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International Hotels: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!
You Can’t Always Judge By the Name
On our European vacation, we stayed in six different hotels; five were meticulously planned, and the other was a last-minute replacement due to a broken-down rental car. I refer to it as a transient hotel; my wife, Carol, is more diplomatic, yet she slept with her clothes on in case we had to make a quick exit.
I’ll start with a BAD hotel; in truth, there were many pleasing aspects to this hotel, but the bad was so bad as to make it one step from being ugly. It was also bad because our expectations were so high. We at least pretended we were on a budget when picking hotels. Carol has worked in the lodging industry for over thirty years and had discounts available with multiple brands. We tried to take advantage of good deals while remaining close to the tourist attractions we planned to visit. The one exception we made was the Waldorf Astoria — Trianon Palace in Versailles, France.
Neither of us had ever stayed in a Waldorf, and we expected they would be the standard for customer service. One of the restaurants was the “Gordon Ramsey au Trianon,” featuring the famous chef and is considered by some the finest restaurant in Paris. The night we could have gone, it was sold out for a private event, but we were at least in the vicinity.
