Hotels, Motels, and Inns

I thought I'd Google the differences between hotels, motels, and inns. Click here to see my search results. Some interesting answers. I agree with some of them. I'm amused by others. And a couple of them made me scratch my head and wonder why anyone bothers to respond to a question with an "I don't know" answer. It's not a test. If you don't know the answer don't weigh in on the matter.

So it seems we all have our own ideas about hotels, motels, and inns. And Holiday Inn messes with all of them, because it's name indicates that it's an "inn", which seems to have more ambiguity associated with it,  but some of them are clearly hotels and others are motels.

Interesting (at least to me) but getting off track. I want to talk about Gaido's Seaside Inn. When I booked it, I was expecting a motel, and that was okay. Unlike some of the respondent's to the question, I don't believe motels are sleazy by definition. The reviews of Gaido's on Hotels.com were positive and this is the picture that was displayed.

Looked okay to me. We only wanted to stay one night and we didn't want to have to get everything out of the car. I didn't book it online because I was trying to use a free night (which couldn't be done for complex and somewhat ridiculous reasons) so when asked if I'd prefer a sea view or courtyard view, I chose the courtyard view. I assumed that the courtyard was what I was looking at in the picture. My mistake. Although many (if not most) motels put their pools in the courtyard, not so at Gaido's. I should have looked at the rest of the pictures. Then I would have seen that the pool is at the front and a bit to the side and NOT part of the courtyard.

If you have a sea view room, you'll also be able to see the pool. So where is the courtyard? Turns out that there are rooms on the back side of the building you see in the picture. These are the "courtyard" view rooms. On the opposite side of the "courtyard" there is another building similar to the one in the picture that also overlooks the "courtyard".  I thought the pool was in the courtyard. But it wasn't. Even so, I expected a courtyard without a pool to look something like this. (But it didn't.)

 I didn't expect the "courtyard" to be a parking lot. (But it was.) And while this isn't Gaido's courtyard (it was raining far too hard to be outside taking pictures) this is pretty much what it looked like - complete with chairs that you could sit in to enjoy the ambiance of the courtyard.

Actually, it would have all been fine if we hadn't been trying to check in while there was a torrential rain and thunderstorm in progress. As it was, we couldn't see anything past the sign that said Gaido's Seaside Inn. We had to park and get out and go look for the registration office - signage to find it was seriously lacking or totally obscured by the weather. (One good thing about hotels - they have lobbies that are easy to find.) I had my handicap sticker so we could park in the front to go look for the office. No handicap spots available. We were just going to get soaked. (At least I was. I can't run yet.) Once under the eaves, we found some other guests who were happy to point us in the right direction. We had to get back in the car and drive to the back of the building. But then the directions to our room weren't clear. We knew it was on the upper level but couldn't see the number from outside. Since we saw two even numbers side by side on the building in front of us we assumed (wrongly) that the odd numbers must be on the building opposite the parking lot. After going up the wrong set of stairs - and mind you I don't do stairs all that quickly yet (still not over the knee surgery) I was making my way down while trying to let Mark know that it wasn't the right staircase. Unfortunately, the staircase he went up wasn't right, either. All of this in a downpour. It was back to the office to find out where the room had disappeared to. Turns out we had the one room where the door faced the staircase instead of the parking lot and couldn't be seen without first going up the stairs. Did I mention that it was raining really hard?

The room was fine. But another problem with motels is that there is no room service and no restaurant. You have to go back outside. I knew that good food was waiting for us next door at Gaido's Seafood Restaurant and we needed to get over there in spite of the downpour. It's not an "open all night" establishment and our arrival had been delayed by the weather. And checking in took considerably longer than it should have - probably 20 minutes to find the office and then find the room and did I mention that it was really raining? When we arrived at the restaurant we were told that they wouldn't be seating any more guests. What? They seriously didn't think I was going to get back in a car and drive somewhere. As it turned out, there was a couple there ahead of us and they seemed to be waiting. If they could seat them, they could seat us. But it seems they were waiting to speak to a manager because they weren't happy about not being seated, either. The manager came out and he was fantastic! He apologized to us and to the other couple for the misunderstanding, explained that the storm had clogged things up a bit because people who would normally have left had lingered a little longer but that we would be seated as soon as possible. It only took a few minutes to get seated. Our waiter was extremely friendly and helpful and served us some of the best seafood we've ever had! Anywhere. Ever. And by the time we left to go back to our room, the rain had stopped.