Just a few weeks ago, Jonathon and I headed to Dallas so he could support a fellow GORUCK buddy who had lost his leg and was running the Big D Marathon. This was Jonathon’s first marathon, and I’d never been to Texas outside of SXSW, so I insisted on coming with so we could meet up with friends and view the city.

In planning the trip, we decided to take the late night flight into Dallas, and landed around 10 pm on Saturday night, the night before the marathon. Our plan was to go to the hotel (where many of the GORUCK marathon crew was staying), check in, drop off bags, meet up with people and go get a late night dinner/snack before hitting the hay.

Hotel Issues

Unfortunately that didn’t quite happen how we expected. We landed early (yay!) and took an Uber from Dallas Love Field to the Indigo Hotel, which was right in downtown Dallas. As we were checking in, the attendant was asking the normal questions: “Are you ok with one queen size bed?” “How long is your stay?” etc. Then he disappeared to the back room, came back and said they were overbooked and didn’t have a hotel room for us after all, BUT they were sending us to the Marriott nearby. We asked for the address and while the Marriott was only about a 15 minute car ride, it was *just* off the highway and NO where NEAR any restaurants! We’d already paid $30 for the Uber from the airport, and refused to pay for another taxi/Uber, so we made the Indigo shuttle us there. Unfortunately they got the shuttle out for us, and it was another 15 minutes before a driver appeared and we started heading out to the new hotel.

By the time we checked into the Marriott Suites, it was almost 11:30 pm. We quickly went to our room, dropped our bags and opened our laptops to see what our options were for late night food that wouldn’t make us sick (aka paleo-friendly and not full of gluten). Jonathon had to be up at 5 am for the marathon, so we needed something quick, close, and not too greasy. Luckily Dallas had a few options for us, and we were on our way.

By the time we ate, paid and took an Uber back to the hotel, it was about 1:30 am we were just turing off the lights. We couldn’t figure out the thermostat at the Marriott (it was set to 80 degrees, low fan and was *freezing* us out), so it took awhile to get warm and fall sleep. I know I tossed and turned until about 2:30 – 3:00 am, but luckily Jonathon fell asleep faster than I did.

THEN THE LOUDEST NOISE IN THE WORLD HAPPENED AND WOULDN’T STOP!!!!!!

While I still don’t know what happened, the fire alarm went off and said everyone needed to make their way to the stairs immediately. It was 4:00 am. We got dressed, I fumbled for my glasses and headed toward the stairs, which were filled with people, just standing and milling about relaying messages from the floors below. We stood there for a few minutes, until we were told it was a false alarm and to head back to our rooms.

Jon and I quickly got back to the room, crawled into bed, and were just about asleep.

WHEN THE ALARM WENT OFF AGAIN!!!

Now it was about 4:15 am. Jon’s alarm was set for 5:00 am. I didn’t get back to sleep until he got out of bed. All in all, I got about 2 hours of actual sleep that night.

Needless to say, we didn’t return to the Marriott suites for our second night, nor did we attempt to go back to Hotel Indigo.

Hotel Tonight

Instead, we turned to Hotel Tonight. We had checked out our options and they didn’t seem terrible in either location or price. While Jonathon was running the marathon, I went and had brunch with friends who took a look at the options we had available for hotels that night. They happened to find the hotel they spent their wedding night in and it was a steal! So we booked the Le Meridian Stoneleigh.

This was my first time booking through Hotel Tonight and wow was it easy! Until we got there….

Even though it had been over an hour since I had booked, the hotel didn’t have our reservation. They said it normally took about an hour. #sigh While I get it, we were just so tired (and stinky) that we wanted to get into our room and relax for a few minutes. Luckily there was a nice bar in the lobby, so we each had a drink as we watched the Masters and waited for their systems to update. Finally about 30 minutes later we were able to check in and we were on our way to our room.

This hotel was so nice, there were chandeliers in the elevator! Plus the rooms were much nicer than the Marriott the night before:

Jonathon immediately got in the shower, and I took a power nap. By the time we were ready, Jon’s marathon buddies were finishing dinner and headed to hotels, airports or back to their homes. So we made our way to dinner by ourselves.

We definitely slept well on Sunday night at the Le Meridian Stoneleigh! The bed was very comfortable and the room was the perfect temperature. Until about 8:00 am. THEN we realized why the hotel was so cheap. IT WAS UNDER CONSTRUCTION!.

We just couldn’t win on our trip to Dallas. Hopefully next time we have better luck with the hotel situation!!

Do you have any horror stories of trips plagued with bad hotels like us?