I'm researching hotels for a January trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and in doing so I've discovered a new place to mine for creative writing ideas.  That's right, online hotel reviews.  Ever have trouble coming up with original detail in your work? Need a jump start on ideas for setting? Hit Tripadvisor, Expedia, Travelocity, and you'll find they've got all that and more.

But of course it's the BAD hotels that provide the most delicious details. And my new personal favorite hotel in the universe is a resort property "on the beach" in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

This hotel may or may not provide you with a clean room. This hotel may or may not provide you with a room at all, even after you are confirmed. This hotel may, according to those who have stayed there, best be described as a scientific retreat for the Pasteur set, with ample mold to keep you company during your stay. But the reviews themselves are the prize here, not the hotel:

From Expedia.com: "The hotal room was dripping with water as if the walls were sweating..."

Sweating walls! Excellent original detail!

 "...the walls dripped so much water it made the beds wet..."

Now there's a waterfront property for you. Let's think about this for a minute. If the walls dripped so much the bed got wet, does that mean that water was literally leaping off the walls onto the bed? How does that work? And keep in mind this is not the only traveler to report this phenomenon. I say it's time to call NASA and get some top brains on this.

"...on my fourth day of the trip and there was no water at all i had to wait until the afternoon to go out because i could not take a cold shower..."

Now I'm not sure what the complain is here. Obviously there was plenty of water coming out of the walls, so one would be expected to take one's shower in bed.

Let's see what other travelers have to say about this same hotel. From our friends at Tripadvisor (good site, by the way):
 
"it was a hoodlumm spot for the locals!!!!!"

Ah -ha! Now we have some characters to add to our story. As the walls sweat in the Puerto Rican heat, the hoodlums - presumably out of West Side Story - have taken over the reception desk (multiple reviews report that the staff are entirely teenagers. How odd is that? Staffing an entire major resort hotel with teenagers? Is this perhaps the set of some new Disney Channel Spanish language series? "The Suite Life" with Maria y Carlos?).

"When we first arrived, we entered our rooms, to find the overwhelming stench of mold and mildew slap us in the face."

Smell is always a fantastic original detail, isn't it? Excellent. 

To this an employee of the hotel (one of the teenagers perhaps?) responds with the following: "we are currently undergoing renovations."  Well, that's a shame then. Would hate to lose all this original detail.  But at least in the short term, The Very Bad Hotel amuses its guests by using the construction to shut down all the facilities at the resort and shutting off all the hot water to the guest rooms.

In addition, The Very Bad Hotel apparently lost its beach - the beach washed away.  This intrigues me, this idea of the "Lost Beach." Where did it go? Is it in Jamaica, sipping on a nice rum?  Was this hotel SO BAD that the beach itself became dissatisfied and had to leave? Questions I will never answer, as I will be avoiding The Very Bad Hotel.

PS  - Just noticed that Trip Advisor has a "Best and Worst" feature on its front page. Every time you open it you get a best and worst review snippet. The one up right now includes the phrase, "There were dead bugs all over our wall." Splendid!

Dear Blonde Lady,

There are two ways you can use this writing prompt. One, actually do some writing, and two, head straight for the fridge and procrastinate.  Your choice.

with spring still blooming here in Minnesota, I caught some pics of local flowers at Coon Rapids Regional Park in Anoka County, North of the Twin Cities. The park has miles of bike trails through mature oak woodlands as well as along the Mississippi river.

Today the family and I took a nice walk through a local park, and it was a lovely sunny day. The river flowed smooth and dark between edges of green spring trees. In the forest itself, the leaves are still a lighter, fresher green, as here in Minnesota spring is still underway and summer has not quite arrived.

I've been sweating through a semester-long class and now that it's over, I feel like I've been let out of the fields and allowed a glass of lemonade.  The blog has taken a backseat to the work, unfortunately. But here I am, ready for summer.

Been buried in a memoir project for two weeks...generating lots of material, but also neglecting the blog. So here's a muskrat near my house last year to keep you company while I work my way out from under my pile of stuff to do.

I was surfing the net today and re-discovered the delightful Roadside America site, which meticulously catalogs all the oddball attractions the American people have created to draw interest to their towns and neighborhoods.  Writers are always looking things to inspire the written word, but what if your writer's block is really, really bad?

Another pic from my January Arizona trip. This is Bell Rock, near Sedona.  It was about 60 degrees, crystal blue sky, and not terribly crowded.  When the sloppy wet snowstorm hits Minnesota some time today I'll stare at this picture to regather my mental health.

As part of a nonfiction project, I've scoured the used booksellers of the internet and collected about 10 books about the history, ecology, and culture of the coastal redwood regions of California.  As someone who split her childhood between the two great coastal redwood regions of the state - the Santa Cruz Mountains and the North Coast - I find it interesting how small the populations are that actually live there. It's a good thing, of course. Too many people spoil the trees, I think. But going through these books, many of the names are familiar to my mother or I, and every single photograph is a place I've been.