A note on the travel pictures: They’re unedited. They are fully raw, as raw as they get on an iPhone. I didn’t try to frame the photograph or get the lights right or anything like that. I just snapped something and moved on.

So, pretty much every picture looks less pretty than the actual thing. That’s just the limit of my picture taking skills. For example, this picture here:

In reality (according to my eyes), the lobby was so warm-yellow, so brown, so comfy. But all that atmosphere could not be captured in this photograph.

Especially with something like this:

See, again, in reality, the combination of the blue and brown was beautiful, at this hotel. They made it a whole thing, with that color scheme. Brown-blue everywhere. Blue-brown everywhere. And it was deep rich dark blue as well as cobalt and navy and other tones, and then deep rich dark brown as well as beige and gold and other things. Plus, green plants, gray-white marble, black, etc. Someone put a lot of effort into the design of this hotel.

And yet! A picture does not speak louder than a thousand words.

That is why most of the time I write, instead of taking pictures.

Notably, the Arctic had a beautiful restroom attached to the lobby. In fact, all the restrooms in Seattle, including public restrooms at touristy places, were super clean, super spacious, and they even smelled nice. I don’t know what it is! Are people in Seattle simply clean people? Aesthetically pleasing people?

Toward the end of the trip, I regretted a little bit that I didn’t make the bathroom experience a thing. Like, I could have taken pictures of all the clean and beautiful bathrooms I went to, and made it a sub-blog. “The Bathroom Reviewer,” it could have been called, and from then on, everywhere I went in this world, I could’ve taken bathroom pictures and reviewed the cleanliness, aesthetics, and smell of each bathroom.

Well, maybe I will start on my next trip.

For now, here is a pic from the Arctic’s lobby restroom:

This is me, bundled up in a T-shirt, a sweater, a vest, a jacket, a scarf, a hat, and a comparatively way-too-thin set of pants, after the rainy trip from the airport to the hotel. (And I’m carrying a navy canvas bag; that’s what’s hanging from my arm.) Again, I feel like I am not doing justice to the prettiness of this bathroom.

But look:

Isn’t this pretty! Ha! I don’t know why I’m so happy when I see clean beautiful restrooms. They make me feel better than clean beautiful museums or clean beautiful office spaces. I mean, look how pristine the floor is. Seriously.

More on the Arctic coming, tomorrow.