Quel Horreur
June 10th, 2008 by PotatoSan Diego’s been a bit of a hole. We’re staying at the Town and Country Hotel and the place is like a ghetto of little two-storey motel buildings all together. Our room in particular appears to be the worst of all — there is no sound insulation and the blinds don’t quite close all the way. Combined with the fact that we are under the outdoor stairs to the 2nd level and don’t even have the immaculate parking lot view of the other units but instead stare directly into a noisy ice machine and brightly-lit Pepsi dispensary, it made the night rather hellish.
The conference chose this place purely out of cost considerations, so I was expecting it to be a little shabby, but some things go beyond the pale. Internet is running at $10/day, and for a place that’s charging us $150 per night I would have expected a lot more than this. Especially since the internet was down all day after eating my $10, and it was really starting to wear on a lot of people who, well, really need their internet fix. Ok, the staff have been pretty nice so far, I’ve got to give them that, but even the conference facility is a little lacking: the speakers in one room have a terrible rumbling bass distortion problem so we can’t clearly make out what the speaker is saying.
I’ve only been here like 2 days and I’m done with Mexican food, thanks. It is kind of neat/weird that San Diego is incredibly close to the Mexican border, I had no idea — even the trolley system goes right to the border crossing — but this mexican for lunch and dinner got old by lunchtime day 2 (chips and salsa I’m good with, but I don’t really care for anything else on the mexican menu). I’m going to have to stop eating now for the rest of the trip because everything that’s not deep fried is slathered in butter and served four sizes too large (seriously, I only ate about a third of my lunch and I was stuffed, not hungry again until like 8 pm).
So tonight we tried to take it pretty easy, sitting back in the hot tub… until security kicked us out. Ok, it does close at 11 pm and I can see how, with the really shitty sound proofing in the rooms, allowing people to frolic in the hot tub can lead to issues… but we were really super quiet. Ah, well, back to the room, to find this waiting for us:
Quel Horreur!!! The picture doesn’t even do it justice for how shocking and gross it was. I mean we were facing a cockroach that was fast and nearly 2″ long.
I want to go home now, thanks. (Or, at least to PEI)
June 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Make sure none of those little guys hitch a ride in your luggage!
June 25th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
“Make sure none of those little guys hitch a ride in your luggage!”
Or just make them carry your luggage.