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davidnAll right, where do I begin? On arrival at Boston airport, Whitney dropped a suitcase on her foot. We went into a cafe to sit down, ordered something to drink, and then the businessman at the next table made an overenthusiastic hand gesture and spilled a pint of orange juice all over me. And it wasn't just a small spill - so strong was the projection of this fruit juice that I was soaked and covered in pulp from ankles to eyebrows. And with our luggage already handed in and headed to the plane, I was let in to the employee bathroom so that I could take my shirt and trousers off, then spent ten minutes passing them slowly through the Dyson hand dryer. It made them less uncomfortable to wear but no less pulp-encrusted.
The flight was changed to a propeller plane, which made me even more nervous than usual because I keep getting the feeling that they stopped using them in the 1940s. Nevertheless, with me looking like a dishevelled orange-flavoured tramp, we got on, were seated at the front of what resembled a minibus with wings, and I clung to my rabbit throughout the journey. The short flight time meant that I was only in fear for my life for one hour instead of seven - is that an improvement?
Montreal, it seems, loves to take life slowly, and queueing is a favourite pastime. The airport is like the population of San Francisco Airport squeezed into the floor capacity of Aberdeen Dyce Airport - the packed, snaking border control queue looked like PAX East except much more boring, and once we got past that there was another immense queue for the taxi. Then, to my surprise, there was another fairly substantial queue for the check-in desk at the hotel once we finally got there.
As we approached the desk, being overtaken by the occasional escargot, watching them check everyone in at no more than about fifteen minutes each, we began to overhear that the hotel seemed to have messed up absolutely everyone's reservations - there was a family who had been put into the wrong number of rooms, and the man talking to the only other receptionist had been put in for one night when he'd booked four. Occasionally another staff member would wander out from the back and shrug a bit.
Twelve days later we got to the desk. I was relieved when the woman behind it seemed to find our reservation instantly and got me to sign the check-in sheet, then had the sauce to announce the hotel had "upgraded" us to a room with separate beds because the room that I had just signed for wasn't actually available.
I'm not usually assertive, but I was out of patience, exhausted and orange-encrusted - I pointed out that I had just signed for a specific room, and she said that when they get bookings that aren't directly through the hotel site they don't guarantee the room type. If this is the usual arrangement for booking sites, I've never fallen foul of it before. I asked her if she could find any available rooms with a queen or king bed, and she spent about ten minutes faffing through the computer system and looking at a sheet, warning us that there would probably be a significant upgrade fee, before finally telling us that there was actually a king bedroom available for twenty dollars.
So at the end of it all, we finally got upstairs to our new and slightly improved corner room, I showered and altered my citrus flavour with a soap that smelled of lemons instead, we had dinner, relaxed, slept, and went down to the lobby for breakfast, where a lady with a lovely French accent welcomed us to the hotel's dining room.
"'Allo," she said, "Would you like some orange juice?"
The flight was changed to a propeller plane, which made me even more nervous than usual because I keep getting the feeling that they stopped using them in the 1940s. Nevertheless, with me looking like a dishevelled orange-flavoured tramp, we got on, were seated at the front of what resembled a minibus with wings, and I clung to my rabbit throughout the journey. The short flight time meant that I was only in fear for my life for one hour instead of seven - is that an improvement?
Montreal, it seems, loves to take life slowly, and queueing is a favourite pastime. The airport is like the population of San Francisco Airport squeezed into the floor capacity of Aberdeen Dyce Airport - the packed, snaking border control queue looked like PAX East except much more boring, and once we got past that there was another immense queue for the taxi. Then, to my surprise, there was another fairly substantial queue for the check-in desk at the hotel once we finally got there.
As we approached the desk, being overtaken by the occasional escargot, watching them check everyone in at no more than about fifteen minutes each, we began to overhear that the hotel seemed to have messed up absolutely everyone's reservations - there was a family who had been put into the wrong number of rooms, and the man talking to the only other receptionist had been put in for one night when he'd booked four. Occasionally another staff member would wander out from the back and shrug a bit.
Twelve days later we got to the desk. I was relieved when the woman behind it seemed to find our reservation instantly and got me to sign the check-in sheet, then had the sauce to announce the hotel had "upgraded" us to a room with separate beds because the room that I had just signed for wasn't actually available.
I'm not usually assertive, but I was out of patience, exhausted and orange-encrusted - I pointed out that I had just signed for a specific room, and she said that when they get bookings that aren't directly through the hotel site they don't guarantee the room type. If this is the usual arrangement for booking sites, I've never fallen foul of it before. I asked her if she could find any available rooms with a queen or king bed, and she spent about ten minutes faffing through the computer system and looking at a sheet, warning us that there would probably be a significant upgrade fee, before finally telling us that there was actually a king bedroom available for twenty dollars.
So at the end of it all, we finally got upstairs to our new and slightly improved corner room, I showered and altered my citrus flavour with a soap that smelled of lemons instead, we had dinner, relaxed, slept, and went down to the lobby for breakfast, where a lady with a lovely French accent welcomed us to the hotel's dining room.
"'Allo," she said, "Would you like some orange juice?"
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-24 07:08 pm (UTC)Still, if there's any consolation to be offered, ummm....er....
...at least you didn't have to go through O'Hare?
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Date: 2013-08-24 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-25 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-25 07:13 am (UTC)D.F.
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Date: 2013-08-25 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-25 05:12 pm (UTC)But I side with DF in saying, I hope it looks up from here! *big hugs*
no subject
Date: 2013-08-26 01:44 am (UTC)If she hadn't said that, and had instead apologised, it might be different, but as it is I'm angry for you. As if it's not bad enough to stuff up your room, take no responsibility and be unwilling to fix it (to the point of charging you to give you the beds you booked for), to act like they're doing you a favour makes it so much worse.
I can understand that, at that point, paying $20 would seem vastly preferable to spending more time roomless and arguing (and orange-encrusted) but I would have had a very hard time swallowing even that. Aren't good hotels supposed to bend over backwards to fix their mistakes, owing to the fact that, you know, you've already spent lots of time, money and convenience getting there and in a litigious society like
AmericaCanada that's grounds for about five lawsuits? Not to mention horrible reviews. I dunno, trying to squeeze $20 out of you to fix their own mistake just sounds like the final insult..... Anyway, sorry, I had to rant about that because it really annoyed me on your behalf. You probably did the better thing by just letting it go. Congratulations on managing to get a double bed, and I hope the rest of your trip is fantastic and completely free of orange juice (until such time as you want it).
no subject
Date: 2013-09-06 05:23 am (UTC)