessary use of energy and also makes it appear the room may be occupied by some other guest.

5. An alarm clock buzzing in my hotel room at some odd and inconvenient hour for which I did not set it.

6. Air-conditioners set to freezing temperatures.

7. Blow dryers stored in a cloth bag with long cords that require time-consuming unentanglement...though that's better than not having a blow dryer available at all.