Living arrangements

After trying three other hotels, I have returned back to my first, the Crown Plaza City Center in the Azrieli center in northern Tel Aviv. Astute readers will remember this hotel for its excellent breakfast, mentioned four weeks ago now in this space. What I look for in a hotel for extended business trips is simple: a comfortable and modern room, lack of vacationing families, and no in-house gym.

No gym? Why so? Because no gym, for a certain class of hotels that I frequent, means that they instead provide you with access to a real gym, the kind frequented by real people. Hotel gyms, on the other hand, are small, cramped affairs used only by business travelers, temporary shadows of real people that they are. This Crown Plaza grants me and its other guests access to a branch of the exclusive Israeli gym chain Holmes Place, located in the same building, reachable by the same elevator. It is the best gym arrangement I have ever seen (complemented by the best hotel breakfast I have seen). "You will like the gym," the check in clerk told me, "Its very exclusive."


And its not just a real gym -- its an Israeli real gym, frequented by Israeli real people. I remember the first time stayed here, my manager, a sweet south indian-cum-bostonian, arrived in the lobby wide eyed, having checked out the gym earlier that morning. "Intense!" he remarked,"those people are working out as if their lives depended on it!" He was right -- this morning at the same gym, I felt myself pounding the elliptical machine at a more frenzied that usual pace, and looked around to realize that I was merely trying to keep up with the focused sweating bodies around me.

Today, somewhat overwhelmed by the exclusive athletes around me, I embarked upon a new phase in my years-long running battle with fitness. I signed up for a trainer. I endeared myself with a little suprise hebrew to the guys at the front desk (I usually hold back at first, keeping it reserve for exactly that purpose), and they referred me to the gym's best personal trainer. "Is it OK if she is a woman?" the little man, Yaron, asked me.

"Yes," I replied, "as long as she is tough."

"She is tougher than you." he knowingly replied. Just then a tall woman passed by, and blew the clerk a kiss. "Ingrid Feldman," he proudly intimated, "She is one of the best models!" He then ushered me upstairs to find Gilli, a compact woman, tougher than me, who gave me a once over and told me that she would check her schedule and get back to me. "Give your number to Yaron. I will call you." She blew me a kiss and was off.