After a rather long, rather depressing, telling-it-like-it-is piece about our two American camps, a short, amusing, telling-it-like-it-was anecdote seems to be in order.
During a recent visit to the Netherlands, we stayed at a beautiful seaside resort hotel.
We had booked what we thought would be a nice room but were greatly surprised when we were shown to a stunning suite, exactly what one would imagine a “presidential suite” to be.
Huge living room with adjacent dining room, two bathrooms, magnificent bedroom, and splendid sea views.
To top it all off, on the dining room table was a beautiful fruit basket along with an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and champagne glasses.
Alas, on closer inspection, we noticed that some of the fruit was moldy and that, oh horror, the ice in the ice bucket had melted.
Greatly offended, I rushed down to reception to lodge a complaint about the fruit and the ice bucket.
The staff apologized profusely but explained that we had been erroneously accompanied to, yes, a presidential suite. They would be very happy to correct the situation by transferring us to the originally booked room.
Equally politely, and somewhat sheepishly, I declined the offer and quickly returned to the suite.
The hotel, however, was even quicker.
Both the fruit basket and the champagne had been removed.
Once we got over such a great loss, we did enjoy our stay roughing it in the presidential suite.
We also learned a lesson, you know, about that horse.
