This is not the Vietnam War - it's just an hotel near Girona!

Towards the end of our holiday, the Snapper receives a phone call, and has to return to England.
On a scorching hot morning, I drive her to the airport, where an emotional goodbye leaves me with 48 hours to kill.
No longer in holiday mood, I have booked a room at an hotel directly between Girona City and the airport. My plan is to pass time, because the only place I now want to be is home.
Unfortunately, I read a few internet guest reviews of my hotel after I had booked the two nights. Many referred to dark dingy rooms and an unfriendly man at reception.
I drive off into the midday heat and proceed to get completely lost, puffing and sweating around the Catalan countryside, until I finally find the hotel, between a motorway construction site, a dual carriageway, the high-speed rail link and the flight path.
Ah well, it looks nice enough. Palm trees and a pool - how bad can it be?
Knowing that I look a wreck, with five days stubble, three hours sweat and old geezer shorts on, I employ my biggest smile and to show willing, greet yer man behind reception with a big native Catalan "Bon dia!"
He neither smiles nor greets me back. His melancholy eyes sit on a huge Humpty Dumpty head, which unfortunately twitches from the neck, his low-hanging jowls wobbling in a less-than-sexy way.
"Passport."
Charming.
"Your room not ready. 20 minutes."
No 'Sorry!', 'Please!', 'Hello!'; not a 'Why not wait over there, Sir?' or anything. I ask him for my passport.
"Why you need your passport?"
"Because... because it's my passport!"
"I must put it into computer. You do not need your passport."
I go to wait in a lounge, and later hear him yelling out to me, but my obstinate feet will not budge. He can bloomin' get off his lazy rude arse and come to me, which eventually he does.
I lug my heavy bags up to the room, where they sit on the bed for 20 seconds, before I take them back down again.
My plan is to stay in my room for many hours over the next two days, and this room is vile.
My spirit is so low, my energy supply gone, but I do not want to stay here.
Giving Laughing Boy his keys back at reception, I explain that I'll find somewhere else.
"You cannot do that! If you do that I will charge your credit card!"
"Look, mate, see this printout? It says I have a top floor room with balcony. You just gave me a first floor cupboard with a tiny window, soaking wet floors and I don't want it!"
"If you leave I take your money on your credit card!"
"If you do that I will call my credit card company and make sure they cancel their account with your hotel! I phoned two days ago, and spoke to somebody who sounded very much like you, and they said my room was on the first floor, and I said I wanted the top floor, and they said the hotel had only a first floor. If your builders can knock off that whole second floor in two days, seems to me you should send them down to Barcelona, so they can get cracking on Gaudi's Sagrada Familia cathedral. They'll have it finished in no time!"
Laughing Boy twitches up a storm and starts to lose it.
"I book you this room. I don't know why! I book you this room and I not know why!"
For once in my life, I actually lose my temper: good and proper, arms waving, voice shouting, all guns blazing, nothing held back.
It felt great.
"You don't know why? I'll tell you why! Because you're working in a fucking hotel, that's why! I book a top floor room with balcony and you confirm it by email, and then I get a middle floor room with wet floors, no light and barely enough room for a mouse to masturbate, and I don't want it. If I go to a bakery and ask for a loaf of bread and they give me a brick, am I going to eat it?"
To be fair, that was a little obscure, and Laughing Boy is lost.
"I know nothing of a phone call. Nobody called me on the phone!"
"Are you calling me a liar! Are you? Are you? Look, I walk in here with a smile on my face, say Bon Dia and you do nothing. You don't even offer to help me with my bags."
"I help nobody with their bags!"
"Yeh, I bet you don't! So I want out! Bye bye fruitcake features!"
As I head for the door he shouts to me:
"Come please, let us try again! Please, we can start again!"
Ever compassionate, I turn and smile.
"Now you're talking! Ola! Bon dia!"
"Hello. Look, here are the keys to a room. Leave your bags here and go up and see if you like it."
The room is huge, with a balcony and pool view. Shaking from anger, stress and exhaustion, I unpack everything and lie on the bed, taking notes.
As I write, a noise comes into my head. Sounds like a flood.
Up on the wall the air conditioner is shooting two jets of water out of itself, down onto the table below, upon which I have spread my phones, the phone charger, the electrical adapter, my wallets, cards and documents.
Rushing for the button I turn off the unit, and the flood subsides to a steady trickle. Almost in tears, I carefully dry off all the electrical appliances, remove all my cards and documents from their soggy homes, and then lie on the bed, in 35 degrees of heat, doing a bit of 7-11 breathing ... calm down ... calm down.
If only there were a propellor fan above my head, I could have relived my favourite scene from Apocalypse Now.
But this is not the Vietnam War. This is supposed to be a holiday.
I know that I will not be telling Laughing Boy about the air conditioner.
I do not want to move rooms again.
I do not want to have engineers in my room.
I just want to lie here, breathe calmly, feel intolerably hot, and wait two days for my plane home.
Horror. Horror.

Double Vision

Caricatures Ireland

Holidays are like life: it's not how much you get, but what you need to be happy!

Having scrimped, saved, and slogged our guts out, the Snapper and I are back in the Costa Brava, the northern Spanish coastline stretching from Barcelona to the French border.
Right now I am sitting on a large balcony feeling smug. For less than the price of a Galway B&B, we have a two bedroom apartment by the pool, with a view high over the stunningly beautiful Cadaques bay, looking far to a headland that Co. Clare would be proud of, dropping into the bluest of Mediterranean waters speckled by fifty bobbing white fishing boats, washing onto a beach by terracotta houses with red tiled roofs baking in the midday sun, the olive trees swaying in the breeze.
We really enjoy our two nights at Carpe Diem in Cadaques, and could have stayed at the chilled-out comfy complex for the entire fortnight, but tomorrow we must move down into the town, to the three-star Llane Petit Hotel.
I'm not sure if I like hotels. Why do we all look forward to paying wads of cash to be surrounded by people on all sides, above and below? Children are crying, the plumbing is whooshing all around, despite it being only 08.30 on a Sunday morning - and this the morning after every man woman and child in the town danced and partied in the main square until 3 am celebrating Cadaques' own Fiesta.
But hotel breakfast starts at 08:30, so naturally at 08:32, all the other guests feel obliged to pile out of their rooms, into echoey narrow corridors.
God knows what those accents are yelling to each other, but my hangover-knackered mind performs its own translation.
"Ah good look! See mother and small children of mine! An empty corridor, and behind one of these doors lies a hungover decadent writer. So Mutti and Alfie, go down to the far end and then shout to to me, and I will shout back a few more times and then we can all laugh because it is so funny, so very funny to make a big noise early on a Sunday morning. Aha. Aha. Aha. And they say we do not have possession of a sense of humour! Aha! What are they knowing? Come on now, shout louder. I think some of them are still sleeping, yes?"
Somewhere in this hotel a creature - for that is how it sounds- produces the most terrifying sound I have ever heard. Audible from a distance of 500 metres, the screaming howling wail sounds like a victim of the most heinous torture. Evidently from something young, I imagine a mutant feral beast, half-human half wildcat, with claws for fingers and fur on its back, its massive Leonine mane wrapping contorted features around a tortured mutant feline-human face.
The screech, which makes me feel simultaneously terrified and crushed with compassion, comes roaring in 30 second bursts of steady tone and massive lung capacity, as if the creature's claws were being ripped out one by one with a pair of red-hot pliers.
The Snapper turns to me and simply says: "Teething."
Next we head towards Calella de Parafugell, where we check out the Hotel Garbi. Sadly, the lass behind reception doesn't give a shit. You can smell it a mile off.
We're off before you can say 'Stuck-up Peahen!'
Now exhausted from our day on the road, I fortunately have a secret weapon.
Down the road is the Hotel Sant Roc.
Unique and imposing in a grandfatherly way, the Sant Roc is only a three star, but the people who work there make you feel you're in a five star. They care, take pride in their work, and a cocktail on the terrace at dusk can be both electric and charming.
Run now by the third generation of the same pioneering family, the Sant Roc feels like a classy joint. Sure it's pricey, and with Balco de Calella, their new restaurant, they are trying to offer fine dining, which might be a mistake.
The Sant Roc is wonderful because of its atmosphere and gentle class. They should stick to what they have been doing exceptionally well for five decades, which is making people feel fantastic, and let somebody else grate truffle over the sorbet.
The secret of success in business is simple. All you have to do is to know your market, and then meet its needs
The next day we find the Port Bo Hotel, a business that knows exactly what it is doing. Conveniently behind the town centre, the place has little charm, but offers a crew of friendly efficient staff, large clean double rooms with balcony and sea view; a whirlpool swimming pool and loungers; free internet and laundry; and the best buffet breakfast we have seen so far, all for ¤33.00 per person per night. The Port Bo has no pretensions. It just delivers what it offers for a very reasonable price, and all power to it for that.
I don't care if I stay in a cave or a castle. Holidays, like life, are not about how much you get, but rather how much you need to be happy.
Bizarrely, I cringe with embarrassment when I spot or hear other English abroad. At breakfast one morning I hide behind my croissant, as three tables of posh English Sixtysomething friends start to swap a bit of banter.
The vowels are stretched from table to table, repeatedly misunderstood and misheard, in true Tony Hancock style, until I find myself laughing with them as well as at them.
"Little Brian is doing Latin. Says he likes it."
"How old is he?"
"12 now."
"I remember when I was 12, my Latin teacher came at me with a knife, so exasperated was he with my inability to grasp the lingo."
"Bloody hell! He'd go to jail for that now!"
"Did he?"
"Did he what? Go to jail?"
"No! Did he come at you with a knife?"
"How long did he go to jail for?"
"He didn't! I just said he would have under the present regime."
"Bloody right. Be strung up for that now. Bloody shame!"
Ah me, yes, indeed.Such a shame that teachers can no longer run at their pupils brandishing sharp blades. What is this modern world coming to?

Double Vision
Caricatures Ireland
Connacht Tribune