Everyone has a bad lodging experience. For those who camp, it might have been a night of driving rain and cold in a tent. Or like my wife and I, it might be a night in a hotel that also had a bunch of young men who had just returned from a military experience and were celebrating. Or it might be a night I remember from childhood. We were staying at someone’s house (maybe family friends? no one remembers). Part of the house’s layout was that to get to the bathroom involved walking through the master bedroom. I woke during the night, needing to urinate, but unable to bring myself to walk through a stranger’s bedroom so i recall suffering until morning light came.

What makes my hotel experience so dreadful was that it was a combination of so many things. It actually felt like someone had planned it, trying to cram as many irritating things as possible into a single night. And done with success.

Some background: our son was doing study abroad in Seville and we flew over to meet him for Thanksgiving week. Seville was great. We flew from Raleigh to London, from London to Madrid, then by train to Seville. A week in the south of Spain was a blast, even if the beautiful hotel where we stayed had a regrettable history: the building where the hotel was located had been, hundreds of years before, homes for Jewish families in that city who had been removed during one of the periodic purges. Naming the hotel ‘Casa de Los Judios’ [House of the Jews] seemed small compensation for having one’s property seized.

Back on the train, we headed for Madrid, and spent a couple of days there, until flying back to London. Which is where the fun began. Because Seville was great and Madrid beautiful. But neither of those cities provided the basis for a hotel so memorable that it has passed into the realm of legend. That happened in London, where we slept a hotel so bad we remember it like it was yesterday, 19 years later.

Next: how we learned that customer service is not taught in some hotel schools.