Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I feel like whoever designs most of these hotels and motels does not do so with the frum family in mind.

The non-Jews have no idea. They definitely do not travel with the same level of food as we do. As far as I can tell, they just go out to eat 3 meals a day on vacation. I don’t know when they can find time for day trips. They come into amusement parks and go, “Which mediocre restaurant should we eat at during the time that we should be doing the activities we paid to get in for?”

Whereas we come in with not only complete meals that we can eat, say during the sea-lion show, but also with a washing cup.

“Sir, you can’t be scooping water out of the sea lion tank. You have to sit back down.”

“Uh huh. Nu.”

Some meals are pretty simple. Like lunch can be sandwiches. Except that all of a sudden no one likes sandwiches. You know this because they told you once you got to the hotel.

The only issue is that some parks don’t allow you to bring in food because they want to sell you their chazzerai.

“Well, I don’t want your chazzerai. I want my chazzerai. Mine is kosher.”

Amusement parks are the only places that do this. And restaurants. So you have to smuggle the food in, like you’re doing something illegal, and nowadays there’s security and dogs because apparently someone’s trying to take down the entire amusement-park industry with heimishe pretzels.

Breakfast is easier. It’s cereal and milk eaten all over the hotel room perched on the edges of the beds with one leg horizontal.

“Stop jumping on the bed while your brother’s eating cereal!”

The hotel does provide you with 1 or 2 chairs, even though they clearly have beds for 4 people, so everyone basically eats breakfast in bed, which I have to say sounds a lot better than it is.

Some hotels also have a continental breakfast that they tout as a major amenity that you can run out to in the morning to see if they actually have anything you can take. Like on our most recent vacation, for example, we were able to take some hot cups! Because we entirely forgot to pack those. What even is a continental breakfast? Every breakfast is a continental breakfast, unless you eat it in the ocean.

So breakfast is easy. You just have to remember to bring along milk that you’ve frozen beforehand and hope they don’t thaw that first day in the car while they’re waiting for you to finish your day trip. The kids are complaining that they’re hot, and all you’re worried about is the milk in the car.

“Is it still yellow? Good.”

Jews are the only people in the world who travel with frozen milk.

And then you have to make sure your room has a fridge, or else you’re keeping your milk cold in a chain of ice buckets. And the hotel gives you this tiny dirah fridge that basically fits two yogurts and definitely has no room for all the drinks you need to refrigerate for the next day, and the freezer is a single shelf with a flap over it up near the part of the fridge where the cold air comes out, using the same science as how whatever’s in the back of your fridge at home sometimes freezes over.

And you look at the fridge, and you look at the amount of food you brought…

You have to try your hardest to economize on space. You can’t bring a container of coffee; you have to pack coffee grounds in a little baggie, and sugar in another little baggie, and—wait, is this the sugar or the salt? No, it turns out you forgot salt, so you’re either buying an entire can of salt out in Yehupitz, or you’re going to keep an eye out in the amusement park for an eatery that has salt packets.

No matter what you pack, when you get there, you will realize that there were things you didn’t pack. This is why the last 5 minutes of your drive, as you’re looking for the motel, you’re keeping an eye out for any useful supermarkets you’ve never heard of that you can inevitably run to in a few minutes. Or a Dollar General, which is a store concept you don’t fully understand. And because I have multiple boys, I’m also keeping my eyes open for an Urgent Care.

You know what amenity we sorely need? Some kind of food prep area that is not inside the bathroom.

Because there’s nothing like cooking for your family in a hotel room to make you appreciate how efficient your kitchen is at home. Even if it’s not. At the very least, you get to work on counter-height surfaces. You have a travel range that you brought, but you forget how long it takes to heat things up on it until the point where you say, “Good enough.” And you’re constantly looking for usable surfaces and prepping food on a paper towel, and all your outlets are in weird places.

And you have to keep walking back and forth and figure out where you put stuff down, stepping over messes because you have no established rules for your kids about where to put their things, and every surface is food items, and—WHY IS THE WATER STILL NOT BOILING? IT’S BEEN AN HOUR—oh, it’s not on. Wait, it is on. Why isn’t the light on? Is this low or high?

And your kids are jumping from one bed to the other, yelling, “We should live here!”

“Nope.”

And then you have to wash everything in the bathroom sink with a tiny shampoo and a washcloth. Because you definitely forgot stuff for dishwashing.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected]