Thirding ianzin and Gyrate – I’ve stayed in little hotels all over England and Wales, and I would feel positively strange having a US-style stay. Independent B & Bs and hotels in the UK have a distinctive feel, and I’ve been in places were you expect Basil Fawlty to come round the corner.
One little B & B, despite being told that we needed a double bed, and that my partner is very tall, gave us a single bed in a room directly under the roof of the building. Sure, the slanting tiles were charming, but it mean he had to stoop like Cheetah the entire time he was in the room. That’s the same hotel where the house next door was occupied by students; they decided to have a noisy garden party all night long. The noise was awful, because the sound just echoed up between two rows of stone buildings and made it sound as if the increasingly-drunk students were in the room with us. People in the houses and rooms of the other buildings alongside and opposite our building started shouting out of their windows for the culprits to shut up, to no avail.
The caretaker at our hotel dithered and moaned about ‘Oh dear, it is a bit of noise, isn’t it’ when we went down to complain at 11pm, 1am, and 2am, eventually I woke up around 4 am to my partner filling up the rubbish bin to tip several gallons of water four stories down onto the culprits. (I wouldn’t let him, but he did send a warning shot down, to their indignation.)
The next morning, when we checked out, having had no sleep (I had a job interview that day, which is why we were staying there, and I ended up not getting the job, I suspect because I was decidedly unperky at the interview) – they asked how our stay was, my partner let them know in no uncertain terms, and the desk-clerk just blinked and asked why we hadn’t complained at the time, as they would have taken care of it right away with calls to the police, etc.
I just watched that episode on DVD. It’s not a guest room. She has art supplies & books on the shelves, an easel set up, makeup on the dresser, and what’s either a dress or a bathrobe on the back of the door. It looks like she did live at the hotel (at least in that episode).
I’m convinced that the odd landing in the stairs, where you go up 5-6 steps, make a 90 deg turn, then go down 5-6 steps, was built just for the comedic value of watching Basil run up and down it multiple times.
And yet I’ve been in British houses/B&Bs that do just that. Usually it’s due to some strange renovation where the building was converted from an old family home with servants’ quarters and multiple staircases to the hotel configuration (or, if it’s a row/terraced building, where they’ve knocked two or three houses together).
With 22 rooms there must be a wing we don’t see. Also in one episode where a couple tries to check in and Basil finds they’re not married, Basil say he can give them two singles, one on the first floor and one on the second.
I don’t know if in England the first floor means “ground” floor or is the floor directly above the lobby the first floor and there is yet another floor above that?
In any case there must be another wing we never see
In England, the lobby and dining room would be on the ground floor, and you’d have to go up the stairs to get to the first floor. However, from the exterior shots it looks as if there were only two storeys in the building, so I don’t know where Basal Fawlty thought the second floor was. It’s probably a continuity error. (They’re common enough in TV programs).
