Second Time Around, These Delta Shotgun Houses Gave Us The Blues

August 1, 2011 at 12:10 PM | by juliab | Comment (1)

All this week, Julia Buckley will be taking us down the Blues trail in the Mississippi Delta and giving us the lowdown on the hotel scene. So kick off your blue suede shoes and get comfy.

It�s almost exactly two years since we visited the Mississippi Delta to follow the Blues trail, and we were so entranced by what we found there that we�ve spent the last two years fantasizing about a return. Finally, two weeks ago, we made it out there, and for old time�s sake, we chose the Tallahatchie Flats in lovely little Greenwood as our first stop.

Last time, we adored it � comfy bed, gorgeous setting and, the Flats� jewel in the crown, their fantastic manager Les. This time, though, we couldn�t help but be a little disappointed, and not just because it turned out Les was no longer chez Tallahatchie (he�s been replaced by an equally nice lady).

No, what bugged us this time was noticing that the cleaning standards had gone down a steep hill. Last time we�d noted that our bathroom sink could have been cleaner; this time, it wasn�t just the streaky sink that was the problem; the toilet didn�t look as it if had been cleaned, the shower almost certainly hadn�t (it had the label off someone�s facecloth on the dirty shelf, and we had to rinse black dirt from the shower tray) and the entire bathroom smelled a little, err, steamy.

Then there was the kitchen. Brilliant to have a kitchen, obviously, but it would have been nicer if there hadn�t been a dirty pan in the sink, and if the one knife we�d tried to use hadn�t been sticky. We quickly decided to eat out.

As for the bedroom, there were massive cobwebs hanging from under the bed, and there was something smelling of some kind of bodily excretion somewhere around the headboard area. We thought, at first, that the pillows hadn�t been washed, but a cautious sniff confirmed that they had. Still not sure what that was.

Not that the Tallahatchie Flats are beyond repair. Staying in a shotgun cottage on a cotton plantation is still an awesome idea, and far more atmospheric than the swanky Alluvian. The new onsite manager is a sweetheart and we even managed to get some decent WiFi reception outside her shack (not ours, sadly). We definitely want to come back, and since prices start at $65, we probably will. This time we were assigned Miss Aubrey�s house, a relatively whopping shack with two bedrooms, two terraces and a living room as well as the kitchen and bathroom. In theory: supercool.

But the shacks do need to be clean. Luckily, all that would take is a day of a proper scrubdown. Let�s hope they do it before it loses its potential.

Disclaimer: our shack was paid for by the Greenwood CVB as part of an article for a UK magazine, but all opinions are our own.

HotelChatter

Select a Destination:

HotelChatter Reviews / Dirty Hotels / Delta Hotels / Mississippi Hotels / Budget Hotels / Weird Hotels / → All Tags