Motel Hell

Time to gripe. I have been in San Francisco, California, for about 18 hours, and I already hate this hotel. I am staying at the Sir Francis Drake hotel on powell street, in the heart of the city. The hotel is costing us about 120 bucks a night, and is highly billed as being one of the classiest hotels around.

Yeah right.

First of all, sure there's pretty chandeliers and marble pillars. It's great that i can hang the "do not disturb" sign on the door and actually not have housekeeping barge in on me. Oh and it has a working toilet and running water.

Here is what I don't like:

1) the hotel advertises free high speed wireless access in each room. At best I can get 190 kilobytes per second, and the connection times out after 2 minutes of inactivity. So by the time you've read the web page you pulled up, you have to quit your browser and reopen it and log in again. And forget about doing ANYTHING other than reading. Drool comes out of my mouth quicker when I sleep than I get speed off this stupid "high speed" wireless.

2) the ice machines on my floor, the floor below, and the floor above are not plugged into power. You might think this is not a bad thing, until you realize they charge 2 dollars and 50 cents for a bottle of ROOM TEMPERATURE water. And not even that, the refrigerator is locked, so you can't get into the damn thing and refrigerate your own drinks.

3) You might say, hey captain, use your back up dialup to get around their "high speed" internet. I would, of course, if they didn't charge 1.00 for the first minute and 10 cents for each additional minute for LOCAL CALLS.

4) they also offer free tv in the rooms. That is if you like network tv or pbs. They don't even give free cspan. That's what turned me against them. Hell with hbo or showtime, I want to watch congress. Not here I don't.

5) I witnessed a maid blow her nose into sheets she was taking into a room to put on a bed.

Hey, why gripe? At least the cardkey worked. Good god I'd be better off in a holiday inn.