Hotels from Hell
 

I hope this isn't too inflamatory, but I thought it would be interesting to start a thread where everyone could post their worst European hotel experience, both as a warning to others and an emotional purgation. Have at it.

I do not want to mention any hotels by name, but by description. <BR> <BR>Very tiny room <BR>Stains on the carpet and furniture <BR>Mildew in the bathroom <BR>Many bugs around <BR>Dark-- too dark to read <BR>Dismal view <BR>Very noisy, thin walls or traffic noise

Not many hotels in my repetoire, but WORST HOSTEL EVER: Luxembourg. Had everything stolen while I slept, then staff members wouldn't let me use the phone, so I had to walk into the city center to report the theft. Turns out that this was a pattern, but that (because it's a hostel) nobody stayed long enough to report this to incoming tenants.

Fortunately I don't remember the name, but there was a hotel that my friend and I stayed at in Earl's Court London, back in the 80's. When you pulled the covers on the bed back.. millions of little jumping bugs hopped out.... <BR>We didn't have much money so we braided our hair and slept on the floor. We had to share the room too, with an ranting woman of questionable mental abilities, who was lead in my some kind of "keeper". The "Keeper" told us to keep an eye on this lady, then proceeded to leave and didn't return until the next morning. The poor lunatic woman spent the entire night, sitting upright in the bed and rocking back and forth.

Thyra, you win ( or maybe I should say you lose) hands down. I don't care how many bad experiences come after yours, but your experience has to be one of the worst.

My husband and I had taken the boat-train from London to Dublin. We were so exhausted by the time we arrived that we made the mistake of going with a woman who was drumming up business for her B&B in the train station. Her place turned out to be unlicensed and quite probably illegal. Our room was a converted pantry in the kitchen; it had a swinging door with no lock on it and reeked of rancid grease. It was so small that we had to squeeze against the wall to get into bed. The shower ran in a trickle, and we weren't allowed to use the phone. <BR> <BR>We stuck it for one night and took off for greener pastures, where the lovely owner of a licensed B&B was horrified by our story. She told us, "Oh, no, dear, you should NEVER go with those people at the train stations!" Tell me about it...

Couple of warm, fuzzy (the fruit plate) memories from ye olde Soviet Onion days - the kitchen in the big, nasty Hotel Rossiya on Red Square ran out of everything except bananas and champagne (Uzbek) for 3 or 4 days. Comrade, how would you like your banana? With champagne? Excellent! <BR>Number 2 - the Hotel Urgench (rhymes with stench) in the lovely Uzbek city of the same name. In mid-August (yes, I know, we were idiots) the electricity went off, leading to the in-room thermometer blowing up as in, pop, mercury here and there, when the temperature IN THE ROOM went above 40°C/104°F. The water from the taps was not something you would want to get too near to, and all there was to drink was well-warmed apricot juice (no beer, of course, Muslim area.) The cockroaches were sleepy, though, except at night when you went into the loo (required by the apricot juice) when they would put down your toothbrush and try to hide behind the shaving cream can. Unsuccesfully - it was too small.

Doubt anyone could top Thyra's tale,. and I do want to say that I understand this hotel has either come under new management or gotten its act together, but in 1989, I was in Strasbourg for business in November. I'd booked a room at the Hotel Esmeralda in Paris, having heard of its numerous charms. According to the hotel's requirements, I had mailed a draft in French francs for the full price of one night's stay (I intended to stay for two nights). I was five months pregnant, traveling alone. There was a bad snowstorm in northeastern France, and my train was late arriving in Paris by about an hour. I got to the Esmeralda at about 7 pm. There was no one at the desk. Several cats roamed the filthy lobby, then a dog came down the stairs and barked and bared its fangs at me. Eventually, a decrepit old lady appeared from behind a faded, dirty velvet curtain over a doorway and asked what I wanted. I said I had a reservation. She said no, I didn't, as it was after 6 pm. I said "what?" She said in France she had the right to give away any room after 6 pm that hadn't been occupied by the client, if the client hadn't called. I said, but I was on a train, I couldn't call. She said "tant pis." I said well, then, I'd like my money back. She said she didn't have to give it to me. And then she went behind the velvet curtain. It was now about 7:45 in Paris, dark, and snowing. I went outside and miraculously there was a police car just up the block. I explained my plight to the policeman, who accompanied me back to the hotel and pleaded my case. He did explain that the 6 p.m. rule was a valid one, and that a hotel could give away a room unoccupied and unaccounted for by that time, but he felt sure he could get the management to get me a room, under the circumstances. NO way. La patronne had given away the room and didn't have another and wouldn't refund the money. The policeman drove me to the Hotel Duquesne in the 7me, which was my old favorite anyway, and they happily took me in. I never got my money back from the Esmeralda, and will never recommend the place to anyone even though I've heard it's greatly improved in recent years. <BR> <BR>I also had a horrific night at a B&B in Earl's court in the 1980s - bugs in the beds and slime in the showers, but no "keepers" or lunatics in the room, and another dreadful night in some sort of flophouse in the town of Mora in Spain, when we got stranded without reservations between Madrid and Sevilla. But the Esmeralda will live on in my memory as the ultimate hotel bummer.

My vote goes to the Charles Dickens Hotel in London. Our room had a window with a broken window latch, dirty towels, the desk wouldn't sell us a stamp unless we bought a post card, the restaurant wouldn't serve us a sandwich we had to go to the bar where the waiter was surly and sexually harrassing. We reported all this to both Thistle Hotels (who by the way no longer owns it) and to British Airways who no longer carries it, but in 14 trips to London this was the only time I came away disappointed with the friendliness of the English People.

Thank you, Lucy, I would indeed love the chance to purge myself of the awful memory of a B and B in Hayle, England. Hayle, by the way, is how some fellow Southerners pronounce the word "hell." We booked our room months in advance. We'd only be staying one night, on our way from London to Penzance. When we arrived, the place looked nothing like the picture on the brochure we'd been sent. But, since it was clean and we were tired, we blew that off. Then the owner informed us that although we'd asked for the room with the king bed, she'd had to give it to someone else. It turns out a family had booked with her for a week, so she gave them the larger room. We were only "one-nighters", she said, and she'd stopped booking "one-nighters" but had made an exception for us since we'd booked so far in advance. The room was so small there was no place to put our luggage other than under the bed. <BR> <BR>I wanted to bathe. There was no stopper in the tub, and no washcloths (I've since learned that this is not unusual). I stuck a clean sock in the drain to keep the water in the tub, and used another sock for a washcloth. Later, the owner knocked on the door and asked us not to bathe, but to shower. Okay, whatever, I'm still letting things roll off my back, especially since my husband took an instant dislike to this woman, and I'm having fears of sleeping in a car. I wish we would have. Things rapidly deteriorated. <BR> <BR>After returning from dinner, we were exhausted and looking forward to sleep. It was unusually warm, so we opened our window. A horrible stench floated into our room. The farmer who owned the adjoining field had just fertilized. As we lay in bed debating which was worse, the smell or the warmth, a loud explosion came from outside. We rushed downstairs, where the woman told us that a gun, or a machine that sounds like a gun, was scheduled to go off every half-hour to scare the birds. My husband and I share a pretty healthy sense of humor, but lack of sleep and tension had killed it for both of us. <BR> <BR>In the morning I plugged in my perfectly good converter, began to dry my hair, and then the electricity blew. I assumed I was the cause. The woman was immediately pounding on the door, demanding to see my converter. She then said she'd have to call an electrician, and implied we'd be responsible for the bill. At this point she looked at the bed, which was bare. I had pulled the sheets off and folded the blankets, which I thought she would have wanted. She then asked if we had "stained the sheets." I was incredulous. I asked, "What?" She said, "Are you ill? Did you have an accident?" I truly felt like we were in an episode of the "Twilight Zone." <BR> <BR>My husband and I hurriedly packed, and on our way out flung our pounds at her. She asked if we wanted breakfast and we said, "NO." We fled as fast as we could and didn't look back. <BR> <BR>Two years later, we are able to laugh about it.

Margot, I feel sorry for that family that had booked there for a week!

One of the worst places I almost stayed at was in Merida in the Yucatan in the '70s (sorry it's not Europe, but I didn't really stay there and it's a good story anyway). My sister and I had prepaid much of our money at another hotel that was disgusting in Cancun, where we didn't stay (another story entirely), so there we were in Merida looking for something nicer, or at least decent. We were with 2 American male friends who were staying elsewhere, one of whom spoke Catillian spanish, which was fairly useless in an area that spoke Mayan. But we didn't know that. So we asked very politely for a room for 2 with air conditioning and private bath. The two of us walked up with the owner and he showed us a huge nasty open room with dirty bare mattresses all over the floor, no ac, disgusting grime filled windows over the busy road and no bath. Seems he thought we were PROSTITUTES!!!! This just cracks me up because my sister had been a debutante in Louisville!!! HA, HA, HA!!

IMO Thyra's experience takes the cake, with Margot's a close second, although it was an eye-opener trying to picture ST Cirq dealing with pregnancy, mad dogs and Frenchwomen: I have this mental picture of her as a cross between Maggie Smith and Katherine Hepburn, definitely cool, elegant and 'tres formidable'. <BR>Let me add my own tale of weirdness. It was late, it was Narnia, Italy and my husband, sister- and brother-in-law and I were too tired to argue when the reservation at the quaint hillside villa turned out to be unavailable and we were shunted into a modern, suburban 3 floor concrete box of a hotel. <BR>The owner was rubbing his hands together in glee at the unexpected guests and pushed some creepy hangers-on out of his lobby/bar to welcome us. He quite deliberately kept sending "the boys" on errands to get luggage, park the car, get cash (no credit cards) so he could keep the increasingly nervous "girls" in sight. <BR>I hadn't been examined so thoroughly by a man not a physician in my life and he had my otherwise dignified sister-in-law squirming in her seat, trying to look up her skirt and down her top simultaneously. When he suggested that the boys go off to an open air theatre for "mens night" and he would "entertain us", we were totally open-mouthed. We fled to explore the charming upper town all together. <BR> But our sleazy host wasn't giving up that easily. When the boys went for the car to go to dinner, he physically pulled us into his dining room to show us his fridge.He opened the door and grinned and pointed. "If you ladies will stay in with me tonight, you can have anything you want from my fridge.." We peered in. In addition to the expected wine and liquor bottles, was the most amazing collection of pharmaceuticals I'd ever seen outside a drug store, at least 30 pill bottles. Yet again we fled. <BR>We returned as late as possible to shower, bed and got up the next morning. When I came out of the room there was mein host right outside the door, as if he'd been listening at the door. One of the oddballs from the lobby of the day before was just disappearing down the stairs. We practically ran to the car, but not before I noticed the final indignity and explanation for all that lurking and heavy breathing. In the bathroom wall, right at knee level was a hole into the hall. Yuckky. <BR>Oh, by the way, did I mention that the "boys" and "girls" in this story were all in their 50's at the time, I'm an ordained minister and our host must have been 70 if he was a day?

My worst hotel sounds so tame in comparion - but I've got to tell you about it because I'm on a one-woman crusade to put this guy out of business. <BR>On Lido in Venice - Hotel Reiter. They have a nice enough looking website - and the photos of the rooms seemed acceptable. But when we actually got to our room, our bed was in fact two cots pushed together to make a double bed. Okay, we could try to deal with this until my travel companion sat down on the bed. (admittedly, he tips the scales WAY over 300 lbs.) When he sat on the bed, the springs on the bottom of the bed hit the floor. When he stretched out, everything from his shoulders to his thighs was sunk to the floor. I'm willing to agree that you don't have to design every bed in the world to accommodate my big buddy, but this was pretty unacceptable. And when we tried to ask for another room,(very calmly, very politely) we were sworn at, insulted, called every name in the book (in English and Italian, and that's a big book) and just generally given to understand that we were at fault. Bottom line, a hotel only for people who want their healthy sense of self-esteem taken down a few notches.. or who want to learn lots of Italian obscenities.

In 1976, I was returning from the Soviet Union via London. Got to London in the late afternoon on a hot August day. There were no vacancies in town, and finally the accomodations desk at the train station found a room in a B&B. A friend and I grabbed the room. It was so narrow that the two beds were up against opposite walls and were touching each other. Also, the space at the foot of the bed was so small that you could not put your suitcase on the floor and open the door at the same time. Not much in the clean dept either. When I turned off the light, it didn't get much darker because of the big lights outside on the building across the street. That building turned out to be a meat wholesaler, and starting at 2:00 a.m., huge, very large trucks started coming and going. I was told that when the troops were mobilizing for D-Day, it was quieter. The nicer drivers didn't honk.

Oh my, I'm not so upset about my couple of icky hotel experiences - nothing to compare to Thyra or LJ. <BR>Brussels: dark, had reservation at recommended hotel. See "hotel" sign and go in; creepy bar, owner greasy long-hair. Takes me upstairs to my room, the door had no door knob, he stuck a screw driver into the mechanism and opened the door. Good sized room, but blanket was greasy and dirty (I've seen bums wrapped in similar). I slept in my clothes on top of the blanket (had no desire to see the sheets), and my giant duffle bag (pre-light packing days) wedged against the door. At - ahem - check-in, owner wanted a depo, I had a $20US bill (I thought the hotel took credit cards), which he took and said he'd give back when I paid him in Belgian francs in the morning. Morning comes, owner nowhere, barkeep has no idea what I'm talking about. I bolted out the door - and walked by the hotel where I actually was supposed to go - lovely lobby, bright and clean, Visa/Mastercard logos on the door, a dozen "best of" plaques on the wall. <BR> <BR>Why I don't arrive without hotel reservations: <BR>London - train station tourist office recommends hotel near Earl's Court. Communal shower was wall to wall mildew and slime, and so small that I had to keep my elbows tucked in or the slime would rub off on me; cockroaches on the walls. When I got home, I guessed right and opened my suitcase in the parking lot of my apartment complex - cockroaches ran out. <BR> <BR>Paris: arrive on overnight train from Nice, get a room thru tourist office at station. It's in the 13eme, Asian neighborhood (not the "Parisian" feel I was looking for), room pretty small and bed very uncomfortable. I'm too tired to eat out, so I buy cheese, baguette and bottle of wine to eat in my room. I wake up in the morning, and the 1/2 baguette and the remaining piece of cheese were crawling with roaches.

I wouldn't say a hotel from "Hell", but a room I had at the Hotel Petit Trianon in Paris (in the 6th, near the Rue de Buci street market) a few years ago was probably the bleakest, most depressing room I've ever stayed in. A lumpy bed, threadbare towels, and a nasty-looking shared shower all helped contribute to making this a most memorable, and educational**, experience. <BR> <BR>** Location <I>isn't</I> everything. :~)

The horror stories regarding B&B's enforce my preferance for 3* hotels. The trip may cost more, but at least it'll be comfortable! ;)

Anybody else notice that this thread is dominated by female Fodorites. This is untypical for this forum: what do you suppose it is about the topic that makes women more 'responsive' than men...(apologies to John and a couple of other males)?

Joan - not trying to be sexist or anything....but women are more likely to complain or vent in general.

Man, I'm not so sure that women are more likely to complain or vent in general than men are. On the other hand, if by a hotel from "Hell", we're talking about a place that's slovenly or dirty, then <I>my</I> "sexist" comment would be that perhaps women have a more exacting standard, <I>in general</I>, than men do in that regard.

My B&B from hell was in Wisconson, not Europe. I wasn't going to post it, but after Joan's challenge I decide to anyway. <BR> <BR>When we were checking in and told the owner we were from Washington, DC, he asked if I worked at the CIA because everyone in Washington works there. My wife has food alergies, so we asked if there would be anything she could eat in the morning. The said they would cook some eggs for her. In the morning, they banged on all of the doors at 7AM getting everyone up so they could change the sheets. At 9:00, they trooped everyone to the dining room for breakfast. They stood in the doorway with their arms crossed dictating the conversation topics. They had everyone give their name, where they were from, and what they did for a living. Breakfast consisted of pastries bought at the local grocery store. Each plate was passed around the table once and taken back to the kitchen, no seconds. When my wife asked for the eggs, they got indignant. When someone asked if the owners had openned up the B&B for a working retirement, it became obvious that was what they had thought they were doing, but didn't realize how much work it was. They were very bitter people. One unfortunate young couple were there on their honeymoon and had put up with this for a week. We haven't stayed in a B&B since. Unlike the hotels in other posts, the place was spotless. Our room was a little too country cluttered for my tastes, but is was all quality antiques.

We had a bad experience with a London flat which we got through British Airways. It definitely had seen its better days & was now owned by an absentee Middle-Eastern landlord. It was a depressing basement flat with a filthy rug (took them 3 days to get around to half cleaning it) & we were there during the middle of a heat wave. Every night the defective fire alarm would shrilly sound, making sleep very difficult (we had trouble sleeping anyway what with jet lag & the heat). They always promised to fix it but only succeeded in its going off later each night - like 3 a.m. (& sometimes more than once). We were so exhausted each day that we couldn't drag ourselves out of the room until noon. <BR> Our next London hotel was much nicer (after an interim visit to York) but we were evacuated at midnight in our pajamas after a heavy rainstorm did in the roof! (We wondered what all that water was running down our walls!)

I'm like Janice, my tale of woe is tame compared to everyone else, but I am also on a crusade. I stayed at the Minerve in Paris last year and it just about ruined my whole trip. The fat bald man at the desk was very unhelpful. We had a bunch of things wrong in the room--bad remote control for the TV, a burned out light bulb in the bathroom, no shower curtain (causing the bathroom to flood). <BR> <BR>Our requests were very simple. The TV remote in our room did not work, so we asked that it be fixed. The first day that we brought the remote to the front desk, they said they would try to take care of it. When we returned at the end of the day, we were told that we turned it in too late and needed to give the remote to the front desk in the morning. The next morning, and the next, we brought the remote back down and made the same request. We even put our request in writing, but it was not fixed. We would pick up the remote every day and ask if it was fixed, and the bald fat man would retort that he did not know. And of course, it wasn’t fixed. By Saturday, he was telling us that it could not be fixed until Monday. And if the fat bald man had told us from the start that he could not fix the remote, that would have been okay--all we needed to know was if he could fix it or not. He didn’t need to lie to us. Maybe he was too busy talking on his mobile phone all the time to help us. <BR> <BR>Finally, Mitre (who was the only nice person at the front desk) helped us by giving us a remote from another room. How simple! <BR> <BR>The other problem was the light in our bathroom. One had burned out the first night, so we were requesting that it be fixed every day....every day as we asked that our remote be fixed. And of course, our requests were ignored. We finally tried to use a bulb from one of the stairwells to fix it ourselves, but it didn’t work. Our bathroom light was never fixed, but we noticed that the one in the stairwell was replaced right away. Don’t you think it’s strange that a guest’s request is repeatedly ignored, but the stairwell gets attention? <BR> <BR>Anyway, I know it sounds so petty for me to complain -- especially now that I've seen WORSE stories -- but no paying guest should ever be subjected to bad service & arrogance, in any hotel in any part of the world.

I stayed at a three day conference in Glaway in one of the big hotels in the centre of Galway, the name of which escapes me.(not the Great Western; might have been the Station). Had a pefectly pleasant attic room. <BR> <BR>Late at night a party started in the room next to mine- 1 or 2 in the morning. Eventually I got up and asked them to tone it down. It was the staff, and I suspect they had thought they had the floor to themselves. they were, however drunk, and thought a polite, very tired guest a very funny thing. So it got a bit quieter then a lot louder then running feet. They had put the television on full volume and locked the door as they left. <BR> <BR>I could not get the front desk to answer and eventually had to get up and find the night porter, who denied that any such thing was possible. It took him over an hour to beother to come and open the room and switch the thing off. <BR> <BR>I actually didn't mind the start of it- I've worked in hotels myself and know how these things can happen- but the "you must be imagining it, madam" esponse of the night porter drove me to distraction!!

Travelled to London at Christmastime about 9 years ago, with a friend. We had booked a budget-priced hotel, despite the warnings of our travel agent who said it seemed a bit low-cost for London and she wasn't sure this was a great idea. Our only stipulation was that it be reasonably clean and have two beds in it. We arrived after travelling through the night, quite exhausted but pleased to be in such an exciting city. We got to the hotel, which seemed pleasant enough, but the front desk clerk informed us that they were closing for the Christmas holiday! Why nobody had thought to mention this to us or our travel agent at the time of booking several months before is anybody's guess. In any case the clerk told us they had arranged for us to stay at another hotel and would send us by taxi "at no cost to you!" Darn right, we thought, but eventually the taxi arrived and took us to the other hotel. It didn't look all that bad in the lobby, but there was a lot of activity at the front desk, and this seemed to be overwhelming the clerk who actually at one point put her hands over her ears and screamed. Not a good sign. She gave us our key and we piled ourselves and our suitcases into the tiny lift and went up to the room. It had one double bed. Not acceptable. So we piled our stuff back into the little lift and approached the clerk again; she was on the verge of screaming again but we explained the situation and she gave us another key. Back into the lift. Up to the new room. This one had two beds. I sat on one of them and it folded around my ears; my friend went into the bathroom and said "Hey, this is great. You can sit on the toilet, brush your teeth, and have a shower all at the same time." The room was utterly dismal. I rummaged around in my suitcase and found one of the guidebooks I had brought, and there was a listing for Durrant's Hotel, which was twice the price we were paying but still reasonable (for London). I called them, they had a room for us, and we went. It was lovely, and I've returned there several times since then; I should imagine the front desk clerk at the other hotel has probably been hospitalized by now!

I vaguely remember that the hotel in Rome was pretty bad, but not terrible. I was 25, and my friend and I had made the reservation at the Italian tourist office in our previous overnight stop, which had been our M.O. throught the trip. The owner/manager was an elderly (to us -- he was probably the age I am now!), somewhat sleazy character. <BR> <BR>Our trip had been plagued by "scioperi bianchi" and other labor actions and other mysterious reasons for EXTREME train delays. Passing a newstand, I'd noticed a headline re a possible full-blown "sciopero" affecting the trains, but hadn't bought the paper or stood around actually reading the article. I asked the man what news he'd heard about this. He told me there were absolutely no strikes, "white" or otherwise, and never had been! <BR> <BR>We should have had the sense not to believe anything he said from then on. Instead, we "bought" stamps from him, which he offered to put on our pile of postcards; we had a lot, since we hadn't had a chance to buy stamps for a few days. <BR> <BR>Sequel: No one ever received the postcards "mailed" from that hotel in Rome. That was 1972. Some of the intended recipients (our parents) have been dead for years, our friends have all moved, and I guess it's reasonable to give up hope....

I love this thread!

An opportunity to save others from a ruined hotel stay! I don't kow what it is about Florence, but I don't like it and I think its because both times I've been there its been 90* and humid and I've stayed in horrible hotels! <BR>The first I don't remember the name of but the room had no windows and was off the kitchen. I was 18 and with a youth group so I couldn't do much about it. It was 85* and raining at the time! <BR>BUT! The Hotel Veneto, which I encountered last year is a must NOT! <BR>Again it was about 90* and we had unexpected problems with the hotel we were meant to stay in. The owner of this hotel swore there was air conditioning, my one deal breaker. Well when we got up to the room, the "air conditioner" was a swamp cooler that sounded like an AC, looked like and AC but sure didn't blow like and AC. When we went to open the window for air the window was painted shut. The window looked into a narrow courtyard littered with old beds and frames that looked like they'd been thrown down from floors above. The floor was gritty, the sheets questionable. But my favorite part was taking a shower. It was one of those bathrooms that has the shower head in the wall and the whole bath is the shower? Not unusual in Italy. Well after a hot, crowded day in Florence I was enjoying a cool shower when I heard my companion screaming. Water was flowing from under the bathroom door! By the time I got out it was a small river streaming across the floor, out the door and down the stairs.

<BR>I believe the most creative people on the face of the earth are those who produce hotel brochures and room photos for hotel websites. <BR> <BR>Oh I know there are lots of brochures that give an honest picture of the property you are considering but there are also a lot that miraculously create enticing portraits of places that qualify as hotels from hell. <BR> <BR>Iknow something about lenses and cameras but I still get suckered in by a picture of a hotel room that looks super and turns out to rate 10 on my hotel depression scale---even with a fish eye lens how do they manage to get a gloomy 10 sq meter room to look spacious clean and bright? <BR> <BR>AH

Oh my God: <BR>I am sitting here laughingwith tears rolling down my face!! Have I ever been lucky! <BR>No horror stories to tell, YET! <BR>Please keep this thread going!

Not really from Hell but very strange:). In Jan00 I was traveling the Peloponesse by car, I wanted to stay in Mycenae for a few days at the hotel (Belle Helene) that Heinrich Schliemann (archaeologist that discovered Mycenae in 1874, Troy, etc) stayed at but *only* if his room (#3) was available. His room is kept in period except for the electric light and possibly the sink, the room has an antique bed, furniture and no heat. I show-up ~2pm a young man is sitting in front of a heater watching TV, he says #3 is available so I happily take it. He gives me my room key plus a front door key in case it's locked he says. I leave for 15min to pick-up a local guidebook at the site for tomorrow's visit. I return and the hotel door is locked upon entering I walk over to the desk just to see if any other rooms are occupied, all the keys (~12) are there except mine. The hotel is *dead silent* as I read my new guidebook and have a couple of glasses of wine (I had a cold:) just waiting until the restaurants open ~7pm. I leave for dinner and return to a dark and still empty hotel and it's getting cold!!! ~10pm it's freezing and I have on all the clothes I possibly can on plus all the blankets on the bed. I can see my breathe and it's got to be below 0C/32F. I'm running hot water in the sink for the steam and the wine isn't keeping me warm either:). The next morning ~9am I left my keys on the vacant front desk and went to a nice & *warm* 4* outside Nafplio. He just left the whole hotel to me all alone for 18hrs, complete with a fully stocked lobby bar. Regards, Walter <BR>

What a hilarious thread...and glad to hear others have had "interesting" hotels too. Our worst was the Crofton in London near the British Museum about 8 yrs ago. A great location BUT our room was in the basement w/ no windows, the door didn't lock, there were no blankets or top sheets on the twin(supposed to be double) beds...they had old sheers on them! Yes, sheer curtains for blankets. We couldn't open the door fully b/c the bed was in the way...and we had to move the 2nd bed to get into the bathroom. We didn't worry about a breakin at night b/c noone could have opened the door, our bed was right up against the door. We gave up asking for working lightbulbs. We switched the one 25Wattish in the room to the bathroom when we needed to get ready in the morning! The towels were so thin and stiff that they stood up on their own. Toilet paper and extra sheets were stored in the courtyard leaning up against the building. There were no creepy crawlers at least. About a month after we got home, "European Vacation" was rerunning on TV...I SWEAR the hotel Chevy stayed in London was the Crofton, altho he must have gotten one of their luxury suites!

House rentals also have their problems. See <BR> <BR>http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andyfarrand/ <BR> <BR>Mr. Farrand rented a house in the Dordogne in the winter of 1999 and had a terrible time. Often vacation homes are not what they should be because the owners are only interested in earning money. When they don't use the house much, maintenance just doesn't get done. <BR> <BR>It certainly has happened to me when I have rented beach houses. I had one where the hot water heater did not work and the stove started a fire. Obviously we did not rent that place again. <BR> <BR>

Mine is just a hotel from heck, but I'm still glad we were only there one night! Hotel Sailer in Innsbruck, 1985: I trust it's much better now. It was decorated in what could best be described as 1960's and convent (not a convent in the sixties; a combination of the two) and had a bathroom door that was only attached at the top. But the worst thing was that it stank! It was a horrible combination of chemical, b.o., and who knows what. The location wasn't so great, either, and everything else was full as there was a convention of travel agents in town. We had a great time laughing over this armpit of a place, but, like I said, it was only for one night!

To the top, Jeeves!

Well, the last time I stayed at the Ritz in Paris I was so disappointed. My tea I ordered through room service was only luke warm when they brought it. What a shame!