Monday, February 24, 2020

La Quinta Disaster

We had to leave in a hurry to get to Florida before my mom passed away last Saturday. So we didn’t have any hotel reservations. For whatever reason, every place we usually stay was booked solid for the entire weekend. That lead to a search for anything while we were on the road - almost frantically - when we finally booked La Quinta by phone in Pinellas Park. Unfortunately I never received the confirmation email so we didn’t know the address and there are five La Quintas in town. All I knew was that it wasn’t even close to our house. So we stopped at the first one and they didn’t have our reservation. The attendant didn’t even bother to help us - she basically said figure it out yourself. Then we drove to the next one. Still no reservation. But this time the manager on duty was so sweet. She called all the other places to find out where we needed to go. We left her a tip for pizza for her kindness during this stressful time. Apparently a concert, state fair, Presidents weekend, and February in Florida contributed to the weird situation we found ourselves in. We were relieved to finally find the hotel, but were aghast at the surroundings. It was plain filthy and disgusting. It looked like something from the 1940’s - outside doors, cigarette butts all over the place, unkempt visitors, loud music, smelly room, window air conditioner, holes in the curtains, scary place. Since we had no choice, we made ourselves stay the night. The next day I searched for other options hoping things would open up by Sunday night. Luckily they did - and we booked Sunday through Wednesday at a new Holiday Inn closet to home. But we needed to get at least a two day refund from Priceline - which we never use. So we had to travel back again to that awful place to drop the key and make sure the refund was processed. Luckily it was. So we ended up paying for a second night at that horrible place because of the timing, but neither one of us could wait to get out of there as fast as we could. The photos don’t do it justice. 
















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