"Comfort" suites in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Where to start? Sitting here gazing over the graceful, placid view of the local Raceway and Wendy's, listening to the roar of passing 18-wheelers, there seems so much to share..
Shall we begin with the nearly ineffective window unit in the room? There was so little air flow on fan or heat settings that we thought at first that it was not working. Let us just say that we are glad it isn't summertime. We might also mention the special tabletop plug setup, with three outlets and two USB power ports... with intermittent, stuttering electrical that made our chargers run uncomfortably hot.
Perhaps we can follow up with the floor that is so wobbly that it shakes the microwave as one passes, or the completely useless divider wall between love seat and bed that serves no purpose but to lower light levels and prevent one from using a reading lamp (it's doubled up by the desk).
The one thing that we can say about "Comfort" Suites in Natchitoches is that the bathroom was clean and likely germ and bacteria free, if only because the airless wasteland produced by the Pinesol of Doom would make survival impossible for any living thing after enough exposure, including humans. We left to find food not only for hunger, but to escape the weaponized stench.
Four hours of constant running of the loudest bathroom fan we have ever heard still did not make it possible to stay in that bathroom long enough to shower without burning eyes and throats. We won't even discuss the torture involved in an extended toilet visit after dinner. We clean hope that an all-night run will clear it out enough to clean up in the morning.
So, here we are, in our cozy, end-of-the-hall room between the unnecessarily obnoxiously loud ding of the elevator and the boom of the stairwell door, across from the article crust crackling of the ice machine. Needless to say, this is in NO way comparable to the Comfort Inn & Suites that we absolutely enjoyed in Longview, TX, a large, well-appointed, reasonably-priced room with a large closet and quiet environs, overlooking trees on a quiet frontage road.
Oh in fact, the Longview room was $34 less expensive for a much better room of the same size. I know,of course, that rooms are at a premium during heavy travel times and along great heavily-traveled routes. The 19th of January certainly lies in a fairly serious tourist month for Natchitoches' 18,000 residents, especially now that its yearly popular, beautiful Christmas celebration is completely done and Northwestern and LSMSA are at least a week into their semesters. However, one might expect that Longview's 82,000, on the road to Dallas, not Shreveport, would have been more expensive...
Dont get me wrong: we adore Natchitoches and are always glad to have an excuse to stop here. We will simply find an excuse to stay as far away from this place as possible. read more
