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Worst Hotel Experiences
Rome on our honeymoon. A place called Morgan Panama Garden or something like that. After an almost all-out confrontation with a cab driver over a disputed fare (he changed it!), we arrived at a dumpy-ish hotel where the clerk couldn't find our reservations.<BR><BR>Finally getting it together, he took us to our tiny bland little closet of a room. After much pleading, he relented and provided us with the "honeymoon suite", a slightly larger room with a small patio (with no view).
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Pension Seibel in Munich. We thought we had researched it pretty well--but what a filthy dump it turned out to be. The second morning we were there, Rick Steves walks into the breakfast room--turns out it was one of his recommended places in Munich. We didn't know this until the people sitting next to us starting talking about it. They discussed going over to tell him how disappointed they were in the place, but decided against it. I wonder if he still recommends it, though I imagine his room was probably much nicer than ours.
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More..anyone?
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A truly horrible place half a block from Paddington Easter week in 1997. London was completely full-all the European college kids on break- and our room was so tiny that if one of us had to go to the bathroom, the other had to scrunch up on the bed. The final insult was when there was a fire a couple of floors above us & we came back to see a fire engine shooting water in the windows. When we were allowed to go back to our room a couple of hours later, the water was still running in sheets down the wall behind the bed-where all the electrical connections were. The front desk people refused to move us to another room and did not really understand what we were upset about. Since then, we have been far more careful about hotels-it really isn't just a place to sleep.
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escholtzia, thank you for reminding me to buy one of those portable smoke detectors before our next trip. Hotels ARE more than just a place to sleep - one hopes they are also a place that one leaves, intact. : (
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My worst was a room I had at the Strand Palace hotel in London. This was a tiny, closet-sized room. The window faced an interior airshaft, and provided almost no natural light or air flow to the room. The room was also billed as having aircon, but this turned out to be a little portable floor unit that blew lukewarm air. Just my luck that London was experiencing a hot spell, so it was pretty miserable. Note that this room was on what they billed as their "Club" floor. Yeah, right. Thankfully I was only there for two nights.
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Julie, I've experienced something similar. The reason they call it the "club floor" is because if you stay there you'll want to "club" the manager who stuck you there.
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I've posted this before--my worst was at the Minerve hotel in Paris. I know it is owned by the same people as the Familia next door, but they were very quick to point out it was different management. The service was arrogant, rude, awful! And not just to me--people who were there at the same time were also experiencing bad/rude/non-existent service.
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We stopped in Exeter, Eng, on our way to Cornwall & found a country inn that had a vacancy. It was a busy weekend & we should have been suspicious when this was the only hotel in town who had a room to let but we decided to stay the night. Later, I was taking a shower & shampooing my hair when the light in the bathroom went out. I reached for the soap, grabbed the shower curtain & it collapsed on top of me. The water from the shower was going all over the floor & my husband couldn't touch the light switch or see me well enough to rescue me from the "killer shower curtain." With the bathroom flooding, me screaming & trying to locate the fixture with my eyes closed (& anyway the room was pitch black) - here comes the "one man" maintenance crew. I sat down in the tub, modestly wrapped in the plastic curtain while the mess was cleaned & problem resolved. Never again will I agree to stay any place until I've examined the premises first.
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first let me say that i am portly...how kind of me...<BR>when staying many years ago in a small hotel near vistoria station we had a shower stall that was so small that i had to soap up my tummy before i could squeeze into the shower as the door was so small.....my conpanion is an extremely tall slender lady and she was unable to lift her arms in this shower stall without trouble...<BR><BR>this hotel had been a famous writers house in a previous life....we decided he never took a shower.....
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My least favorite was at the Hotel Lyon-Mulhouse near Bastille in Paris. I was on a cheap France-Vacations package. The beds were horribly uncomfortable (we had neck & back aches), and our window opened up to an un-picturesque courtyard. There was a bakery which would bake in the early morning hours (long before sunrise). It woke me up every morning with all the banging of loading bakery trays onto racks. I love bakery products, but I don't want one in my backyard! The bath tub was about 1/2 the length of a normal one. We are big on bathing, so of course we found that to be insufficient.<BR>
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rhkkmk--physicians refer to it as "well-nourished." Such diplomats.
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We were in England just as a heat wave had started. In the small hotel we were staying in on the coast they had set the heat incorrectly, so at 2am the steam heat came on with no way to turn it off. The other was a German hotel that we stayed in one night. We didn't know that they had a beer garden that didn't open until late so we had a party outside out room until the early morning.
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Rufus, you have a doctor that refers to "portly" or presumably overweight people as "well-nourished"? I think you need a new doctor who understands the word nourishment.
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Patrick--that is a code term among doctors in the USA--when doing physicals and recording the information in front of the patient, they will often say "well-nourished" instead of something like "fat hog."
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Oh, dear God, I think it's closed now, but it was the Hotel Aigarden in Avignon. My own fault, as I had not reserved in advance, and got a cab at the train station, armed with my Frommer's guide to discover my "first pick" was closed for renovations and a festival was going on in town, so the other options were slim. This was right after I finished school in Florence, so unfortunately, my budget was also slim!<BR><BR>BC
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Too many to mention, but they are 'countered' by so many fabulous experiences.
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We had our worst experience in hotel near Sienna, B.......Hotel, full name left unstated.<BR><BR>We were there in September 2000. Returning to the hotel after frustrating hoursnot finding a parking place in Sienna we were told by the staff "Oh, yes today is market day--parking is always a problem today." After suggesting they post a sign of this and any other event, I then said we would return to Sienna on Saturday. The staff said "Better not..." Why I asked. "They are holding a special Palio that day and parking will be impossible". If I had not complained about the parking I might never have learned of the holding of this grand spectacle--this stupendous Palio-being held because of the bicentennial. And, the hotel's food was dreadful.<BR><BR>We got to the Palio no thanks to the hotel management.
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A hotel in New York City near the Plaza, written up as charming, a place where many Broadway stars have extended visits. Musty, creaking hallways and paper thin walls, you could hear dresser drawers being opened in the other rooms. After checking in we sat for 10 minutes while the couple next door had a loud grunting contest. Not so charming but hilarious. We checked out the next day.
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Worst experience that comes to mind was a very old hotel in Rouen. I became very sick in the middle of the night (food poisoning I think) and, of course, had to use the hall bathroom several times. The plumbing was so old that it made a great deal of noise and woke up most of the guests. The hotel owner came up and yelled at me, refusing to listen to any explanation. (I think she must have thought I was drunk even though I was a quite respectable appearing considering the circumstances). The next morning she refused to let me use the shower (a key was needed) and wouldn't serve my husband breakfast. Needless to say, we quickly left.
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