Downtown

Our two headquarters hotels for the fall meeting of my scholarly organization are the Hyatt Regency and Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta. The two hotels sit back to back on adjacent blocks. For our spring board meeting, some of us have been given rooms in one hotel, and some in the other; I happen to be in the Hyatt.

I love fancy hotels. I love big hotels. And both these hotels fit the bill. They both feature soaring atria that go all the way up to the tower skylight, with rooms that overlook the inside vista as well as the outside. I never tire of that expansive space, the sense of delirious architecture, the overkill of it all.

It doesn't hurt that the staff and amenities at these hotels are top-notch, and they have treated us well. (The lunch we had catered in to our board meeting today ... well, let me just say that I could have taken a vat of that peach cobbler home and sold it off piecemeal at a profit.) I can't wait to come back here in October -- which is, of course, the aim of the management.

But I confess that I miss my children, painfully so. I wish I could show them this crazy place and let them ride the glass elevators that rise in full view on the outside of the central column all the way up two dozen suspended stories. It's a fantasy world, and it makes me feel like a kid to pretend that I'm an adult who's not surprised by such things.