Llandudno

I've recently spent several days in North Wales and it's actually been quite enjoyable.

Even an almost sleepless night under canvas seemed enjoyable compared to Llandudno. 

That's not to say Llandudno is a bad place. It's actually the least shit seaside resort I've been to in Britain. 

The problem was the hotel.

We arrived late afternoon and were greeted by a surly Russian man on the reception desk.

"Are we ok parking in the side street?" I asked. 

He looked confused. "Probably," he reluctantly offered.

The room was on the third floor and there was no lift. We were given the wifi code and set off to climb the 20,000 stairs.

It looked like the room had recently been done up.

It also looked like they couldn't be arsed to clean it properly either. Obvious piss marks on the tiled bathroom floor cast doubt over whether the towels had been changed since the last guest had left.

The bed was small for a double and the duvet was barely large enough to cover it. We asked the receptionist as we were on our way out if we could have a better one and he seemed uninterested.

While we were out someone went into the room and "fixed" the duvet problem. Well, they made the bed again. Why do they tuck the duvet under the mattress anyway?
The wifi code may as well have been written down by the receptionist using Cyrillic characters for all the use it was. We were so far away from reception there was no signal to connect to. Although if I had the passwords I could have connected to the networks of two neighbouring hotels. 

There seemed to be an infestation of bed bugs which is fun if you booked the sado-masochist package, which we hadn't. 

Waking up every five minutes because you've been bitten and the flimsy duvet isn't covering you is quite annoying, but that wasn't the only problem.

There was a seagull who liked the roof outside our window. He liked it so much he decided to shout about how great it was up there to every other seagull in North Wales. He thoughtfully waited until I was just nodding off before starting his shouting.

When morning came, there was further evidence of the lack of cleaning. The top from a water bottle and an After Eight wrapper were recovered from under the bed.

Breakfast, I thought, represented a chance to get our money back.

According to the menu, tea, coffee, cereal and "unlimited toast" is now called a continental breakfast. I'm not sure which continent this refers to.

The cooked breakfast was obviously a much better option. If you didn't have tastebuds.

Cheap sausage, half a lukewarm tomato, a rubbery fried egg, the saltiest bacon ever, chewy mushrooms, soft hash browns and fried bread from a deep fat fryer was what was served. I bet Jamie Oliver is shitting himself. 

The surly receptionist was on waiting duty, as was a slightly older man I assume was his brother.

He at least was happy in his work. A little too happy. He looked like he might do jazz hands at any given moment.

The dining room ambience was non-existent as a radio belted out loud techno music.

We couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Seeing a toilet at a service station just outside Runcorn that was literally overflowing with poo an hour later was only a slight improvement.