Mold or moss, I don't know, but it was green and fuzzy and definitely some kind of fungus. We then looked up furthur onto the porch above the hot tub and saw this:
A cat scratch post. Okay, well, that made it official, the cat lived there. At a "hotel" with a very, very strict "NO PET" policy.
It was a vacant lot with all kinds of broken down toys over to the right. And below is the vacant house. Borded up, abandoned, probably condemned.
And, the house on the other side of A.R.S:
What you can't see in this picture is their side yard with the abandoned, broken-down school bus in it. So, that is all my pictures. To proceed with the story, we then entered our "suite", absolutely dreading what we would find. Although it was a bit nicer, (it was clean, well-kept, and cozy) it was smaller than our room here at home and felt exactly like we had just gone to visit a great-aunt and were staying in her guest room. As we stood there looking at each other trying to figure out what the heck we should do, we suddenly heard footsteps above us that were so loud I thought the ceiling was going to collapse. We were outta there. We drove back to a really nice-looking ACTUAL hotel (which was actually cheaper than A.R.S.) we'd seen just as we drove into town and got a room. It was so nice inside. Once in our room, we knew our first piece of business had to be cancelling our "suite" and getting our money back. We looked up the place in the phone book, it was no where to be found. That was a little disturbing. Luckily, Bill had the confirmation letter in the van, so he went and got it. We called and got some young girl who said there were no refunds unless something was broken. After arguing with her, she said she'd have the owner call us. A few minutes later, the owner called, and what followed was nothing less than absurd. Seriously, if the confrontation had been in person I would have hit her upside the head with my shoe. The stupid lady, instead of being apologetic and trying to fix the situation like a good business-owner would do, kept asking over and over what was wrong with it. Bill and I each took turns telling her, and she kept saying the dumbest stuff like, "Why did you make the reservation in the first place?" and "What would you have done if you weren't able to find another place to stay?" I thought Bill was going to throw the phone through the hotel window. Then she had the nerve to say, "Do you mind me asking where you did decide to stay?" Bill pretty much told her then what she could do with her romantic "suites" and where she could shove them. And she had the most ridiculous excuses for all that we complained about, such as: it was okay that the hot tub opened up to the yard and the neighbors, because the house was vacant. And she kept blatantly lying to us, saying we clocked in at 2:58 (check in was at 3, we got there at 3:15) which would conveniently allow her to charge us for the whole first half of the day, and that we were there a whole half hour. We were there about five minutes. She kept telling us that if nothing was broken or "sub-standard" there would be no refund. Everything was sub-standard, Devil Woman! Grow a brain cell already! Then she said our only hope of a refund was if she could re-sell our room for that night, and even then it would be minus a 25% cancellation fee. She said she would call us no later than six that evening to let us know. She never called. In the meantime, we called our credit card company to try and stop the payment. The guy on the phone told us he had a payment today for a Bavarian Lodge (the new hotel we were at) and a payment a month ago (when Bill first reserved the rooms at the A.R.S.) for a Bavarian Lodge!!! Oh no you didn't. Something was seriously going on here. The plot thickened. We marched down to the front desk of our hotel and asked if they were in any way connected with A.R.S. They said no, but that the people that owned A.R.S. also owned a chocolate shop that used to be called Bavaring Lodging. Okay, the nice ladies behind the desk were off the hook. They asked why, and after hearing our story proceeded to tell us that there had been a lot of complaints about A.R.S. and that we needed to take a complaint form to the Chamber of Commerce who would take it very seriously. After all, Leavenworth depends on tourism to survive, they can't have stuff like this happen. They even gave us the form, called over to the C. of C. to see who was there to help us, and also told us to try going to the chocolate shop (which was also the office of A.R.S., there was no office at all at the house) to see if the devil woman was there, to try and settle it in person. We first drove over to try and settle it with the lady. They had just closed, but the young girl (the same one we had spoken to on the phone at first) told us the owner would be back in the morning at 10 and then again at noon. We said we'd come back. This is when we decided we needed evidence. We snuck back to A.R.S. and took the above pictures. We felt like spies. It was really fun. Back at the hotel, I fell asleep because I was nauseaus from reading in the car, and poor Bill watched UFC in Spanish for three hours. I woke up at 11 pm, and every restaurant was closed. We decided to take a walk, and that was by far my favorite part of the weekend. It was dark, beautiful spring weather, and all the bavarian shops were lit up with little yellow lights. There were other people out walking, too. We walked along the closed shops and peeked in the windows and chose which ones we wanted to go into the next day. Then we walked to the gas station and bought a lovely dinner of a frozen personal pizza for me and a Hot Pocket for Bill, which we had to eat on wash cloths back at the hotel. Look at me trying to save money by not wanting to spend ten bucks on plates and forks at the gas station. The next morning we slept in but woke up in time for the awesome continental breakfast of waffles and to be at the chocolate shop at 10. They were closed. Interesting. We shopped for two hours and went back at noon. The she-man that was working there was devil woman's sister and said she was out of town for the weekend. Okay, now some serious butt was about to be kicked. We marched right over to the Chamber of Commerce and after telling our story, the people there were bending over backwards to help us. They took my little complaint form from me (which I had yet to fill out) and handed me a few sheets of paper, instead, saying it sounded like I needed a lot of space to write! I filled them up with our story and were promised they would let us know what their ethics commity decided when they met next week. Satisfied, we shopped the rest of the day, which resulted in aching feet. So, before dinner, we soaked in the public hot tub and met some very nice people from Canada, eh? Then we went to the front desk to look at all the restaurant menus and our nice friends from the day before were working. They asked how things went and we updated them. They were so apologetic and sympathetic, soooo nice. They suggested some places to eat, and we left for a place called Gustav's that was delectible, and got some gelato ice cream next door that made us never want American ice cream again, it was so good. When we got back to our hotel room, we were shocked to find a tray on the table of two wine glasses and a bottle of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider, with a note from our two friends up front saying they were sorry for our unfortunate experience and hoped our stay didn't end up being too awful. It was so sweet, I couldn't believe it! They even signed their two names, not just "staff." It was really cool because we were going to get Martinelli's that night anyway, they saved us four bucks. The next morning we gorged ourselves on more Belgian waffles and checked out of our beloved Bavarian Lodge. We hit the shops one last time for last minute stuff for the kids, although I think we spent the most on me. (oops.) Then we left, seven lbs. of fudge heavier. (in a bag, not in us.) Diet? What diet? And that's it. That was our roller coaster of a weekend. It felt like ten minutes. When people ask how our trip was, I don't even know what to answer. There was soooooo much good and so much crap, too. All in all, it was quite the adventure, but the bottom line was it was still a weekend of just Bill and I without the kids, and that was the whole point in the first place, eh?
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