Returned this week from Barcelona where I witnessed first-hand the super-odd Antoni Gaudi architecture. A few snaps can be viewed here.
I’ve noticed that most people’s holiday snaps of Barcelona (especially those of the Casa Milà and the Sagrada Família) look exactly the same. An explanation: it’s very difficult to get photographs of the large and up-close Gaudi buildings and so everyone either finds the one perfect position to take it from or plumps for a huge lens-filling shot of wobbly windows. I think my rooftop shots might save my set from total conformity though.
.
While staying in the fabulous Hotel de Catalunya, I noticed that a complementary foil-wrapped chocolate had been placed on my bedside table, the poop of a candy rat, after the first night.
After the second night, two chocolates had been left.
I wonder how far the hotel staff take this cumulative chocolate delivery system? If one has been there for three nights, is one rewarded with the appropriate number of chocolates or is there an upper limit to their praline generosity? If not, and the number of complementary chocolates is always proportionate to the number of nights stayed by the guest, the long term residents would have serious problems with door-opening.
I can imagine trying to go to bed after three weeks in the same room and having to sweep the chocolates off the bed covers and hearing them rumble across the wooden floor.
If you didn’t like chocolate for whatever reason or if you were perhaps lactose intolerant, you might find this whole thing rather invasive, even frightening. Since you weren’t eating the chocolates to begin with, you would accumulate them even faster than the long term guests. Slowly and surely they would come to your room, like zombies to a boarded-up farm house, until every last cubic centimeter of space is taken up with walnut whirl. And yet they will still come. The robotic maids understand no limits. Death by chocolate etc.
Back in reality, I don’t know what the idea behind this cumulative complementary confectionery (CCC) arrangement might be. It’s no incentive really. To the guest, it would be a highly expensive and indirect way of acquiring chocolate.
As I was only staying for two nights we shall never ever know the nuts and bolts of this reward system. I’ve failed once again on the investigative journalism front haven’t I?