21 April 2026
The Pfister Hotel
70 degrees, Sunny
There is a small ritual I perform every time I check into a hotel. Before I unpack, smell the vanity soaps, or figure out the thermostat, I look for the stationery. Hotels don’t really carry it anymore. They used to, complimentary or for purchase. Most times now I’m lucky to find a small memo pad with the hotel’s logo on it, which honestly works just fine. I always keep a few envelopes and stamps on me anyway.
It started at conferences, of all places. I am not a conference person. The noise, the networking, the fluorescent everything — it is a particular kind of overstimulation I have never quite made peace with. But hotels? Hotels I have always known how to be in. And somewhere along the way I discovered that a postcard and a stamp could turn even the most exhausting work trip into something worth remembering.
The most recent example was a conference in Green Bay. The hotel had complimentary postcards, which felt like a small miracle. I wrote to a few close friends. But the most meaningful ones I wrote to myself.
It sounds strange until it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s a simple note, “you survived, treat yourself.” Other times it’s more elaborate. A checkbox questionnaire with questions like:
Was it as bad as you thought it was?
Did you accomplish anything?
How was the food?
Did you talk about “the weather” and “what you do” successfully without completely blanking and going mute after you’ve exhausted your Rolodex of questions and responses?
Sometimes it’s just a list of things to do once I get home. Errands, intentions, small rewards.
I stamp it and let it go.
Those questions, lists, small notes of encouragement are for future Megan to sit with, enjoy, handle. Sometimes the postcard beats me home. Sometimes it arrives a few days after. Either way, there is something grounding about it. You write to yourself from the hard middle of something, and by the time it reaches you, you’re already on the other side. You survived. You’re fine. Mostly unscathed. And you realize that a lot of it was the story your mind was telling, not the thing itself.
But not every hotel letter is a survival tactic. Sometimes it feels more like a love letter to the experience itself.
When I was in Boston, I wrote to a friend about everything. My surroundings, what I’d eaten, the types of people I’d seen. And I didn’t just write. I tucked things in. A ticket stub. An old menu. A receipt. A free sticker from a cafe. A pressed flower. Anything that could fit in a first class stamped envelope. My experience became their experience. A thoughtful souvenir that didn’t cost much but meant everything.
My uncle loves receiving them. He lives vicariously through my photos and stories. My parents love seeing what I’m up to. There is something about holding a piece of someone’s journey in your hands. Something a text message has never quite managed to replicate.
Letter writing from hotels isn’t a new idea. It’s how people communicated before cell phones made everything fast and forgettable. Travelers would write home to notify family of their safe arrival, share a few things they’d seen, check in on business. A postcard was efficient. A letter was an event.
Hotels understood this. Many provided stationery as a matter of hospitality. Letterhead, envelopes, postcards — sometimes complimentary, sometimes available for purchase in the lobby. The hotel’s name printed at the top of the page was its own kind of calling card. Proof of where you’d been. Proof that you’d thought of someone while you were there.
The Pfister is no exception to that history. The hotel doesn’t carry postcards currently, but it used to. I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a few scans of the originals:
Sent from The Pfister in 1912 to Helen F. Kehoe, from her father announcing his arrival.
Milwaukee, January 1916. Homer checking in with Carl; letting him know he is still on the road and updating him on the weather.
Ordinary moments. Extraordinary that they survived.
So whether it’s a trip you planned for months or one you dreaded from the moment it showed up on your calendar, there is always something worth capturing. A moment, a meal, a stranger’s laugh across the lobby. Write it down. Tuck it in an envelope. Send it to someone who would have loved to be there. Or send it to yourself, and let future you decide what to do with it.
Megan