The Sylvia Beach Hotel
With Carol, my friend of almost thirty years, I went for two nights to my favourite place, The Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon. Each room of the hotel is named for an author. We had been lucky to get the Agatha Christie room for one night; usually this requires reservations a year in advance, I’ve heard. I’d stayed before in Agatha with even more longtime friend Mary (the webmistress of tanglycottage.com), but even though I like to try new rooms on each visit, I wanted Carol to experience the one I find the most charming.
The library with its ocean view, and the best place to read in the world
After a dauntingly foggy drive and the disturbing factor of the car’s “check engine” light coming on, we arrived in time to do some reading in the third floor library, and even snagged the best reading spot in the world all to ourselves for an hour: the corner of the library loft where the big pipes go through to the roof.
Both of us were a little nervous about playing The Game at dinner: a gathering of communal tables where one is encouraged to play Two Truths and a Lie while consuming a delicious meal of several courses. We actually enjoyed it so much that we (or at least I) very much looked forward to the next night’s game. The truth I told both nights which almost everyone thought a lie was that I live in a 460 square foot house. Is this one of the only countries in which that would be so very hard to believe? (We just discovered that if one includes the loft, it’s about 600 feet, but technically real estate measurements do not include rooms unless you can stand upright in more than just the center of them.). I recommended the book Material World to our fellow diners.
evening in Agatha’s room; the fireplace is across from the couch
We spent the first night in E.B. White to save a little money, and because each room has its own room diaries so one finds more fascinating reading by staying in different rooms. I was a little worried when I went up to the library at ten PM and found no mulled wine in the tea room. Had this important ritual been dropped since my last visit? But it was just late; a second excurision found that the mulled wine tradition is still kept, so I carried two cups down to E.B. White and settled in to read the diaries. The next morning we were efficiently moved into Agatha’s room. We spent the day in the library, except for a brief stroll out to lunch. (The noisy cafe was startling after the quiet murmurous environment of SBH.) My ideal visit to the SBH involves very little leaving of the hotel during the day, and much sipping of Earl Grey tea (free along with a wide selection of teas and coffee in a small room off the library) while reading journals and gazing at the ocean view. I was able to read all the diaries from the library, the upstairs economy-priced dorms, and several rooms which were between guests for the day.
Carol in the library, and the view from the library deck
After another scrumptious dinner (and The Game0, we repaired to Agatha’s room and started a fire in the fireplace…a bit tricky even for Carol, which led to some teasing about how a Montana girl should know rustic fire building skills. I was sad to find that most of the Agatha guest journals were missing. Originally the room had many clues (such as a bottle of “poison” in the medicine cabinet) and a few remain.but it was a greater mystery what happened to the diaries. I snuck down to the Hemingway room and snagged a stack of journals from there, careful to return them later before guests arrived. Had guests checked in before I replaced them, I would have hung them in a bag from the Hemingway doorknob…which would have seemed a mystery indeed..
Guests write humourously in the style of their room author…Some of the Hemingway journalers excelled at that game. Others write movingly of their lives…of a healing retreat in the Jane Austen room after a marriage which had taken place in the library two years before had gone awry…Of a visit by a 92 year old who could no longer make it up the flights of stairs to the library….Of a woman whose husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and who on their latest visit could no longer play Two Truths and a Lie.
Dickens, one of two Hotel Cats, and the view from the Christie room..
Sunday morning neither Carol nor I wanted to leave, and we spent another poignant hour in the library where I polished off two more journals from the Jane Austen room. Jane seems to inspire a quiet, thoughtful sort of writing. As we were checking out, we saw the most amusing map by the main desk: a local neighbourhood map with pins marking each sighting of hotel cat Dickens, with a drinks tab attached from a local bistro; he had come home with it tied to his collar.
The drive home was clear and beautiful rather than terrifyingly foggy. We got to actually see the ocean, forests, and towns…little knowing that the charming towns of Wheeler and Garibaldi would be painfully thrashed by a monster storm less than a month later. I recommend a stop at Bear Creek Artichokes, just past Tillamook, for good espresso and treats and culinary gifts. The “check engine” light remained on, but nothing bad happened and it went off as soon as Carol returned to Seattle!
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