A regimented motel

The Japan House in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho is quite unique in terms of the form of hospitality it offers the unsuspecting traveler. I booked the hotel through Expedia and still can remember that most of the comments were extremely good, particularly those about the quality of the breakfast offered, so with absolute confidence, I pulled the trigger and booked a room.

When we got there, the outside didn't look that fancy, in fact it was just your traditional American motel. At the reception, Kim, the owner gave me a very exacting order form for the next morning's breakfast. It took me a good five minutes to go through it (multiple options, but rigid flexibility) and a set time for showing up in the morning.

Then we got into the room. Quite clean, but lousy Wifi signal. I went downstairs and began bitching about it. We got it working. The TV was an old cathodic tube, low definition model that we didn't use, but it sure failed to impress us. Any remote chance of a view was blocked by the staircase, but the king size bed was very comfy.

The next morning, our breakfast appointment was set at 7:30 am sharp. Problem is that we came straight north from British Columbia and assumed that we were in Idaho (correct) and still in the Mountain time zone (wrong), because Coeur d'Alene's heart beats in unison with Spokane's and its Pacific time zone. Go figure!

So we had been up since 6:00 am, hungry and champing at the bit for our breakfast slot, so by 8:00 am mountain time, I went down to plead for moving up the time to 7:30 pacific time. In the meantime, my wife was wondering if we'd get at least two slices of bread and always re-assuring, I told her that “everything is gonna be alright”.

The lady of the house wasn't not enthused about my requested change of plans and told me that she could not run her business if every guest were as scattered as I was. Still she granted me an exception and authorized me to bring my wife downstairs for the meal at 8:00 am. When we got there, everything was measured and tiny.

It was a Lilliputian version of breakfast. The coffee mugs were small, the sausages tiny and we had two slices of bread each, but together they added to a third of a normal slice. Granted, we were offered coffee refill that we gladly accepted and it's only when we checked out that our hosts became very pleasant.

The guests from hell were gone!