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Dec 29 2009
Dec 28 2009
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Dec 28 2009
Where to NOT stay in Castries / Rodney Bay
[Update] I complained to Hotwire about the experience, and they sent me a $130 credit! Yay Hotwire!
We thought we'd check out the "big city" over the weekend, so we booked a last-minute hotel in Castries on Hotwire for $105 USD/night (incl. tax): The G* Resort (omitting the name just in case they have mafia connections).
My initial impression when we arrived was, "Meh." It's on a hill with a decent view but a boys' correctional facility is across the street.We went to the restaurant and the waiter didn't seem to speak English (St. Lucia is an English-speaking country). I picked what I wanted from the menu but he didn't understand -- he asked me to write it down for him. So I did.
10 minutes later he came back and said that they don't use the menu (??). He said they had fish. I asked what kind? He took out a cell phone and called the chef (!) and said they had Snapper and something else that I didn't understand. Then he handed me the phone, and _I_ talked to the chef. He was in his car, and said he'd get to the restaurant in 5 minutes (it was 5:30pm?). He asked me what kind of fish. Not knowing what the other kind was, I answered, "Um, half of one, and half of the other, I guess." I saw the cook arrive 10 minutes later. I had given the waiter a beverage order, but it still hadn't come. I returned to the bar twice to ask about it, and after a half hour we were able to pick the drinks up ourselves from the bar. It was just pineapple juice; not sure what the hold up was. After 90 minutes at the restaurant our meal arrived. We were treating locals, and I hope they enjoyed it, because it sure didn't suit Canadian tastebuds. The bill was EC 260 (as there was no menu I had no idea what it would be). You know, I wish the restaurant was the reason the Glencastle is an awful place to stay, but it's not. The restaurant was perhaps a highlight. The A/C in the room was broken. Now, it's okay to be without A/C in St. Lucia IF you have windows on two sides of the room, so you can get a cross-breeze, and IF those windows have screens, to keep out the (plentiful) bugs. At the Glencastle, neither of these preconditions applies.I went to the front desk to ask about it. (Incidentally, there was a Hotwire booking confirmation on the desk with Hotwire's full credit card information and the amount that Hotwire should be billed for my reservation. Hotwire's profit margin on my stay was $75.) They said there was nowhere to move us and the repairman lived outside the city. So we sweltered!! And I mean sweltered. Our 15-month old was absolutely dripping with sweat all night long. The temperature in the room stayed in the 90s; it was difficult to get any sleep.
Speaking of my 15-month old, the hotel is not child-proof. In St. Lucia, it seems that about half of the railings in use have 6-8" gaps between rails, and that was the case from our 3rd-story balcony. The electrical outlet by the floor fan was also broken, so the repairman bent the plug to get it in, leaving lots of prong exposed. There were also 1-foot steps into the bedroom and then into the bathroom. Lots of areas for little kids to get hurt. The next morning I asked about the A/C. The front desk staff told me it wasn't their fault, because we had done a same-day booking on Hotwire... We left the hotel, even though we had paid for 2 nights. We moved to the Coco Palm Resort -- which was fantastic! It has a wonderful Creole theme with cheery Caribbean colours, painting and handcrafts, a magnificent pool, and great food.Comments [0]
