DAY 12 UNION ISLAND......Hotel Bastardos

King's Landing Hotel has a very good rating on Trip Advisor. It also rates itself highly on its own website. I suppose it's ideally situated not in the centre of Clifton, the Capital of Union Island, but at the end of the street where the shops, bars and restaurants run out into housing propped up on a steep hill. As we approached the hotel, we were assaulted by a very unpleasant odour, far worse than anything I had smelt recently including the inside of a French Cheese shop on a trip to Calais or indeed the last time we smelt it which was on Bequia...... It was the current curse of The Caribbean.....brown seaweed. The smell initially took your breath away, forcing you to breath open mouthed, the rancid foulness too awful to nasally contemplate. Breathing thus we stumbled into reception. Staff here were very polite but overcharged us for our rooms. We had ordered cheapo Garden View rooms but had been given, at extra cost it seemed, Ocean View rooms complete with a balcony upon which one could lounge and breathe in the sea air...the seaweedy air. The Garden View rooms were all taken. What a surprise, the occupants must be taking cover like foot soldiers during a gas attack, the Ocean View rooms forming a barrier between them and the rotten obnoxiousness.

But there was nothing else for it but to bite the bullet and take the rooms offered. After all these were deluxe rooms. Deluxe rooms with no TV, no Wi-fi, no warm or hot water, no air con that uniformily worked properly, no coffee making facility, no mosquito screens, and poorly maintained facilities generally. The only thing that came to our aid was that the credit card machine didn't work and they could not take our payment on arrival. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Now I don't mind a three star hotel with basic facilities, the Frangipanni on Bequia is one such, but it does not purport to be anything different. What they promise you is what you get, but King's Landing was the complete opposite. For example, Jim and Merlin enjoyed the luxury of air con whilst Trish and I did not. Jim wasn't able to turn his off as he didn't have a remote, but luckily his thermostat worked and he was comfortable. Merlin on the other hand came down to breakfast looking like an extra from 'The Iceman Cometh' for his AC unit was stuck on 16 degrees and his remote was unable to make a difference. He took to covering his bed with clothes from his rucksack in order to stay warm in the night. Opening windows and letting warm air in was not an  option, not without mosquito defences. Meanwhile we sweltered the night away in our floor fan only room. For the next three nights this played out with regularity, apart than for Merlin who put some batteries in his remote!