Ultimate Blog Challenge - Four Points

Welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Challenge - today we're supposed to about any kind of four things, like the elements, the seasons, etc.

"Hi, welcome to Four Points, how can I help you?" I was greeted by the receptionist.

Hello, my friend (insert name) has a reservation for the two of us.

"Can I see some credit card and picture ID, please?"

Upon typing my name he frowned.

"I'm afraid you're not included in the reservation."

That's probably because his assistant made the reservation. I arrived early, I'm in desperate need of a nice shower as you can see.

What followed was a lengthy discussion. Bottom line, they did not give me the key.

I could not reach my friend because he was in the plane, flying in from the East Coast.

Do you have a business center, if I had access to my e-mail I could show you the booking confirmation that was forwarded to me. That would kind of confirm that I'm good, right?

"I'm sorry, you need a room key for the business center, it's for guests only."

That's what I am trying to become, for crying out loud - a guest!

I ended up booking my own room, which my friend was going to move into and cancel the original booking as soon as he arrived in the Silicon Valley.

Geez, I understand they can't just let any unknown person into a guest's hotel room, but I felt they were less than helpful. More precisely I felt like Vivian at the Boulmiche Boutique, except I didn't get kicked out.

I don't want this post to be about a bad hotel review though. I googled it, btw, and it looks like it's gone out of business. I might be a tiny bit gleeful about that fact.

In case you don't know, I am originally from Switzerland, but I was living ib San Diego, CA, at the time. My home country's entire area only covers some 40,000 km2 (=16,000 square miles), the state of California alone is ten times larger and is home to 40 million people. Check out this map, it's mind blowing!

Why is this important? 

I'm going to tell you how this trip progressed. We had dinner and enjoyed each other's company. Another friend from Switzerland joined, too. It felt good to have a little reunion.

The next day I thought it was a good idea to have breakfast in San Francisco, where my friend had a business meeting and drive back to San Diego, where I had to be in class at 7pm on the same day. 

So, it took an hour to get from Sunnyvale to Downtown SF.

According to Yahoo Maps (back then Google didn't even exist yet) SF to SD was an 8 hours' trip. 

Or roughly a 500 miles' journey. In Europe it's almost as if I was driving from my town in Switzerland all across Germany to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Nobody, nobody, would be as crazy as to have breakfast in Amsterdam and plan on being back in Zurich by 7pm! 

It all went relatively well until I hit Los Angeles' rush hour. Oh, boy. Did I mention this was in 2001? No navigation system in the car. Just a spiral-bound Rand McNally road atlas.

PS: I was less than half an hour late for class! I apologized to the teacher and told her I came directly from San Francisco.

"Was your plane delayed?" she asked.

Nope.

"Did you miss your flight altogether?"

Nope. I drove.

"What do you mean, you drove? You drove??? All the way down? Why would you do such a thing?

Because I was naive. If it's within the same state, it can't be that far. 

Have you had any comparable travel fails yourself? Let me know.