Hotels en France... Nuit et jour difference!

I'm in the middle of an around the world trip, which is one reason I haven't posted much in the past few weeks.

Today, I'm in France, and have a slight break in the action, but only slightly.

I'd originally booked a hotel which can't remain nameless --- Hotel Arcadia, Cannes-Mandeliu, Cote d'Azur, France.

It looked good on the web, was reasonably priced, and adjacent to where my meetings were going to be.

Then I saw the place...

1) The bed was literally on a frame of 2x6's, and only 6" off the floor. Plus, in typical Euro style, it's a short bed that my feet hang off of...
2) Mold. Not just a few spots... The shower walls looked like a Cruella De Ville full length jacket.
3) Extremely narrow halls. When the maid cart was out, there was no way around it.
4) TV with an 11" screen, mounted on the wall, about 2' from the ceiling, and angled downward. Totally unable to change the channel without a remote, and difficult to watch unless you were laying down on the bed.
5) No 24 hour staff. They went so far as to have a roll-down door over the check-in area, and lock the gate in/out of the parking lot at 2200....

To be fair, there was an upside -- they had good wifi coverage. But that's the only positive I can think of.

I've stayed in a lot of bad places over the years, and this goes down as one of, if not the worst.

Given I needed to be housed there for five days, I packed up and left after one night. It was worth paying the cancellation penalty just not to be there.

Fortunately, the hotel hosting the conference I was attending had availability, so I was able to change.

You know the story about being upgraded in a hotel? Well, it happened to me finally. I checked in late in the evening, and wound up with a suite. Not just a nice room with a separate TV/living area... No, this was larger than my first apartment... Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, kitchen, couch, table seating eight, and a porch overlooking the golf course with a second table also seating eight....

Dumb luck I guess....

Now, to be fair, there was also a downside... There was no wifi in the rooms. They had a hardwire connection available at€10/day, and free wifi in the lobby.

No worries -- given the option of strolling around their stocked lake on the boardwalk to get to the lobby, or showering in a pit of mold and sleeping 6" from the floor, I'll take the walk...

And I did.