Joanna Stich

Did You ever have a sleepless night? I’ve been having one of those for the last 4 nights. It’s finally February 1st and we are getting packed up and ready to move into our “new” apartment. We are no longer homeless! This comes after weeks in a dirty, dog hair filled sublet and four nights in this hotel. I guess it comes as a surprise that even though I’ve been a hotelier for 12 years I still end up in dingy accommodation. Honestly, I don’t know how this time it happened. I just saw the price and was like yeah we’re saving a lot of $$$ But at what cost? (No pun intended).

It started at check in; we left our sublet at around 11am; when we got to the “hotel” they said its too early to check in (which we expected anyway) so we decided to leave our bags. They charged us $5 per bag to leave the bags with them in the storage room. Baffling – now I thought I’ve heard it all, clearly not. We came back a little later to check in and they asked me to give them my credit card as a security for any possible damages in the room. I understood it at the time, but then I got to the room and was wondering what other damages could be possibly done to this room? Honestly, I attract hellholes. I won’t be naming and shaming I’ve already voiced my opinion on their TripAdvisor Profile so enough is enough.

The room was spacious, we had two beds – clearly they assumed that since we spend 99% of our time together and have made no friends yet, that two beds would be an appropriate solution to minor case of cabin fever…. Ha. We booked this hotel as the rooms were actually apartments, so we could cook our own food and not spend a fortune eating out. You’d be surprised how quickly you can get sick of eating out. Also did you know money doesn’t grow on trees??? Baffling. We went to the supermarket and bought enough food to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next 2 days saving us a small fortune. We went to turn on the cooker and it wasn’t working. Everything else in the kitchen worked and when we finally gave up trying to figure out whats wrong we phoned reception and turns out that in a teeny tiny writing on their website it says that while you pay for the apartment you DO NOT PAY FOR THE USE OF THE KITCHEN. So, we had to pay extra $25.00 a night to use the kitchen. Not so cheap after all… We had a young receptionist come up to our room and fiddle with the switchboard on the wall to turn on the fuse for the cooker, ridiculous!!

I feel like all I’m doing so far is highlighting the bad sides of our tip so far but coming over without a job & a place to live can be so stressful and daunting; it could drive you over the edge and every little ‘misfortune’ is taken as a “huge” step back #WhyMe. I would not fancy making this transition all alone as it can be such an isolating and lonely experience. You feel lonely even though you have your other half with you; but you also need someone else to talk to so you don’t go insane.

Coming back to our wonderful accommodation, last sleepless night consisted of a storm, it rained for about 24 hours straight and our roof started leaking right next to my pillow. Happy days, free shower! This was just the nail to our coffin. When I say I couldn’t get out of there fast enough is an understatement and to top it off when we got to our apartment we couldn’t move in because previous tenants U-Haul got cancelled at the last minute…..

Stay Tuned.

Jo xoxo