Livin' it up at the Hotel California

I kid you not - that song was blaring at about 12:30am this morning from a bar across the street from the Hotel San Francisco, the latest stop on our hotel tour of Mexico. After four days at one place with no working phones and marginal at best Internet, we picked the next stop based on location - near the Alameda and just a couple blocks from the previous place - and a few reviews.

The first clue that things were amiss was their inability to find the prepaid reservation. No matter - they gave us rooms anyway. My room had a large metal "X" blocking the window. Fellow borg-dwellers will recognize the feature - it's earthquake-proofing. The beds were conveniently pre-indented by all of the bodies who've slept (or not) on them over the past 40 years. They promised wireless Internet and gave us a code; when no signal was picked up, they shrugged - no problem. No Internet. The phone in the rooms worked, and as promised, phonecard calls were allowed - but were double-charged. Using the phonecard would result in the same two-dollar per minute rate as a direct dial call - as well as depleting the phonecard.

Nothing, though, compared to the band playing loud 1980s/1990s rock at an ear-splitting volume just across the street. Did I mention that the street was a sound corridor? The hotel was tall, and a new building was being built across the narrow street - a wall of uninterrupted concrete. Made a perfect echo chamber and amplified the noise quite nicely.

I'll skip the other details - the 70 or so teenagers - mostly from the US - who seemed to have the run of the place, without chaperones. Or the 50 or so ten year olds who were running around the lobby. Oh, and then there was the matter of not one but both elevators going out at about midnight, one crammed full of teenagers.

The Student wandered out just before midnight (he took the stairs) to make a phone call from a Telcel phone on the street. I camped out in my room and tried to read, but it would've been like reading at Satyricon or the Pine Street back in the day. So instead, I sat in the groove in the bed and sang along. I also decided that four-day reservations be damned, we were getting out of there today.

And so we did, packing up and checking out this morning. The rooms were prepaid, and I'll take that up with the online agency tomorrow. (The hotel lied about the availability of some services, so I'm prepared to put on my pushy lawyer hat with the travel company to get at least some of the money coughed up.) By 11am, we'd found another hotel and proved the song wrong. They may check us out any time they like - but at least we were able to leave.

We're now ensconced in a place where the Student stayed several years ago, conveniently located to the Zocalo and Cathedral, lovely rooms, nice staff, great rooftop courtyard, absence of Eagles, Radiohead, Nirvana, and other covers. Oh - and the elevators work. Bonus. I think I'll sleep tonight.

Up for a bit still - maybe I'll get some photos posted. Still trying to figure out photo resizing on the Mac. Oy vey.