Irish Drifter wrote:
Estebanh wrote:
Joker,
Do you really consider this a safe walk (from Freebird to Del Rey)? Its a pretty sketchy area even during the day plus you have to walk through all the street rif-raff in that area
If you feel that walking from Freebird to the HDR during the day is unsafe then perhaps you best not bother coming to San Jose.
If you feel that certain members are dickwads and you can't deal with them or else accept them for the dickwads they are then perhaps you best not bother coming to San Jose. jk
Before anybody reacts and gets their panties in a twist, I should clarify that I'm not saying whether any particular member is actually a wad from a dick or not and not saying Estebanh overreacted when questioning the safety of that walk, though he now admits he may have. I'm just poking a little fun at everybody.
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Hailceasar,
As long as I'm clarifying possible misunderstandings, I hope you don't consider my posts to be one of those unfairly negative ones. I think I was quite clear from the start of it that I had never sactually stayed at your "Hotel" and that all my subsequent comments were directed at my particular limited experience outside your property. I did speculate on possible reasonable explanations for what happened (that registered guests had keys and/or entry codes), which turned out to be exactly correct. And I expressed my own personal (and I think understandable) reservations about staying at a place that didn't even seem to have anyone on duty during the day to answer the door. You've since explained your way of doing business and I can accept that. Perhaps, it might have avoided my confusion, and possibly that of others', if you referred to your business as a "Guesthouse" rather than a traditional "Hotel", as BK suggested more aptly described your operation.
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Lastly to
HikerTom,
Since I'm on the subject of terminology, I don't think the term "Hostal" always means the same thing to people in some other countries like CR that it does to us here in the US (just as a "Motel" is something very different south of the Rio Grande). For us, or me anyway, a "Hostal" connotes sleeping on a bunk bed in a dorm room with a shared bathroom, or usually only at best a rather simple private room with a shared bath. While the Tiquicia (and the Freebird) at worst has standard private rooms with shared baths (perhaps a bit like the upper end at hostals) it also offers deluxe private rooms with their own baths. Besides, there are also small upscale B&B's in the US that only offer rooms with shared baths (often the case with converted country homes), so that aspect does not necessarily make a place a "Dive". At least based on their room pics from their websites, the rooms at both the Freebird and Tiquicia seem much nicer than what one would normally expect from a "Hostal". What's more, despite whatever you think you saw, the picture of their building on their website clearly identifies them as a "Hotel" any way (check for yourself).
As for the lack of response to your inquiry through the Freebird website, that was certainly unfortunate (as was the lack of response I got when I appeared there physically) but non-responses by businesses in CR to communications over the web are not that unusual. Perhaps, you might try calling them directly next time rather than submitting an on-line form from a website that might not even be working properly. Anyway, we probably shouldn't necessarily rule them out because of that.
It's true that basically there's a threshold point where "cheap SJ hotel" DOES mean a dive but apparently that point is different for each of us. Again, we're talking terminology here. For me the term "dive" means a sleazy or disreputable establishment (such as a place where most of the neighbors on the other side of the paper thin walls are hookers and johns who have rented their rooms by the hour, like the Hotel Asia) or it could mean a dirty fleabag flophouse. Both the Tiquicia and the Freebird rent by the night or longer, have respectable guests just like you or me, I think we can assume are reasonably clean and at least certainly don't have any bedbugs and have rooms that are furnished and decorated much nicer than any cell-like room only good for flopping down in.
I was probably a bit unfair in my criticism of the Freebird, but IMHO you're REALLY applying overly critical standards for what are really lower economy HOTEL/GUESTHOUSE options that are NOT "dives"
If you look at our building sign it says, "The Freebird"...no mention of hotel. The CRT ad & on our website there is "no mention that we are a hotel." In fact our website on the home page clearly states,
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