I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m having trouble finding a pet-friendly hotel in the Washington, DC, area. Some people are utterly heedless with their animals and the responsible and the petless suffer for it. Our former neighbors had a tomcat they allowed to run loose and mingle with the feral cats that the county refuses to collect—not only could you clearly see his “mark” on several litters of kittens, but God knows what kind of diseases he was exposed to.

My mom and my godmother have a similar problem: across the chain link fence from their yards there’s a big dog tied outside all the time. The owner interacts with the dog about a half hour a day (his girlfriend doesn’t want it in the house). He doesn’t clean up after the dog, so the yard is noisome as well as noisy, since the animal is lonesome and barks. (I remember Victoria, the maiden lady who owned that house and kept it and the yard spotless. She’s probably spinning in her grave.) I know darn well why Mom or Padina haven’t reported him to the health department or animal control: they’ve heard as many stories up there as I have down here, about nasty neighbors who take revenge. A couple of elderly ladies don’t want to take chances. Ironically, despite the mess, they’re still worried about the dog--Monday Mom was telling me that she and Padina had both seen him chowing down on a sponge and she was wondering if it would make him sick.

Anyway, no surprise that so many establishments don’t want animals (or rather their owners).

Anyway, I know Motel 6 accepts pets--even good ol’ Tom Bodett will tell you so--and was set to make reservations at a place in Camp Springs. But the published policy says “animals supervised at all times”—does this mean they will not allow Willow to stay in the room locked in her crate? It would make hash of us taking a few hours off to go see the new Air and Space Building at the Smithsonian. I can call for reservations instead of doing it online and ask pertinent questions, but I thought I’d line up a few alternatives in case.

I found a Days Inn in the same area that indicated “crated” pets were okay and it had a AAA rating of two diamonds, which means it’s a nice serviceable place with a few extra amenities. That looked promising until I noticed that the Days Inn website had ratings for the place. All of them were recent and all of them were bad; not folks whining about trivial junk like the place not being the Taj Mahal, but legitimate complaints about dirty rooms, bad smells, surly staff, and non-working items in the rooms.

I cast about at the more expensive digs. I found a Holiday Inn in Chevy Chase that supposedly takes pets. ("Supposedly" because the pet-friendly hotel site said they did, but when I did a search on Holiday Inn’s site with the criteria of “pets accepted” checked, no results came up.) Yow! even this place had bad reviews of the same type as the Days Inn.

Man, when I was a kid, Holiday Inn was like...well, the Taj Mahal. The Plaza Hotel of motor hotels. We took innumerable car trips, including two cross country from RI to California, another to Florida, and several sorties into Canada. We stayed at a “name” motel (Howard Johnson) only once in all those hundreds of overnights and never once got burned. Some of these “generic” motels were strictly utilitarian, with painted cinderblock walls and no pools, but they were clean and well kept. Our favorite motel at Lake George was not a big flashy resort motel, but a little place called Lee’s, with cottages and flowers. On dad’s and mom’s factory salaries, we could only dream of what superior rooms awaited at the chain places like Holiday Inn.

A Holiday Inn rated as being dirty and smelly…wow. Have things changed so much?

I’ve found a Howard Johnson’s just north of DC that merits looking into as well. It’s a decent price for the location and has a shuttle to the Metro station. Still, its customer rating is 6.2, which puts it into the “good but unimpressive; if a better place comes up, take it” category. That one Howard Johnson’s we once stayed at was practically hotel quality next to our motel forays, so to have a HoJo rated so low is eye-opening.

What I wouldn’t give for a good Drury Inn up in DC; the one we stayed at in Charlotte was superb.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:15:00 AM

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