Across the Café Table #1: How do you Indulge Yourself?

We invite you to join us every second Wednesday of the month around the cafe table.

Welcome to the first “Across the Café Table,” where once a month here on The Travel Belles, we ask a travel-related question. We then share our answers “across the virtual café table,” by responding on our own blogs, adding a link to your post below, and linking back here from your own answer.  If you participate also be sure to visit everyone else’s post and leave a comment!

So grab a beverage and pull up a chair – there’s always plenty of room!

For this month’s travel discussion:

What is/are your secret travel indulgence(s)?

Perhaps it should be a little embarrassing to share my secret travel indulgences, but for some reason it isn’t. Truthfully I think of travel itself being my most ultimate indulgence; so I guess it makes sense that all these other things that fall into the indulgence category best happen right along beside it.

In my day to day life I am a fairly practical person; but check me into a nice hotel, and I have been known to run quite the opposite. I will go a full year without a pedicure, but if I happen to find myself at a nice hotel with a spa, you will most likely find me indulging in one. A martini at the bar afterwards, even though it’s only 2pm? Not unlikely. But at this point my love affair with a nice hotel is far from over:

I think my most favorite secret travel indulgences all have something to do with the hotel room itself.

A nice hotel room is a castle, and I am its queen. I dive head first into my hotel room into a personal white and lavender scented realm where time is not real (except for the minutes needed to let my nail polish dry) and calories don’t count. Money, if I must think about it, is of the Monopoloy variety: pastel colorful and confetti like.

What?  Throwing wet towels on the floor because I don’t want to settle for anything less than the scent of a fresh laundered set tickling my nose? Check. Leaving hotel room lamps on, and sometimes even the television when I leave for the day? (It keeps the thieves away.) A long hot shower in the morning and a hot, filled-to-the-brim bath at night? Bien sur!

Maybe even indulge in a room service Ben and Jerry’s milkshake sipped after midnight between Egyptian cotton sheets? Pourquoi pas? While watching  mere minutes of a Pay per View movie  just to get to look at George Clooney? Heck yeah.

If I haven’t come to my senses a bit by the next morning – which is unlikely with my Ben and martini and Jerry hangover – even that split of Veuve Clicquot in the minibar is in jeopardy. If it’s check out day, I’ll sweep all the little soaps and bottles of shampoo and conditioner into my make-up bag in one swipe, just like a jewelry thief.

I’ll exit my playhouse of marble and down through revolving glass doors. My freshly painted toenails glint in the sun. I’ll hand some singles and change to the valet and break the spell. And my nice hotel room won’t tell my secrets.

What are your travel indulgences? How do you like to indulge yourself while traveling?