At the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz, France
What a Faulty Door Taught Me About Travel
Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz, France
The first time I stayed alone in a hotel, I was seventeen and passing through Biarritz on my way to northern Spain. I was to spend the entire summer there, improving my Spanish, and this single night at the Hôtel du Palais was merely a carefully planned pause in a journey organised down to the last detail by my family. My only task was to follow instructions faithfully.
I arrived from Paris by train and was welcomed with warm courtesy by the hotel manager, who had already reserved my dinner, chosen a menu for me, and allocated a room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I thanked him politely—somewhat shyly—while secretly longing to skip dinner altogether and rush upstairs to the verandah he had described as offering a truly unforgettable sunset.
But my family’s instructions were explicit, written neatly on a small piece of paper: Dinner at 8.30 p.m. No exceptions. Luckily, there was no indication of how long the meal should last. I therefore ate with admirable efficiency, my thoughts fixed entirely on the ocean waiting beyond my window.
When I finally reached my room, excitement quickly gave way to alarm. The door would not close properly. In an instant, my imagination conjured the image of a nocturnal thief making off with the precious contents of my suitcase: a few notebooks, some pencils, a map, two Spanish books, and the Swiss chocolates I unfailingly carry with me whenever I travel.
Faced with this unexpected inconvenience, I improvised. I dragged a small desk in front of the door, placed a chair on top of it, and balanced a lampshade at the summit, constructing a fragile pyramid designed to collapse noisily should anyone attempt to enter. Satisfied with my ingenuity, I stepped out onto the verandah at last.
The Atlantic revealed itself in all its splendour as the sun dissolved into the sea, giving way to a night illuminated by the steady beam of the Biarritz lighthouse and a full moon hanging low over the water. It was mesmerising. After some time, lulled by the rhythm of the waves, I decided to order a crème caramel from room service.
The waiter arrived shortly afterwards. Finding the door ajar, he knocked, received no answer, and stepped inside—straight into my carefully engineered defence system. The pyramid collapsed with spectacular noise. Startled, the waiter fled, while I ran after him, mortified, to apologise. Ashamed, I telephoned the manager to explain. He listened patiently and asked a simple question: why had I not informed him about the faulty door? My answer was equally simple:
“I did not want to disturb you.”
The lounge of the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz, as the author remembers it.
The incident stayed with me, not only as a memory of teenage embarrassment, but as one of those formative travel moments that quietly shape how one moves through the world. Staying at the Hôtel du Palais—once the imperial summer residence of Empress Eugénie de Montijo, overlooking the Atlantic in all its Belle Époque grandeur—lent the experience an almost cinematic quality, as though my small personal drama had unfolded within a much larger history of elegance and ceremony.
It taught me a simple but lasting lesson for the traveller I was to become: that alongside the countless “thank yous” I scatter generously wherever I go, I must also learn to use a confident and assertive “please”. For it is often the simplest request, politely but firmly made, that brings the swiftest and most effective solution to life’s unexpected problems.
The places that move me most — timeless hotels, hidden gardens, coastal light — inevitably become part of my writing world.
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