Where is the most original place you have slept? I was in London for only a day and suffering

[applegrove]

from jet lag. I wanted to see the sights so I went to the National Gallery and then headed to Buckingham Palace. I didn't make it. I slept for 4 hours in St. James Park.

I also once spent the night on the front lawn of the Chateau Lake Louise in my sleepingbag.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. I once stayed in the same suite that the Queen stayed in

at the Awanee hotel in Yosemite. Does that count?

[applegrove]

2. My brother had the same dorm room at Harvard as the guy who wrote "love story" there.

[riderinthestorm]

3. I actually stayed at Tikal National Park, Guatemala which was the site of one of my scariest moments

and one of my most sublime.

Tikal is the location of one of the greatest Mayan temple cities in Central America. When I was there you could actually sleep in the park in these incredibly luxurious cottages - my cottage looked like one of those gorgeous expensive Kenyan safari cottages, all white linens, elegant teakwood furniture, billowy mosquito netting but for like $10/night... but I digress. The park itself was just incredible with the most amazing temples - just an utterly fantastic place to stay regardless.

That day while I explored the park I met up with a group of Swedish backpackers who told me that they were going to sneak back to the temples before dawn the next day to watch the sun rise over Temple 7, and hear the howler monkeys in the rainforest canopy (which was actually BELOW the apex of Temple 7). They warned me though that was now an illegal act, and if the park officials caught us, we'd be prosecuted. Also, since Tikal was so isolated, and Guatemala was/is so poor, people were looting the Temples and we'd be shot on sight. I shivered. I'd seen the many, many guards at Tikal with their machine guns and heavy artillery everywhere (well actually ALL of Guatemala was heavily armed then just a couple years after their civil war ended).

So at 2 am, a knock came at the door and 7 of us gathered to silently trek back into the depths of the park for our adventure. We were SILENT when suddenly someone shouted at us from behind and we all ran pell-mell into the rainforest... I have never been so scared in all my life! You want to know my "scariest ride", well it was more like the scariest flat-out-run through the rainforest.... I kept thinking of those guards with the machine guns, Guatemalan jails....gah!

Anyway we finally got to Temple 7 and hiked up in the dark. A couple Israelis, 3 Swedes, a South African an American woman and me. We settled at the top, our backs to the Temple peak and waited. Like magic, just as the sun started to rise the howler monkeys start - like primitive jaguars echoing throughout the canopy. Incredible. I stayed there for an hour after the park opened and the others were long gone just sunning myself in the warm air.

[applegrove]

4. Sounds heavenly. Bookmarking in case I feel like taking a jungle trip.

[bluedigger]

5. Cemetery?

I spent the night in a cemetery at Colonial Pemaquid in Maine waiting to get picked up in the morning to go out to Damariscove Island.


I got dropped off by friends on the way home from a Bad Company/Heart concert in Portland, iirc.

[ashling]

6. I slept on a bench outside the jail

in Lordsburg New Mexico once

[Brickbat]

7. I fell asleep at a Son Volt show at First Ave in Minneapolis. I've also spent the night at the Sofia

airport when it was almost abandoned. I don't recommend that. I've also slept in a bunker under a house in Berlin that in the 1930s/40s belonged to some Nazi who was important enough to have a bunker in his basement.

[era veteran]

8. Paris, In the Metro station

Summer time in the mid '70's. I do not think I would do it now.

[jakeXT]

9. In my car, forgot my keys and didn't want wake up everybody sleeping at 3am

[hobbit709]

10. It would have to be either an underground house in Cappadocia

http://www.cappadociaturkey.net/
or in a little cabin in Pamukkale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale
Both are in Turkey

[Shankapotomus]

11. In my own totally unfurnished

125 year old house after an argument with my dad. I had just bought the house with my brother and hadn't moved anything in at that time. Slept on the bare wood floor. Not even a pillow or blanket. Loved it.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. Peace Park in Hiroshima, Japan

I arrived in Hiroshima at 8:00 a.m. on the night before the annual August 6 ceremony, and was surprised to find that there all the hotel rooms were filled up. So I asked a local policemen where I could spend the night, and he said that it would be OK to spend the night in the Peace Park (where the ceremonies were to be held the next morning). I met some fellow travelers there, and we had a great time. One of my best memories.

[HopeHoops]

13. On a pull-out bed mattress on the back floor of my 70 Maverick on 7th in Ocean City, MD.

I spent an entire week there. 7th was the only street without meters (it has meters now - probably my fault). I took the back seat out and dropped down a mattress. When I got there, I pulled a graywarrior with towels in the windows. It was August, I think, but hot as hell anyway. I had a little battery operated fan and would open up the cardboard covering the holes in the floorboard for ventilation. By 6:30 or so in the morning it was too hot to stay in the car so I basically lived on the beach - bought a stunt kite, flew it most of the day (terrorizing seagulls), and met a really hot chick (because of the kite) who happened to live close to where I lived. That was nice.

BONUS: The cops left me alone and the beer-drinking age was still 18 in MD at the time!!!

[LiberalEsto]

14. The roof of a building in Montreal, in the rain

Back in my hippie days, a group of us from NJ decided to visit Montreal. We had almost no money, but brought along a watermelon to trade for a place to sleep. Met some hippies who said we could crash on their roof.

After that miserable night, I wanted our watermelon back.

[Chan790]

15. Confessional at the National Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

I'd gone down to visit friends in DC on the overnight train and I must have looked like a wreck, my friend worked at CUA and wasn't going to get out until like 9PM so I laid down on the university mall to take a nap in the sunshine. Well, campus security thought I was homeless or something because next thing I know I'm being rousted by a guard. So I walked around campus for a while but I'm still exhausted so I go visit the shrine and I notice that confession has just ended for the day and the confessionals are empty...so I got my nap.

Unfortunately, my friend got out of work early and had no idea where I was.