CICAK, may I suggest you encourage your wife to see the big picture. When you're in a hotel room you are not required to savage the minibar. When you're in an apartment you aren't required to cook. The kitchen just exists quietly should you desire it. What you're there for is to spread out, have privacy with all the comforts of home, possibly be in a more interesting neighborhood & surrounded by people who interest you and who may even be interested in you and any number of other real-life aspects of being in a foreign country. Which can include not being surrounded, as in a hotel, by the very people you've spent a lot of money to leave behind. AND, you can have a meal on occasion, take-out stored in your fridge for instance, without getting dressed.