Boy does this conjure up some memories, ‘cause I traveled pretty rough in my salad days. From dorm-like Dutch hostels with no water pressure, to some God Forsaken, buggy place in Jerusalem that I shared with some guys who didn’t speak a shared language with me. From a two room Soviet Style hotel along the Silk Route in China where I ceded one room to the biggest freaking rat I’ve ever seen to jumping on overnight trains with a rail pass just to sleep. To, my favorite, the place I always stayed in Paris as a student: a maintenance room in some apartment building that I couldn’t find today for love or money, but the location was passed to me from a hostel-mate, and I dutifully passed it along to another. But, in keeping with the spirit of the thread, I choose a place that advertised itself as a hotel; and sadly it was at a time that I could have afforded to have done better....and I blame my wife.

In the late 80’s, my wife had spent the summer studying art and Italian in Florence. So, I manufactured a business trip to Europe to connect with her. First to England to visit Marconi, which produced our electronic home arrest equipment, then I preceded to join my wife in Rome to travel around Italy and then catch a Yugoslav ship in Venice for an Adriatic cruise.

Anyway, as she was living in Italy, my wife made the arrangements. We were flying out of Milan after the cruise, and she had got a room in that city. Ever frugal, she picked something cheap and convenient to the train station. Also convenient to the heroin users, who were geezing in the alleys surrounding the hotel. The name of the place is lost in the mists of time, but I remembered that it came with breakfast. If you asked the desk clerk for your complimentary meal, he proceeded to climb a stepping stool and then, from an open shelf he grabbed a bread-like product that was wrapped in plastic. He blew the dust off the plastic and just handed it over. I ate it out of stubbornness. After getting in the elevator, I was in fear. Showers down the hall trickled cold rusted water; towels were air dried, but not washed, between guests; a bed that sagged in the middle; drug addicts and the homeless arguing beneath your window. And then, to top it off, Milan in August is basically closed, and even Da Vinci’s Last Supper isn’t viewable. Final insult to injury, no reward points for the stay.

While gradients of really bad are hard to compare, I think that this was just about as nasty as eastwest’s stay.

Near college graduation in Florida, my girlfriend at the time and I flew out here to Seattle to check it out for employment, apartments, etc. Not knowing the area, we checked into the Black Angus Motel on Aurora Avenue in Seattle.

It was obvious that this room had not seen a vacuum cleaner in a long time. I was especially amused by the peanut shells all over the TV, dresser ,floor ,table, etc. The view out the third floor window faced prostitutes working the street and a Mecuric-oxide street lamp that lit up the room to make nightime seem like 12 noon. Around midnight, I decided I couldn't stay in this dump, used the phone to reserve a room at a better place. We packed up and went to the office. Upon explaining our complaints, the night manager accused me of using the room for a romp in the hay with my girlfriend. We got into an arguement when I noticed she was organizing the credit card charge receipts and mine was lying on top of her little pile. I reached over, grabbed it and told her to call the police if she wanted to straigten out this mess. Instead, she grabbed a baseball bat!!! I didn't even think for a second, ran to my rental car where all my stuff was already loaded and my girlfriend was waiting inside. I jumped in, stepped on the gas and missed having the window smashed by this she-devil nutcase by inches. Never had a charge on my credit card statement and never heard from the police....whew!

I now live in the Seattle area and even 15 years later, I get the shudders driving past this place once or twice a year. Yes, it is still in business! If you drive by, look for the streetlamp by the corner room...

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Addicted to airline miles? Check out: The Airline Mileage Workshop

Letoile, Having spent months and months of time on Virgin Gorda over the years and not having been there in the past 6 years, the Yacht Harbor bathrooms sound pretty good to me now.

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I stayed there February, 1999. It was ok. It was similar to the no-nosense Japanese business hotels, except the rooms were a bit bigger.

When I turned on the TV, I didn't see topless nudity (not that rare in different European countries), but graphic sex including genitalia and sex acts! I was shocked to see this on TV!

was that so bad, Skylink?
(at least it was free...)

This is a very interesting topic. I am not quite sure how to answer, but I think I will answer based on "worst value." Because there are times when you pay $2 and you get what you paid for...

But then, there are times when you pay $150 per night per room, like FlyAAway did probably, at the Radisson Edwardian Savoy Court, and get what you should have paid about $15 for. This experience was made worse for the fact that I had picked this hotel for a trip among four friends of mine, and to this day, they will not let me forget the mistake. And believe me, it's not like we were cheap blokes either, because we had two rooms. The problem was that the beds were made of plywood boards and about the size of two postage stamps. Sadly, the facade of the building actually lulls you into thinking that it's "got character." It is a pity that Radisson has its name associated with this hotel... because it just doesn't live up to the standards that I would expect from their name. Don't get me wrong; it's not that we were treated poorly or anything, just that even the most attentive and courteous service couldn't have made up for the fact that were paying good money to stay in a closet.

Because of this and some other incidents, I no longer give Radisson first look when I'm searching for lodging anywhere.

Skylink:

Your posting sounds almost like a recommendation for the AMS Ibis.

O.K., it's not as bad as some "hotels" posted in this thread. However, Ibis AMS is shabby and not very clean. I would go there again only in a "emergency" situation.

The Hotel Tashkent in Uzbekistan.

In 1988, we were travelling around what was then Soviet Central Asia. We had scheduled a couple of nights in Tashkent in order to see what we were assured was the best ikon museum in the world. When we got to the city, we discovered the museum had been closed for weeks due to a sewage leak.

We should have taken that as an omen and fled the place double-quick.

As we walked along the dingy hotel hallway towards our room, (I think it was on the eighth floor) we couldn't help but notice the large hole in the floor--stretching from wall to wall--over which someone had laid a plank to walk across. As we peered down to the seventh floor hallway, we saw a smaller hole in the floor below, allowing a glimpse of the sixth floor. Fortunately, the fifth floor was not on display.

We finally made it to the room, which, aside from having just enough room to sidle between the twin beds, wasn't too bad. There was even a balcony (which was a bit hard to get to because of the beds in the way of the balcony door that didn't lock). Well, part of a balcony. The left and front walls, and part of the floor on the left side, were no longer there. We closed the door hastily and piled our bags in front of the door to keep it from blowing open in the breeze, and went to look at the bathroom. Which had a single wet grey towel and a toilet that wouldn't flush. We climbed back down to the lobby (no way were we going to use the elevator again in that place) and mustered our meager Russian to ask for help. After an hour or so, the floor matron brought us one reasonably clean and completely dry towel. A while after that, a guy with steel teeth (really!) came and dismantled the toilet, took about three pounds of wet sand out of it, and put it together again. He turned out to be quite friendly, and even knew a bit of English. He told us, with evident pride, the Tashkent was the best hotel in the city.

We fled early the next morning.

Does anyone know if the ikon museum is still there?

Ah, yes the famous Russian (and evidently Uzbek) steel teeth. My dentist recently showed me a collection of steel teeth that he had mined from some of his émigré patients during the last few years. It was quite harrowing just to look at them.

I tend to grind my teeth quite a bit; I wonder whether that would cause sparks?

About 15 years ago i got last minute notice
to attend a meeting in NYC. Corp travel
insisted that there were no rooms available
in or near NYC. I told my secretary to
start digging ... and that i would phone
her when i arrived at EWR.

She had found a motel in Newark; a no-name
operation ... Sagamore sticks in my mind,
but I may indeed be in error re: the name.
it is certainly not a nice area. I park
and enter the 'office' area and find that
the clerk safely hidden behind a bullet
proof security cage with locking/rotating pass-throughs and a scratchy intercom system.

I hand over my credit card and mutter, "one
adult, one night." Without missing a beat,
she asks, "all night?"

-doug

In February '97, Jailer and I flew into New Delhi to overnight before heading up to Kathmandu. The Connecticut "India Specialist" travel agent I used to arrange the trip warned me that the hotel (name escapes me) he was putting us at the first night, would be below the standards being used the rest of the two week trip. This was quite an understatement.

At the time, a decent hotel room in New Delhi was $175 and up, but this room was $80. By my American standards, it probably was overpriced by $60. I recall the lobby being pretty dark, when we checked in around midnight. The reason for this became obvious when we came back downstairs seven hours later.

The room also was a bit dark, but I attributed that to typical third world concerns about the cost of electricity. It felt unclean, and I was certainly not going to use the water supply, which would dispense a hellish collection of incurable diseases (hey, I was seriously jet-lagged, to the point where you are so wired, sleep was a physical impossibility – seem to recall Jailer slept like a baby).

Turned on the (circa 1962) TV. One station available, but with so much snow, watching was impossible. Couldn’t read, not enough light. Couldn’t look out the window at the neighborhood, as the outside of the window was so dirty, I couldn’t see ten feet ahead. So I tossed and turned in the bed, which probably hadn’t had the sheets changed from the last customer (no real evidence of this truly happening, but in my wired state, it was a absolute certainty).

Next morning, we went back down to the lobby, to meet our driver who would return us to DEL. As I walked down the stairs, I could finally see what the lobby looked like, since it was now well lit. Not due to the lights being on mind you, it was due to the roughly 8 foot wide gaping hole in the wall of the lobby, about thirty feet from the front door. While I’m confident the hole was due to some sort of planned construction project, it had the look of the remnants of a small bomb blast. There was even a nice collection of rubble, below the hole, to add to the bombed out ambiance.

In retrospect I’m confident I’ve stayed at places as bad or worse over previous 20 years I had been traveling, but this one sticks out in my mind. Likely it was because I was up the entire night, and had convinced myself in that jet-lagged state that this was the start of what was going to be two weeks of utter hell. In fact the rest of the hotels we stayed at throughout Nepal and India were fine. The travel agent did not deceive.





[This message has been edited by Craig6z (edited 09-23-2000).]

These posts are hilarious! Keep em coming.
I had a similar experience in Seattle. 5 years ago when I was a starving student had to go for an interview in Seattle. My travel on a shoestring guide recommended Aurora Ave for cheap hotels. I pulled into the Geisha Inn because it had such a nice sign. ....Not really thinking about what Geisha meant. Well, I should have just turned around when the guy asked if I wanted a waterbed or a circular bed but I didnt. I should have turned around when I saw the clientel learing at me from 2nd floor. I should have ran screaming when I saw the card on the bed that explained how to get Xrated movies and by the way, prostitution was not allowed. The room was done in red shag carpet...even the walls. The curtains didnt shut, and the door didnt lock properly. As panic took hold I called my fiance back in California. He reminded me what a Geisha did for a living and advised me to "get the @#$ out of there!" and I did.

Craig, have you forgotten the division of labor on our trips? You are in charge of worrying, and I’m in charge of blissfully sleeping, oblivious to anything that might disturb me. I enjoyed the remembrance of that first night in India. I also remember later in the trip becoming very well acquainted with the floor of a hotel bathroom after getting a touch of food poisoning from that roadside restaurant outside the bird sanctuary.

Puppypaws: I take your point, but I know some of our Japanese brethren will comment that Geishas are artists and performers, not hookers. But of course you’re dead right, at the Geisha Motel in Seattle I wouldn’t be expecting much of a Japanese tea ceremony.

Craig, the folks operating that hotel in India have moved to the US. You can see them, or their relatives, at a nearby Comfort Inn/Holiday Inn Express.

I average 130 nights per year in hotel rooms and have no horror stories to share. Each stay has been a wonderful value. Well, maybe......

What are their rates?



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Time..... is on my side.