Ours was a former kibbutz hotel at a place called Neve Yam, on the beach just south of Haifa in Israel. Unbeknownst to us, the hotel had been 90% (our room was in the 10%) transformed into a guest worker camp for Romanian contract workers. The beach consisted of 60% sand, 20% dog poop and 20% broken beer bottles. Someone had urinated into the wall air-conditioner, a fact we discovered when we turned it on to be greeted by a clattering of rusted metal and a fog of atomized you-know-what. There were rodent droppings under the table. The TV was broken, the radio emitted a spark and a pop when we turned it on, but no music.<BR><BR>The sheets had been washed previously, but not since several sets of guests had passed through (and passed out.) Ditto the toilet and tub. My favorite thing of all was the collection of used and discarded prophylactics under our son's bed.<BR><BR>It was too late to find another place, so we stormed to the office and demanded clean sheets and towels, in which we wrapped ourselves and slept on top of the beds. We bugged out at dawn's early light, before the real bugs appeared.<BR><BR>Second place goes to a hotel in Connemara in Ireland where the floor at the foot of the loo had holes in it, allowing you to peer (between your legs, if you get my meaning) at the head of cook preparing the bacon and eggs in the kitchen directly below. Bed, breakfast, and....?<BR><BR>

Hotel La Plage in Taormina, Sicily. Smelly, mildewy, claustrophobic, mosquito-infested awful place. I wouldn't stay there for free! Ocean view is nice, but doesn't make up for the downside &amp; doesn't merit a stay.

My worst hotel was in Pensacola Florida. They actually had the toilet inside the shower. It was a corner shower about 1.5ft by 1.5 ft with a toilet inside. And if you wanted to close the bathroom door to brush your teeth, you first had to step into this shower with the toilet so that there would be enough room for the door to close.<BR><BR>Drunk/drugged out architect???

Morgana Panama Garden in Rome on our honeymoon, no less. This place is a dump. Go elsewhere!

We drove down from Crater Lake, OR and stopped in the small town of Chemult. Wife checks us in, points to a unit in this motel, and unlocks and opens the door. Our 100-lb. Labrador immediately enters the room...and disappears. We can't find him anywhere. Wife suggests we look under the bed, which we do. Wife suggests I lift the foot of the bed because big dog won't come out. I life, she grabs dog. He is guarding the leftovers of a beef rib dinner. I &quot;suggest&quot; we change rooms, having seen all sorts of trash and other leftovers in room. I go to desk. I find problem: desk lady has a spot in middle of forehead. Wife, bless her naive soul, has checked us into a patel, a Indian-run motel. Very common, speading like lice across America. I insist we change rooms. No dice says spotted lady. I demand. She insists. I insist. I demand money back. Lady balks. I call cops. We flee.

The Clarion San Francisco Airport sucks! If you do not pay an extra $25.00 (special rate at the desk) on top of the $90.00 standard your punished. You get a room (bungalow)off the main hotel. Very, very gross! I do not think these rooms have been cleaned in a long time. I've stayed at hotels in Tijuana Mexico that were cleaner.

Fonz, your racist and patronizingly sexist attitudes are a disgrace. Clearly it was a disgusting motel but your implicit generalization to all Indian-run motels is ridiculous.

I didn't notice any sexist comments...

The Travelodge on Santa Monica Boulevard, in Los Angeles. We booked this thinking it would be to a similar standard as the UK Travelodges - ie clean and adequate, but far from a 5 star hotel. Wrong!<BR><BR>Firstly, we arrived at LAX at about 2pm after a flight from London. By the time we got there, it was close to 4. We checked in, and went to the room - to find that the door more or less opened directly onto the street (the UK Travelodges are usually enclosed, like hotels, and the doors certainly don't open outside!) Opened the door - the room hadn't been cleaned, there were condom wrappers on the floor (didn't want to look in the bin) and the room was so dark and dingy that we had to have the lights on all the time. &quot;Breakfast&quot; was allegedly included - if you could call a rather stale Danish and a plastic cup of coffee breakfast. Needless to say, we left the next morning for a much more expensive - but wonderful - inn near the centre of LA.

Hey, Carolyn: We stayed at one of those Yellowstone cabins 30 years ago. Had a bat hanging down from the ceiling; my dad tried to smoke it out with the wood stove, but ended up smoking us out instead... We switched to one of the more &quot;modern&quot; cabins the next day...<BR><BR>As for recent bad hotels, I would have to say the Hotel Maestrale in Carrara, Italy. It was listed as a 4-star resort, but it was a dump. Worst of all, we were the only guests there, which was really creepy (that's what I get for trying to stay in an area frequented by Italians). The staff was nice, and the beach was beautiful (except for all the men and boys running around in Speedos who didn't have any business wearing Speedos), but we only stayed there one night and went on to Florence without a reservation, hoping to find something suitable. In our rental car, we mistakenly drove into the city -- it took us two hours to get back to where we started on the Autostrade. DON'T DRIVE IN FLORENCE!! We ended up at the Sheraton Firenze Sud next to the Autostrade -- which was 170 Euros but at that point worth every penny. Plus they had a free shuttle into town.<BR><BR>Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde Hotel Award goes to Locanda Barbarigo in Venice. When we walked up, we thought, &quot;what a dump.&quot; It looked like a slum on the outside. But inside was absolutely gorgeous. And the owners are terrific (didn't like that they only took cash, though -- had to run around in the rain and find an ATM to pay the bill).<BR>Pam B.<BR>

tt

Once in college, while trekking about Spain, I stayed in a hostel in Barcelona. Recommended to me by other students, but when I got there, I knew I wasn't going to be happy. Dingy, dark, but the price was right. The only window in my room was about 2 feet x one foot and faced an air shaft. And man, was it small. The size of a bathroom. And that is no exaggeration, since I could still see the outline of the toilet on the tile floor from when the room actually used to be a bathroom. Stayed one night and moved on.

The SAVOY COURT Hotel in London - not to be confused with the Savoy! Single room, top floor. I would prefer to go to jail.

A dump in Montmartre, Paris where shower did not drain for a day, and the shared toilet was let us say gross would be an understatement. Some of the youth hostels/backpaker places in Cairns, Queensland were disgusting - I moved out of mine it was so bad to find people moved in thinking it was good compared to what they had left. And the dodgy manager of Youth Hostel in Strahan in Tasmania - liked to open the bedroom doors unannounced to see if anyone was changing (guys and girls)to get his thrills (crucifixes above every building as well).

A cheap place in Seoul. It actually had a red lightbulb in the room (the only source of light) and a poster on the wall of the bathroom reminding us to &quot;wrap our peppers&quot; to avoid contributing to the overpopulation of Korea. We didn't have peppers to wrap, but the condom dispenser was hanging on the wall next to it, just in case. <BR><BR>On the plus side, the sheets were clean and once my friend's cousin explained we were nice girls and not expecting any gentlemen callers, the desk clerk was very helpful. On the down side, they kicked us out after 2 nights because they only rent by the hour on the weekends....

For $125 USD I stayed at the Hotel Europa in Ludwigshafen, Germany (about 20 minutes from Heidelberg, unless you get lost in a parking garage, then it's about 90 minutes) For this I got a room about the size of a prison cell, with brick walls, a single bed and 2 iron hooks on the wall in lieu of a wardrobe. The minibar held two bottles of Coke Lite and but lacked a bottle opener. Okay - it's only for 2 nights, with lots of stuff to do during the day - I can handle it. Not so much. When darkness fell, the bugs came out - little flying ones that looked like ashes when killed and tiny hard black ones roaming the bed - those bit. I sat on the edge of the 'chair' (a piece of plywood caterlevered to to the wall) and read til dawn when I drove back to Heidelberg and payed a fortune in gold to the Crowne Plaza for one night.

I can't remember the name but it was the only b&amp;b in Sydney,BC. It was in an old tudor house which was fine except for its interior desig!! Breakfast was at 8 am sharp(on a Sunday), the dining room had shocking pink sheer curtains and breakfast was something called &quot;Eggs in a nest&quot;..egg whites whipped with a yolk on top surrounded by chopped ham..all cooked to &quot;raw&quot; in the microwave

<BR>by far - Harcourt House Hotel (b&amp;b) in London - by Victoria Station. <BR>What a DUMP. Awful cramped halls, tiny Basement dining room (very limited serving time) Creepy dark 1970's brown decor. Weird instutional room door with bizzare bolt type lock. <BR><BR>Was Totally fooled by the website -pictures must have been taken in an alternate universe! A relative stayed there before us and loved it - I seriously question her sanity. <BR><BR>Debbie

I agree with Nigel above. I long for the days when the common riff raff was barred by the doorman from even entering the hotels. Today anyone can walk in and avail themselves of the bar or tea room, and I think this is just improper. Of course, this has been ongoing ever since we lost the empire and began to allow all of these outsides into the country. One can not find good help these days, what? Shame really, that most of the hotel staff are now from Slovenia or somewhere like that. I say, I wish we could go back to the good times.

The Hotel DuBuerre (sp?) in Amsterdam, the only place we could find late one hot summer evening in 1977. Though I'd been to Europe a couple times, it was my wife and in-laws' first time. <BR><BR>The &quot;hotel&quot; bordered on the red-light district. We had one room with four army style cots, two bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, filthy bathroom down the hall. But the best part.....the windows opened to the view of the windows of the cat house 3-4 feet away. So what do you do....close the windows in the stifling heat, or open them to the sounds of whatever was going on next door? We chose to keep them open.<BR><BR>My relationship with my mother-in-law hasn't been the same since.

Palazzo Zenobio in Venice Italy. Don't get fooled by the website. It's an old rundown palace. It had some good days but those days probably never extended to the rooms.<BR><BR>A Paris hotel which allegedly garnered three stars located near the Eiffel Tower. Not only was it flea ridden, it had the most horrible reception/customer area and it is absolutely not a hotel for handicapped people [then again the entire Paris does not appear to be made for handicapped].

The Key Lime Village in Key West, Fl. I met my husband in Key WEST, he was living there at the time and I in PA. Was going for a visit and I heard from a co-worker in sales who had that territory that it was a cute place and you could have your own bungalow! <BR><BR>When I arrived, there was a pile of rags in the corner that Gilles said he used to clean the floor. We should have left then &amp; there. Middle of the night starts to rain and there is a leak in the ceiling, we did have to laugh! Next day, leaving to walk around town and are approached by what seems to be a homeless woman with a shopping cart full of rags! She wanted to know if we needed fresh towles, what a hoot. For some reason, it does bring back fond memories though!

I stayed in a small chateau in France which was lovely from the outside. When you entered and climbed the stairs to your room it was like entering a cellar above ground. There were no outside lights in the hallways and the dim lightbulbs were on a timer so you pressed a button and had just enough time to run to your room. I hesitated once and the hall turned pitch black, I had to literally feel my way down the hall counting what I hoped were doorknobs to what I hoped was my room. We were in the tower room, which was fine during the day, but at night the one window had shutters that banged all night long, loudly, right above the bed, they would not stay clasped shut and, oh, yes, the one light in the room was on a timer too, so you had to do what you had to do quickly after pressing the button. I got caught in the dark and knocked a full bottle of very strong lavender perfume off the table and it broke, soaking the floor.<BR>I had lavender induced nightmares all night, with the constant shutter banging above my head.<BR><BR>I have since chalked it up to &quot;quaint&quot;.