Stairway to Hell

My previous six visits to this corner of the world I’ve booked my hotel through hotel-assist.com, usually choosing the least expensive lodgings I could find there. Hang on to that “usually” – it’ll come in handy later.

This time I booked a month or so later than usual, and there were fewer choices. Last year’s hotel on West Cromwell Road was not available, but to my surprise I found one even cheaper, albeit with a shared bath. For the price, I could handle a shared bath. Apparently a couple of key brain cells had been lost to debauched living, because I booked a room for six nights.

Fast forward to me dragging my four pieces of luggage into the hotel lobby after six hours of detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Reservation in order, room ready for occupation. “It’s on the top floor…” the receptionist said, and there was something terribly sympathetic in her face that made me remember what I already knew from years of not booking this hotel. “…And there’s no lift,” I said. My God, I’m in the Kensington Court Hotel, the one I don’t stay in because it’s five storeys tall and – that’s right, weary traveller – it has no lift.

The man waiting behind me for his room volunteered to haul up the two heaviest pieces, saving me a second and third trip (at these rates you don’t get bellhops), so I was still able to breathe when I got everything into the room, but then it’s two floors down to the nearest toilet. Down and back up again, that is. And these stairs are half again as steep as stairs built to code in the U.S., because they have to lift you up the same distance while using up far less horizontal space. Grueling, is what it is. I must have gone to sleep with an overdose of either stairways or captivity, as I woke up about 0100 with a splitting headache that didn’t back down for almost twelve hours. Heading into night four, I begin to feel a degree of equanimity concerning the top floor, but that’s probably because I’m leaving tomorrow, about which more… tomorrow.