MY CRAP HOLIDAY

My Crap Holiday

By Little Havana Gringa

A dozen years ago, my husband and I were winter-weary Ohioans on a trip to sunny Miami.

It all began to go horribly wrong just before our plane arrived in the Magic City. The flight attendant asked me if I could walk down a flight of steps.

As a wheelchair user with a severe – and very obvious – disability, descending steps was not an option. Upon landing, the other passengers deplaned while we waited 45 minutes for the airline to bring a mechanized, rickety lift.

On the tarmac, we waited another 45 minutes for a wheelchair-accessible van to take us to the terminal. We had terrible visions of our luggage being stolen given the delay.

Repeated pleas to airline employees to have someone secure our bags were met with disinterested stares or amused giggles.

“Your bags will just go round and round,” one wag assured us.

We finally arrived at baggage claim and our bags were nowhere to be found.

Because our week’s itinerary included a job interview for my husband, we began strategizing, since our wardrobe now consisted of the clothes on our backs and undergarments in a small carry-on. The next day, determined to turn fate around, we descended on a nearby outlet mall like shopping commandos.

Since my husband has never been able to purchase slacks “off the rack,” that evening I sat beside the hotel pool formulating how to “hem” trouser legs with nothing but safety pins.

After two nights, we changed hotels, wanting to experience different parts of the area.

This new hotel was a lovely South Beach Art Deco property.

We hadn’t anticipated the all-night dance party just outside our window.

If you turned up the room TV to full volume, you could almost hear it over the bass-heavy dance pop that played until 4 am.

With just a couple hours’ sleep, we rose early to head off to the job interview to find the hotel’s only elevator out of order.

After desperately pleading with the hotel manager to “do something,” the elevator was back in service (now emitting disturbing sounds) with just enough time to get to the interview.

Each day I called the airline about our bags and was told they’d not yet been located.

I gave up by the fourth day when a creepy airline customer service rep -- apropos of nothing -- began telling me about his young daughter’s murder.

The last two nights we had booked another South Beach hotel, this one quieter but much more careworn: shabby carpets, blood stained mattress, and other stains that likely originated from large bugs that had been violently squashed.

Our final night, we stayed out late, dreading the return to our depressing digs. Settling into bed around 1 am, we were awakened by the fire alarm.

Terrified, we rushed down to the lobby -- along with scores of other guests in their pajamas -- demanding an explanation.

The two hotel employees on duty overnight insisted it was a false alarm.

After two more incidents of the alarm going off, our fellow guests were near mutiny.

The final straw was when the fire department arrived, and hotel staff tried to keep them from entering the building.

We hastily packed our things and high-tailed it to the airport, sleeping overnight in the terminal.

After we arrived home (our luggage was not located and returned to us for a month), we made numerous calls to government agencies, reporting the hotel for code violations.

A few days later, the hotel manager left a message on our home answering machine, advising us to “watch our (expletive) backs.” My husband and I later moved to Miami , and we can now laugh each time we drive by “Hotel Craphole.”