Hotel Room Picnics

Ah, this is my father and I! France is the best, but we can pull it off pretty much anywhere. Hotel room picnics are terrific after a long day in the elements/crowds/traffic. It's so nice to graze and watch Netflix.

From a bakery: bread, dessert, perhaps a slice of quiche

From a market: Fresh vegetables (for salad), fresh fruit

From the grocery store: Boxed soups (we picked up some electric lunchboxes in Nice last year; they are perfect for warming these!), jarred ratatouille, even canned vegetables, cheeses, composed salads, beverages, applesauces, yogurts

Raisins, prunes, cashews, almonds and peanut M & M’s.

My sister and I "picnic" in our rooms all the time. We have a big breakfast and a late lunch. By dinner time, we're often worn out from walking and mutually agree to a room dinner. I love going to farmers markets and grocery stores. We pick up fruit, veggies and anything locally produced. Premade salads are great for eating in a park or hotel room. You can always add to them. Once, when we bought cherry tomatoes at a stall, they threw in a big handful of basil leaves. We added a buffalo mozzarella, a loaf of bread and slices of the wild boar salami we bought the day before for a sublime meal. A nice bottle of wine or some beer on the patio is a nice way to end the day. Sometimes, a bag of local cookies or crisps are a nice addition.

I pack a picnic kit in a small insulated bag. We check our bags, so sharp items aren't a problem. In the picnic bag are a small, flexible cutting board, a knife with a cover, a corkscrew with bottle opener, a wine bottle stopper, two light, flexible plastic wine glasses without stems, some cutlery and a few little plates. I include a few teabags, some tubes of instant coffee, packs of wet wipes and plastic bags to store leftovers. It also nice to carry food for a train picnic.

Last year, our Airbnb in Atrani, had a very basic kitchen. We bought the souvenir packages of rice or pasta mixes to make dinner. They have the carb and a sauce/herb mix and only needed water and a little oil to prepare. Sometimes, we'd add some protein. That, a salad and wine on the balcony was awesome and frugal.

Don't forget some kind of reusable grocery bag to carry your plunder back to your room. You'll be glad to have something sturdy to schlep things in.

In France having breakfast in our hotel room is a preference. We love to get high quality yogurt and butter from a fromagerie, berries at a market and some baked items at a close by boulangerie. Much better then the hotel breakfast and a bonus that it’s less expensive. Hot drinks either from the hotel or somewhere close by. We will eat a good lunch out and then have some snacks handy for early evening.

Bread and Cheese. I can have a meal almost anywhere with these staples. I do like to add fruit and yougurt. One advantage of bread and cheese is that refrigeration is not such an issue.

The advantage of the picnic is time, money, and calorie saving.

Usually a salad and a glass of wine. Although, we have gotten tacos or something similar and ate in the our room. just nice to sit and relax.

We often do this in our US road trip travels, sometimes bringing meal from home to heat in the microwave. Bur not in Europe, at least not hotel room picnics. We like to book apartments where we can cook a real meal, with local ingredients, or go out to enjoy a restaurant, especially in Italy.

We do, however, often have breakfast in our room even at hotels that offer breakfast, as we are light eaters and prefer to keep to our breakfast routine. But husband will always try to get coffee from the hotel restaurant—much better than making it in the room. I drink tea so that is easier.

I tend to skip a restaurant more often if I’m traveling solo. I have a nice hotel breakfast and either a sit-down lunch or dinner. The other meal is often something picked up at a grocery store or market. If it’s for dinner, I eat it in my hotel room. Typically, I bring several of the single serving almonds, peanuts or cashews from Costco. I will pick up some vegetables and eat them raw with the nuts. It’s fun for me to select some fruit juice or fruit/veggie drink mix from their grocery store. A package of cookies from their shop, stored in a Ziploc bag will last several days.

I take the garbage from the hotel room picnic outside to a trash receptacle, so it is not attracting bugs in the hotel or annoying the room cleaner in the morning.

The rest of this applies to traveling solo or having my husband traveling with me:

If the picnic meal is for lunch, it’s typically a roll and either a yogurt or some cheese, maybe some sliced meat and a sparkling water. We eat those in a park, and I bring a plastic spoon & fork from home for the trips.

Another common occurrence is to bridge the time from a nice breakfast to dinner with just an afternoon gelato.

My daughter and I picnic often in our hotel room. I bring two sets of plastic knives, forks, and spoons. We have found some really good food in many of the grocery stores. Especially on our Scandinavia tour, picnicking saved us a lot. There we found prepackaged cheese platters, some great salads (the beet was really good), and often a fruit or vegetable tray.

I also lean more towards breakfast items - get some fresh fruit at the street market, some juice and pastries, and if there's a bowl or vase in the hotel room I can make a little decorative centerpiece for the table or dresser as well.

Anyone heading to Stockholm.....there is a supermarket on the lower level of the rail station. They not only have prepared salads and sandwiches, but they also have a large selection salad bar.

Bread, cheese, ham, dried apricots or an apple. Yoghurt for dessert.

We’re headed to Paris soon and this is the first time we did not take the hotel breakfast. Our hotel has a fridge and coffee set up so we plan on picnicking a lot this trip. I have some lactose issues and am a little nervous about eating too much cheese and cream and butter. So, we will be at the market for sure. I have my 2 sets of travel silverware, will pick up some paper plates and 2 souvenir mugs and be all set.

Although we tend to be fairly budget-conscious on travel, this is where I think the upmarket, gourmet grocers shine -- Monoprix in France; El Corte Ingles in Spain; Globus in Switzerland; etc. Many are part of department stores, the way upscale department stores in the U.S. used to be. We love them because in addition to gorgeous fruits and veg, their prepared foods are outstanding for picnics -- pasta salads and couscous salads; smoked salmon and trout; roasted vegetables; cut-to-order hams and salamis; pre-made soups. Some even have sushi. And then there are the dessert counters...the less said about those the better! Anyway, it is all still cheaper than a meal in a restaurant, and it adds variety to the standard meat/cheese/bread picnic. Worth the splurge in our book...

I do the same as others have described - take away salads or sandwiches, or whatever prepped food looks interesting at the market. I also love to get some kind of locally flavored potato chip - Prague ham! British port and cheese! Thai pho! I rarely eat chips at home but it's fun to taste test. Plus a bottle of local brew to wash it down.

Of course, meals in a room. We love going to local grocery stores in other countries anyway. There are so many things we see that are different. It is a cultural experience.
When traveling it often gets tedious to eat out all the time. Where? Always a question. And what do you want at that moment in time. So there we are on Yelp or some other restaurant finder or reviews or locators. Spending too much time trying to choose. But a grocery store or market, full of surprises and foods you might not have thought of. And, you can buy things you can see, unlike the big wonder on what will arrive on your plate when in a restaurant.
Oh, much cheaper.
Our favorite cheap, hot, delicious , healthy, and quick meal for all time is the reliable kebab. That is our first look see from our hotel. Where is the nearest grocery store, and is there a kebab shop?

Funny that OP has non travel friends who ask him about eating out when he travels. Do they ask him anything else about his travels?

Dining in is only doable IF your hotel allows it - I have been in 2 hotels in France that had "BIG" note cards on the desk, no food in rooms.
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My favourite take-away / dine-in option is Sushi.

Wow @periscope! Really?! That's a first, although nothing surprises me with hotels anymore. Next they'll say you can have food in the room ... for an additional "20 Euro picnic upcharge service fee"! 🙄

I have seen that too - hotels that don't want you eating or storing food in the room. In France and Germany. We were told it was because they dont want vermin attracted to your room. And of course, the smell and cleanup of the mess that many would leave behind. In some cases, signage suggesting that any eating be done in the common areas of the hotel, not in the sleeping rooms.

Back in 2019 my wife and I took our bucket list trip to Norway and Germany. Part of our plan was to make sure that we "ate at home" at least part of the time and snacked/sampled local fare wherever we could. This became one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole experience. In Norway we had an apartment, so we frequented the local supermarkets and their gourmet market hall (Thanks Andrew Zimmern). Tapas, Iberian ham, local cheeses, etc. made up most of our fare - not really different from the menus posted. Outside of the folk museum we snacked on a basket of very large raspberries. We could have bought a portable grill and picnicked in a park if we wanted. Per the TV commercials, Norwegians are crazy about grilling in the summer. Who knew? In Berlin, we supped one night in our hotel room on doners bought from a storefront on Friedrich Strasse. In Freiburg we brought flammkuchen to our room and another night had cheesecake (thanks Samantha Brown for that tip). Prior to our train trip to Nürnberg, we shopped at Freiburg's farmers' market buying bread, meats and cheeses that we shared on the multi-hour trip. As much as dining out is an integral part of indulgence both at home or away, frankly it can get a little tedious, not to mention expensive. "Dining in" certainly has its advantages. Thanks Frank II for letting me reminisce a little.

Funny that OP has non travel friends who ask him about eating out when he travels. Do they ask him anything else about his travels?

I travel full time so friends think that means having to eat out all the time because that's what they did for their short time trips. Most of them are one weeks travelers, so they eat out.

For my travels, I like to go into markets to see what the locals are really eating. Jars of different types of herring in Sweden, rows and rows and rows of dry pasta in Italy, the gigantic selection of yogurt in France, the sparseness of fresh fruits and vegetables in Iceland.

I like to go into markets to see what the locals are really eating

In Poland, I like to get a couplea of slices of head cheese and a couplea of fresh rolls.

In France, I am beholden to terrines, particularly rabbit terrines, along with a demi-baguette.

In Italy, any panini and cold Italian beer usually satisfies me. Oh, and a slice or small scoop of Gorgonzola Dolce.

In the past we traveled 3x for 4 months straight, living out of hotel rooms. We got very good at having little picnic items on hand or that we could pick up at a market/food stand. Many of the things we used as our 3rd meal of the day are items already mentioned above. We too used a set of cutlery that we would wash and reuse. Early in one trip I realized that not all of our funky little, in some cases, hotel rooms would have a table or much of a clean surface. So one of my favorite things I bought on that trip was a pretty tray from a department store in Canterbury. It slipped into the outer pocket of my 24” luggage and I still use it today.

@History Traveler, not something new.

The RS 1-week tour hotel in Paris in 2013 had the sign saying no food allowed in the rooms. The easy solution was to walk over to the nearby Eiffel Tower lawn and picnic like so many others in the evening.

I usually stay in vacation apartments, so haven't had many hotel room picnics.
I do think that the grocery stores and markets are so much more interesting than ours at home.
I could spend hours in them, and sometimes do......
We usually eat breakfast and sometimes dinner in the apartments.
I stock up on groceries the day of arrival.

Eating in our room can depend on it having a fridge. It's rare that we'll eat anything in our room besides snacks except for breakfast and so we like to have the fridge so we can stock up on perishables such as yogurt. I will also often buy some bananas at the beginning of a trip so they have time to ripen to my liking (no green, starting to have brown spots). Neither my wife or I like warm drinks either, so even a drink in our room isn't usually a thing unless we have access to a fridge or ice. It's one more thing that we'll have to revaluate once we retire. Apartments may be in our future as I can't see us eating out every night if we're gone longer than 2 weeks, and unfortunately, fridges just aren't that common when we leave North America.

Many places might not have signs, but it's not something small hotels look on favorably, though some hotels will bring breakfast to your room, croissant and all. Large hôtels with room service serve on a tray and expect you to eat at a table. It's changing slightly now, but sitting at a table in a room that can be swept or vacuumed after the meal is the status quo, at least in France.

Definitely a must if you plan to save some money while travelling. Plus I think it's nice to have something snacky or even make your own food if you can, even if it's just some sandwiches and wine or something.

Bread and cheese. May add tomatoes, cucumbers, fruit, etc.