I recently travelled to another country. And no, not a non-English speaking one, and not one that I had never been to before, that's a whole other topic for a whole other article. I travelled to England and for the first time ever there, stayed in a hotel and not with relatives or friends. This hotel was in a big city, close to train stations and major attractions, and a beautiful, clean facility. That being said, I did notice some differences from staying in typical North American hotels.

The first thing was that the room utilized all of its space really well. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. Instead of a headboard, they had used giant framed pieces of art that doubled as both a headboard and visual focal point for the room.

Since I was going from one electric voltage to another, I had brought an adapter plug with me, but found I didn't need it to charge my phone as I could simply use the on-wall charging station. But here's something that I found odd, the bathroom was partitioned from the main living space of the room only by a glass sliding door. It didn't lock and it didn't even reach all the way to the wall, so there was always a gap. In North America we are trained to go into the bathroom, close the heavy wooden door, lock it and then go about our business. Not so there, and as a friend pointed out, there was also no extractor fan and no window. The toilet also had two flush options-- I'll leave that to you to figure out.

Then there was the tissue supply, or lack thereof. In North American hotels there are usually tissues in both the room and the bathroom, not so on the other side of the pond. If you are travelling there, bring your own!

The cutest difference I found was that there was an umbrella assigned to each room, right there in the closet. The note on it said that you were welcome to use it on your stay but to leave it in the room when you left. Never seen that before in a North American hotel!

It was a lovely hotel, in a great area in a hustle and bustle type of European city. The trip was wonderful, the beds comfortable and the little differences sweet. Even the staff were as helpful as could be.