The pink room hotel

Normally the places we end up are nice enough, or mundane enough, that they aren't worth writing about. However, our stay here was much longer, since we had no where to go except on our bikes out in the rain. As well, it seems to be an accumulation of overall questionable hotel things...and then some.

The fact that it is pink (a colour I detest) is the icing on the cake. The fact that it is paired with a dark grey tile just looks like a design disaster.

Open concept
When you hear of an open concept house, you normally think of an open area that captures the kitchen, the dining room and the living room. Here, because it is a hotel, you have only a small glass cube wall that divides the bedroom and the bathroom.

Bathroom concert hall
Since the bathroom is made mostly of tile - except for the shared glass wall - it acts like a mini concert hall. Nothing like going to do some business and having it echo throughout the place.

The shower
This part actually looks the best, as you have two options: a huge shower head sprinkling from above, or a hand held arm. But since it is open, spraying on tile, it makes the entire floor wet. At least when I was in Greece with this type of concept, we were provided a squeegee. Here, we just get a really wet floor, all over the place.

And since the whole room is open, the whole room also steams up.

I should mention that this is the third time we've come across this open shower concept. The last two, however, had a tub that ended up capturing most of the spray. Although, we had to laugh at the first, which actually hung a picture in the shower - guess they didn't mind it getting wet.

Beautiful vs functional
The french seem to prefer beautiful room, versus functional rooms. (And keep in mind that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.) For the higher-rated rooms you tend to find fancier bedspreads, elaborate light fixtures, or some nice tiling. Nothing about better beds, pillow, or more shelf space in the bathroom.

Dinner
Normally our included dinners have a menu a carte, which means we get to choose between two options for dinner. (This is a very popular, and cheaper, way to eat dinner here in France.) However, tonight we were demi-pension, which means we had no real choice, nor any paper that I could try and translate.

The first course was great - a pumpkin soup. Actually, we've usually found that the first courses are usually the best.

The main course was poisson, or fish. At least I remember reading that if there was only one choice that I could request an alternate, so I did. Viande, or meat, was going to be my mystery option.

What irritated me at this point was that our tour company specifically asked for allergies or eating restrictions. Obviously this made no lick of difference...

Especially when we received our main course, pork with a mini quiche. I can't eat eggs. So again I became the problem customer, as I really wanted something besides a plate of meat. (It was just cubes of pork, nothing else, and nothing particularly yummy.) So my plate went back and thankfully good ol' potatoes made an appearance.

The finally course was one we were looking forward to - chocolate cake. We made a joke that it will probably be something really small, knowing the french. Well it was no joke, and we got a wee cake about the size smaller than a hockey puck. At least it was very yummy and rich, so it ended up being a nice way to end the evening.

Discothèque
...That is until we got back to our room.

We were up for a bit watching after the meal, and when it came time to turn the lights off, it was lights off, lights on. Lights off, lights on again. Lights off, lights on a few more times. I started laughing, saying that I wasn't in the mood for a discothèque. We both had to laugh at how our room just wouldn't stop giving us surprises. But this one took the cake - the lights wouldn't turn off.

Phoning front desk, no one answered. So instead of getting dressed and trying to find someone to deal with our problem, we removed the lightbulbs from the offending lights. Unbelievable! And the next morning they were still on.