I Need a Prescription for Xanax

I'm not kidding. Yes, this is the ranting post.

So our hotel that we stayed in in Pammukale was CRAP. Like, the worst hotel experience I've ever had. Let's go through it step by painful step, shall we?

First, we got there and although the owner was very nice, the price was pretty high (60TL/night instead of the 25TL we'd planned to spend). We were extremely tired and hungry at this point however. Also, it was dark and we knew we could drive around for a long time looking for pansions that were cheaper and open in the off-season. He showed us the rooms and they seemed very nice, with a view from the balcony of Pammukale. Although the heat wasn't on because there were no other guests, he showed us that each of the rooms had its own heater. (The fact there were no other guests SHOULD have tipped us off, but sadly, we remained ignorant until later.) Nesta talked him into 50TL/night, we paid, turned on the heater, and went to hunt for dinner.

Like I said in the previous post, dinner was amazing. We returned to the hotel and found to our surprise that although the heaters were running, the rooms were still well below 50 degrees! We put our hands up in front of the heaters, and they were blowing out mostly lukewarm air with spurts of hot air. Great. We're freezing. We drank a little wine to help us warm up and then got ready for bed. I went to wash my face, and lo and behold, there is no hot water! Chris went and asked them to turn it on, and they were still banging around when we went to bed an hour later.

A few hours later we both woke up, wide awake, and freezing. We were awake for hours, finally going back to sleep at 4:30, after checking that there was indeed hot water. We woke back up 3.5 hours later, took hot showers, which unbeknownst to us would be the last time we felt hot water at that hotel. We went downstairs and met Nesta for breakfast, which was made and served by the hotel owner/manager. It was very good, which was the only part of this hotel that was...

It was during the day that I first noticed my face itching, and looked at Chris. The right side of his face had approximately a dozen mosquito bites on it! I had much fewer, but whoa. We saw later in our room there was an infestation of mosquitoes! Gross. And just what we need.

We planned to go to bed earlier that night, thanks to our bathrobes that would keep us warm. After Nesta left, we stayed up a bit talking, and were about ready to turn in when there was a knock at the door.

Nesta called to Chris that he needed to open the door and have is ikamet (his residency permit) card with him, because THE JANDARMA IS THERE!!!! The Jandarma is a cross between the police and the military, usually armed with automatic weapons, and looking scary. I about peed my pants. We opened the door, and sure enough, there they are, all 4 of them, the hotel owner, and Nesta in her PJs. It's 10:45PM.

Chris hands them his paperwork, and since I don't have one, and I didn't bring my passport since we're traveling inside Turkey, I give them my driver's license. (Lame, I know, but how was I to know that the police would be knocking at my door?!) After looking at both carefully, they gave them back and proceeded to search every room in the hotel, looking on the balconies and inside the closets. It was probably 20 minutes later, just as I was calming down, that they knocked again, and asked to see our paperwork again. This time they took it with them downstairs. After 30-45 minutes, they brought it back up again, and left for the night. And how am I supposed to sleep then?! And a hot shower couldn't help because once again, there was no hot water.

Nesta knocked on our door the next morning asking if they had dropped her ikamet off at our room, because they hadn't returned it to her. Lovely. The hotel owner knew nothing either. They were just getting ready to drive around to all the Jandarma outposts (there are several) to ask for it when Chris, being the brilliant man that he is, decides to look at the reception desk. Whew, there it was! As we were checking out that morning, the Jandarma was back again, this time with a whole vanfull and the police. We still don't know what was going on. I am just happy to be out of there!

Moral of the story: If you go to Pammukale, skip the Yildizhan Otel.