While I was traveling to Seattle, Lisa was heading to Lucerne, Switzerland, where I had arranged for her to stay at a Holiday Inn Express in a suburb of that city. The location was good (only about 150 m from the station platform on the suburban rail line), but the property was not. It was the most expensive Express we've ever booked, and Lisa reported that room was tiny, had a bunch of gnats swarming on the windows, and was generally not a good room. They did acknowledge that Lisa could stay in the room (I'd worked that out with them by email in advance), but the housekeeper apparently kept coming to tell her she wasn't supposed to be in the room. After a few hours of this, she'd had enough, handed back the keys, and left. Unfortunately, getting back to Munich, while possible, took a long time and involved riding in the Chair car of a NightJet sleeper train (covered by the rail pass; she would have bought a compartment, but there were not available) to Salzburg and then a Dreaded Bus Rail Replacement service to get back to Munich. This morning, Lisa relayed to me the sad story.

The hotel acknowledged by email to me that Lisa had handed over the keys and left. I contacted IHG and complained about the room condition and the poor treatment she received. IHG says they are going to work to have all of the points I used to book that room refunded.

Holiday Inn Express is a decently good brand in the USA and Canada. However, our experience of those in Europe has been for the most part deeply disappointing, unlike all of the other IHG properties, like the Crowne Plaza in Ljubljana and the Holiday Inn (not Express) Heathrow Bath Road.

That's now two cases where Lisa had an unsuccessful sortie from Munich to what was supposed to be a multi-day stay but turned into an unwanted extra train trip. At least the train trips were all included in the cost of the rail pass. I think Lisa will be regrouping for a few days.

Kuma Bear reported a bit on the trip. He likes trains as much as we do, but maybe not this way.

When I flew to and from the UK a few weeks ago, I was able to obtain relatively cheap Polaris Business (first) class upgrades both directions. In both cases, I received various goodies, including an amenity bag each direction. I noticed that the bag going one way was a different style than the one going the other, and I initially put that down to different suppliers. Today, while looking more closely (and actually reading the info card that came with them), I discovered that it's an intentional difference, and rather clever.

( Two Bags Into One )

I'm going to give this to Kayla to use as her travel makeup bag so she won't have to keep carrying stuff around in Ziploc bags.