noplasticshowers

Back in the mid-’90s we spent a bunch of time in San Diego. One of the first annual trips was a visit to NDSS, a geeky conference always held at the Catamaran hotel. That must have lasted a decade or more.  A return in 2024 (some 15 odd years since visiting the Catamaran) shows the toll that time has taken.

You see, the Catamaran has spent more on the common areas (which are very pretty but also just a bit wrong…like, say, a pool area where you are required to wear a wrist band as if you are an untrusted 20 year old) than they have on the rooms.  Nobody seems to have considered fixing up the rooms since maybe 1982. Or maybe they spent all of their budget on marketing drones?

So you go from this:

To this:

Hamster cage with no design sensibility and indestructible furnishings. But wait, there’s less.  How about the Holiday Inn bathroom console (featuring communal soap)?  With a vinyl floor?

But you are here for the shower. Here is a prime example of the worst kind of plastic shower. Oh let us count the ways: lilliputian tub only a foot deep and made of plastic, obesity bar, plastic shower curtain (with a see thru plastic window portal design), and a shower head that does nothing to improve the flaccid water pressure. A big nope.

Here, watch the plastic shower in all of its glorious action…

There are good things about the Catamaran, like friendly staff, a good restaurant, and an espresso bar that knows how to make a real macchiato. And it’s right on the Pacific! But we’re not surfer dudes.

There’s an excellent coffee bar nearby too—pump coffee.

A visit to Ken Sushi Workshop is a great idea. Excellent.

Ultimately, room 218 is so dissatisfying that it was time just to jettison the plan, pack up early (after the morning meeting), and switch hotels. A lowly one showerhead and no more chances for the old Catamaran. It has sprung a fatal leak.