5/25/08

The California Trip, Part Ten: The Madonna Inn

Putting the "trip" in California Trip, naturally--naturally--we stayed at Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo.
The [Madonna] Inn is featured in Umberto Eco's book Travels in Hyperreality (1991). According to Eco, "the poor words with which natural human speech is provided, cannot suffice to describe the Madonna Inn...Let's say that Albert Speer, while leafing through a book on Gaudi, swallowed an overgenerous dose of LSD and began to build a nuptial catacomb for Liza Minnelli." (Link)
What can I say. Either you get it...or you don't.

IMG_9266

IMG_9267

You can tour all 109 rooms of the Madonna Inn online, or you can look at my blurry snapshots. Here are some of the rooms. (You get to have a postcard of the room you stay in, gratis.)

IMG_9268

IMG_9269

IMG_9387

IMG_9383

IMG_9382

IMG_9388

We stayed in #143, "Rock Bottom".

IMG_9378

Inside...

IMG_9345

The bed we slept in:

Madonna Inn 1

The TV on which we ordered up Charlie Wilson's War.

IMG_9293

The bathroom:

IMG_9350

The toilet with the seat that would not stay up, necessitating a sit-down to man-pee:

IMG_9291

All Guy knew when he booked the room was that it had a waterfall shower. He said, "Give me a waterfall shower." If you look closely, you can see the camera flash captured water in mid-fall.

IMG_9349

Does this all seem so very unholy to you? Well, the Gideons were here too.

IMG_9302

To be honest I found the room rather hellish, but germ-phobic Guy was delighted. As he correctly pointed out, it was very clean, without the usual sketchy carpets and hotel room textiles and suspicious dried flower arrangements. Nowhere to hide for microbes and germs.

Anyhoo, very content and physically tired, we checked in early and did not leave until check-out the next day.

We had Reubens at the counter...

IMG_9334

Cakes to admire...

IMG_9332

A dip in the pool...

IMG_9317

Numerous drinks in the bar (where we got chatted up by a fun couple from LA--him a contractor and her in Hollywood).

IMG_9355

We sat by the cozy fire...

IMG_9358

And had a romantic dinner for two in a pink vinyl booth...

IMG_9341

I took this picture looking straight up.

IMG_9361


San Luis Obispo Botanical Garden in Part 11.

3 comments:

Frances, said...

Okay, this is the best room in the place by far. Was the rock cool to the touch? Was it underground? Was it damp? Love the view from your dining booth.

Annie in Austin said...

Wow - thanks for showing us this one, Chuck! I'd have tried to talk Philo into the room with the rock waterfall shower.

The only thing similar in my life is that we recently saw Charlie Wilson's War. Also, there'd be a slice missing from that chocolate cake in the display case if I were there!

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

lisa said...

That's got to be the funkiest, coolest hotel I've ever seen! What fun...now I want to go!