13-05-2025
We're clearly not a fancy hotel family. How do other people manage it?
I. Am. Exhausted.
AH, the dulcet tones of our night in a fancy hotel in Stockholm. A delight for us and, I imagine, those sharing neighbouring the hotel rooms.
Our wee boy is four now and thanks partially to my job and us country-hopping to try and find secure housing, he's extremely well travelled. Four is a "good age" – he's fun, engaged and chatty. At this age, you can reason, bargain, share your favourite 90s pop and get them excited for the trip in advance. However, you cannot change the fact they are, in fact, four.
My boy is sweet, he's polite when reminded, but he is still also a stinky, sticky fingered agent of chaos who lives in the very tactile, sensory moment of touching, and occasionally licking, whatever takes his interest. I will also personally take full blame for his joyful bellowing of Britney Spears and constantly asking when the next snack is coming.
Before I had a kid I believed, as many parents do, that we were simply adding something to our old lifestyle; "Nothing has to change, they can adapt to our way of life". In the language of post-parenthood this translates literally to "Hubris, denial, hahaha."
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Still, I have always felt that parents deserve nice things too. Surely we aren't expected to just never eat in a good restaurant again? Or, in this case, stay in a fancy hotel? Especially those of us with no grandparents babysitting or parent pals nearby. Do we wait 18 years for a night in crisp, white hotel sheets?
As for other guests, my thinking was always do as would be done unto you. Pre-children, in stylish spaces where I've sat reading and having a martini, I often smiled benevolently at kids throwing wild tantrums and handfuls of spaghetti, offering a kind word to the harassed-looking parent so they would know I didn't mind, "Weren't we all children once?
These are, theoretically, all good and sound principles. But, theoretically, my kid has got through 98% of breakfasts without smashing something and 78% of bedtimes without throwing tantrums of Linda Blair-Exorcist levels of malcontent. But theory and reality are not the same thing. For this, I owe the good people of the Stockholm Stadshotell an apology.
Picture the scene: a well-rested, casually but impeccably dressed family stroll through the hip, creative Stockholm, Södermalm island district. They arrive at Stockholm's newest and most stylish design hotel carefully renovated from a building that was built between 1873 and 1875. The emphasis is on arts and crafts and every single element from the teaspoons to the mini-shaving shaving balm are painstakingly chosen. The heritage baths have been shipped in from the UK. The bed linen is "hand-constructed by artisans in European ateliers" and renowned Swedish filmmaker Kritian Petri made a short film about the ambience of the hotel. This family checks in, enjoys a cocktail in the sumptuous clock lounge area, sleeps a solid eight hours and then descends in the wood-paneled elevator for a breakfast of freshly baked pastries on crisp linen tablecloths. This family is not us and never will be.
Now, picture our family. Loud by nature and dishevelled, my wee boy wearing tiger leggings and Care Bear charm-adorned Crocs. We've caught the train from Malmö and look and feel like crumpled paper bags in need of a wee and a snack. We drag our much-travelled neon yellow suitcase through a courtyard of impossibly chic Swedes, drinking aperol Spritz while the sunshine accentuates their gift of good bone structure and very, very expensive highlights. We step into the absolutely beautiful calm and hush of the hotel reception and so, our 24 hours of trying to get our kid not be a kid and well, our family not to be our family, started.
Our son, God love his curiosity, wanted to touch everything at this hotel. And it is clear that everything is luxury. A quick Google reveals the orange Bluetooth speaker my son wishes to swing around like a handbag is worth a princely sum of almost €600. Suddenly our perfect room is not somewhere to while away an afternoon appreciating each carefully-curated detail but a place we must keep our kid from destroying at all costs. We go out for ice-cream, we get a Max Burger –Sweden's McDonald's – for dinner. There is no cocktail reclining in velvet armchairs, instead we drink cans of beer sitting at the top of a skatepark ramp while our son makes friends with a little girl dressed as a "Mermaid diva".
We do sleep beautifully and in the morning, we do have our linen tablecloth breakfast designed by chef Olle T Cellton, including freshly-made cheese scones, cream cheese and marmalade that made me almost weep with happiness. But to do this we gave our son his tablet and promised him a great many sweeties on our ferry ride later that day.
Towards the end of our breakfast a family walked in, a variation of shades of neutrals, quiet children who took their seats, placed napkins on their laps and delicately sipped apple juice while surveying the menu. Clearly, a family who hadn't spent their night acting like they were trying to stop a small bomb from detonating and arrived at breakfast looking like a cast from The Hangover. We conclude as we pour our third cup of coffee that we are simply not a fancy hotel family in spite of all the care and attention given by the hotel to my son and his needs.
The classy bar area of the Stockholm Stadshotell (Image: Kerry Hudson)
It seems every family is as unique as the teaspoons at Stockholm Stadshotell. According to Euromonitor's Voice of the Consumer: Travel Survey, 56% of luxury travellers do so with their children so it is possible. Perhaps it is simply a matter of practice, or not feeling guilty for the sticky thumbprint on the startlingly white duvet. But I love my son, and our family, just as it is in all its dishevelled, unpredictable chaos. I wouldn't change that for a thing.
Parents do deserve nice things though, and that's why I'll be returning to Stockholm Stadshotell again when I'll drink cocktails, listen to Britney Spears on €600 speakers and weep over freshly made cheese scones at breakfast… blissfully alone.
Kerry Hudson is an award-winning bestselling novelist and memoirist. You can find her on Instagram and on Threads @ThatKerryHudson
