Bath Shower Ha Na

European bathrooms can be quirky by American standards. Your hotel’s WC may come with luxurious heated towel racks — or a rattling fan and leaky sink. Just keep an open mind, and remember that nothing beats a good bathroom story when you get home. No matter what, my advice is to wash up quickly and get out and about in the place you came to enjoy. First, don’t expect big spaces . Over the years, hotel owners have carved out chunks of elegant bedrooms to shoehorn in prefab private bathrooms — and they can be very tight. Counter space is often limited, and showers can be surprisingly tight, especially if you’re a larger person. Be careful bending over to pick up a dropped bar of soap — you might just hit your head on the toilet or sink. Even in top-end hotels, I find some things poorly designed . Once, I used a particularly narrow shower stall with the hot/cold lever directly in the center. If I nudged it accidently while washing, it would either scald or freeze me....

While your chances of calling the White House home are slim to none, you can feel as important as the commander in chief — if only for a few days — by staying in a presidential suite. The term is widely believed to have originated in the 1910s during Woodrow Wilson's presidency because of room specifications (some now standard such as an en-suite bathroom) that he required on trips away from Washington. Now, it typically refers to the largest and most expensive living quarters in a luxury hotel. Popular swanky accommodations , running thousands of dollars a night, can be found at the Bellagio Las Vegas — complete with its own indoor garden and fountain; California's The Beverly Hilton — with a library and ornate fireplace; and the Mandarin Hotel New York — with handcrafted rugs and upholstered silk walls . In the Lehigh Valley, the newest posh pad is at the Renaissance Allentown Hotel , a $65 million structure that opened this year in the heart of the city's booming rede...