Worst Sleep in a Hotel

[DCI Harry Batt]

Visca Catalunya lliure, and all that

[Toby Gymshorts]

The worst night's sleep I've ever had was in the Travelodge at Leeds Bradford airport, but as that was a stopover before travelling home to London after a five-day stag in Ibiza, I'm not sure I can pin that on the amenities.

I suppose that means the award goes to the hotel we stayed in in Paris. The bed itself was fine, if somewhat jammed into a slightly-too-small space, but it was liveable.

Unfortunately the room (in a fully-booked hotel) was right next to the antiquated lift shaft, and the lift seemed to run all night. Creaking cables, thumping doors, the lot.

It also featured a toilet I had to sit sideways on to have a shit, but again I can't really blame the lack of sleep on that.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Is this a past event for adhoc, or his current inter-rail jaunt?

Current. Images in the latest UK heatblast thread, I think.

[elguapo4]

I remember I once stayed in a room with no windows that was right opposite the main downstairs bar in a "hotel" on Lower Gardiner Street in Dublin. I'd gone with a girlfriend and as impoverished students we'd booked it purely for location and price (this was long before tripadvisor reviews). Neither of us slept a wink and not for any reasons of passion, but after at one point someone mistook our room door for the toilet and banged on it loudly for ten minutes demanding how long we were going to fecking be in there. We checked out in the morning and went to a place over the river near the castle.

Moran's Hotel?

[Third rate Leszno]

I've probably forgotten some bad ones, but a Best Western in Bournemouth takes some beating - there was a wedding on and despite it being quite a big hotel, for some reason they'd put us directly above the function room. Having had a long drive down and with another long drive the next day I'm afraid my patience ran out before the music and screaming from downstairs and in the corridors did. I hung out of the window and screamed at some guests milling about below to turn the music down (with a range of added expletives), I put my telly on maximum volume for a couple of hours and at about 11:30pm I went downstairs to enquire when the music would be going off. On being told midnight I believe I may have been slightly rude to the person on reception and indicated that I may take matters into my own hands if it went on a minute past 12. Needless to say I'd wound myself up into such a pointless grump that it took another couple of hours before I had calmed down enough to sleep.

[Lang Spoon]

1999, somewhere in Baixa, Lisbon. What the fucking rough guide referred to as very inexpensive, but clean and characterful and with an engaging host was a disgusting filthy hostel run by a monisyllabic bastard. There were body or crab lice on the blankets, I slept in my clothes. The shared bathrooms/showers were shared with what mostly seemed to be aggressively drunk Russian merchant seamen. Someone had taken a shit in one of the shower stalls. The room and corridor had character like it was out of Barton Fink. There was lots of shouting from nearby.

3 nights booked stay quickly became one night, the mate I was travelling with broke down in tears and went back to Scotland to try to get back with his ex. I found new lodgings.

[Benjm]

I remember I once stayed in a room with no windows...

I stayed in a room with no windows at the Britannia Hotel in Manchester. It was quite a heavy weekend so sleep wasn't a major problem but the place would be a very strong contender in a more general worst hotel competition.

[David Agnew]

A "hotel" in Amsterdam near the station. Expensive. Already the weekend from hell. We were supposed to arrive Saturday afternoon. Instead, the UK Air Traffic Control system went down around noon, we were flying out of Luton, and they have the lowest priority in the country, so no other flights left Luton that day.

We didn't realise this was a high point of the weekend.

That evening was great. Free bar, free food nice hotel, good company from someone we queued for a replacement flight with. Ł500 behind the bar for all the travellers sent there. They sent us three.

Me and my mate were split across two flights. I loss the coin toss and had to get the 7am flight the next morning. I didn't realise at this point that I won the coin toss, as this meant I got the choice of hotel beds.

Got to the hotel. Went to the room. Opened the door, turned the light on, and there were loads of dirty sheets on the floor. Dropped my bags on one of the beds and went for a walk.

Got back, mate still not arrived. Went back to room, turned the light on, dirty sheets have gone. Beds have been made, with the outer sheet folded back, so you didn't have to do it to get into bed. Notice one of the beds has a massive brown stain on the bottom sheet. Make the bed, so it can't be seen, and claim the other bed (hence I won the toss).

Mate arrives, take him to the room, turn the light on. "Why have you turned the light on?" It's at this point I realise there's no fucking window.

Mate goes to the toilet that's shared between the whole floor. Comes back and describes the toilet. The toilet has an inspection shelf, and someone has left something for everyone to inspect. The hotel was above a 24 hour bar, so I never used the toilet in the hotel.

Decided to sleep on the bed, in my clothes, so I didn't discover any surprises within the sheets. Mate sleeps inside the bed with the massive brown stain, none the wiser. Need a piss, so have to go downstairs to the 24 hour bar. And can't just have a piss, so have a pint and a piss. Drank a lot that night, pissed a lot that night, Got less than an hours sleep. The hotel cost Ł200 a night. The most expensive one I've ever stayed in.

And one of the earliest comments on TripAdvisor about this hotel was "WHY DOES GOD HATE US SO MUCH". Best, and most accurate review I've ever seen.

[Sunderporinostesta]

Regensburg, Germany.
A lovely cool verging on hipstery hotel owned by a super cool trendy German woman right bang in the middle of town. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were and what a bargain it was in comparison to everywhere else during the 2011womans WC. So bang in the middle of town that it was next door to the Cathedral/ Number One church…….that rang a bell all night every 15 mins…….and if that weren’t enough rang out with the appropriate number of chimes on the hour every hour.
Two nights of that and I was a nervous wreck.

Does the Euston-Inverness night train count? Never book a cabin over the axle is all I’m saying.

[diggedy derek]

My experience of F1 is similar to
Steveeeeeeeee’s. They’re chamless and basic but they’ve served a purpose many a time for me, back in
the day.

[Nocturnal Submission]

My experience of F1 is similar to
Steveeeeeeeee’s. They’re chamless and basic but they’ve served a purpose many a time for me, back in
the day.

[Balderdasha]

If this was a worst hotel/weirdest overnight experience thread then readers can instead consult my output on the "strange nights away from home" thread.

However, pre-children I was a champion sleeper. I used to regularly sleep with my head banging against the window on the hour long bus into school and as an older teenager I used to sometimes catnap standing upright against a wall in Fabric nightclub with house or techno blaring out.

I had no problem sleeping in the "hotel" in Colombia that turned out to be a brothel, or the one in Mexico that was a breezeblock cube with slices of foam as mattresses where when we turned on the single hanging lightbulb in the middle of the night we found a swarm of cockroaches on the floor. I slept comfortably in budget hostel rooms across the world with other snoring travellers and even went back to sleep after the time that a guy broke into our room in Peru and stroked my bare thigh.

Post-children is another matter entirely. By far the worst sleeps I've had in hotels have all been in relatively nice, expensive business hotels that we stayed in when our daughter was young. For the first couple of years of her life, my husband was doing a lot of work running training courses across the UK (and sometimes Europe) and where he went, we went, whether it was Oxford, Manchester, Cardiff, Ipswich, Cheltenham, or Vienna. Our daughter was a terrible sleeper. Before she was six months old she had not ever slept for more than 90 minutes to two hours in a row at any point, day or night. This meant that I hadn't slept for more than 90 minutes to two hours in a row for the same time period and I was fairly delirious from lack of sleep. I became highly anxious and completely fixated on trying to create a bedtime routine that would help her (and thus me) to sleep longer. At home we had a small measure of success once we moved her into her own bedroom at six months old, and she would sometimes sleep for three, four, maybe even five hours in a row which was bliss. When we were in hotels we couldn't separate her into another room, so we did whatever we could to create a separate space for her, usually a technique of putting her cot next to the window and wrapping the curtains round it until she slept and then moving them to the other side of the cot before dawn.

I was so anxious and fixated on getting her to sleep that I was terrified of making any noise whatsoever in the hotel room while she was going to sleep. I remember trying to lie silent and motionless in our double bed at 7pm in the dark and angrily berating my husband in whispers when after twenty minutes he turned over to relieve his discomfort, causing a rustling noise which I feared would wake our daughter. Sometimes after our daughter eventually went to sleep we would watch half an hour of something on TV with the sound muted, but generally we just went to sleep when she did as it was the only way to get any sleep at all, and we both always had to deal with difficult days the next morning (him running a training course, me solo parenting in an unfamiliar city). When our daughter woke to feed throughout the night, we both woke several times too and after about 4am it was rare for any of us to get back to sleep at all.

Our babies were beautiful and I loved them deeply, we had some memorable, lovely moments exploring new places together, but I would not go back to those days for all the tea in China.

[Felicity, I guess so]

We stayed several nights in the F1 outside Madrid in the emergency caused by Ms F's new colleague pulling the offer of staying with her.
It was newly-opened and deserted and everything worked, the morning staff were bored, so really helpful with directions and advice about estate agents and flat-finding and we remember it with some relief and fondness.

[diggedy derek]

NS, just you wait until you hear about their range of breakfast options.

[WOM]

We stayed in a couple of F1 on our honeymoon and they were quite new and very nice at the time (1999). I remember checking in at a machine like an ATM and not seeing any employees until the morning at breakfast. Small room, of course, and bathrooms in the hall. But otherwise fine.

There was a similar chain I *think* called Hotel Des Villages.

[WOM]

We stayed at one [in France] that was in a suburban area with mixed businesses and residences. On a big vacant lot next door were shit-loads of clay pipes stuck half into the ground for rabbits. And there were *thousands* of rabbits on that chunk of grass, all running hither and yon. Never seen the like before or since.

[Gangster Octopus]

Rabbits hadn't yet learned how to use cigarettes?

[Sam]

Following discussion upthread about blackout things to stick on windows, we've made our own. During the week my girlfriend went to the fabric district and got a huge sheet of 100% blackout material and ten metres of sticky-back velcro, and today we cut the velcro to size and put it up. At 5pm on a sunny afternoon we shut the door, switched off the light and I haven't experienced darkness so complete since we went caving three years ago up in the north west. It won't be particularly portable, what with having to take our window frame with us if we want to erect this particular made-to-measure sheet elsewhere, but having been woken up and then kept awake by cracks of light finding their way through as recently as two nights ago, I'm very much looking forward to this. So thanks again, everyone.