Cape Breton

Well, traveling with me is never dull… Sadly for my husband. I think that he would enjoy a nice quiet trip where everything went as planned! That never quite seems to happen. Although, I have to admit that I do cause some of the trouble that occurs!

We headed down to Cape Breton for a really quick trip to deliver my mother and meet up with my brother and his family. Mom then continued her journey with my brother and family. I kept meaning to book a hotel room for me and Kim, but would only think of it as I was running late, or when I was not near a phone or computer… Finally, the day before we were to leave, my mother offered to make arrangements. She booked a hotel room for us in Port Hastings. She and my brother were staying in Port Hawkesbury, just down the road.

The drive to Cape Breton was lovely and uneventful, but once we arrived, we headed confidently to our hotel. There was no reservation. The very unhelpful lady at the front desk wanted to know if we were sure that we had reserved there and not at another hotel, which apparently is connected to them. Mom had accidentally ended up booking through Hotels.com. She had phoned what she thought was the phone number for the actual hotel, and ended up talking to someone at a call centre. Our reservation confirmation did have the name and the address of the hotel where we were at that moment standing, but no room had been reserved. The lady at the desk called their sister hotel to see if we were booked there, but no luck either. We had wanted a room with a queen size bed, but all of those rooms were already booked, so off we went to look for somewhere to stay.

Our first stop was at the sister hotel, but we did not even make it into the office… The place was dark except for the office, and really just had a closed down look to it. It was probably fine, but I don’t get the creeps often about hotels (we have stayed in some jems!) so when I do, we tend to move on. We decided to stop in to the hotel where Mom and my brother were staying to see if they had space. The same call centre that supposedly booked us a room had said that this hotel was full, so we figured they might be wrong about that too… Turns out they weren’t. We drove a bit longer before returning to our first hotel and booking a double room.

Through all of this, my brother, his wife and kids were at a concert. They got out of the concert at about 11pm and went to their hotel to check in. They had two rooms with two double beds each booked… or so they thought. Turns out that they only had one room with two queen size beds, and 5 people to accommodate. My brother came to our hotel to share the news with us. Our room only had one double bed, so that was not much help. My mom went to find out if we could move to another room with two double beds. We were told that we would have to pay for the one we were in (which I understand) as well as a new room should we move. My mom felt that if we straightened the bed that the room would be as good as new… There was a thick film of dust on the TV screen (and probably everywhere else too, but it was obvious there) and the carpet looked as if it had not been cleaned in a while either. According to our “reservation” we were staying in deluxe, one star accommodations… In the end, we did managed to get a cot for my mother so she could sleep in our room and my brother and his clan could sleep at the other hotel.

We still don’t know if Mom’s credit card has been charged for the room that did not exist… We will find out soon enough I guess. It was an adventure though. Kim assures me that from now on he will be booking our accommodations as I tend to leave things to the last minute, and Mom somehow managed to make a reservation without an actual room!

Kim and I love going to Cape Breton, but we wonder if it is meant to be… The first trip we took Kim ended up with pneumonia, on our honeymoon we missed a call from our hosts telling us that they would not be there and that we should just move in, so we almost called the police thinking that they might be injured somewhere in their house, and this time, despite our efforts, we almost ended up with nowhere to sleep… Never a dull moment!