Sun and Shade

[ why light ]

A hotel can be described by its price, its size or its address, and all of that is written down elsewhere. Light is harder to copy from a listing. It comes out of the plan: where the openings are, how deep the walls run, whether the building turns inward to a court or outward to the water. Reading a building that way tells you what it is actually like to walk into.

[ what goes in each block ]

The first block, where the sun lands, covers the surfaces that take daylight: glazing, courts, terraces, the direction a wing faces, snow or water throwing it back. The second, where the shade is kept, covers arcades, eaves, shutters, wall thickness, trees and neighbouring buildings. The third, what stays lit, covers what carries light after dark: lamps in a court, an illuminated facade, windows along a street, lights on the water.

[ why there are no hours here ]

We do not publish times. No sunrise, no sunset, no opening hours, no schedule for when a facade is illuminated. Those change with the season and with the operator, and we have not verified them. What we describe instead is built and stays put: the window, the court, the awning, the depth of snow over a chamber.

[ what before you set out means ]

The last line of every entry is a piece of preparation, not a complaint. It points at the thing that is easy to leave until too late: a transfer that has to be arranged, a terminal that is not the one you assumed, a lane a car cannot enter. It is not a warning about the hotel.

[ where the material comes from ]

Published material only: the hotels' own sites and press material, architectural and design writing, and reporting from the regions themselves. Everything is rewritten in our own words. We do not publish stay reports, and nothing here should be read as an account of a night spent in the building.

[ what we do not publish ]

No prices, no star ratings, no scores, no room counts, no awards and no booking. There are no affiliate links anywhere on the site, no paid placements and no way to buy a mention or a correction. If a hotel closes or changes hands and we learn of it, the entry is rewritten or removed.

[ why a casino section ]

Four Canadian resorts are grouped as Casino Hotels because that is what they are, and leaving the word out would be less honest than using it. They are read like every other entry: the glazing, the deep halls, the lights over the water. The gaming floor is not described, not counted and not judged, and we link to no gaming site.

[ colophon ]

Two people have kept this guide since 2019. One writes and one checks; the photographs are commissioned. Corrections are welcome and are made without charge, and the bracket at the end of an entry records the month its material was last opened.