B&B Hell

Last Friday, I corrected an urban myth.  You see, legend had it that, particularly on specific stretches of 3-4 days during the months of May-October, a horrible thing happens.  St. Louis, an otherwise lovely city, becomes infiltrated with a plague.  Legions of creatures with blue clothing descend upon the city, shouting obscenities and jeering at our fine citizens, all in the name of baseball (though if you don't do anything for 100+ years, does it really count as baseball?  I digress).   Many St. Louis residents believe the legend's most important lesson: There are no ruder creatures on Earth than the very blue-clothed degenerates I just spoke of...Cubs fans. 

The legend stands corrected. 

In fact, I attended Friday night's Cards vs. Cubs game with two such people, and they were perfectly lovely human beings.  I didn't encounter any issues until AFTER the game.

You see, my friend and I planned a trip to St. Louis for ourselves and our husbands.  Since we always stay downtown and visit that scene, we thought it would be nice to do something a little different.  Much to my surprise, considering her poor taste in sports teams, she found a delightful B&B just outside the downtown area.  We realized after perusing their website that the owners were a gay couple, but decided to keep that piece of information to ourselves, as our respective husbands come from small towns and do not encounter many members of the gay population. 

We checked in before the game and were greeted by one of the owners, who was positively delightful.  He helped us with our bags, showed us to our rooms and, most importantly, showed us where the cookie jar was.  I love this guy! 

After the game, we headed back towards the B&B, and ordered an Imo's pizza.  Those of you who have ever tried to order a pizza after a Cardinals game can probably guess the kind of issues I was dealing with on the phone, trying to place this order: sitting on hold, barely being able to hear once they DID answer, and being rushed right off the phone, ASAP...but not without a promise that the delivery person would call when they were on their way.  I didn't think anything of this, considering that is pretty much standard practice, in my experience, when they deliver to a hotel.  We were also told (at 11:10) that it would be at least an hour before the delivery person arrived.  No problem.  We considered ourselves lucky they weren't done for the night.

We got back to our friends' room, which was on a lower floor, and decided to wait there for 45 minutes or so, then go outside and wait, so as not to disturb any other guests or the owners (who live on property).  So you can imagine our surprise when, at 11:55, my phone rings and the delivery man says he's already here.  We never heard a doorbell, a knock, nothing, so we assumed he was waiting outside. 

We were mistaken.  Apparently the doorbell only rings inside the owners' quarters, which is why we never heard it, but it was rung, because the delivery man was inside, standing there with a man who turned out to be the other owner of the B&B.  And the owner was PISSED!

He proceeded to scream at me, and the pizza delivery man, while I was attempting to pay for the pizzas.  At first, I thought he was joking, because he made comments like, "You really ordered pizzas at midnight?"  I learned quickly that he was very serious and very angry.  He began to yell about how he was startled awake in the middle of the night, from a sound sleep, by the doorbell, which kind of scared him, only to find a pizza delivery man standing there.  I apologized repeatedly, and explained that we were told the driver would call when he was on his way and they never called.  I explained how sorry I was for his inconvenience.  The pizza man apologized to me, to him, and for me to him.  He said they usually leave a note if he's supposed to call and there was no note, so he didn't realize he should call.  (Brief aside: I can understand how annoying it must be to be woken up in the middle of the night.  I can understand why he might be worried because they are located in a nice area....but there's a not so nice area a few blocks away.  It's not like I don't realize there was a "party foul" committed.) 

Did both my and the delivery man's apologies stop the screaming?  HELL no.  It just got worse!  As the pizza man was leaving, the owner began ranting and raving "This is so rude and outrageous!  I'm sorry but this kind of thing just pisses me off.  I'm the innkeeper and I live here too and my doorbell gets rung in the middle of the night and it's a pizza delivery guy?  Who orders pizza at midnight? Are you kidding me?  What are you, in a gang?" 

A gang?  Really?  REALLY?!  I understand the startled state and the frustration, but when you hear that a person orders a pizza at midnight the first thing you think of is that perhaps they're in a GANG? 

W....T....F?!?!

Now is as good a time as any to mention that I was wearing navy linen shorts from Gap, and a gray tshirt from VS with red glitter and the word "love" written multiple times across the back.  What kind of gang has a uniform of linen shorts and glitter/love?  The gay gang?  The Britney Spears Club?  Oh, I know, the infamous Former Sorority Girl Gang.  Give me a freakin' break, dude. 

I think, perhaps if I hadn't been so busy trying to not to cry, I would have laughed in his face.  But, the reality is, I was humiliated and terrified because this guy seemed totally unstable.  In fact, the only reason this whole encounter ended, was because (even after my continued apologies and promises it wouldn't happen again) this bitchy queen finally stomped off (literally, stomped) waving his hands frenetically and saying "Fine, whatever, just GO eat your (insert sassy at-ti-tude tone here) PIZZA and I'll see you at breakfast."

But we didn't see him at breakfast.  In fact, we didn't see him at all the rest of our stay there.  To be totally accurate, since I was the one who went down to get the pizza, I'm the only one who ever saw him at all.  If it hadn't been for this incident, neither my husband nor my friend's husband would've ever known there WAS another owner. 

The incident was never mentioned by the original (polite) owner.  No apology was ever given.  No free night's stay offered.  Nothing.  I guess they're pacifists.  Whatever.  Frankly, the queen diva is lucky I came down to pick up the pizza and not one of our drunken closed-minded husbands.  It could have been a lot worse, and I am (seriously) thanking God that it was me downstairs and not them. 

What's really unfortunate is that (other than the infamous "pizza throwdown") it is a beautiful B&B, very comfortable with large rooms.  The breakfast was good, the nice owner knew just how long to chit chat and when to leave you alone, as if it were a 6th sense almost.  The location is excellent, very close to downtown, but also close to more unique shops and restaurants.  Unfortunately, we will never return. 

The Goofy Food Gang (or Muffin Top Clan, whatever you prefer) will spend our money elsewhere.

As some of you know, Adam and I attended the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game in St. Louis this week. We had a blast, but rather than go into every stinkin' detail, I made a top 10 list.

Top 10 Things That Made My Trip

10. Getting kicked in the back of the head/neck the ENTIRE time I was in my (very expensive) seat at Busch Stadium by a 1-2 yr old sitting on his mother's lap. Granted, I understand children are free, only so long as they sit on a parent's lap, and it's not like there were a whole lot of spare seats available during the All-Star week. I get it. I really do. At the same time...don't act like you don't know what your kid is doing when they are SITTING ON YOUR LAP. It's kind of hard to miss.

9. The 7 yr old to the right of kicky mcgee, who gave an excellent play-by-play and even better commentary. He was very upset with the umpire's determination of the strike zone in comparison with what is considered the strike zone in his video game ("it's way bigger, dude.")

8. The man we bought tickets from off of eBay (Sam) turning out NOT to be a scam artist, and actually a very nice guy, despite a few spam emails received directing us to Western Union the ticket money to Jeffrey Takeda in the UK. (P.S. It's a pretty good indicator that you're looking at a fake email when it's signed: "Regards, verylegitimate" At least make very legitimate 2 words, gosh!)

7. Ellen, our waitress at Zia's in The Hill for being the best waitress ever and explaining to us how only 2 men own all the parking in downtown StL, so expect to get f'd if you don't park at your hotel...or maybe even then too. (Side note, this is why StL beats Chicago ANY day of the week. Our parking at a DOWNTOWN HOTEL during the biggest baseball week of the year, with several main events located immediately across the street from the hotel....had a $20 fee to park for the entire time we were there. We spent one night in downtown Chitown this April which, by the way, is nowhere near Wrigley Field, and spent $50 to park for ONE night. Suck it Chicago.)

6. Learning that my dog has somehow (after a little over a year) decided to be a humper. My parents' hellion, ahem, dog, Gracie may be an instigator but I'm pretty sure that was a surprise. I swear, Bella has never humped anything, anyone, any dog, nothing. No idea where she got the idea to start humping. I blame Gracie. She's like the bad little kid at school that your parents won't let you play with because they don't want the bad kid to rub off on you. Bella learns all kinds of new tricks after she stays with Gracie...although I suspect Bella's grandma and grandpa maaaaaaaay have something to do with the sudden need to jump into chairs, lay on the bed, and etc. Let's just all hope that's not where she learned ALL her new tricks...gross.

5. Getting locked out of our hotel room at 1 AM after the All-Star Game. I really love it when employees try and tell you how much "trouble" they'll get in for doing their jobs. "Oh, I could really get in a lot of trouble for resetting your room key." Are you serious? "Well, if you don't know the SSN of the person who booked the room, that is." Keep in mind, the person who booked our rooms is a friend of a friend whom we just met, and although the room is technically in her name since we have not checked out/paid yet, they do have Adam's credit card on file already for incidentals and express checkout. So, no, I'm sorry, I do not know her SSN, nor do I want to wake her up and ask for it in order for you, lovely hotel front desk worker, to DO YOUR JOB. Also, I really do not want to stand up here and argue with you about why you should do your job and fix what is clearly a hotel problem (non-working key) at ONE AM after I've been out in the bleeding hot sun all damn day giving my every last tourist dollar to float the city's economy. GIVE ME THE FRICKIN KEY, BITCH! I won.

4. Getting up to our room after the key incident, only to have Adam (who has a severely plugged nose from allergies) walk in and say "wonder where they hid the joint?" Our room REEKED of pot. Not like, maybe some dirty hippies walked by. Like 5 of us searched the room for a kilo of kush. We didn't find anything. Maybe it was just me being an anxious and paranoid person (or maybe it was the pot! haha) but I was kinda freaking out about being charged for smoking in a non-smoking room. After all the hoopla in IL regarding indoor smoking and the crazy high fees if they do smell smoke in your room, I was not about to get charged (or have the friend who purchased the rooms get charged, since the front desk can't do their jobs) for something I didn't do, especially something illegal. So, I called the front desk, who assured me they would send up security. It is now almost 2 AM and we are exhausted. I waited 45 minutes and went to bed. No one showed up.

The more I thought about it, when we originally left our room earlier that day, they were cleaning someone else's room, and I noticed there were 3 cleaning ladies in there, which I thought was kind of weird. It's the Holiday Inn, for crying out loud! How many people does it take to clean that size of room? One of the cleaning ladies was actually sitting at the room's desk, working on something. I couldn't see if she was actually on someone's laptop or what the deal was, but I remember thinking, thank God we put up our do not disturb sign so they won't clean our room. Clearly that worked out.

3. Seeing Ted Lilly not only get booed when they introduced the All-Stars, but sit his ass on the bench for the entire game. That's what happens when you've been losers for 101 years.

2. Yadier Molina's game-changing hit. Yadi is my homeboy.

1. My good friend, the 7 yr old commentator: "I don't know about this Ichiro; he looks kinda like a sissy."