In case you forgot, Valentine’s Day is just four days from now. There’s still plenty of time to find the perfect gift for your amour. However, I have some bad news. Unless you already have reservations, you won’t be spending your Valentine’s Day evening at the Sybaris. They’re all booked up for Saturday night.I checked.Now before you get all uncomfortable and suffer from the heebie jeebies because you think I’m about to provide too much information, let me say that I didn’t really plan to stay at the Sybaris. I just wanted to know if people actually went to such a prototypical “romantic” hot spot on Valentine’s Day.Of course they do. All five Sybaris locations are fully booked not only for an overnight stay, but for the 12:30-4:30 Afternoon Getaway option. So no nooners for you!I saw a Sybaris billboard on my way in to work yesterday. I hadn’t noticed the billboard before, but I don’t know if they just kick their advertising up a notch around Valentine’s Day or if I’m just not observant. Either way it got me thinking about Sybaris.When I was a kid I thought Sybaris was the coolest place on earth. They had swimming pools in the rooms! And pool slides, and some rooms even had waterfalls. Holy cow, why are we staying at Knights Inn on vacation when we could be staying at Sybaris?Keep in mind that the Sybaris commercials in the 1980s were much less risqué than they are now. I tried to find an old commercial on YouTube, but had no luck. All I could find were a couple of present-day commercials like this.Had the commercials from my youth shown two half-naked people practically eating each other’s faces while holding a glass of champagne, perhaps I would have known that Sybaris wasn’t a place for kids. But those old commercials didn’t show such lurid, risqué footage, they just made it look like an indoor waterpark, and what kid doesn’t love an indoor waterpark?Since I had the great misfortune of growing up with two responsible parents, they made the decision to shield me and my sisters from all that Sybaris had to offer, much to my chagrin.It’s a good thing, too, because it says right on the Sybaris website that children aren’t allowed. And neither are pets. I guess some people need everything spelled out for them.However, the site also explicitly states that each room is for two people only. No guests! That sounds like a rule created to combat a recurring problem. Now we’ll never know just how many people can fit into one of those cozy rooms.The irony of my feelings about Sybaris is now that I’m married and no longer think of Sybaris as an indoor waterpark, I don’t want to stay there.
Can you imagine what those rooms must be like? The reviews on TripAdvisor and this article by a writer in Milwaukee both rave about the cleanliness of the place, but some places are so dirty that they’ll never truly be clean. The article states that the pool was “a touch over-chlorinated,” but clean.A touch over-chlorinated doesn’t seem enough to me. That pool could be a vat of Clorox and I still don’t think I’d go in it. I’ve heard stories of women getting pregnant just by looking at a Sybaris pool. (Okay, I haven’t really, and that’s obviously not possible, but it expresses my feelings!)And the beds! Unless there’s a well-stocked mattress store right next to every Sybaris location so that the mattress can be replaced after every stay, I’m not lying on those beds dressed in anything less than a hazmat suit. I don’t care how high the thread count is on the sheets. I’m sure the bacteria count is even higher!Don’t forget about the carpet. Yes, carpet! In a room with a pool! I don’t even want to think about the things that might be growing in the carpet of that warm, steamy room. It’s like a petri dish for whatever microscopic pleasure debris might have been left behind by the previous guests.Luckily, my wife agrees with me on all of this, so I’m not going to catch any flak from her for not allowing her to live the life of a Sybarite, as suggested by the website. But if it sounds good to you, please make reservations as soon as possible. I’m sure you’ll be fine and have a good time!Tell us about your stay in the comments below, and remember, no pets allowed!PREVIOUS POST: The Beer Mile is Foolish FunIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Warning: It's Wife Appreciation Day+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, did you like reading this? If so, you should Share it on Facebook so you can bring joy to others. You can also find tons of other posts by me here. And you can like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes. Please.
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