A View Massive Amounts Of Drugs Can't Pretty Up

December 7, 2006 at 4:31 PM | by markj | Comments (0)

You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.

Editor's Note:
[Hotel Maven Joe is a man of many words.

We parsed Joe's Amsterdam Anti-View tale of woe in two--here is Part 1 is after the jump.

Look for Part 2 tomorrow.]

Joe's Intro
Whilst in Amsterdam over Thanksgiving break from our semester abroad, my best friend and I were hit with a double anti-view.

Granted, our...er...choice of recreational activities in Amsterdam may have contributed to our not caring about what was out the window. However, I'm a hotel guy from way back, and my friend trusted me to book every hotel and hostel in Europe.

Joe's Anti-View #2
Long story short, we discovered that RailEurope had not charged my credit card for our train tickets back to Rome after Thanksgiving. Booking new tickets meant spending an extra night in the city due to availability, so after a bit of searching on TripAdvisor and Expedia, ended up booking the Albus Grand Hotel for one night in a standard double for 79 euro. The hotel was located in a beautiful part of the city, and I figured that the 8-story building must afford great views of the Rembrandtsplein area and the canals. I even called the hotel before booking and confirmed that the rates are not based on view, and then put in a request for a high floor. Great, right?

When we checked in, the upbeat front desk woman informed us we had been upgraded free to a deluxe room, and handed us the card keys to room 110. One-ten...that would be on the first floor, the one above the lobby? Still optimistic about the upgrade, we went to the room...looked out the window...and saw this gorgeous vista.

I dared not even ask to change our room since my friend was sick and needed to rest. When returning later that evening with some cold medicine, I tried to crack a joke with the front desk woman about our "beautiful...view..." from room 110. She earnestly thanked me with a big, apparently genuine smile...I can tell you that I don't believe she knew where in the building our room actually was. It didn't even show up on the emergency exit plan (which of course I forgot to photograph) either. Everything else about the hotel was fine. Room was clean, bed was comfortable, pay per view movies were 11 euro for unlimited viewing per day, power shower (ahem, a hole in the floor enclosed by a shower curtain) was a godsend after 4 nights in a hostel. Sigh...thank goodness it was only 79 euro.

But that view. Ahem...anti-view.

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