Bitter

A completely frivolous post, but... I tend to accumulate hotel soaps and shampoos while traveling. We use some to stock the guest bath, which may sound chintzy but gives the guest a new bar of soap and their "own" shampoo. Even common hotels in the US seem to be offering high-end (or supposedly high-end) soaps. Do you have any favorites, or anecdotes or stories about hotel soaps or shampoos?

AllyPally

Well, first there was my boss who stayed at the Hotel du Crillon a few years ago. I asked her to bring back any soaps, etc she didn't want. On Monday morning, I was presented with an armload of Annick Goutal Eau d'Hadrien soaps, shampoos, etc. Wonderful! Then there was my trip to Singapore this past March where I stayed at the Inter Continental. To my delight, there was plenty of Bulgari Green Tea toiletries on offer. Unfortunately, my boyfriend also took a shine to them. So, we split them: shower gel/lotion for me and shampoo/conditioner for him. I have really long hair so it would have been silly for me to keep the shampoo as I would have used the little bottle just for one shower!! As a treat for him, I recently bought a full size bottle of the shampoo. But shhhhhh, it cost me £20. When he asked, I told him it cost me £5!!

MHS

It's a good day for frivolous! Current "best": The Tub, a Scottish Fine Soap. Location: Apex International, Grassmarket, Edinburgh. Bar Soap plus 2 different types of body wash and 1 yellow rubber ducky!

jmv

Agree with Ally/Pally on the Bulgari toiletries. We got them at the Il Pelicano on the coast just north of Rome. Beautiful fregrance, relaxing, elegant. I bought some of the green tea soaking bags that color and perfume the bathwater. At $40 US for I think 4 bags, I've been holding onto them as if I were planning to be buried with them.

bajaflash

Yes, we collect soaps/shampoos/bath gels/conditioners. My husband belongs to a service club here in the USA and they have a program that donates all of the above to an organization which gives them to the homeless.

Kavey

I liked what we were given at the Movenpick Petra Resort hotel - and it has a superb location _right_ at the entrance to the ancient city of Petra too. The regular toiletries were standard stuff but there was also a sweet and colourful silk drawstring bag containing dead sea salt bath crystals along with a tube of dead sea mud face mask. Got same on second morning too, though I don't know if that was because I was polite to the guy cleaning our rooms as we passed him in the corridor because others travelling with us only got one set of the special stuff.

Mostly I don't pay much attention to what brand the toiletries are, as long as I have a showercap and some shampoo or gel to use as bubble bath. But then I'm not into branded toiletries at home either.

I did like the perfume of the soap at Le Mas d'Artigny near St Paul de Vence a few years ago but no others spring to mind.

AllyPally

JMY, LOL at the image of you being buried with your tea bags!! I, too, am still hanging on to mine. I'm sure I'll die before I use them. What are we like?

Kavey

PS I do same as Bitter and provide a collection of a few hotel toiletries for guests who come to visit but I tend only to bother taking such things home from hotels occasionally when the scent strikes me as particularly nice, or the bottles are pretty, or for the soaps, if they come in mini plastic soap boxes.

My neice in particular loves hotel toiletries so if I ever amass too many I have her take a bag away with her when she visits.

cigalechanta

The Rosemary/lavender bath oil and salts
at the Bastide de Moustiers.

EnglishOne

I'm glad I'm not the only one who collects the little soaps, some of them are wonderful. The funniest thing is flying for 10 hours from London to Memphis, Tennessee to find 'imported London soaps' in the room. DOH!!! Oh well. They were lovely and I brought them back home anyway. Just checked the name - Gilchrist and Soames (sounds oh so British - never seen the soap here though ironically!) The sea Kelp bar is fab.

Barb

While in Sorrento I decided to try to the hotel shampoo, after 2 seconds, the smell was so bad I rinsed it off and used my own. I was later on the bus to Caserta/Casino (hot and very crowded) and a lady sat next to me. I thought to myself, gee her perfume is really awful, so strong. I could hardly wait until she got off. When she did, I could still smell that horrid perfume, at which point I realized, it was me!! It was that shampoo!! Took two more shampoos to get rid of that odor. Moral - always smell it before you use it.

elaine

At the Grosvenor House in London, I was introduced to Molton Brown products!
The hand cream alone was worth the stay!

sharonkaye

Actually not in Europe but at the Givenchy Spa in Palms Springs wonderful products that included several samples of French shampoos.
Merv Griffin owns this property, as I was telling my kids when we drove up and of course they said "who is Merv Griffin at that point he was arriving in the car in front of us. Funny!

RufusTFirefly

I went to a conference a couple of years ago in Aurora, Colorado. The Radisson was the conference hotel.

Wanted to take a quick shower before heading to registration. So I grabbed the soap, some sort of oatmeal variety, and proceeded to scrub away. OUCH! After a few swipes in a sensitive area, I realized that it felt as if there were iron filings in the stuff.

Turns out it was some sort of exfoliant stuff and really did mess up some rather tender skin. And that's the only soap they had. I bought some Dove that evening.

When I took a close look at that oatmeal soap, it did look like it had whiskers or iron filings embedded.

Ruth

This is the hotel soap story that I like (supposedly a true story): (or how to end up with 54 bars of Camay soap in your room)

http://www.clean-funny.com/Hilarious...saga-maid.html

Ruth

Oops - I've now looked up the source of the soap story and it was written by Shelley Berman the humorist. It's still funny though not a true story.

http://www.shelleyberman.com/books_soaps.htm

txtree

I love the Bulgari green stuff - the George V in Paris has it. I swiped it every day (twice a day, actually, since they replaced it at turn-down). I have no pride.

I did the same thing at the Mandarin Oriental in London - they had delicious Jo Malone products. To this day, the smell of that stuff takes me back to the big marble bath in my room there.

EuropeNewbie

I agree with AllyPally. Bulgari toiletries were my favorites.. The Four Seasons in Boston and the Ritz in Singapore had them (slightly larger sized ones in Singapore!) I loved the shampoo and conditioner that I bought them in New York for $34 a piece - something I probably won't ever do again!

yeadonite

I am so glad other people collect soaps/shampoos from hotels. When I was 24 I spent a month in Tokyo at the Imperial Hotel. I collected all the soap shampoo etc. I put it in a separate piece of luggage, which never arrived in NYC. I was mortified when I had to fill out a missing luggage report and admit in front of my coworkers that it was hotel toiletries.

I still love collecting them put only if they are really special products.

elaine

The Four Seasons in Prague supplies soaps and shampoo by L'Occitane.
The lemon verbena soap is wonderful, and it's always going to evoke Prague for me.