hotel windows

Let me take this opportunity to bitch about the window situation in Mérida hotels. By the way, the above is the view from our room. Ginger and I looked at a couple of other hotels when searching for one to stay in, and later on we pretended to need a room and looked in a few more of the expensive-looking ones, just to see, you know? But ALL of the expensive, beautiful, colonial-architecture hotels had windows that won't open. The windows USED to open. I know. Because in about 1987 I went to the Yucatán with the anthropology club from the University of South Alabama and we stayed at one of them and we had a little balcony and we could walk out onto it. I think what has happened is the hotel managers think that the tourists must have airconditioning. So, to keep the stupid wasteful tourists from turning the AC on and leaving the windows open, they permanently seal them. This has the, possibly, unintended result of making these beautiful (and some, seriously elegant) rooms stink. I don't know if Ginger and I are the only tourists who feel this way, but I'd MUCH prefer being able to open the window. And the rooms would smell a lot better, too. Now, to it's credit, the Hotel El Balám did not smell bad. Maybe it's because it was pretty new (the part we stayed in) or maybe they do something to the air conditioning (it was central air). But you STILL can't open the window. We complained in the suggestions part of the check-out paperwork.