The Future Inn Cardiff Bay...

[fajrdrako]

My hotel in Cardiff looks like an American or Canadian hotel. Feels like one. It's the largest room I've had in the UK yet, very new, almost disappointingly un-British. But you can tell it's not an American hotel if you look closely.

• All the electrical plugs turn on and off, and it is cunningly devised so that you can't leave any electricity running when you leave the room. The card-key has to be in its slot for anything to work. It took me a while to figure this out. It's ingenious, and a frustrating for she who wants to recharge her laptop.
  
  
• The elevator talks. The lift. It's been my experience this trip that most lifts, particularly the new ones, talk to you - usually to announce floors, sometimes to say they're opening and closing. The only thing like that I can recall talking to me in Canada was the waste bins at the Rideau Centre, and that didn't last long, thank goodness.
  
  
• The morning coffee arrangement in the hotel room is instant coffee. Seems that instant coffee is much more used here – both in hotels and private homes - than in Canada, where I never see it. I've been opting for tea. No wonder Ianto sees himself as a lone gallant crusader for real coffee.