The strangest places you have ever stayed in

[NoEffingWay]

I once, in a moment of cheapskated madness, booked a room in a pub as a stopover. How bad can it be, I thought? This is before booking sites and I didn't really read reviews anyway.

Well, it was a cheap looking pub in the middle of a dodgy estate, everything was falling to bits and the rooms were above the pub. It was karaoke night so I went to sleep listening to someone murdering Whitney Houston.

3am rolls around, and the crackle of a police radio outside the room comes to life, and then I lie in bed hearing what appears to be a mini dawn raid.

This was the first night of my honeymoon and possibly a reflection of the marriage that followed

Oh God 😄😄 sorry to laugh at your pain op, sounds awful!

Many years ago we stayed at the holiday cottage owned by a quirky film producer. There were rooms at each end of the cottage. My sister and her friend and Wilf and I were at one end. You went up the stairs and there was a room on each side of the landing. In my sister and friends room was a full stained glass window of the crucified Jesus fixed into the landing wall. To make matters worse Wilf insisted on having the landing light on all night so my sister and friend had Jesus gleaming on on them all night! 🙊 🙊 🙊 🙊 🙊
My sister remidied the situation the next morning by getting all the supplements from the papers and sticking them over Jesus. When we left she left Jesus still covered over!!

Dh and I went to LA to visit my family there and have a road trip around southern CA. We booked a motel in a neighbourhood that gave my LA family a good panic when we told them where we were staying. It was not a ‘naice’ area.

The motel itself was amazing. I mean, it was absolutely shite. But it had a lovely pool and every afternoon 4-6pm they did free all you could drink cava and all you could eat cake and nachos. We ended up meeting a random guy who seemed to live in the motel who was from the next village over from Dh in Devon. 😂 Small world.

And when we finally left to go to the airport at like 4am for a very early flight, I had to drive the hire car down a very narrow alley at the back of the hotel. In the middle of said alley, a gathering was being had by what I could only describe as some ‘gangsters’ based on their very specific attire, drinking Hennessy from the bottle with guns clearly tucked in waistbands. I had to get out of my hire car in the dark and very Britishly ask if they could be so kind as to shift the party to the left a bit so I could squeeze my minivan through. 😂 They couldn’t have been more polite and apologetic, guns and all, and everyone kindly shifted their chairs so we could squeeze past and then waved us off. Absolutely bizarre place and I wish I could remember what it was called as I’d definitely go back!

A place a friend booked so we could attend a wedding in Herefordshire. No rooms available to book at the venue and quite rural so you take what you can get.

She told me she was booking a place she found and would she like her to book me and DH a room too. Sure says I and sent her the money and thought nothing else of it.

We rocked up and it was super old fashioned 70’s building and style. Corby trouser press in room. Lots of pictures of Jesus. Had to turn a few around it was creeping us out.

Dump our stuff and put our finest on then off to the wedding straight away. Came back in the small hours and DH wants a quick drunk ciggie before we go up to the room. He’s leaning on a railing and I’m talking to him with my back to the glass fronted lobby. All of a sudden he goes white and stutters ‘Colonel… there’s a shitting monk’ I whipped around and nearly had a heart attack. There’s an actual Friar Tuck looking monk standing on the other side of the glass just staring at us from the gloom of the darkened lobby.

Turns out behind the 70’s building there’s a giant Abby and working monastery we’d failed to notice. Weird place.

A few years ago, I was going to a conference in Canada and forgot to book a room at the official hotel until it was too late, I found a very convenient, marvelously cheap alternative just down the road. When I got there, it was plain that people rented by the hour there and also that there were some permanent residents complete with drugged up faces and very large, scary dogs. It turned out that this hotel was the epicenter of prostitution and drugs in this medium sized Canadian town. The wifi was, however, first-rate and the beds were very comfortable and I wasn't molested in any way, and I had a good (and very cheap) stay, but even so, I was glad to be gone.

We were on our honeymoon in Austria (this is back in 1994) and we were heading for a hotel we'd booked. I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up I realised newly dh had no bloody idea where we were. We had to stop at a garage and asked but it turned out dh was so lost that we were 90km away!

Ended up staying at a motel on the road. Worst Wiener schnitzel that I've ever experienced!

And this is my worst despite backpacking around Central America 3 times, including with children!!!

DSIL booked a largish house with swimming pool in Bath for her hen do. The swimming pool was grim with scum floating on the surface, there weren't enough beds so we all ended up sharing beds and the only shower was at the end of a corridor with no door - just a curtain. The kitchen had no utensils at all apart from a very large and rusty axe tucked away in a drawer.

SIL has form for booking suspect accommodation and restaurants.

oh So many places in backpacking days

Chungking Mansions In Hong Kong, such a dump, with bars on the windows and a rubbish dump in the central well. It was infamous for dodginess.

more recently a hotel in Cambridgeshire that I’d booked as it was walkable from a wedding venue. Well it was but through an army base…

We stayed at a hostel like that in Inglewood a couple of times, it had a shuttle to the airport, great pool, cheap bar and lots of happy hour and other stuff that sounds similar. I loved it 😂... and do think sometimes now how I probably took my life in my own hands wandering around outside it going to 7/11 etc.

I am enjoying these

Stayed in Guayaquil in Ecuador at a recommended budget place. When we got to the room there were gaps at the top of the walls to the next rooms of about 18 inches. We had to listen to some couple shagging all night. It was a terrifying intro to Ecuador but got better from then on .