Tell us about the worst trip you ever took.
Yesterday I started the story about the worst trip that I ever took. If you didn’t read yesterday’s post, then go read it now and come back.
Yesterday’s cliff hanger was left with my brother and me going from hotel to hotel in Chicago looking for a room. I can’t even remember how many places we checked, but I know we were nearing ten, if not more. We did find a Super 8 who had a room for $125! Seriously? A Super 8 for that much? Ah, we kept looking.
We finally found a small motel a fair bit away from the convention center that had available rooms. YAY! The lobby smelled like curry, appeared to be run by a family and the place needed some updating, but at least the room was under $100. We were tired, and we settled. This is where is all started going wrong.
Typically unless you request a room with a King-sized bed, you get a room with two Double beds, right? Not at the Garden Inn and Suites on Mannheim Road in Franklin Park, IL (no, not the HILTON Garden Inn). My brother and I got to the room to find a single King-sized bed and a dumpy sofa across the room. I went back downstairs to ask if we could be moved to another room and was told it would cost me $20 more a night. What?!?! Ugh! I figured they just didn’t want to deal with me, and I really didn’t want to give them $40 more for the two nights we were planning to stay there. Besides, Matthew is my brother. We slept in the same bed plenty of times when we were young kids, right? Also, I was not about to have Matthew sleep on the horrible sofa in the room. I didn’t even want to sit on it!
Little did I know that when I returned to the room, I would find out that we also needed another pillow since there was only one in the room. Seriously? I went back downstairs and 15 minutes later they finally found another pillow for me. I don’t even want to know why it took so long for the guy to find one while I waited in the lobby for him to return.
Once settled into the room, Matthew was flipping through the channels while I was reading. I look up, and the TV was on a porn channel! Matthew?!?! The remote was one of those cheapo universal replacement remotes that only had Channel Up/Down, Volume Up/Down, Mute and Power. So yes, our TV had a porn channel that we had to flip past to channel surf. I’m so glad that Matthew wasn’t a 4-year old.
The next day, we returned from a very long day of Chicago sightseeing to find that our room had not even been cleaned the whole day that we were gone. Why I was surprised is beyond me. I went back to the lobby to complain, and they said they would see if they could find someone to clean it in the next hour…or so. It was late, we were tired, and I was picturing them waking their grandma to go clean my room. I sighed and declined the offer. I did ask for more towels and toilet paper, which again took 15 minutes to get to me and once again I didn’t want to know why it took so long.
The room was dumpy, oddly shaped and in desperate need of some updates, but it served its purpose of providing us a place to sleep for two nights. It may have been the worst motel experience I’ve ever encountered, but it was BY FAR the most interesting experience, too.
I’m actually kind of surprised that they didn’t rent the room to us by the hour.
Have you had an “interesting” lodging experience? What’s your story?
Has your life been shaped by a mentor or have you been a mentor to someone else? Tell me about your experiences!
During the month of November, I am participating in the National Blog Posting Month, also known as NaBloPoMo, hosted by BlogHer. Most likely I am following these suggested prompts, but I might just get crazy and change things up every once in a while. I‘m one wild and crazy gal!
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haha…oh boy! Yes, I have had an interesting lodging experience. It was when I was in high school and our family stayed in a log cabin for vacation. It was such an odd week and an odd campsite. For one thing it was Hungarian Week at this lodge. There was some conference going on and us kids were surrounded by non English speaking people (a boring week to be there because there were also no young people to hang out with). It rained the entire week, in fact I think it flooded a little. The cabin I think had mice because we found droppings in the morning. I was on a top bunk where spiders were coming down from the ceiling. To add an interesting twist, there was a super old and creepy graveyard right in the campsite. Dunno why! Maybe it was because of the rain, but this foggy mist hung over it the whole week too. SInce it was a boring week and we couldn’t talk to the other guests or do anything with all that rain, we went in that spooky graveyard for some entertainment. The headstones were really old (none recent) and many of them were sunken in. The ground was sinking! So yeah, that was some very strange and interesting lodging! Worst vacation ever, but I wrote a children’s book to pass the time during all of that rain at least. 🙂