“How quaint”, I thought as we checked in. “Real keys instead of key cards.  I can’t remember the last time I was at a hotel with actual keys”.

That should have gone under the heading of “Signs and Portents”.

But the initial reaction of this charming throwback to a bygone era, known as Hotel Seattle, soon became screams of abject horror and near death.

OK, that was hyperbole.  Nothing almost died, except maybe a tiny bit of our humanity.

I ask few things from a hotel.  The point of a vacation is to spend as little time in the hotel as possible.  So I don’t need mints on the pillow or gold plated shower heads or Tuscan marble foyers.   What I do need is a toilet that can flush.

Let me explain.

Sunday morning I got up “early” to go to Top Pot for the best donuts ever.  But before heading out I needed to tinkle and upon flushing the toilet, it never stopped.  Water flowed continuously.  Since water conservation is a priority of mine (anyone who has seen my front lawn will confirm this) I alerted the dude at the front desk.

“Hmmm.  Our maintenance guy has the day off.  But I’ll see what I can do.”

OK.  It’s not really my problem or my water bill.  So I proceeded to Top Pot.

Once back at the hotel, I was told by (in order not to embarrass her I will keep her identity a secret and only refer to here by some random German automobile initials) VW that the toilet had stopped flushing and she thought that would be an excellent time to “take the Browns to the Superbowl”, “drop the kids off at the pool”, “make gorilla fingers”…..

“YES! YES! I get it.”  I exclaimed.

“Well, just so you’re warned.  The toilet doesn’t flush anymore.  And there’s stuff in it”.

After cleaning up my puke and assuring myself that VW is the only one of her kind to do such disgusting things (maybe she got a bad oyster, yeah, that’s got to be it), I informed the front desk that the toilet had stopped flushing and now wouldn’t flush at all.  The front desk dude told me that the maintenance man would be up shortly.

The maintenance dude came and went and we were told that the water pressure had to build back up in order to flush.  36 hours later and still no flush.

Awesome.

Oh, and don’t lean on the sink or you’ll knock it over.