about that hotel

For our honeymoon, Joey and I took a Mediterranean cruise. We docked one day in Montenegro, where we bought a bottle of wine at the local market for two euro. A few hours later, bound for our next destination, we brought our wine to the ship's dining room. Although we had our own romantic table for two, we really enjoyed the large table of octogenarians next to ours, and we joined them that night for dinner. We offered to share our wine but no one was interested. One dining companion offered us a pearl of wisdom for our new married life: two euro wine in Europe is usually a lot like a two dollar wine in the US: not very good. While I have had more than a few good, cheap bottles of wine in Italy and France, his advice absolutely held true for that Montenegran wine.

So maybe I should have listened to his voice in my head when I booked the Twiga Home in Moshi for $20.

Beside the filthy floors and walls, cobwebs and bugs inside the broken wardrobe, suspect-looking towels (one each), ant infestation and dirty sink, the shower consisted of a faucet slightly over the toilet attached to a live wire with zip ties. We were given the option of A/C, which broke, on, after the staff had left for the night, and since the only bedding available was a thin sheet over the rubber mattress, we actually froze.

I don't know what I was thinking when I booked this place. I'm pretty sure the reviews on Trip Advisor were okay. For a hostel. And truth be told, I've never actually stayed at a hostel before. Had I realized this place was a hostel, I probably wouldn't have booked it because hostels are for college kids who can drink enough they don't care where they're sleeping. But Twiga doesn't call itself a hostel. It calls itself a home. So I canceled my perfectly good reservation at the Protea, a perfectly good South African chain, to save $125, apparently believing it was just a good deal. I'm so smart. And when did I become such a big spender?

So in addition to my moratorium on drinking bad wine, I have instituted a new moratorium on booking bad hotels by establishing a lower limit. Unless that cheap hotel room is sold by Costco or Trader Joes (because everybody knows you can get good, cheap wine there).