No-Star to Five-Star Hotels

 

Four in a Bed is a British TV show that I enjoy. Each week they select four B&Bs. Their owners visit each other's places and rate them.  

Bienvenue chez nous is the French equivalent. 

The format is the same:

• Arrival
• Room introduction
• Inspection by guests
• Activity
• Dinner
• Sleep
• Breakfast
• Rating forms
• Payment of what each guest thought the other was worth
• Departure 

In the fifth program, the guests meet around a table, look at the rating forms, challenge some statements others made. The one whose payment is the greatest percentage is the winner.  

The rating sheet graded the B&Bs on:

• Hosts
• Cleanliness
• Facilities
• Sleep quality
• Breakfast
• Desire to stay again  

There are similarities in both the different British and different French personalities such as nasty to nice, competitive, arrogant, genteel, friendly, humorous, the same range found in most of humanity. 

Some cultural differences stand out. 

The Brits go out of their way to find dust, a hair on the sheets and consider breakfast, especially the sausage, important.

The French emphasize the dinner quality and score (one-ten) far harder almost never giving tens. 

I've stayed in lots of B&Bs and hotels with ratings from no-star to five- star.

Now whenever I stay in a B&B or a hotel, I pretend I have the rating form to fill out. I do it just for fun.

Here's some experiences 

Two no-stars a treat 

Surprise! Both were spotless. One was in Coral Gables FL for a month. The owner had moved from Cuba and bought the hotel to renovate only the month before. We started sharing a glass of wine or tea many nights and chatting about my marketing assignment and his reconstruction progress or lack there of. 

Another one-star hotel in Lyon, France also had a lovely owner that was trying to make a go of it while underfunded. His enthusiasm was delightful.

Five-Star non-perfection

Our five-star hotel in Lisbon, Portugal had an elderly doorman who had a walk-on role in a James Bond movie when he was a teen. Our suite was spotless and beautiful. The view spectacular. The Eggs Benedict would make any chicken that contributed an egg swell with pride.

However, on one staircase the banister was loose. I mentioned it at the desk. When we went back the next year, it was still loose. 

We are just back from Zermatt at a spotless three-star. The style was definitely wooden chalet with great art work. Staff was more than helpful and multi-lingual. Breakfast in many Germanic hotels have a little canister on the breakfast table for throwaway anything which I love. Also the wide selection meats, cheeses, fruits, bread, juices, jams and more is great.

The only negatives were two tiles missing from the outside of the shower and an electric plug that didn't work. The list of television stations on a card did not match those of the television. A bit more shampoo would have been nice. Writing all that, two good nights sleep, and all the positives far outweighed the negatives.

As always, I realize how lucky I am in this beautiful country where I live, there are no bombs or drones destroying life around me. My loving husband and dog are nearby. I have what I need or more usually when I want it. A fallen bathroom tile has no importance other than to be part of this blog.

    

John McLaughlin 1939-2026

A problem with age is losing people that had influence in your life.

John McLaughlin was my Chaucer professor at Lowell, a lifetime ago. He gave me a fascination and love of anything medieval as much as if he put diamonds and rubies in a package and tied it with a ribbon. More so probably.

Because he didn't have a car, Dr. Burto, the department head, who had a car, gave him a ride from Cambridge to Lowell. 

I would give John a ride back to where I lived near the Reading train station. He would catch a train back to Cambridge. We had wonderful conversations on the 30 minute drive.

His reading of Chaucer sounded beautiful when his Glaswegian accent mixed with the middle English of the Canterbury Tales.

John was born in Glasgow, Scotland. We had trouble understanding his lectures. He never lost his accent. 

We met up a few years back in Washington, D.C. when I stayed with my daughter, who joined us along with John's lovely and talented wife for a meal. He recited part of Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida for us proving to my daughter I was right how beautiful Chaucer was spoken in Middle English mixed with Glaswegian. 

I still can recite the opening of the Canterbury Tales.                

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur

Of which vertú engendred is the flour 

 

One night when visiting John and his first wife in their Cambridge 

apartment, their guest Carolyn and he were talking about her upcoming orals, I realized the track my life was on wasn't where I wanted it to be. 

 

The academic life wasn't going to be possible for me, but I needed to follow my dreams. It happened slowly, but it happened sometimes by lucky accident.

 

John's life was an example. A boy born into Glasgow poverty one of nine boys he didn't follow the typical path that he should have followed. He was a boxer and later in the merchant navy. 

 

He found a guardian angel, a wealthy woman already supporting his family through Bundles of Britain. She pushed him to live up  to his potential ending with his Ph.D. from Harvard where he was both magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

 

John and I only touched bases periodically after I graduated, aided by e-mail. His eclectic interests in folk music that included his radio show Roots and Wings as well as teaching made me appreciate the indirect contributions to my life. That we agreed on political honesty gave me confirmation I wasn't crazy.

 

He was a lucky man, who reveled in his wife, children and grandchildren, his American nationality and his Scottish heritage. When he was born in 1939 no one could have predicted the roads he would walk. Maybe he did more than walk them. He experienced them in greater depth than most of us.  

 

Rest in Peace.