From Russia with Love...

I had to go to Tampa last week for work. A trade show to be more specific. I am not a traveler, let's just say. I HATE FLYING! But, if I have my friend Zanex, I can somewhat manage. It just keeps me from getting hysterical, but I am still scared. Anyway, I don't think anything else could have gone wrong on our way to Tampa. They lost our most important bag (but luckily found it), we got lost on the 17 freeway changes we were supposed to take (thank you cell phone GPS system for telling us where to go about 2 minutes after the fact), and we got to our hotel at around 2am. And here is the best part...

Mike (my boss) and I got checked in and headed up to our separate rooms. We actually had the rooms right next to each other. Mike went in his room, and I went in mine. Well, I flipped on the light and started walking down the small hallway past the bathroom and to the bed. This is where I found a man, who was obviously startled out of his sleep, standing in front of me in his boxers and a t-shirt. That's right! To make things more fun, he had a very thick accent. I like to think he was Russian or German or something. Anyway, he said "This is my room 6-1-3." And I said "Apparently it is mine as well." And then I started laughing so hard I could barely breathe. I went out into the main hallway and knocked on Mike's door. He opened it to find tears streaming down my face, and laughter beyond control. He seemed concerned, and I was able to get out the words "there's a man in my room."

I went down to the front desk and told the girl there what had happened. She said "well according to my computer that room is vacant." I responded "Apparently not, unless you want to go tell that to the poor man upstairs that I just scared the living daylights out of!" She apologized and told me they had no rooms for me. So I walked next door and stayed in the only vacant room that hotel had for the night. Thank heavens they had one!

Marriott was very apologetic about the whole thing, they bought me dinner, breakfast, and comped my room at the other hotel for the first night. They also sent me away with a free night at any Marriott anytime. So there you have it. My best story from the trip. Sorry for waking you up that way sir, but maybe you should set the latch in all of your hotel rooms from now on to save from having this happen again... Hopefully you got a free room out of it as well. That's all I have to say about that.