I saw a Groupon (it was not from Groupon itself, but a similar site) for a 2 night hotel stay in Daytona Beach for $60 and it was right on the beach. Normally we always stay at a Hampton Inn or Hilton due to the cheap deals we can get through Omar's family. The funny thing is that I totally didn't think of getting a hotel through them, it later occurred to me. Well I thought, that is a good deal and it is right on the beach...why not?
I asked my parents if they wanted to join us and besides my mom mentioning that the place looked sort of dumpy. I thought, it looks pretty nice from the pictures and hey we are right on the beach it can't be that bad. I told her it would be an adventure. I later realized that the weekend we chose was the weekend of Omar's birthday so I figured we would celebrate that as well. I didn't even think well Omar is not a big beach fan nor would he want to go to Daytona since he goes there 2-3 times a week at least for work. Get the idea, that not much thinking was happening with this trip, right? This is me being spontaneous...not a good idea, I guess.
So off we went. Omar and I left the house about 11 AM and he had a 2 jobs to do in Daytona Beach before we went to the hotel. Daytona is really only about a 50 minute drive from our house, which was nice, but made me later realize that a day trip would have been sufficient. After his jobs, we puttered around over to the hotel stopping at a pawn shop that was having a tent sale just to browse.
We pulled up to the hotel and I was like, "oh my, my parents are going to flip!" We just laughed and laughed that we would be staying here. I read reviews the day before of the hotel and got mixed reviews, of course I didn't think to do this before purchasing the Groupon. I was in the moment when I bought, imagining what a great trip we would have. We checked in and payed our $7.50 in room taxes (that should give you an idea of what this place is like). It was definitely worth no more than $30/night. I asked the lady upon checking in if they had a lot of success with the Groupon and she said they had over 300 people buy it in the first day. I asked how much rooms normally go for and she said $79/$89 per night.
We walk into our room and just laughed. This place was supposed to/advertised that it has a kitchen with an oven, stove, fridge, etc. Yeah there was just a little closet space (not an actual closet) with a mini fridge and a microwave sitting on top of it. The bathroom did have bar soap but the shampoo was one of those free plastic samples you get in the mail sometimes. There was a tiny little table and it had a tablecloth over it that had stains on it. We pulled the table cloth up and the table was much nicer so we took the table cloth off.
I realized that the reason people stay at a place like this is because they have rooms that are for smokers and you can bring pets. I didn't even know that hotels would let smoking be allowed anymore. The day before we left this guy came down to the pool with his dog and asked how he would get back into the pool area with the locked gate. My mom and I told him that there is a pass code you need in order to get back in and they gave it to you at check in. We told him what it was. After about 20 minutes he came back up and couldn't open the gate and my mom had to open it for him. We heard him muttering as he walked by, "for $85 a night and I don't even get a pass code." We just laughed. We later found out that he actually got a deal online that was for $69/night. He said when he and his wife pulled up to the place that they both said "What a dump." they demanded to see the rooms before they stayed and that he walked into the room and told my mom, "Now these are NICE rooms, I mean real nice." It took my mom everything not to be like, "are you kidding?"
The whole weekend we made fun of the place. It kept us in good spirits. Some of the jokes were:
"only the best for Omar."
"What is that noise, a cow, a long fart, or....oh, wait that is the toilet flushing."
We did anything to avoid staying in the room. We talked about leaving the last night and going home to sleep in our own beds. My dad convinced us to stay so we could get another walk on the beach in the morning. He had been a walking maniac, he probably walked 4 hours the first day on the beach and I know that I did hour long walks both Saturday and Sunday mornings with him. My mom asked if we were going to end up leaving in the middle of the night and not tell them. If she hadn't said that we probably would have because of what happened next.
Saturday night we went to bed and were awakened at 4:15 AM to loud pounding on our door. Omar opened the curtains right next to the bed and there were people yelling, are you guys okay, and this creepy guy staring into our window. They kept saying they heard strange noises and crying. They then went to the next door and did the same thing and the people next door started cussing and telling them to get outta there. Well I thought that was weird and wondered why they would do that. Omar just calmly responded, "Oh they probably thought someone was dead in one of these rooms and wanted to make sure that wasn't the case." Lets just say I could go back to sleep because then our neighbors who were so upset by the whole thing started smoking. The smoke was so strong it was coming through the walls and the adjoining door. It was a horrible night. I later thought, I wonder if they heard me? I had just finished a dream where I had been crying and Omar tells me that I cry really loud in my sleep and he usually wakes me up. He didn't notice it, but maybe the people heard it and came to check? So weird.
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