A place that would offer that in the US would offer a nice selection of cold cuts, some sliced veggies, a selection of decent breads, muesli, boiled eggs, maybe some pickled fish, and milk, yogurt, coffee, tea, juice, and maybe dried and/or fresh fruit in Germany.
In Japan, that quality of restaurant will give you a set breakfast with rice, tea, weird pickles, and some fish. Unless it’s Buddhist, then you’ll just get natto instead of the fish
Which is fine if you just want to get going.
My Anti-money laundering Conference is always at a nice hotel in Los Vegas, and the conference throw in breakfast & lunch.
We stay at the Pittsburgh airport La Quinta every year the night before our flight to Sint Maarten, which is typically a 6 am flight. Our stay gets us a shuttle ride to & from the terminal, plus a place to leave our car.
Their “free breakfast” is funny. They have an area with a waffle machine, orange juice dispenser, coffee pots, a few bananas, etc. Every year most of the breakfast things are empty/broken. I’ve never seen the waffle maker in working condition.
Is that the La Quinta on Beer School Road? Excuse me, “University Boulevard”?
Yes, Indeed!!! We call it “our” La Quinta.
There is a Primanti Brothers two doors down where we always have dinner before vacation.
The thing that I find ironic is that it’s typically the lower end hotel brands that offer a “free” breakfast. Places like Comfort Inn and Holiday Inn Express offer a breakfast buffet including a few hot items (i.e. a couple of catering trays of scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes, etc). But then the full service Holiday Inn, one notch higher in terms of price, will typically have a full service restaurant on site but no free breakfast.
In Utah I had the opposite of that. “Free Breakfast” was from 7:30 or something and when I went to check out at about 5:30 I saw lot of folk having breakfast, who were appaently all attending a big hot air balloon event. I asked if I could have breakfast and was told they had only opened up for the people in the event but they did allow me to eat as well.
I am very much a night owl. By the time I wake up, breakfast has usually already ended.
I think it’s fairly common for higher end, more expensive hotels to charge for things that lower end hotels give away for free, because they cater to rich people and/or business travelers who aren’t spending their own money.
Many moons ago I worked at the Wendy’s near that hotel.
That was the specific scenario I had in mind as I am a balloonist & we are usually leaving the hotel about an hour before sunrise to get to the launch field, attend briefing & be ready to go once we’re past sunrise.
Do many lose their breakfasts in the air with balloons?
My “something else” in the hotel breakfast poll is that it depends on why I’m at the hotel.
When I travel for work, my day starts early enough that I don’t care to get up even earlier to stop for breakfast. A quick scoop of eggs and a couple sausage patties are just the thing to keep me going until lunchtime.
But on a vacation, I don’t care if the hotel offers breakfast since I can venture out and find food at my leisure. Besides, I’ll often sleep past the usual breakfast hours anyway.
I’m the opposite. If I’m working, I’m often going to an event that will serve me breakfast anyway. But if I’m on vacation it’s nice to have a place to eat without having to think hard about it.
You know, I’m not sure I’ve ever put as much thought into hotel breakfast as I have in the last few days.
On a recent long road trip I stayed in a varied mixture of non-chain accommodations (VRBO places) and Holiday Inn Expresses (which have breakfast included).
I came to really appreciate the cookie-cutter consistency - and yes, the breakfasts - of the HIEs.
mmm
Other: I check my tire pressure whenever I drive, since our cars have little dashboard warnings when it starts to get low.
My car is an older one and it has similar warnings. I can also scroll through a menu to check the tire pressure on the dash. Then I take it my mechanic to top up.
I stayed in a motel in Anaheim for a business trip eons ago. Somehow I managed to become “friends” with the manager, who let me in on his managerial secrets.
He had a certain amount of money to spend on pastries/coffee for the guests. He found a place that sold day-old stuff cheap, and nobody complained. He’d buy a couple of bear claws, one for him and one for me.
One morning he totally blew off the pastries. When people came in looking for food, he told them that some salesmen ate them and took what was left for their lunch.
I check air pressure on the cars whenver the monitoring system alerts, or before a long drive. On my bikes I usually top them up before each ride, since bike tires are higher pressure and lose air faster.