A must-have for travelers!
I posted earlier about our upcoming trip to Mystic, CT. When I booked the hotel room, I made sure that there was free WiFi, but didn’t check to see if the rooms had refrigerators in them. After making the non-refundable reservation (hey, it was cheap to pay in advance), I checked and didn’t see anything that said if there were refrigerators in the rooms or not.
Having a fridge in the room is important to us. In addition to the usual beer, we like to have a couple of those pre-made sammiches from the grocery store in the room, mostly for Mike if he wakes up in the middle of the night, hungry.
But not all places have fridges in the rooms, that is why I bought one much like the one pictured here. I got mine from Brylane Home, but they no longer stock it. However, there are other places to buy them, Amazon is a good one. If I had to buy one of these fridges now, I’d likely pick this one. The size and features are very similar to the one I have.
Why do you need this? Well, it can pay for itself in many ways when traveling. If you are staying in a budget place that doesn’t have in-room fridges, you have a way to keep some food on hand, which will cut back on the cost of restaurants. If you do eat in restaurants, and have leftovers, you can pack them up and keep them in the fridge. Even if you don’t have an in-room microwave (which you won’t if there’s also not a fridge there), many places do have common areas with microwaves for guest use. So you can always zapify your leftovers in the middle of the night, should you be hungry later.
If you don’t finish your meal while on the trip, most of these mini fridges come with a car adapter, you plug it into what used to be called the cigarette lighter, in the dashboard, and it’ll keep running until you get home and can put the food in your home fridge. Whatever you do, be sure that the one you buy comes with the car adapter as well as a regular a/c cord, I think it’s pretty useless without one.
Why? Because I found that my little fridge takes about two hours to get fully cold. So I put the thing in the back seat of the car, plug it in, just as we are leaving. It’s pretty much all the way cold by the time we get to where we are going. And if you have a newer car, as we do, the power source will still run the thing off the battery when the car is not running, while you stop at a restaurant, rest stop, wherever. However, I do not recommend leaving it in the car plugged in overnight. That might run down your car battery.
Some hotels will offer to bring a fridge into your room upon request, but there is usually an extra cost involved with that. Some hotel websites I’ve seen do not tell you what this cost will be, you have to ask. And if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it. Personally, I hate that, I think that they should list the costs of EVERYTHING right out there for all to see. I would not want to book one of these places, only to find out that it costs $50 a night more for a fridge. Much better to have my own, just in case!
I do hate being nickeled-and-dimed. What will they try to charge extra for next? Having security cameras in the parking lot, to make sure that your car doesn’t get stolen? I always read everything thoroughly when I book, as I don’t want to see any surprise charges on the bill upon checkout time. Being able to get online while on the road is important to me, so I not only look for places that have internet access in the rooms, I also look for words like “complimentary” or “free”. If I don’t see those words when it comes to WiFi, I do not book. If it is NOT free, it is always very expensive. Never cheap or even moderately priced. And I’ve noticed that the higher the room rates are, the more likely that NO extras are “complimentary”. I don’t know why this is, but it is. I’ve found taht budget to mid-priced lodgings are more likely to have more complimentary extras than the expensive luxury places.
Anyhoo…we keep the mini-fridge and its cords in the trunk of the car, so that we are never without it anywhere. I’d say that it’s more than paid for itself by now!
