To avoid being able to answer this QOTW in the future
I advise you to use TripAdvisor.com Maybe I've got lucky, but when I've used its recommendations it's been pure gold for me.
I'm not affiliated to it or anything - just know how much a bad hotel can ruin a holiday, and I think using that site is one way to avoid such an occurrence.
Hope this isn't too boring a post...
( I_Was_Mordred, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:13, 4 replies)

Scotland?! I've just remembered this
Many moons ago I had to go to the Isle of Bute in the wintertime for a very boring acoustic survey of a cheese factory (still awake?)
Well, having arrived in Largs at 9ish one cold wet night I thought I'd find a quaint little guest house to get some kip before catching the ferry the next morning.


WROOOOONG!!!!!!

I found precisely 1 place to stay, not a lot of choice but needs must etc so I went in to the bar where yet another hammer horror style silence happened, it seemed that every mutant on the west coast was assembled in the bar.
I asked the least revolting of them for the landlady, he/she/it pointed out a huge mound of crimplene-clad sweaty blubber that was chortling hysterically in the corner, probably at the physical attentions of the human weasel who was ramming a hand under her/it's dress all the while exclaiming undying love and demanding a blowjob! "Classy bird" I thought to myself.
I finally got her one good eye (from the three) to focus on me and asked for a room. She almost died from the shock of being spoken to by a human but peeled her sweaty (oh god I hope it was sweat) arse from the vinyl and, wheezing like an asthmatic walrus's uglier fatter hairier sister led me upstairs to a dark room. Putting the light on showed a very small but servicable room. Having negotiated the price down to £25.00 for bed and breakfast she waddled off with a promise to make me a sandwich to be collected at the bar. I had a shower in the very small yet strangely echoey bathroom and repaired to the bar.
It was a sight to behold when I walked in.

Walrus woman had just finished giving weasel boy a handjob.

In the bar.

With all of the locals watching.

Licking the fluids from her gargantuan hand she wandered behind the bar to hand me my sandwich.

Unwrapped.

No plate.

Same unwashed hand that had been pleasuring weasel boy not 5 minutes earlier.

I politely declined and half-ran to my room with the dreaded cry of "I can see to you later if you like" ringing in my ears.
After barricading my room door with the tv stand (no actual tv, just the stand) I fell into a fitful sleep. As is my wont, I awoke and needed a piss like a four-dicked mule so I went to the bathroom, As all men will know, having a piss first thing in the morning means working around the morning glory that is both a man's blessing and his curse, especially when desperate to pee.
I adopted the statutory "one hand on the wall behind the cistern, feet apart, 45 degrees to the floor" stance and was just letting fly whan the wall collapsed.
The wall between the guest room bathrooms was ONE layer of plasterboard held in round the edges with what looked like bath sealant. I fell through ONTO walrus woman whose bathroom was back-to-back with mine, spraying us both with water and other things from MY side and knocking her, mid shit, from her throne. Undeterred and still horrifically drunk from the night before she lay giggling on the floor like a shit-covered blubber slick.
Luckily I had a wet towel from last night's shower to clean myself up with before I packed in record time, ran downstairs, dropped £25.00 on the bar and ran like a scared little girl to the safety of my car. I have been shot at more than once, found a suspicious package with wires under a car I was about to drive, I've benn stabbed, attacked more times than I can remember but I have never been so scared in my life.

I recommended it as THE place to stay in Largs to my hated boss (the mentalist with cancer from previous posts).

I don't think he liked it.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 15:07, 20 replies)

Bunch of truckers
Driving long distances in ridiculously small cars provides a wealth of stories, usually toilet-focused. This one involves the Ukraine again, a country so lacking in hospitality that Chernobyl was probably the best thing ever to happen to it.

Midnight or thereabouts. I'd been behind the wheel of a clapped out nineteen year old VW Polo for so long that my hands were clenching the steering wheel in a vice-like grip and I was chain smoking and singing show tunes to stay awake, which was impressive since I don't usually smoke and can't sing at all. The ProPlus was wearing off and I was exhausted. My co-driver had long since crashed out in the passenger seat and I didn't have the heart to tell him I was falling asleep at the wheel.

We were tired, we were hungry, and up ahead just off the patchy motorway we saw the bright lights of the long distance lorries. The convoy of four useless cars pulled over. We could hear music somewhere. The warm, crackling flames of bonfire danced outside a long, low building and the smell of the meat-on-a-stick enticed us in.

Using the tried-and-trusted international gesture for food (moo-ing and pointing at our mouths) we each managed to secure a portion of meat-on-a-stick. There was even beer - cold beer - the moisture trickling down the outside of the icy bottle. I was going to eat and sleep. This was good.

A smart person pisses when she can, not when she needs to, so I somehow managed to mumble to word for toilet. The kindly harridan behind the counter led me out of the building, along a row of trucks, up a small hill, and pointed at a small wooden hut. I took one step closer and the smell of ammonia nearly knocked me out. A second step, and I had to stuff my scarf in my mouth to stop me gagging. I made it to the hole in the ground smeared with crud and splashed with piss. This was girls' toilet; thank god I never saw the blokes'.

I held my breath for a very long minute and a half before bursting from the shed and legging it down the hill towards the trucks. There I had the delight of bumping in to the hairy lardiness that is the Eastern European truck driver, accompanied by the lovely young and nubile ladies of the night who were selling their wares in the lorry cabs. I arrived back into the cafe to find the harridan screaming at us for more money. Once we got the cars going (no mean feat when you have to bump start it every time you stop) we left hastily to the dulcet tones of Cyrillic swear words and found a lay-by several miles away where I could sleep on the back seat and pee in a hedge in comfort.

Moral: truck stops are maybe not the best places to get a good night's sleep. But then, you knew that already, right? In retrospect, it was not unlike a scene from the Lost Boys. Had I stayed, I bet I would have been vampire fodder.
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:48, 6 replies)

Halls of Residence Again (When I Were A Lad)
Early 90's, North Wales....

... flashback to my first day as a fresher,as I open the door of my new room to find a dead cockroach in the middle of the floor, and a sheep looking through the window.

Obviously a precocious 'rentasheep escort' picking out her patch before the other brazen hussies baa'd their way up the hill.

No power socket - just a wall light socket (try and cope with that now, you young whippersnappers) - actually me and the guy next door who was doing electrical engineering and therefore like me owned a screwdriver nipped to the local sparky's supplies and made up a bunch of adaptors. Beer money sorted!

Duvet the approximate size and thickness of a poppadum (it thickened throughout the year as DNA was *ahem* added).

Facilities: we had a twin ring Baby Belling, toaster and kettle between about 20 blokes. One fridge that was a sort of mini Tardis in that it held approximately one pack of fish fingers before the laws of physics reversed and the door wouldn't close. Where it would leak water in a puddle so that first one in the morning could speed-skate amusingly across the floor before splatting into the wall in a lovely early morning comedy moment.

Oh, and 2 baths, plus 4 sinks with handheld shower head things attached.

(Rumour was that the site used to be a Catlick girls school or suchlike and they couldn't put showerheads in or they'd be hanging themselves left right and centre). Or it housed oven-dodgers (sorry, refugees from the Nazis) who went a bit odd when the word "shower" was used.

Laundry facilities non-existent for a couple of years (we did have a nice sink. And Contact Detergent Dermatitis). I washed my towel once a year, regardless of need.

What I want to know now, with the benefit of age and wisdom, is (a) how the hell did I get SOBER people of the opposite species sorry gender to have sex with me? And break my heart (sniff)?

And (b) who in their right minds would pay to sleep in my pit over the vacations?




It was also on top of a mountain, there was no parking, the heating gave up at about 8pm, the local scrotes treated it as a burglars paradise and the abbatoir supplying the site was allegedly closed down after abcesses were discovered in the meat.


Best time of my life. Albeit smelly.





(Hull ticket booked for the Nazi bit)
(osok Rebel without a clue, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:46, Reply)

Barcelona
i am sure it was a nice hotel.
Trouble was the name.

Hotel Colon.

www.hotelcolon.es/eng/hotel/index.asp

And we ate in a restaurant called "El Dick"
( bazza van der trance , ooh baby baby, baby baby. Get up on this., Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:38, 2 replies)

This simply will not do!
Well I never, London. The capital city of our fair and glorious isle. You would think that in this metropolis of acclaimed culture and prosperity, some sort of standards should be maintained. Sadly, this was not the case during my stay in a, frankly, second-rate establishment.

I should have realised by the name. Any hotel named after a down-market savoury biscuit must surely be a vestige of vice and indecency. The next sign of shoddy approach was the doorman. The guttersnipe was filthily unshaven and his grubby gloves left smears on the door handle of my car, which he made no attempt to polish away.

The young harlet whom dealt with the administration of my arrival was competent, if a little blase. Judging by the amount of paint applied to her face, it would seem that her main form of income was earned elsewhere. Gyrating semi-clad in some seedy cavern I don't wonder.

As for the oyk that manhandled my fine luggage, he had the audacity to thrust his grimy paw at me like some starving Ugandan bush-child. Reaching great annoyance by this stage, I spat in his palm and slapped his face for good measure.

To say the suite was substandard would be to insult the term, understatement. Upon deciding to compose a letter of complaint, I found that they expected me to use a writing implement made of plastic with a ball meachanism. That simply was the final straw. I could stand this place no longer!

I realised that physical retribution would be the only form of communication suitable to the situation. I therefore, pissed on the beds, shit on the television set (setting some aside to display my dissatisfaction with the inferior china tea set). Fittingly I wiped my recum with their low grade linens.

To ensure that they didn't mistake my message of contempt, I masturbated more furiously than a Guatamalan monkey, splashing the results over the 'customer satisfaction survey'. With that, I buttoned my duffelcoat, plugged the washbasin and bath, turned the taps to full (a whole twenty seconds until the water ran hot mind-you!) and fled this third circle of hell with my virtue barely intact.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:30, 1 reply)

She is much flatter now...
On a school trip to Bude, aged around 10, we were all in rooms of about 6 people. 2 bunk beds and 2 single beds. Obviously, the rooms were organised by sex, all the boys rooms on one side of a corridor, and the girls rooms on the other side.

At around 1am, we heard a huge scream, and someone crying, coming from the room across the corridor. We ran across, and went into the room, revealing that this rooms 'bunk bed' was just 2 single beds on top of each other, and the top one had fallen onto the bottom one. The girl on the top was thrown off onto the girl in the single bed, so they are both crying, while all we could look at was the leg sticking out from the bed sandwich.

The bed was really solid wood, so as little kids, we couldn't lift it, so had to wait for teachers, by which point, I was crying too, because I had got bored, and sprayed one of the girls' perfume in my eyes...
(bobman500 enjoys a grope as much as the next fella, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:22, 2 replies)

Hotels in Scotland
To carry on a theme.

Arrived late in Pitlochry to find my Expedia booked pre-paid hotel was 'full because we often overbook, like every hotel'. That was a first for me..

So I was kindly sent in the direction of another hotel. I arrived noticing the rate card maximum of £50 (a little bit less than the £85 I had paid) and when someone finally turned up at reception I was told that the good rooms had gone...

She was not wrong. Nylon sheets, a certain dampness in the air and no curtains. Lovely.

To top off the stay I went downstairs to the bar where I was asked if I wanted to eat in the hotel the following evening and if so I had to tell them what I wanted to eat there and then. I guess when you drink as much as the guys in the bar seemed to have done by 6pm then all food tastes the same. Me I like to think about what I am going to eat a little closer to the time I eat it.

Scotland Welcomes You is I believe their latest nonsense.

Length - If outside the grounds of Edinburgh Airport then too far
(Outtheresomewhere, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 14:00, 2 replies)

Rhyl
Back when I were a girl (I still am, just older) and British Summers actually existed, my parents took me on a good old Yorkshire family holiday (ie, a good 20 family members all leaving Yorkshire, on a coach, and going to Rhyl.)

The hotel was nice enough (indoor heated pool, silver service (oh yes) at dinner, choice of entertainments) but the stay was marred somewhat by my dear father's best efforts at falling out with the manageress.

My dad, niggled by small hotel based irritations (such as the blatant drip tray reusal in the bar, and the buckshot in his pheasant the night previously) couldn't find his brand new posh holiday pringle jumper. Clearly, the cleaners were thieves (fashionable thieves, who snubbed the roll of twenties in the sock drawer and went right for the top prize).

Marching down to the bar, he encounters the landlady who was a good six foot tall and looked a lot like T-Bag from that CITV programme but with a little extra make-up for good measure. He starts with diplomacy: 'my jumper seems to be missing, have your cleaners seen it?' and when T-Bag takes offence to this slight on her domestics, my dad increases to slightly-less-than-diplomatic 'YOUR BLOODY CLEANERS STOLE MY JUMPER! WHAT TYPE OF ESTABLISHMENT IS THIS? FIRST I'M PAYING TWO QUID A PINT FOR DRIP TRAY NOW I'M BEING ROBBED IN MY ROOM' etc etc.

I think my mother broke up the slanging match, with my dad swearing blind he'd never visit Rhyl again (well, who would).

They got back to the room, where I, a mere innocent child, was in bed, a mess of duvet and fireman sam pyjamas.

I sleepily awoke and untangled myself from the duvet.

And my dad's brand new holiday pringle jumper, which he'd left on the end of my bed the previous evening.

We went home the next day and have never been to Rhyl since.
(Northern Lovely, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 13:54, 3 replies)

Mexico
About ten years ago I decided that quitting my job and going to Mexico was preferable to staying working for a woman who was convinced I was a satanist.
So it was that Davy and his backpack vanished into the jungles of the Yucatan with nothing but a Lonely Planet Guide and Pelton's The Worlds Most Dangerous Places (far the more useful book - an essential read for any traveller - buy it today!).
Every time I arrived in a new town, I followed the same pattern - check into the cheapest hotel in town, sleep, wake the next morning thinking 'fuck this!' and check into somewhere decent for the rest of my stay.
I arrived into Palenque on the most humid day of the year and checked into the $5-a-night pit on the outskirts of town. Forget the infestation of mosquitos, I could deal with that. Forget the 50% humidity which required me to take a cold shower every 30 minutes to avoid overheating. Forget the bed which looked and smelled like every sailor ever had got lucky with the local rent boy in it the night before. All of these things were as nothing to seasoned traveller Davy.
I finally got to sleep stark naked at about 3am, and was awoken about 30 minutes later by the Biggest Insect Ever crawling up the inside of my thigh, directly towards my genitals. This thing had a shiney, iridescent blue shell, a pair of horrifyingly sharp looking mandibles, dozens of legs and a pair of huge, bulbous multifaceted eyes which were fixed with a determined gleam upon my family jewels.
This was a bug looking for something tasty to eat and then somewhere to lay its eggs, and my nadgers were top of the menu for both.

The next thing I remember is that I was standing on the other side of the room squealing like frightened piglet and the insect was scuttling towards me again, undeterred by my schoolgirl-like fright.
I finally managed to shoo it back into the 2" gap under the door with a towel, which I then rolled up to block the gap.

I didn't sleep again that night, and in the morning I went and checked into the Maya Tulipanes, which was much nicer.
(davywavy, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 13:14, 1 reply)

RAF Northolt
back long ago as a budding little air cadet we went on a weeks camp to RAF Northolt in London
loads of teenage cadets packed into small rooms aint fun
i was lucky and was only with one other person from my squadron and our room was the only one with a sink

unfortunately my roomate had scratched his finger badly and was in danger of tetanus or sumthing. couldnt swallow pills whole (never understood that)
so he brought a spoon and a tub of chocolate spread so he could mix the powder with the spread to make it taste nicer, as you do
Tries this the first time round gags and spits it back up into the sink, it blocks. Washing it out does nothing and it just stays in the bowl
The only bedroom to have a sink in it. Not happy
Had to use the communal toilets (no hot water till the last day) where some retarded cadet had shat everywhere as retards tend to do sometimes
nightmare of a holiday
(Joe Guevara is well known for stealing your biscuits, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 12:56, 4 replies)

cornwall b&b when i were ten
lovley people, lovely place.

no guard on the outside of the top bunk tho.

a lovely dream of falling. And the first time i broke my nose.
(magictorch, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 12:51, Reply)

Oh, the colours.
Mr Cherryblossom and I once stayed in a hotel in Cardiff. It was pretty cheap, but I still didn't expect the wallpaper to be purple and green striped.

The soap was green. It turned the bath green. It turned my hands green. I think it turned everything green for a short period of time.

On a lighter note, if you want to have a GOOD time, stay in a Swissotel. They are, quite simply, the best hotels EVER EVER EVER.

We stayed in one in Berlin and the staff fell over themselves to make us happy. Oh, and the room service was orgasmic.
(YayLady is cold, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 12:39, Reply)

Brighton Mid 90's
Brighton B&B - can't remember the name - three types of "carpet" on the floor to cover the floorboards, unchanged & clearly dirty sheets, condom wrappers in the room (one under pillow), dust everywhere - still we didn't care, we'd been on a pub crawl, surely the breakfast would be ok - nope - full english was of the tinned variety - apart from the eggs, which had been cooked like they'd been accidentally dropped on the frying pan, and quickly scooped off onto the plate. Yes, we were all sick later that day.
(Pesky Young Scamp, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 12:11, Reply)

Ahhh, Edinburgh...
Home of the famous festival: perhaps the most sophisticated city in Scotland.

Perhaps.

Mrs Mork and I went to Edinburgh for a weekend with some old schoolfriends, but, due to making our minds up at the last minute, we couldn't get into the lovely plush appartment that the others had booked. Instead we had to take our chances with a B&B. We should have known when we say the sign banning "guests" from rooms.

The house had parking round the back. Unfortunately, you had to park in a line so, if you were not at the back of the line you had to find the other guests and ask them to move their cars. Also, there was a side gate. The owners assured us that, during the day the gate would be open. It would be locked after 11pm but, if you were out just park your car on the front drive and move it in the morning.

OK, so that afternoon we go back to our room and get ready for the evening out with our chums. Come six pm we go to get our car out, but the side gate is locked. So we ring the bell to summon the owners. The owners do not appear. Instead three surly teenage girls mooch out of the kitchen and ask us what we want. The conversation can be summarised as follows:

"We'd like you to open the side gate, please."

"Can't"

"Why not?"

"Don't have a key."

"Well, what are we supposed to do."

"Get a bus, or a taxi."

"Well, will you pay for that?"

"No"

Things got a bit tense, when one of the girls went back into the kitchen and found the gate key to let us out.

Oh, and the landlady wanted paying up front, and didn't take cheques, so I had to go out up the street to the cash machine before she would give us our key.

Breakfast was at 8:15am. We turned up at 8:10am to find the breakfast room locked.

Oh yes, real regal Scots hospitality.
(Mork, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 12:07, 2 replies)

hotel 'freight train' and other rowing training camp and trailering stories
by the railway line in Mechelen, in belgium. nice enough. but as the name suggests, not the quietest of places. It also had these really strange matresses that just had a concave space in the middle.. impossible to do anything but conform to a weird position while sleeping.

hotel F1 in troyes, france. id used the toilet, and one of my mates was waiting to go. she popped in after i popped out, unaware that the toilets in these facilities self clean thirty seconds after vacation. har har.

seville rowing centre. fantastic place to train, but not open to the public. which is a good thing really, as last year they gave the GB womens rowing squad beds infested with bedbugs. this place has tightened up its food recently too.. ill never forget one of the spanners in our squad wondering whether the half raw chicken on our plates was actually a regional delicacy.

that would be a no then.

the hotel nazereth in gent. where the powercuts turn the water rusty. weird people these belgians.

oh, and if you run a training camp at donkey lake, you deserve to get screwed at the motel.. ;)
(magictorch, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 12:06, Reply)

HOUSEKEEPING!
Was the cry outside our room.

6am!

"Please go away, it's too early."

"OK, I come back later."

HOUSEKEEPING!

6.30am!!

"No thank you, come back after 10 please!"

"OK, I come back later."

Some time passed.

HOUSEKEEPING! And she opens the door and walks in...

8.15am!!!

"EXCUSE ME?!? Can you wait until later please?"

"But I clean room now."

"No, no you don't."
(Waspard has your wank bank account details, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 11:56, 4 replies)

Swarm!
We arrived at dusk, confused. Was the whole town one big fuck off brothel? Every single light, bar one (the sign on our hotel), was shrouded in a red shade.

Amsterdam on the border between Nepal and India? Bleary after a 14 hour train journey, we checked into the accomodation that was included in our two day journey onward and upward.

As we handed over our passports to be copied in triplicate, a couple of large beetles landed on my T-shirt, heavy enough to pull the sleeve.

The receptionist had a fan blowing from behind him, and he was constantly swatting away large grasshoppers, bodies the size of baby sweetcorn, as if this was perfectly normal. Inside a hotel.

It was getting dark. Our room wasn't ready so we took a (brief) look around. The name of the hotel was now illegible, such was the concentration of insects flocking around the light.

Upstairs, the room was dark. I had to clear the light switch of bugs before I could turn it on. Fuck me! If Indiana Jones was the direct descendant of Job, and god was in a playful mood, there couldn't have been more bugs. Huge grasshopers, flies, spiders, an entymolygists wet dream. Corpses everywhere, the blood from previous battle casualties reclaimed on the walls.

With my T-shirt over my mouth and nose, we set about clearing the bed - swept it, put the mosquito net we'd been carrying round with us flat on two plastic sheets we'd laid down, tucked it in, hung it up, brushed myself down...and spent the rest of the night watching the grass hopper olympics.

This place is where the Himalyas start to rise from the plains - insects get blown there - so maybe it is a brothel of sorts. (ducks) ;)
(Countryslicker, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 11:44, 1 reply)

hell in paradise
following a family tragedy just before christmas 2005, we booked a last minute trip to barbados to get away from everything at home. it still comes with you, of course it does, but being away from how christmas should be and the horror that it will never, ever be like that again helps to freeze things for a week.

the first class virgin seats also helped, as did the champagne and the ridiculous beauty of barbados - white sand, sweeping palm trees, warm turquoise water and frozen turquoise cocktails.

however. if you book a christmas holiday at the last minute, you do not get the best accommodation. although i am admittedly a 5 star snob, the hotel itself was only just ok by anyone's standards - it alleged 3 stars, but whilst the rooms were very big and comfortable, the aircon always leaked or rattled; they "forgot" to change the towels; the food was only adequate; the pool was a cesspit (mind you, who wants a pool with the caribbean lapping saltily on the doorstep?). after one night there, we realised quickly that our wing of the hotel was available because it was right. over. the. bar. but it finished by 2am each night so it could have been worse.

the real problem was the staff. some of them were lovely, but the managers were rude, ignorant and arrogant. one day i took some US dollars out of the safe as i was going diamond shopping in the cheap diamond hotspot of bridgetown with my christmas money. as i was packing, my brother shouted about something and i popped into his room. 2 minutes later i went back into mine, got my bag, got the bus, chose my bracelet...

... no dollars. gone. vanished. and my english emergency cash had gone as well.

i was fuming. it had to be staff with a key as the rooms locked themselves behind you. so when we got back to the hotel, i kicked up an almighty fuss with the manager. what happened next was frankly unbelievable. she sighed, rolled her eyes, and sashayed her enormous parcel-shelf like arse up the stairs to my room. she called in 2 cleaners and a security guard, and the 4 of them strip searched the room. they pulled all my clothes out of the suitcase and went through the pockets; they tipped my bag upside down; they stripped the bed. they made me open the safe. then the manager physically got hold of me and searched the pockets of my shorts and inside my socks!!!!!!

finally she looked at me and said accusingly, "why you leave de dollar out of de safe?"

"because i thought," i said icily, "that i could leave possessions in my own room. and it was for all of about 1minute."

she shrugged and the 4 of them walked out. she called back over her shoulder, "you call de police if you wanna."

i did better than that. i made enquiries and quickly found out that the 5 other families who had booked with virgin had been moved for the same thing but we hadn't been warned or moved. the compensation cheque from the bearded one arrived shortly after my telephone call once we got back home...

but still, it was a pretty grim experience...
( rachelswipe with a fork, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 11:39, 4 replies)

The Comodoro, Los Cristianos, Tenerife
We had a holiday planned in Tenerife, in some cheap but decent apartments through a friend. Unfortunately, the apartments fell through, and we were left with flights already booked but nowhere to stay.

We'd got this apartment for a song, and we were suddenly looking for something similarly priced on the open market. We ended up at The Comodoro in Los Cristianos.

From the look of it, I'd say it was a 70's tower block hotel. On going inside, it soon became apparent that much of it was now residential, with the remaining rooms being rented out to tourists.

The door to our room had obviously only just survived being kicked in once before. I'd say whoever tried had been successful but the door had been patched up afterwards. Inside the apartment, there were the wires, switches and sockets hanging out of the walls, but that's not too far out of whack for Spain, where they still seem to treat electricity as they did when they were on 110 volts.

The biggest problems were the bathroom ceiling and the bedroom curtains. The curtains were strange things with massive holes in the weave that offered no privacy: The building is a cross-shaped tower block, meaning that you're directly overlooked by other apartments on the same floor.

As for the bathroom ceiling: There wasn't one to speak of - just a big hole where it was supposed to be.

We got out the next morning and found somewhere decent to stay, but not before the rep had turned up and stung us for the 160 quid we'd agreed to pay for the week. I imagine they're quite used to people doing a bunk the following morning after realising the state of the place.

I don't know if it has improved, but I still wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
( Horatio P Lemming, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 11:38, Reply)

Clearwater
This concerns a hostel in Florida that I stayed for four weeks of a six week holiday back in 01. It was a great place, small, family-run, about a minute's walk from one of the best beaches I'd seen in a long while. Of course, it was the US, so on one occasion I did nearly get shot, but hey, it only happened the once and I didn't hold it against the place.

Whilst staying there, I somehow became magically attractive to the opposite sex. I've grown into myself a bit now, but back then I was a gangly, extremely awkward individual and I had had absolutely no joy with girls at all. In the space of these four weeks, though, I got off with practically every good-looking girl that walked through the gates. It was awesome.

There was a Czech girl working there as a cleaner. She was easily one of the best looking girls there. Short blonde hair, slim, long legged, very pretty. I'd noticed her a while back but not done anything about it. There is, after all, only so much self-confidence you can have after twenty years of failure. Buoyed up by my recent success, however, I thought I'd have a go.

That night in the bar I paid lots of attention to her, asked her about herself, smiled, played up the awkward Brit thing that foreigners like so much. It went well. On the walk home she whispered to me that she had keys for one of the family rooms that was currently unoccupied. I was in.

Later, I met her there. We went indoors, my young and inexperienced knackers twitching with excitement. She closed the door and kissed me.

Worst. Kisser. Ever.

Even now, seven years later, I'd rather snog a burst water main than that girl. It'd be drier. My experience at the time was limited, but I was pretty sure than the lips should be involved somewhere, that my mouth was supposed to be not quite as full with her tongue as it was.

There was an awkward moment when I realised, my mouth full to bursting with gallons of her saliva, that no matter how desperate a virgin I was, no matter how hot she was (and she *was* hot), no way, *no way* was I daring to have sex with this girl.

The next morning was awkward. Very awkward. In fact, so awkward was it that I packed my bags and headed for the Keys. My success with girls packed up at that very moment.

From a slightly different angle, easily the worst hotel experience of my life.
( Kroney, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 11:28, 1 reply)

New York
Minus one suitcase because the airline lost it, we checked in and went up to the room.

Decided to switch on the TV whilst unpacking, which was showing a current affairs program doing a secret camera exposé on how easy it is to blag your way past the maids into other peoples' rooms and nick their stuff. The reporter had no trouble at all getting past the completely indifferent maid. Nice and easy.

The room on the TV was oddly familiar. It eventually dawned that it was identical, in fact, to the room I was standing in. And then they named it.

Yup. My hotel. Just what you want to see on arrival.

As it happens, apart from them refusing to give me my suitcase when it arrived and me having to throw a major fit in the lobby to get them to hand it over, all was fine in that hotel. It wasn't until two weeks later in a nice five star hotel in Paris that I had stuff stolen from my room.
( HairyCanary as Ann B. Davis as Alice, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 11:07, 2 replies)

Forget about hotels...
what about uni digs? The shared toilets mean drunken, half asleep urination down the sink is now a viable option, paper thin walls mean any bedroom nookie is essentially open to the public and bad flatmates turn the whole kitchen into an eruption of leftover food. And that's forgetting about noisy neighbours and the god damn builders who see fit to start at 7:30am EVERY... FUCKING... DAY but still fall so far behind schedule they get some guy in to do something loud at 3 in the morning despite there being a police station just over the road (I'm not joking).

Length? Not bad for my first time I don't think.
(maca2kx, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 10:59, 3 replies)

Hotel St. Lawrence, Luton
Fuck it, name 'em I say.

A few months ago I had the honour of staying in room 117 at this place. This is the corner room on the first floor....above the bar. Right above the bar in fact, which was open on that night until gone midnight. It's a good thing I had some DVDs with me, to slap on the in-room telly and drown out the fucking racket from downstairs until such time as the local populace took their leave and fucked off home at 1am, meaning I could get some kip. This is of course after having forayed out to find something to eat and ended up with base junk food because there is Fuck All in Luton worth eating EXCEPT for one curry place a colleague introduced me to, after this evening alas. So, 1am, and asleep, finally.

Until 5am. Because this hotel is on a junction, and this room literally overlooks the traffic lights of same - and has old school sash windows with all the sonic insulation properties of a paper bag, which means after four hours' fitful sleep I get awoken by some bastard in an eighteen wheeler waiting at the lights.

In fairness breakfast was OK but didn't make up for the fact that I had got half my usual amount of sleep and was rigorously knackered for the next day. Even a half decent shower made barely a dent in my weariness.

It is for this reason that I recommend against staying there to any work colleagues, even to the point of 'you'd be better off driving two hours each way to wherever because that's the amount of sleep you'll lose'.

Note: libel is a law against telling lies. Everything written here is fact and 100% true.
( Fathter Puddytat Kill Kill dat widdle boid is mine on, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 10:24, 1 reply)

Romania
While travelling in Romania, I arrived in a town that wasn't listed in my guidebook and set about trying to find somewhere to stay. Nobody spoke a word of English and I had to mime sleeping to dozens of people before I was shown towards a large building that looked like a school or hospital.

The receptionist seemed to suggest that there was indeed a room and enthusiastically took my cash in advance before ushering me to a windowless cell, where my attention was drawn immediately to the corpse. It was lying in a coffin on a trestle in the middle of the room - an old woman with mortician's make-up and that old-womany smell of lavender talc (and formaldehyde). Naturally, I said that the room was not acceptable, but I was made to understand that there was no other - and it was quite cheap. What the hell, I thought -it's an experience.

So, trying to ignore the stiff, I unpacked my bag on the bed and started to think about a cup of tea. There was a phone, so I called reception and used the Romanian word for 'tea'. Thirty minutes later there was still no tea, so I walked out of the room and met the room service lady approaching me down the hall. She was clacking steadily along with a zimmer frame and had spilled all but a drop of my tea down the frame and along the corridor. I thanked her anyway, but she seemed to be suffering from advanced dementia and just chortled to herself insanely. Weird.

I'll say one thing, though. It was quiet. I had a great night's sleep, even with a dead woman in the room with me. In fact, I wrote down the name of the hotel to give to other travellers - only to discover a couple of weeks later that the "Stary Resydence" I'd stayed in was actually an old people's home.
(frankspencer, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 10:22, Reply)

Its not about having no choice, I pre-booked this place over the internet.
Myself and Mrs T wanted to go to Rome. She was particularly keen to visit the vatican, being catholic. And we also couldnt leave it much longer as she was 5 months preggers and soon would not be able to travel.
I also wanted to have a 'nice time', and as I was paying for the hotel and flights, I wanted to choose a fairly decent hotel, but Mrs T has this thing about 'cheap'.
Anyway, I found this rather nice looking hotel in the internet, 4star, swimming pool, decent price.
We got to the hotel. Utter shit. It looked nothing like the photos.
The pool had been filled in with concrete, and this was by no means a 4 star hotel.
In the room, there were NO power sockets. Fortunately I brought a travel adapter which also had one of those edison screw light fitting adapters, or Mrs T would not have been able to use her hair drier.
The bathroom. Tiny. Shower, Sink, toilet. So small you could have a shower and take a shit at the same time.
The shower door barely opened enough to let in a 5 month pregnant woman. And If I had been any fatter, I would not ave been able to get in either.
The room was also on the first floor, but as the car park outside was 'sloping' we may have weel been on the ground floor as the window was level with the ground outside. Each morning from about 6am, the next coach load of holidaymakers was being delivered, and we were fortunate enough to have the coach parked right outside our window, not only that the driver was considerate enough to leave his engine running constantly.
The hjoliday was topped off with me having my credit cards stolen on the second day.

Fucking marvellous. Never ever go to Rome if you want a good time.
( turb0t, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 8:24, 3 replies)

Hotel Meridian, Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
I arrived in the Congo at the arse end of the country's civil war on a bit of ill-advised business. Le Meridian turned out to be a heavily-armed compound in the centre of the city, next door to the ruins of the cathedral. Amongst its delights:

* The hotel doubled up as the officers' mess of the Congolaise army, so it was crawling with over-dressed young ladies (eyeing up the Europeans for a quick way out), and their angry-looking AK47-toting husbands.

* If you wanted to venture outside, you had to hire a posse of hired goons and the hotel's bullet-riddled Mercedes.

* What I took for charming concrete mouldings around the hotel reception, were in fact, rocket-propelled grenade scars from a recent gun battle over the state of the kitchens.

* The hotel, at one stage, had its own zoo. When I arrived, it had already become the army's practice range and free supply of tasty meat products

* A five minute phone call urging my boss to get me the fuck out of there cost £90.

* Not a trace of Um Bongo

On the plus side, I managed not to mention the war to the German guests.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 8:16, 7 replies)

not the hotel, the guests
a few years back, i went on holiday with my cousin. the hotel wasn't great and the dining room was across the street, but the drinks were free. as a result of this, we got extremely shitfaced the first night there. we actually drank so much that the cockney barman decided to keep a record of our intake for the duration of our stay.
during that first boozy evening, we met a nice welsh family who'd brought an ounce of weed with them. we also met 2 scottish lads, one nice, the other a fat, ugly rugby-playing arsehole. arsehole took a liking to my cousin and, despite being told in no uncertain terms to fuck off, he proceeded to stalk her for the rest of the holiday.
one night, we got back to our room to find a teddy bear outside the door. it was one of those cutesy ones holding a heart, which had "i need a hug" printed on it, along with a note from arsehole, begging my cousin to sleep with him. as their room was 2 floors directly above us, we decided to throw his teddy back to him. we did, after i'd ripped its head off and changed its message from "i need a hug" to "i need psychiatric help".
this did not go down well.
we woke the next day to find many of the guests looking at us and giggling. we had no idea why.
on the last night, however, arsehole's mate came to our room and told us why everyone was laughing at us; arsehole had told the ENTIRE HOTEL that he'd shagged my cousin senseless on the first night and that she'd followed him around for the rest of the holiday, begging him for more!
this little nugget of information just about tipped me over the edge. my cousin was a nervous wreck by this time, crying and desperate to go home. i decided that she would be revenged. oh yes, she would.
i ran down the stairs to the bar to find arsehole sitting there with a smug look on his face, telling newly-arrived guests about the girl he'd been getting stalked by. i walked over and grabbed him by the hair, spinning him round to face me.
"what have you been saying, you lying, ugly fuck?" i yelled at him, "my cousin wouldn't touch you! she knocked you back the first night and you've been stalking her!"
he stood up to face me, then made the biggest mistake of his life: he laughed at me.
i've never hit anybody so hard in my life. i was so angry, i actually THREW him over 3 tables and through a set of french windows. he wisely decided not to get back up.
"if you ever come near us again," i yelled, "i'll fucking kill you!"
and with that, i stormed back upstairs to spend my last night there consoling my cousin.
getting on the coach the next morning, we both thought that we could put the whole unpleasant business behind us.
not so.
when we told the rep our names, she looks at my cousin and says "oh, you're the girl who spent the week with arsehole, aren't you? he's just been telling me that the two of you were inseparable!" cue the waterworks from my cousin as i explained to the rep just how badly this fucknut had ruined our holiday.

we ran into him the next morning on the ferry(i do not fly) and i managed to corner him. "i've already contacted the holiday company" i told him, "they're sueing you on our behalf." and, with a very hefty knee in the bollocks, i left him to keel over on the deck and, hopefully, die.
we couldn't actually sue him as it was his word against ours, but god, i wish i could.

btw, he told the rep that he'd got the black eye and split lip(which i'd given him) after defending an old woman who was being attacked by a gang of thugs.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 7:01, Reply)

One night in Hebron. COCK! AND BALLS!
I was in Hebron (West Bank) for a weekend. One weekend every year thousands of students from all over israel come and people put them up in there houses.
I had a fun story there.
Me and my friends get to the house where we were staying and the guy comes out in a bathrobe with a .50 cal pistol on his belt. (belt and a bathrobe, I know) He tells us its the right place, but we need to help clean up a bit, so he takes us to this room and it looks like someone took all the things that one may find in a house and shit them out into this little room. So we start shifting it and after about an hour and a half its clean. I found the spare clip to his .50 cal under the couch cusions (gave it back).
As I put my sleeping bag in a free corner, fourty more guys come from upstairs; they had been cleaning the other rooms and had been there before I had.
Then we have dinner and we cram far to many tables into the room (so I wont be able to sleep in that room). More people come in: The fourty from upstairs, the ten who were with me and about fifty new people (who didnt help clean up one bit). One hundred people plus the host in a space about three bus widths wide.
Naturally the host only bought enough food for half and forgot to cook it, which was all right because it was free.
After dinner I had to sleep in the only place I could find- the yard. The yard was also strewn with garbage and I shared it with a friend, two stranger's and the neighbors dog who climed under the fence.
I awoke bright and early the next day refreshed. Not because I had a good nights sleep, but because it rained.
But except for that, I had an awesome (and totally free) time. My friend got drunk and tried to say goodnight to every soldier he could see and almost got arrested.

THe end
(hathat, Mon 21 Jan 2008, 6:06, Reply)