OUR STAY AT THE FAIRFIELD - LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING

A mad dash to Spokane in pursuit of our new dream home saw us lodged at the Fairfield Inn Express there for two days.
Rod and I had been assembling another List of favorites, houses we hoped to see in the city this trip, having met with disappointment three weeks ago when we had made the journey. It happened that Rod had two Safety meetups coming up so we scheduled them around a quick trip Spokane, stopping at Half Moon Bay just out of San Francisco for an overnighter, before proceeding north to Washington, and the other at Lodi, which we hit on our return trip.

We weren’t especially looking forward to another go-round of viewings, having worn ourselves out that last trip, taking in a dozen or so homes two days in a row before climbing back in the rig and driving thru the 3 States to get back home in time for Rod to go back to work on the monday. And this trip was going to be even more time constrained. About the time we got to The Dalles in northern Oregon, where we HAD intended to overnight it, after leaving Half Moon Bay around 11 am that morning and it being only 10 pm, we looked at each other and decided on the spur of the moment to just keep driving! We were in good spirits, had energy having both gotten good nites sleeps the nite before in a lovely room where we could hear, if not see, the ocean waves rolling up the beach. We’d dined on wonderful seafood at Sams Chowder House right on the beach, just down the street, sipping micro brews, relaxing as we watched the tide go out. Heaven!

So onwards and upwards or so they say! We arrived in Spokane at 2 am, and secured a room at the Fairfield Inn for two nites. Exhausted and wanting soley to just crawl into a nice cool bed and lose ourselves to sleep for the next 6 or so hours, I pulled back the covers on my QS bed (we had a room with 2) to discover several long black hairs throughout the bed! GASP!!! The sheets were wrinkled and clearly, clearly the maid had NOT changed the bedding. Rod checked the other bed and it ‘appeared’ to be fine so we slept in that one, just being too darned tired to see about a room change at that late hour. Well the uncleanliness didn’t end there. The next morning when I pulled open the drapes on our top floor room, which by the way had wonderful wide windows, wall to wall, to my further dismay I could see food scraps (rice!!), lint and dirt on the carpets. They also had not been vacuumed or cleaned. Entering the bathroom I was met with more long black hairs on the bathroom floor. This room had been totally missed by the maid for some reason. I guess it happens (??). But at $120 a nite we DID expect better, we’ve stayed in Motel 6’s for $50 a nite that,though small and basic, have always, always (!) been clean. A clean bed is really all I need and expect.

We mentioned the bed issue to the desk clerk as we headed out to meet with our Realtor, and she argued ‘oh no, we ALWAYS change our sheets, we ALWAYS clean the rooms”… she offered a small $10 discount which I don’t believe we even got in the end, but all I asked her was “Please see the room is cleaned and our beds changed for tonite”.

I wish I could say that was the end of it, that there were no more issues. There were. We returned to our room around 9 that nite after a full day to discover the AC was not working. It was off when we came in the room and when I turned it on (it was 96 degrees outside all day, and hot and stuffy in the room), the machine made a humming noise, then a clank, sputter, sput (!) and went off! Tried two or three times and only hot air would come out of it. Rod called the desk and was told the maintenance man was off duty, but that they had one more room on our floor we could move to if we wanted…but that it was a Smoking Room. We got the key and walked down the hall to check it out, sometimes Smoking Rooms aren’t too bad??? This one was…it literally reeked of smoke. So we threw our arms in the air, laughed, and determined to make the best of it, returned to our original room. Thankfully the rooms windows DID open and around midnite it had cooled down to a do-able 80 degrees. We both slept well.

There was no point in complaining to the desk clerk as we checked out, it was not the same one from the night before, or the night before that even. At least we had a roof over our heads, a warm one mind you, but were safe and secure in our beds, having seen many of the less fortunate sleeping on and wandering the streets each nite we were there. A sign of the times I suppose, this difficult recession and those hardest hit by it. Also, perhaps the fact we HAD found the house we hoped to find the first day in town, AND our offer accepted that same day (!!) that allowed for our more generous and open minded attitude about the hotel accommodations, it seemed unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

"Don't get your knickers in a knot. Nothing is solved and it just makes you walk funny." ~Kathryn Carpenter