HOTELS
High-End: Located just across the Rue Douleur from Satan’s summer place, the Hell Hilton is the place to go if you’re a visitor to the infernal regions for whom money is no object. The accommodating staff will gladly accept all major credit cards and will remind you of the fate of those who commit the sin of avarice without being asked. Beds are large and dressed with high-thread-count Egyptian cotton rather than the nails, hot coals, or starving ferrets one encounters at more modestly-priced hotels; and its convenient location means that you never have to miss one of the three daily shows where the Lord of Lies consumes the still-living head of Judas Iscariot, no matter how hung over you are from last night’s three-peppertini dinner at Dis (c.f.). The only downsides are the upsetting enthusiasm with which the desk clerk says he hopes to see you again, and the fact that the hotel is run not by the famous Hilton hotel family, but rather by Hilton Kramer, who each night visits every single guest to deliver a two-hour lecture about how the popularity of boy bands heralds a return to Stalinism.
Moderate: Dante’s Inferno is a surprisingly affordable boutique hotel, considering the obvious care and expense that went into its design and atmosphere. The accommodations are outstanding, the amenities are what one would expect from a luxury hotel, and best of all, each suite is individually themed and assigned to guests based on their preferences and personalities. Unfortunately, visitors who fail to call ahead or consult travel guides are often surprised to learn that the “Dante” in question is not, in fact, the poet Alighieri whose brilliant evocations of the netherworld are our shared cultural heritage, but rather Dante Hicks, the fictional protagonist of the Clerks films. Themed rooms include the Quick Stop Room, the Mooby’s Room, the RST Video Room, the Have Sex with a Corpse and/or a Donkey Room, and the Kevin Smith Explains Star Wars at Great Length Room (an overnight stay in the latter is, alas, mandatory.) The “Inferno” refers to the fact that the rooms are constantly on fire.
Budget: Like its waking-world equivalent, the Motel 666 adjacent to Hitler Memorial Stadium in Hell’s southwestern suburbs offers inexpensive rooms, modest amenities, and predictable but reliable places to stay for travelers without a lot of money to spend. Towels are made of human skin and sandpaper, the TVs only get the Lifetime Movie Network, and all the hangers are kept extremely frigid, running the risk of frostbite when you get your suit jacket, but other than that, the Motel 666 may be your best bet if you want to save some vacation money for a side trip to Purgatory. Be warned: this place of lodging only takes the Discover card.
RESTAURANTS
High-End: Dis is the place; if you’re looking for top-shelf cuisine, or planning a fancy dinner to impress a client, significant other, or potential future tormentor, head chef Gilles de Rais’ continental-with-a-twist (usually of the neck, ankle or nipple, depending on the day of the week) eatery is the only place to go. Literally. All the other restaurants in downtown Hell are Church’s Fried Chickens staffed by mentally unbalanced Eastern European immigrants with weeping sores. But you’ll have no cause to complain here, at least until the bill arrives and you are forced to sell your children to cover the corkage fees, or, if you don’t have any children, be sent to a minotaur-run rape camp to conceive some. Try the grilled salmon with citrus-zest salsa and asparagus dog penis.
Moderate: With downtown choked with poorly staffed chicken shacks featuring nonfunctional deep-fryers and a complimentary communicable disease bar, and Hell’s west side splitting the culinary duties between Packer’s Peopleteria (try the Badly Burned Betty) and Arby’s, your best bet for good-quality yet affordable cuisine is to take a agony cab east to Herkimer’s BBQ. A full range of sides is available, and the atmosphere is pure down-home (proprietor and chef Andy Herkimer is a recent arrival in Hell, following the failure of his most recent appeal). The smell of roasting meat and rich, zesty sauce is just the thing to cleanse the palate of the aftertaste of voided intestines, fear-sweat and exploded lung tissue that permeates the rest of the neighborhood. The base of the sauce is whatever leaked out of previous diners after they found out what’s in Herkimer’s bathroom, and all of the meat comes from dwarves convicted of sex crimes, so be warned, it’s not vegetarian-friendly – but the TV is the only one in Hell that carries ESPN News.
Budget: If you’ve spent your vacation budget visiting Stick Things Up Walt Disney World, the Museum of Intestinal Parasites, or the family-fun wonderland that is the Slip-‘n’-Slide Incontinence Park, you might not want to go in hock at Dis; Hell’s credit policies are ungenerous, and diners who attempt the dine-and-dash are often the next featured entree. However, you have to eat, and when you have to eat eat on next to nothing, you might want to stop by Marty’s Piece Pit. The portions are huge, the seating is plentiful, and the prices are right — in fact, it’s free! What’s the catch? Well, technically, the Piece Pit is not a restaurant, but rather a big open pit where Marty, one of the least reputable of the demons of the Ninth Vortex of Screeching Horror, sorts through the corpses of the recently disinterred to see what might be useful in creating horrible homonculi to torment the damned. Whatever he doesn’t use, you can eat! He also knows three good jokes and the phone number of Hell’s only legitimate massage therapist.