“Now that’s a room!” my daughter Holly said as she walked into the Edgar Allan Poe room with its stuffed raven perched on the bureau and the pendulum-like scythe hanging over the brocade-covered bed. With its dark woodwork and red-velvet drapes, the hotel room looked like a scene out of “The Pit and the Pendulum” with a bit of “The Raven” thrown in.
Holly and I had come to the Sylvia Beach Hotel with its author-themed rooms for a mother-daughter vacation on the Oregon Coast.
“E. B. White is booked, but Jane Austen is available,” the reservation clerk told me when I called to book my room. E. B. White was my first choice. I’ve been a fan of White’s ever since I was a grad student and came across a collection of his humorous essays in a used-book store just off the University of Oregon campus.
But, as the clerk said, E. B. White was booked; and I’d already booked Poe for Holly, so when I found out the Austen room sat next door to the Poe room, I booked Jane for myself. That room included a small writing desk, stuffed chair, double bed with flowered bedspread and lace curtains.
Holly and I arrived in the small town of Newport in the middle of the afternoon. After parking in the nearby lot, we walked across the cobble-stoned street to the green, three-story, shingled hotel with its white picket fence and small garden.
The minute I stepped inside the pleasantly ramshackle hotel, I immediately felt at home. Unpretentious to the extreme, Sylvia Beach boasts uneven floors, wobbly lamps and two resident cats but no elevator, which meant Holly and I had to haul our suitcases to the third floor, where we checked out the cozy library with its fireplace and comfortable chairs.
Before dinner that night, we wandered up and down the halls, peeking into the unoccupied rooms. Holly got a kick out of the whimsical Dr. Seuss room, while I found myself wanting to move into the Emily Dickinson room, a spacious corner room set in the back.
That evening, Holly and I joined several of the other guests in the dining room to eat, visit and play a game called Two Truths and a Lie, in which everyone is asked to come up with two true stories and one untrue one about themselves. The trick was to try to fool everyone else.
I said I’d been to Denmark (true), had worked as a medical technologist (true) and had shot a moose (not true). Holly said she and her dad once got stuck in some sand while driving in the John Day Fossil Beds (true); knew how to play the violin, piano and guitar (true); and was valedictorian of her high-school class (close, but no cigar).
Holly and I had come to the Sylvia Beach Hotel with its author-themed rooms for a mother-daughter vacation on the Oregon Coast.
“E. B. White is booked, but Jane Austen is available,” the reservation clerk told me when I called to book my room. E. B. White was my first choice. I’ve been a fan of White’s ever since I was a grad student and came across a collection of his humorous essays in a used-book store just off the University of Oregon campus.
But, as the clerk said, E. B. White was booked; and I’d already booked Poe for Holly, so when I found out the Austen room sat next door to the Poe room, I booked Jane for myself. That room included a small writing desk, stuffed chair, double bed with flowered bedspread and lace curtains.
Holly and I arrived in the small town of Newport in the middle of the afternoon. After parking in the nearby lot, we walked across the cobble-stoned street to the green, three-story, shingled hotel with its white picket fence and small garden.
The minute I stepped inside the pleasantly ramshackle hotel, I immediately felt at home. Unpretentious to the extreme, Sylvia Beach boasts uneven floors, wobbly lamps and two resident cats but no elevator, which meant Holly and I had to haul our suitcases to the third floor, where we checked out the cozy library with its fireplace and comfortable chairs.
Before dinner that night, we wandered up and down the halls, peeking into the unoccupied rooms. Holly got a kick out of the whimsical Dr. Seuss room, while I found myself wanting to move into the Emily Dickinson room, a spacious corner room set in the back.
That evening, Holly and I joined several of the other guests in the dining room to eat, visit and play a game called Two Truths and a Lie, in which everyone is asked to come up with two true stories and one untrue one about themselves. The trick was to try to fool everyone else.
I said I’d been to Denmark (true), had worked as a medical technologist (true) and had shot a moose (not true). Holly said she and her dad once got stuck in some sand while driving in the John Day Fossil Beds (true); knew how to play the violin, piano and guitar (true); and was valedictorian of her high-school class (close, but no cigar).
Neither Holly nor I fooled anyone, unlike the other guests, including a woman who said she once met Johnny Wisemiller―the actor who played Tarzan―and got his signature (true), hosted her own TV advice show (true) and played guard on a basketball team that won the state playoffs (not true).
Goody, the friendly owner of the hotel, told us several stories about herself, including one about a man she once knew who asked her to pretend to be his fiancé because he’d told his dying grandmother he was getting married (true); and another one about how, to surprise a friend on her 50th birthday, Goody stole the friend’s address book and used it to contact 50 men whom she asked to stop by the friend’s house and give her a kiss (true – 47 of the men showed up, including the woman’s Volvo repairman).
At the Sylvia Beach Hotel, I learned that night, telling stories is a highly valued form of entertainment.
Over the next couple of days, Holly and I met several of the other guests, including a freelance writer from San Francisco and a woman on sabbatical who’d come to the hotel to write.
During our stay, we did venture out long enough to visit the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse and check out the Old Bayfront Bazaar with its seashell jewelry boxes, seashell coasters and seashell coin purses. We even stopped by the Pirate’s Cove shopping area where we took pictures of ourselves standing in front of the pirate statues before having lunch (shrimp stew and clam chowder) and walking along the bay with is smelly crab nets and barking seals.
But it was inside the hotel, with its reading lamps, used books and photos of everyone from Kurt Vonnegut to W. B. Yeats, that we really relaxed.
On our last evening, Holly and I stayed up late playing the board game Balderdash (in you have to come up with word definitions) before adjourning to my room where we stretched out on the bed to read together. Holly flipped through pages of Cosmo Girl while I enjoyed a biography of Jane Austen, a copy of which I found in the room.
1 comment:
Nancy,
I love this piece—it makes me want to rush back to the Sylvia Beach Hotel and enjoy the quirky atmosphere again. Oregon Writers Colony, as you likely know, has their spring conference there. Hmmmm.....
Barbara Blossom
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