This is a beautiful, but melancholy, song. The singer is thinking about a lost or separated love. Here is a live recording of Sylvia Hotel that you can find on YouTube.
Cheryl wrote this song shortly after her breakup while staying at the Sylvia Hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, which looks out over English Bay. She had finished her show and went down to the bar for a drink, feeling sad and lonely. It was raining and she was looking out the window and watching the bay. She reached into her pocket and came across a book of matches from The Durango Hotel. This is the hotel where she had recently stayed visiting "her ex". (Cheryl advises not visiting your ex after a breakup. It doesn't help) 
One part that always gets to me is:
I don't wonder why you left
I wonder why you stayed so long.
This hotel must be quite something. It turns out that Bruce Cockburn also wrote a portion of "Wondering Where the Lions Are" at the same hotel. (Cheryl & I are both fans of Bruce.)
- Sylvia Hotel
- Words And Music By
- Cheryl Wheeler
- This is a lonely life
- As I know you know too well
- I'm thinking of you tonight
- Here in the Sylvia Hotel
- Smoking a cigarette
- Drinking a glass of beer
- Catching a conversation
- I am trying not to hear
- One more? Why not? Ok.
- Guess I'm glad I came
- To stare at English Bay
- Under all the rain
- There's a cat in this bar right now
- Twitching his tail away
- I called with a soft meow
- Maybe he only speaks Francais
- You must be safe in bed
- Down in your cowboy home
- I don't wonder why you left
- I wonder why you stayed so long
- One more? Why not? Ok.
- I'm glad I came
- And here's to English Bay
- In the lovely rain
- I found some matches from Durango in my pocket
- But if I let my heart get sad then I can't stop it
- And this is a lonely life
- Though I think it suits me well
- And everything's fine tonight
- Here in the Sylvia Hotel
- 11/7/96
- (P) Novmber 10, 1997
- Penrod And Higgins Music / Amachrist Music
- ACF Music Group
- International Copyright Reserved