Welcome to Cannes… Kinda

Before leaving Marseille, Sara and I decided it would be a good idea to book a hotel in Cannes, which ultimately turned out to be a very bad idea. Up until this point I had always booked at least my first night in a new location before I got there so that I knew where I would be staying and how to get there. Up until this point, that had always proved to be beneficial. After looking over at least ten hotels in Cannes, we decided on one and headed for the train station. Having not written down the name of the hotel or the directions of how to get there we stepped off the train and headed in the direction that we thought our hotel was in. As we approached a hotel with a name that sounded familiar, and we were certain was the one we had booked. Walking through the lobby we were greeted with a friendly smile by the older, yet very attractive French lady behind the desk. We gave her our passports and gave her the name on the reservation, which she sadly informed us we had not made. Oops. Walking out of the hotel, we both looked at each other as if to say, “Yup, we should’ve just waited till we got here to find a place to stay”. Two blocks over we found the hotel that we did make the reservation at, but unfortunately did not find the same greeting. Walking through the dingy lobby of the “right” hotel and up the torn carpeted staircase, we were reluctantly greeted by the somewhat rough looking girl behind the front desk. She informed us that she did have our reservation, but however our room was not ready yet. She did inform us that we could leave our bags in the room and could come back for the keys. A concept that seemed odd to me, but for some reason I agreed anyway. Walking into the room, which was the size of a shoebox, we found a broken light, some semblance of a desk with a broken plastic lawn chair, a sagging bed, and a small isolating fan for “air-conditioning”. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I looked at Sara, who, I think out of fear of catching some type of disease, had decided to remain standing, and said something to the effect of, “This place sucks!” Her way of agreeing with me did not come verbally but rather by her pointing out the nail clippings that remained on the floor from some previous guest. We agreed to take a walk, get some food, and figure out what we wanted to do. Over a decent pizza we decided to go ask the pretty French lady at the place we thought we had a reservation with, how much a room would be there, if we could see it, and how much it would be for the two nights we planned on being in Cannes. Being that Sara spoke French I sent her in to deal with the woman and to scope out the room. Sara shortly returned with a giant smile on her face saying that the room was beautiful, the hotel immaculate, and that it was the same price as the other one. We walked, or more appropriately ran to the other hotel and told the girl at reception that we had an emergency and wouldn’t be able to stay with them and would like a refund. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem surprised, and quickly processed a refund and sent us on our way. Happily we walked back to our new digs and dropped our bags in a small but air conditioned room, with a large bed, proper shower, and a large balcony. All I could think was, wow, how different would our experience here been had we just stayed in the other hotel. Now we were ready to enjoy ourselves in beautiful Cannes.