Galveston Motels

We booked a stay at Gaidos Seaside Inn in Galveston prior to our 10/30/2023 cruise. What a mistake! The motel is old, and layers of paint, like lipstick on a pig, can’t hide everything. Our first problem was trying to find the Office for check-in during a heavy rainstorm. After two phone calls and our third trip around the block, we finally found the Office. The lady working the desk was very nice. Once in the room, we immediately noticed there was NO place to put our luggage except on the bed or on the floor, despite having a large open area near the bathroom wall that could have accommodated luggage racks or a table, or at least some comfortable chairs or small sofa. Many savvy travelers hesitate to put their luggage on the floor of a motel room because the floors are not regularly deeply cleaned, and leftover yuck from prior guests is NOT where I want to place my things. However, sleeping with our luggage on the bed was not an option. We are elderly, and bending over to get stuff out of the suitcase from the floor just didn't work! It was painful to say the least, and hard on my arthritic knees. There was also NO place to sit, except on the floor, on the bed, or on the dirty, cheap plastic chairs outside. There were 2 wooden chairs by the window but 5 minutes on that chair gets you numb butt. The bed was much higher than normal, requiring this arthritic old lady to literally “climb” onto the bed! I also had to keep pulling the corner of the bottom sheet and mattress pad back onto the mattress during the night. Definitely not conducive to a good night’s sleep, especially after a long drive in heavy rain. The noise in the room was another issue we had to deal with. There were LOTS of noisy black birds outside our room. A simple fix would have been for management to place fake owls around the trees to discourage the birds, but they didn’t do that. I guess $20 at Amazon is too much for them to spend to get their guests some peace and quiet, and to reduce bird messes around the pool and the property. In addition to the incessant bird squawking, we had to listen to the air conditioner that sounded louder than most large diesel trucks. When the AC unit wasn’t running, it was very stuffy in the room. The bathroom presented a whole bunch of challenges. First was hunting for the hidden light switch for the light near the sink. Second was the low height of the toilet – good height for a child but not for a grown adult. They should have included a grab bar so we could haul ourselves up to our feet. The property layout is very strange and difficult to navigate. You can’t always go along a straight line to get where you want to be, and signs are not helpful or easy to understand. The next morning when I was trying to locate the breakfast place in the cold wind and rain, I had to hike around the property a few times before I stumbled across it by accident. Signage for this is almost non-existent. Despite the motel advertising a