Lucy

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.

Karen

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

ALW

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.

Thyra

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.

Lisa

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.

Leilani

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...

John

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.

StCirq

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.

Isabelle

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.

Margot

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.

Lisa

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

OP

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!!

LJ

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?

janice

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.

Dave

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.

elvira

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.

Capo

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. :~)

xxx

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!

Joan

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)?

Man

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