Lodging Disasters

If you need a laugh, this is the episode for you. The worst places we've ever stayed, separated into the four base elements: Earth, Air, Water, and... FIRE! 

We talk about our experiences in B&Bs, hotels, and farm stays in Italy, Ireland, and in the USA.

Want to know more about us and our travel services? Find us at:

www.LittleRoadsEurope.com

www.facebook.com/LittleRoadsEurope

We craft small-town driving itineraries for travelers to Italy, Ireland and Scotland.

And our "alter-egos" as musicians:

www.OrsiniVirtuosi.it

Transcript

Note: This is not a complete transcript, but rather the show notes we write in advance to prepare for the episode. 

INTRO: 

Welcome to Little Roads Unfiltered: Italy and Beyond

Today we’re talking about Lodging disasters - the worst places we’ve ever stayed in

You’ll hear about:

- The one where the donkey kicked me in the hand,

- The one in the expensive castle with the rusty nails sticking out of the floor

- The one where you can only flush the toilet once

This is Matt Walker          …and I’m Zeneba Bowers - 

We’re recording while sitting on the terrace of our tiny home in Italy - so you’ll get a sense of the sounds of life in our little town. We want this to be more like a casual conversion with us, rather than a scripted studio session - complete with church bells, cats meowing, motor scooters and trains and the town’s daily siren, and maybe the occasional clink of our drinks. 

“ … we’ll be talking about some of the worst experiences we’ve had with hotels and B&Bs, in today’s chat - here on Little Roads Unfiltered: Italy and Beyond.”

For those of you who don’t know us: We are professional musicians and also travel writers and consultants, living and working here in Italy for the past 6 years. 

If you want to learn more about us and our lives, you can find us on our website LittleRoadsEurope..com, on our socials, and now here on our new podcast, which we’re going to try to make you feel as if you’re sitting here chatting with us 

…and by the way: intro music - Matt arranged it, and we recorded it right here in our house! Since we’re musicians working here in Italy, we thought that would be a fun and sensible addition to our show.

So let’s get to talking about Lodging disasters… 

Most travel planners take kickbacks or discounts from places they recommend. We don’t, frankly, because we could never find a way to do it and still give an honest opinion to our clients. So we pay full rate everywhere we stay, and we only recommend places we have personally stayed in to our clients. 

We’ve stayed at hundreds if not thousands of places over the years. Little problems can crop, simple human error, or some type of unavoidable emergency, but that’s not what this episode is about. This episode is about places where when things go wrong, they had a “sucks to be you” attitude.

We have gotten really adept at figuring out online in advance whether a place will be good or not. But some places still get past us. Most of the following examples are from years ago, and we used those experiences to figure out how to avoid doing this to ourselves again. But some are quite recent, because having that experience on the ground really is the only way you can truly know. 

We realized when we were compiling our “greatest hits” list (shits list?) that our various experiences fit neatly into the four base elements: Earth Air Fire Water

EARTH: 

The place in north part of Lake Como that we left. MONASTERY In “Earth” category because it was so grubby. 

- We like places that are off the beaten track, but we don’t necessarily like it when people have brought bits of the beaten track into the rooms.

Didn’t look like anything that they showed online… Looked and felt like a college dorm, and it was kept up about as nice too. Dorm furniture, plastic covered single beds.

In fact a whole soccer camp was staying, so I guess it was a dorm - really noisy, lots of kids drinking and hooking up.

We actually left this one after 1 night — Animal House

B&B near Rome with the insane road, first he said there was a pizza joint within walking distance. Then that went away, and it was actually 30 minutes away, but not on that road, with its car-size potholes. Had to get out of car and navigate to make sure tires did not go in. needed cash only, but only told us when we arrived, so we had to drive to town. Then he said You’re lucky you don’t have to do it every day, 

Ireland Tower. In Earth category because of the dirt and paint chips falling into the food and dishes. The most expensive place we have ever stayed, I did 19 hours of recording sessions of Japanese video game music to pay for it. Beautiful terrace, which is why we rented it. Clouds of bugs. Nails in the floor that we put pieces of paper on for the middle of the night. Slanted floor in bathroom that flooded toilet after a 1 second shower. Slanted floor on the terrace that molded around the entrance and flooded in the slightest rain, in IRELAND 

WATER: 

Tuscany hot tub on ground floor, room on top floor 4 stories up with slanted roofs, bang head on ceiling

Private hot tub at castle, with Dutch couple. “Private”, hot tub not big enough for 4

6 gallon shower when I had Covid 

Historic hotel in small Irish town, right on town square. Maintenance work being done, notified at the end of the night that there was no water from 9-9. One flush! No discount. 

Lack of Water: Good information to have

— “ADVERTISEMENT” BREAK —

That reminds me that we need to stop for a word from our sponsor - - - - 

- - - just kidding, we don’t have any sponsors - and we’re not looking for any either, we want to keep this an ad-free show.

So today’s show is brought to you by: A Good Idea. 

And today’s Good Idea is: If you see a story you like on social media, take a minute to look it up. A lot of it is AI, even feel-good stories. We all need feel-good stories, but there are lots of true ones, so it is worth it to take the time to make sure yours is accurate. 

That’s it!

… So anyway, where were we?

FIRE: 

In Fire category because of the chainsmoking.

Irish B&B with the host who chain smoked and peed in a cup because there was only one bathroom. 

High marks in reviews. Don’t tell anyone this is a B&B. Butterfly in chain link fence

Concetta kicked me in the hand, and the fire, scorpion.

AIR: 

This one is in the air category because you will likely become momentarily airborne because of the terrible design. ROME Place

In air category because of the super strong scent sticks in the tiny space and windows that did not open. Booked because it is near a favorite castle of ours, and a couple of great restaurants, always wanted a hotel in that town. Hotel 1K away with two twin beds and bathroom outside the room. Driving, driving driving to get to it. Lots of jokes about being back in college. Walk 1K to dinner, past lots of barking dogs, neighborhood we did not feel great about

Irish pub but on ground floor next to Dumpsters, in Air category because the dumpsters stank, could not open window. Glass bottles tossed in all night, shadows of people walking by. Creepy. 

Hello B&B (amenities manufactured out of thin air)

Using its real name - it’s out of business

Rare weekend off so we drove 5 hours to stay overnight, Top Chef restaurant 

Late arrival of host. Spider webs at entrance, bad sign

Victor , crusty soap, fridge shared with Victor, PRIVATE ENTRANCE 

Porn mags in room

OUTRO: I think that’s a good place to wrap it up here - we hope you enjoyed joining us for our lodging disasters!

[Feel free to give us feedback on your favorite listening platform, and tell your friends!]

We’ll be talking about a wide variety of topics here on this podcast, posting a new episode every Tuesday. 

So catch us next time - we’ll see you down the Little Roads… CIAO!