Our Trip to the Local Hotel

After one month of living here in very close quarters with others, it was definitely time for some “alone time.” After all, we are still newlyweds! Being the thrifty people that we are, we decided to check into the local “discount” hotel for the night. For only fifty dollars, we would have a warm room with hot running water, a bed, and some breakfast. As we walked to the hotel (about a 25 minute walk), JB said that if it was anything like a Motel 6, he would be happy. Boy were we in for a surprise!

To begin with, when he called to make the reservation, he told them that he and his wife would be staying for the night. “Your wife?” they asked, “or your girlfriend?” “My wife,” he told them. “Wife okay,” they responded. “Girlfriend not okay.” He reiterated that yes, indeed, he would be bringing his wife and NOT a girlfriend.

When we got there, we were assigned to room 102. That was the room with a big wad of gum stuck in the middle of the zero of the door number. Nice. Walking into the room, we were hit by the smell of curry. It turns out that our room was directly above the Indian restaurant, so like it or not, we were going to be smelling curry for the night. It’s a good thing we like curry!

We both immediately wanted to take a shower—something that we really crave since we don’t have running water at the house we are living in. Interestingly, in our double room, there was only one bath towel, one wash cloth, one hand towel, one bathrobe, one everything! Looked like we would be sharing. There was also one small bar of soap, and one packet of shampoo—Black Shine Shampoo. I was glad I brought my own shampoo. I would hate to see how my blonde hair would turn out after using Black Shine Shampoo!

Once we had showered we thought we’d read some and rest before dinner. We were really looking forward to some quiet time…until we noticed the Indian techno music coming from the Indian restaurant below us. Hmmm. Curry and techno. How relaxing. Maybe, we thought, we could find an English channel on the TV. JB started playing around with the TV but couldn’t get it to work. After he had fiddled with it for a while, he finally said, “Oh…someone cut the cable.” So, with no TV, we stretched out on the bed to rest and noticed that, not only was it very hard, but we could actually feel the springs coming through the mattress! Upon further inspection, we discovered that there was no mattress. We were lying directly on the box springs.

For dinner, we originally thought we’d head down to the restaurant that supposedly serves pizza, although they’ve never served pizza when we were there. It was so dark on the street and so cold, that we only made it a few blocks away and turned around. Forget pizza—we were going to eat Indian!

The bad news is that we both got sick from the Indian restaurant. The good news is that we did get our night away in a warm room with warm running water and non-stop electricity, even if it did have its quirks. Besides the barking dogs outside that woke us both up about a half-dozen times, we actually rested pretty well. (JB told me he also heard the patter of a mouse behind our bed once during the night – I’m glad I didn’t!)

Was it like a Motel 6? Well, not exactly. At Motel 6 they give you two towels and a mattress, but, hey, we’re not complaining! We got showers! We have learned to appreciate the little things in life. How richly we have been blessed!

God bless