Tuesday, June 28, 2005

please make up this room

When one is travelling, one takes certain things for granted. For instance, if one books a room in a national hotel chain, one might expect a reasonably clean room. It would be unreasonable to expect your bed to be turned down and a mint on your pillow for anything less than $175/night. But one would be reasonable to expect clean.

This was not the case for the room we reached after travelling by car 8 hours for a cousin's wedding.

First of all, it was not a hotel. It was most certainly a motel. I'm not a fan of the motel experience. But I was trying to keep an open mind. The lobby seemed tidy and clean. They gave us our room keys and directed us to our room. As we approached the room, even before we opened the door, we could smell cigarette smoke. The room was dark, smelly, and dirty. Moldy and mildewy and dirty. We could not sleep here. We called the front desk and told them such. They told us that this was the only room left and that we would indeed have to sleep in this ashtray. Luckily, a few minutes later they rang back to say that they indeed had one other room.

This new room was a little better. It was not an ashtray...just dirty and moldy. The ceiling had been patched up but not painted. Everything was old and dirty. I complained to my sweet husband. He complained to me.

And then we decided to drop it. I thought of it this way...I camp every year with his family and this is almost the same. I did not want his family to see me as some sort of diva so I decided then and there that I was happy to be in this stinky, dirty room. If anyone asked how I liked the room, I would smile pleasantly.

All night I felt things (imagined, perhaps) crawling all over me. I did not sleep well. We got up in the morning and got ready quickly. We were not comfortable. He had some sort of rash on his leg. I was tired and itchy.

We went for doughnuts and coffee at a nearby spot. While I was enjoying my coffee in the brightly lit coffee shop, my sweet husband tried to tell me in a nice way that I had over-applied my makeup. It was so dark in the bathroom that I couldn't see what I was doing. I ended up looking like Tammy Faye. Tammy Faye...motel. This is not who I am.

Now here's where the story sweetens. As we were out driving around the area, we got a call from his family asking if we would like to move with the rest of them to another hotel up the street. Yes! Yes! Yes...we would. So we did. And it was a clean and pretty smelling hotel. And the rest of the weekend went happily ever after.

Oh, and the wedding was nice.

2 comments:

Allie said...

I think I stayed in that exact ashtray! I didn't want to stand in the shower, so I put a towel down in the bottom of the tub and stood on that. The towels were very white, so I figured they had to have been bleached and much much cleaner than the bottom of the tub. Oh and there was a sign on the wall about disposing of hypodermic needles. Loved your story, but mostly I just love knowing that things like this happen to other people too :)

Anonymous said...

As the owner of a motel - I am sick to hear of a place that is so disgusting for a patron to stay. We have huge and spotlessly clean rooms. Our beds are top of the line and we maintain our rooms to the best of our ability. Please - do not judge all motels by the nasty experience that you have had. Some of us motel owners DO take pride in our establishments.