By Samantha Hillman

Editor of D&D’s Sunday Paper

ROOM SERVICE.

(SORRY in advance for kicking this week off with the literature’s largest cliche BUT:)

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those for whom robes are something you wear, and those for whom robes are something you ARE. Something that signals a way of being. A way of life. A good one will make you feel lazy and glamorous. Like the sort of person who lives (full time) in a hotel. 

This week’s Leisure Letter is an ode to the hotel, featuring the ambient flourishes you need to make your home feel like one. Starting with: 

THE MINI BAR

A hotel room lives or dies by its mini bar. While I refuse point blank to associate food with any sort of guilt, because life is for LIVING, etc. the one exception to this rule is the paralysing regret that I have come to associate with almost all hotel mini bars. I remember every sip - every frivolous, lackluster sip - of the last $6 tonic water I drank from a mini bar in lunatic detail.  I once accidentally ordered a bucket of ice for my non-mini bar prosecco, only to watch eleven actual dollars melt rapidly into a puddle of cold water before my very eyes. My personal yardstick of extreme, mind-boggling wealth is being able to snack freely from a hotel mini bar and not feel like I’m being laughed at, or at least be rich enough to not care. The trick to recreating this experience at home is to buy a bar of gorgeously packaged, hideously overpriced, and ultimately just-fine-tasting chocolate. But if you’re feeling positive, a small pillow-sized mint chocolate like this one is a nice touch, too. (That or a nice tin of fish from a different country, the best sort of souvenir.)

Anyway, on to the:

BATHROOM!

You want luxurious, velvety bath towels and lots of them. One for your head. One for your body. One for a pool, or at least to drape lazily over a chair. 

You want the sort of toiletries worth stealing. This all-in-one oil is a nice homage to the 2-in-1 products one so often finds in hotels, except that it’s good. Really good! Because this is a nice fake hotel, remember? Think of your quilted robe, and the sort of products it belongs with. If you want to really lean into the theme, opt for the mini versions. 

Next, pump up the serenity with this bathing playlist. Read a hilarious book about traveling. Or a darker one about shutting oneself off from the world. Light a candle that smells like expensive wood. 

 AND LASTLY: 

Slippers to match your robe? A face mask to match your slippers, to block out the world? Check, check, check. The main benefit to turning your home into a hotel is that there is no check-out time. 

HAPPY SUNDAY! x