Travel Travails

I'm back!

And very, very tired. After a long day in the car, the DH and I are back from a just-the-two-of-us vacation. We had a great time, except for the hotel room saga.

Now, if you're a reader of Lucy Monroe's blog, you know that she has stories to tell about all of her trips, with at least one thing going wrong on every vacation. Our room saga fits right in with that theme.

We had a nice room to start with. About halfway up the tower, with a nice view and decent accommodations. But the second day we noticed that the door wasn't latching consistently.

Door that won't shut or lock? Um, no. We called and asked for someone to come fix it. The maintenance guy showed up right away, took a look at it, and said it'd take a while to fix, so we should probably be moved to another room.

Five minutes later, we're shoving things in suitcases while a bellman stands outside the door ready to take us to our next room. We get there, tip the bellman, unpack, and discover that 1) the toilet is close to overflowing and 2) there's no hot water. At all.

Another phone call, another fast pack job, and the same bellman is waiting to move us yet again. Room three, another tip, we unpack, and there's a knock on the door. It's the same maintenance guy, clearly confused to find us in a different room than the one he'd set up for us earlier. We explain the problems with room number two, and he shakes his head. He'd been sent to THIS room on a work order for the air conditioning, which is spewing water all over the carpet. We, of course, hadn't noticed this yet. Nor had we noticed the missing night lock, which the maintenance guy pointed out as well.

"That's it," he said. "You guys deserve a suite." He sets it up, get us our room keys (the fourth set of the day), and helps us carry the luggage up to the top floor so we don't have to call the bellman yet again. Which was a good thing, because I was out of cash for the tip.

Oh, and did I mention that I'd left a library book in the first room and had to run back there to get it, luckily running into the housekeeper who'd just put it in the storage room?

Or the fact that during this time frame the elevator was out of service for almost an hour while the fire department investigated an alarm, which turned out to be two wires touching accidentally?

On the bright side, we got a huge two-room suite with a fabulous view and lots of space, for the same price as our original hotel room. And all it cost us was three moves, several panicky pack jobs, and a handful of tips.

What's your favorite (or funniest) vacation story?