So I told you in the recap yesterday that Ryan and I took a weekender trip to Holland, Michigan, for the Tulip Time Festival. Last year, we decided to start a tradition of taking a trip somehwere sometime around our birthdays, since they're so close to each other. Last year's trip was to the Creation Museum and also contained our ziplining adventure. This year, we decided to try out the Tulip Festival. Neither of us had ever been.
The forecast for the weekend wasn't that great...cold and rainy, they said...but we were determined to have a great time anyway. So we got up Friday morning, packed up the car and set out on our great adventure. So many stories to tell you...but I have to start with these because they cracked us up so much!
We were almost to the Michigan line when we stopped at a truck stop for a bathroom break and to get a fountain pop. The men's restroom had been relegated to a trailer outside the gas station while they remodeled the one inside, so I waved goodbye to Ryan and some trucker with an eye patch and hoped I would see him again. {Ryan - not the trucker.}
We met up at the fountain pop and saw a sign that said the drinks were 99 cents - YAY! We got 32 ounce drinks and when it came time to get our straws, we found the l.o.n.g.e.s.t. straws on earth. Ryan said he might as well tape two together and leave the cup IN the cupholder to drink. When we got up to the register, the manager asked us if we found everything okay.
Ryan joked, "Well, unless you've got some longer straws somewhere." The man didn't crack a smile and said, "No, I think those are the longest ones we have." Okay! So no sense of humor here. Noted. Our total seemed high, so Ryan asked if the drinks weren't 99 cents. The guy said, "The 44 ounce drinks are, but not these." Ryan rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, so you pay more to get less?" Mr. Personality said, "Well, it's a promotion on the part of the cup manufacturer. But...I can sell you the smaller one at the same price."
As we walked out, I said to Ryan, "You know we're going to be the people he tells his wife about at dinner, right? Those crotchety curmudgeons who complained about the straws and the price of pop?"
Ryan laughed and said, "Well, he just messed up my whole quinoa."
Stop.
WHAT???
"He messed up my quinoa. You know. My aura."
I am STILL laughing about it. It's a new word for us now. Perogi = Pergola. Betrothing = Annoying. And now....quinoa = aura. I hope you're making a list of our Shafferland vocab.
We continued on our merry way and stopped at the hotel we booked last January. The hotel that gave us one of its last rooms and was the only room we considered affordable in the heart of Holland's Tulip Festival. The hotel where we mutually agreed to spend less than we might normally because we would hardly be there anyway, and it would be more fun to spend our money on festival-y things.
That hotel.
I should have known, when I was standing in the 8x8 lobby, leaning against the counter that boasted the promise of a continental breakfast...reading the photocopied rules about unattended pets in rooms and the hotel's strict policy against prom-goers staying there...that we were in trouble. Furthermore, we BOTH should have known when the nice clerk at the desk said all the rooms weren't clean yet and it was almost 5:00 in the afternoon...that this was going to be a rough one.
My quinoa should have been all over that.
But it wasn't. The {really, truly} nice girl handed us our key card and we made our way down the hallway toward good ole 116. We passed the open laundry room {red flag!} and walked over the giant hole in the carpet {BURNING red flag} and flung open the door.
Please, oh please, oh please, hear me when I say we are not hotel snobs. I REPEAT. We are not hotel snobs.
And it wasn't even the hello-1982 decor that got me. It was that this stuff really WAS from 1982 and suddenly explained a whole lot about why housekeeping was still cleaning rooms.
It doesn't come clean anymore. Ryan ripped the comforter off the bed and we walked {in shoes} across the squishy carpet, surveying the room. I dared to sit on the couch, which was shiny slick in ways it really shouldn't have been - and the TV was one of the old kind - complete with a grainy, static-y Phoebe Buffay sauntering across the screen.
We sat on the edge of the bed, and I tried to figure out how I would take a shower the next morning without removing my clothes.
The dogs {unattended...breaking rule #2 from the photocopied sheet} were barking mercilessly two doors down and the overwhelming, sickening aroma of the entire room being immersed daily in Febreze about choked me.
Ever the {really and truly} loving wife that I am, I wrapped my arms around Ryan's waist as we sat on the edge of that thank-goodness-there's-not-a-black-light bed and kissed his cheek. "It will be okay," I said, willing myself to believe it as I pushed away thoughts of the shower. "We won't be here that much. We can do this."
Ryan pulled back the blanket and sheets to take a nap and stared at the long black curly hair{s} in the bed, recoiled and said, "No. That's it. We're out of here."
He went back to the front desk...to plead against the no-refund policy. The manager was merciful and gave us a full refund, even while the girl said, "We try to get all the hairs off the sheets before we make the beds."
You can about guess the state of our quinoa at this point.
Ryan came back and began mostly running our possessions back out to the car while I searched for a new hotel...in a festival-laden town that had been sold out of the good rooms since January.
We managed to find one hotel still renting rooms for both nights...paying more than twice as much as we had at the first hotel, but feeling so grateful to NOT worry about needing the services of the CDC that we really didn't care. We rushed up to our clean room on the fourth floor...one where we could kick off our shoes, lie down and sleep peacefully...and not hear dogs barking over the TV.
With our quinoa feeling much better, we knew...this was going to be one
interesting vacation.
