Room with a spew...

I was very tired when I finally got to the check-in counter at my hotel in Paris. So tired, that when I exited the lift on the 3rd floor I thought I'd somehow lapsed into sleep and was dreaming when I saw the state of the place.

The hallway to my room looked like the set of a crime thriller. I had suddenly been transport to a 1920's low-rent, low-life dump. The carpets were badly stained and shredded wallpaper was peeling from the walls.

My room was worse still. I was expecting CSI to burst in at any point, because it looked like the mattress to my bed had been murdered in a rather violent attack. I attempted to wedge open the window, but I couldn't budge it. There were no curtains on the bathroom window so I entertained the other guests with a quick shower before dressing beneath the only remaining lightbulb that worked and hurrying downstairs to meet my colleague downstairs in the lobby.

'Does your room look like a crackhouse', I asked Sam. We attempted to move or upgrade rooms, but were firmly told that the hotel was full - 'What!', I responded. 'Is there a drug dealers convention in town?'. For some reason they ignored me after that.

Bleary-eyed and exhausted I finally drifted off to sleep to the serenade of random thumps, bumps and faulty plumbing only to be woken earlier than planned by the vibrations and rumblings of the Metro train that apparantly ran directly below my hotel.

I will not be staying at the Mercure Hotel rue de Ponthieu again......ever.