The Hotel formerly known as ETAP

Last night and tonight I'm staying at a hotel called "Savyonei HaGalil". If you've never heard of it, don't worry. Nobody has. It's a non-descript building on the side of the road with a big sign on the side that simply says "Hotel". Which is why I drove by it. Twice.

What it would have been helpful to know is that this is the former ETAP Hotel. I'd never been to ETAP, but it was a noted landmark on the drive up North. Plus, it's a weird name so we all knew it.

The hotel formerly known as ETAP is interesting. There's a decent lobby, but the restaurant is two doors down in the strip mall. The rooms have a bed and a small dresser, but no chair. And the dresser is actually two small drawers with a refrigerator underneath. So maybe calling it a dresser isn't quite accurate.... And there are two wardrobes, one with a mirror on the door that is stuck in a corner between the wall and the small dresser so that you can't actually use the mirror or open the wardrobe door, and another that is between the side of the bed and the wall but has doors so wide that you can't actually open them fully or they hit the side of the bed. Not that I need to hang anything up.

I'm pretty sure that the soap dispenser in the shower is filled with water and a few drops of detergent - like what you'd blow bubbles with if you had a small plastic bottle and a wand. I didn't bring a wand or a small plastic bottle. I did not forget soap.

The biggest problem isn't the lack of actual soap in the shower, so little counterspace around the sink that there's nowhere for even my toothbrush or even that there's no elevator. It's not even that the only coffee they put out this morning was instant and decaf. It's the bed.

There are two pillows on the bed. Both have been stuffed with fluff. Lumpy fluff. I'm sure the manager of the hotel formerly known as ETAP has never slept at the hotel. Or if he did, he did not use their pillows. It's like sleeping on a really big bag of (defrosted) frozen peas. And, there is no fitted sheet. Again, this wouldn't be a problem if the sheet was large enough to actually cover the mattress. But it's not. And the space they did not cover is at the head of the bed, not the foot where I might not have even noticed. (Let's be honest, I would have noticed.)