There’s really no way of saying that I stayed in the Monart without sounding pretentious. Since we started our jobs as principals, once a term, Rozz and I treat ourselves to one or two nights in a posh hotel to get away from it all. We generally find a deal on the web for a random fancy hotel and head off for some spa therapy. We’ve stayed in some great places. I can highly recommend the Killinard near Portarlington, the G Hotel in Galway and the Dylan in Dublin. However, we saved our biggest treat of all til the end of this school year for the Monart.
I was incredibly run down at the end of this year. My immune system was beginning to give into a cold and I needed serious recovery time to gain back the lack of sleep I had had over June. A few hours in a sauna, steam room and a long relaxing massage followed by a nice meal and several hours sleep would do the trick.
The Monart has been voted the 3rd best spa in the world and is a 5-star hotel. To me, a 5-star hotel can be summed up by the following feeling: guilt. Generally, in a five star hotel, I constantly feel guilty about how well I am being treated by the staff. Generally, they do things that are completely unnecessary such as bringing your bag from the door to the reception or describing every detail of your room as after they walk you there. Everyone steps aside when you walk by and smile and almost curtsies. No matter how many of these hotels, I have stayed in, I never stop feeling guilty.
However, I didn’t feel guilty this time. The Monart Hotel seems to do everything that a five-star hotel does. They have the friendly receptionists and the knowledgeable waiting staff. They have a games room with fancy chess boards and a library full of hardback books. The bedrooms are spotless and comfortable, with soft carpets and beautiful views of their Zen-like gardens. The bathroom has a deep bath and giant shower head. The spa has the largest amount of therapies I’ve ever seen and there are about a dozen different “experiences” of steam and sauna derivatives. The food is unquestionably five star as well with stuff on the menu that we would never eat and the stuff that we do eat cooked so beautifully that we do savour every bite.
It just didn’t feel as good as we expected for the price.
And, perhaps that’s where the problem lay. It felt as if the hotel has recently decided to cut out those extra special things that other five-star hotels haven’t.
It’s a culmination of really tiny things that generally wouldn’t bother anyone but when you’re paying the cost of a week’s holiday abroad, you somehow feel a bit cheated. The examples below make me sound even more pretentious.
For example, a five-star hotel usually provides five-star shampoos and toiletries in bathrooms – the ones that people usually take home with them and bring on holidays. They usually provide ones that women and metrosexuals know all about – they have ingredients like avocado oil and gooseberry extract and a French-sounding name. The Monart provided us with generic watery stuff you find in every other hotel in the country.
Then there was the spa. In a five-star spa, you usually have to book in at a certain time. This allows the receptionist to show you around the place and tell you how each item works. They usually offer some sort of fruit tea or organic lemonade. You usually start to feel totally relaxed before you even get into the first steam room or solarium. Not in the Monart. We arrived coincidentally at the same time as about 12 other people. Some random, pleasant girl gathered us altogether mumbling about what we were about to go into. We didn’t get to hear her and it felt a little bit like cattle mart. She didn’t bring us around the spa and merely told us to read the signs dotted around. There was no lemonade but there was a broken tap, which was to be our only source of water.
I’m still sounding like a snob and this last example won’t change it.
A five-star hotel usually checks your room twice a day. The first time is in the morning to make your bed like any other hotel. The second time is usually just before one comes back to get ready for dinner. The staff generally leave a chocolate on the bed or some other favour. In most five star hotels, this is some very fancy chocolate or something fun like a personalised cupcake (the G Hotel does this). Our chocolate favour just seemed boring.
I’m sure the Monart used to provide fancy soaps, chocolates, bar-bites, free espressos, big choice of TV channels, up to date DVDs and a quiet spa back in the hey day when we couldn’t dream of affording a night there. While it still ticks all the boxes for a five star hotel, it just seems to have lost whatever it is that makes one go “wow.”