Getting lost in the underground car park of the Gatwick Premier Inn a couple of hours before my flight to San José wasn’t the most auspicious start to the trip, but given the layout of the hotel, it must be a fairly frequent occurrence.
The hotel reception is on level 2, and the entrance on level 1 is just a lobby giving access to lifts that take you to all floors. I’d noted this fact when I arrived, and the next day after a good night’s rest before the early flight and in need of some fresh air for a few minutes I took the stairs down from my room because the elevators were all either busy, or going up. I went down a few flights, and down again from the reception level, and exited through a door expecting to find myself in the lobby on level 1. However, I quickly saw that, instead, I was in an underground car park. No problem, I thought, I’ll just go back up one flight. But the door I’d just walked through which had closed behind me had no handle, and instead, there was a notice saying “No access to Premier Inn”.
No problem, I thought, how difficult can it be to get out of a car park? Quite difficult, it turned out. The car park was vast, with various down and up ramps, and no sign of an exit. It was completely disorientating. After several minutes of walking around, down and then up, and feeling increasingly stupid, in the distance I noticed an open door and through it two maids who were having a ciggie break. I walked over and asked how to get to the Premier Inn entrance. “Out here, turn right, go round and along, then round again to the left, and then along the road for a hundred yards and it will be on your right”.
Half an hour later when it was time to check out from the hotel I made sure I took the lift to reception, which was very busy. These places are very efficient, and soon there was a queue of people wanting to leave, at the two elevators. The next problem, however, was that the elevators only seemed to be going up, rather than down to the lobby. This went on for some time – the doors opening, the up arrow flashing, and then the doors closing. Then, there was a ‘ping’ but no door opened. Then another ‘ping’. I looked over to my right to see that through a partition was a third elevator, which had just descended. The two main elevators continued to arrive and continue upwards, as I hummed the Eagles song Hotel California, “You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave!”
Eventually, I found my way out of the hotel and over to Gatwick North Terminal. Instead of paying quite a lot for breakfast at the Premier Inn I’d taken a chewy bar with me, and standing in line waiting to check-in I unwrapped it and got stuck in. Almost immediately I felt something wrong inside my mouth. A large filling had fallen out and I’d just swallowed it. Maybe this was why I kept setting the alarm off later, at airport security.
It was also, probably, the reason that I bit my tongue badly during the meal on the plane. It swelled up, but I didn’t really notice until a couple of hours later when I reached my hotel in San José and asked the boy at reception where to get a local sim card, and all that came out was “Vla, bla, sla, la, cla”.
Later on that first day in San José the company through which I’d booked the trip sent me an email saying “Dear Mr Macleod. Now that you are back home we hope you had a wonderful trip and we would appreciate it if you could spare two minutes to tell us about your holiday”. This didn’t exactly fill me with confidence for the various arrangements that had been made for the coming weeks.
It looked very much as if this trip to Costa Rica was going to be yet another of my disastrous attempts at travel.
In the event, however, the trip was excellent, and I invite you to watch the video above which describes the many things I got up to.
Roddy Macleod's Blog 
At least, you had on your underpants.