Discovering dirty sheets in your hotel room
requires checking everything out when you check in!
All in
all, our best success has been in taking a
notebook computer and booking a room one
night ahead, unless the destination and
hotel are favorites that we really want to
check out. Some cities such as Monterey are
just so popular that you can run into the
fully booked hotel situation. I did pay $150
for a basic room where I discovered that
sheets had not been changed (strong smell of
a woman's perfume). It was 2 a.m. when I got
back from a wedding at Monterey Bay Aquarium
to BW Montery Beach Hotel. I lay in bed and
couldn't escape the heavy scent of cologne
I've never worn. It was on the pillow and
sheets. I felt totally burned but by this
time, where would I go?
Recently when visiting Arkansas I decided
to sleep on the pullout couch mattress at a Hampton Inn since the bed was too
soft. You can imagine my shock when I picked up the cushion and felt something
sticky (I swear), as I looked down at
two naked ladies on the cover of a
magazine. I saw crumpled sheets pushing through the iron bar on the sofa and
decided that there'd be no way I would sleep on that mattress. It was a rough
night on a soft bed but I made it.
After thinking about these situations in
finding no room or an unchanged bed, I am going to make a note to look at the
beds and sheets immediately when I check into a hotel from now on. If you wait
too long, it's harder to right a wrong.
It's that time of year when parents,
boyfriends, girlfriends and all sorts of people book hotel rooms to attend
college graduations. In California, we've had the (mis)pleasure of trying to
book a room in a city where graduation was being held that weekend. Pulling
into Santa Barbara and stopping at four hotels along the oceanfront, each was
full, save one modest room. It was an upper floor king bedroom that allowed
smoking (ugh!) The room was pretty warm and the aircon didn't seem to work. So
after a brief 30 second thought, I decided there was no way I'd pay $150 for
something I knew would make me sick all night.
When you're out on the road and encounter
special events that fill a city's offerings, what can you do? Once I slept in a
hospitality suite at Hyatt Regency Sacramento in just such an instance. Sure,
it smelled like smoke. But I had no choice as I'd flown in for a conference and
it was part of my job to attend. The glitch was that I was booked for a room,
but somehow they overbooked...kind of like airlines.
When you're on the road and think you'll
just wing it, it doesn't hurt to call ahead to a city you think you may land in
that day. Sometimes the cities are stretched pretty far apart and your options
diminish as it gets dark. Again, have exit plans for where to stay and how to
get out of a situation that doesn't go your way.
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