Is Everything to Your Liking?

It was odd to be mingling with the fancy folk at the Wickaninnish Inn. We ended up there, in case you’re wondering if we are the fancy folk and have been lying to you all these years, because last year I read someone’s blog where she talked about having planned a vacation a year in advance. She and her partner realized that if they left it to fate, money, or time off, they would never, ever have another holiday. So they booked a cottage somewhere for a year in advance and committed to going there.

I liked the idea. At the time, I was still on maternity leave and felt as though my life was permanently stalled in the Dull, Routine & Often Desperate Gear. Saint Aardvark, by contrast, was working, commuting 3 hours a day and was trying, at the same time, to be the best father & partner EVAR so was feeling more like he was permanently caught in the Fast, Holy Crap I’m 50? & Often Desperate Gear.

We decided to take a vacation in 2008. Someplace nice, just the two of us. Mexico or Hawaii or London or something. By January, 2008, we reasoned, we would really NEED a vacation. Plus, we would have more money in our vacation savings account. Plus, Trombone would be a highly-leaveable 18 months old.

Around, oh, say, September, I revisited this idea with SA and we decided that given the circumstances (mainly the pregnancy) and our limited time off – me leaving on maternity leave again in a few months and SA hoping to take a month off when the hippo is born – we’d stay closer to home for our vacation. When it turned out that his parents were coming to stay for 2 weeks at the end of January, we booked two nights at the Wickaninnish and said hang the cost, it’s still less than a week in Hawaii (and praise be, I didn’t have to squeeze this gut into an airplane seat.)

So it was that we came to be in a place where, when the staff sees you walking up the driveway, they run – they actually RUN – to the door to open it for you. Where the valet parking is complimentary, (but it makes you nervous because you don’t know where your car is so you just use your partner’s car key and don’t tell the desk staff you’re going anywhere, feeling all the while somewhat like you’re 16) the bathrobes are very, very squishy and where the magazines in the room’s magazine rack might as well be called “Richy McRicherpants” and have thinly-veiled luxury car ads as their feature articles.

One of the nicest things about the Wickaninnish Inn is that you can have exactly as pretentious or as unpretentious a visit as you like. The staff is equipped to lick your ass, if you desire it. But if you make jokes about ass-licking, they are not beyond laughing with you, genuine laughter, not the “I am hoping for a big tip so I am laughing at the stupid joke” laughter that we all fear when we make jokes in luxurious surroundings. What, you don’t fear that?

Another strikingly nice thing about the Inn is that it is so incredibly tasteful and respectful of its surroundings. It stands near the ocean without trying to usurp the ocean. It is like the best kind of character foil; existing only to show how wonderful the other is. It smelled good, it felt good, it looked good; it tasted absolutely fantastic: it is just elegant and quiet and beautiful.

Except for the coffee.

Especially the in-room coffee.

Now, most mid-price range hotel / motel rooms have little coffee pots with baggies of wretched coffee and powdered chemical white-stuff milk substitute. Lower price-range rooms tend to give you instant coffee and a kettle. But the Very High Price Range Wickaninnish Inn featured a Pod Coffee maker.

The Pod goes like this: you fill the machine with water & press a button. The water boils, then you stick this teabag-style bag of coffee (“pod”) in the top of the machine & latch down a press. Then you press another button and the hot water is pressured through the Pod, SHOOOOOOOOOM, it says, and a cup of coffee dribbles out the spout into your cup. With froth on top. I think it wants to be an espresso machine. The end result sort of looks like espresso, in that it has the brown foamy stuff on top (crema? is that what it’s called?) But it tastes? Like dirty, old coffee pot.

One “pod” alleged as how it would make 2 4-oz cups of coffee if you pressed the “2 cup” button. Or, for STRONG coffee, you could press the “1 cup” button. We like our coffee STRONG so we did that. Dirty, old coffee pot juice poured out – and was still only 4 oz of liquid so we used 2 pods per cup. And BAD! Holy SHIT it was bad. Worse than instant, bad. Worse than American truck stop coffee. Worse than “we’re stranded in the wilderness, day 2, so let’s just pour more hot water over yesterday’s grounds and see what happens” bad.

Inn-keepers everywhere: feel free to put a coffee pot, some coffee filters and some coffee in your rooms. If the person staying in the room actually likes coffee, she will KNOW HOW TO MAKE SOME using only these three tools. If the person staying in the room doesn’t like coffee, she will drink the tea instead. If the person staying in the room has never made a cup of coffee in her life, she will either decide to try it and not know any better when she tastes it or decide to go out and buy some coffee because that’s what she usually does anyway.

I mean, for god’s sake, dudes, you put real cream in the fridge and emphasized that it would be refreshed for me every day. But the coffee tastes like dirty, old coffee pot? Whattup?

In lieu of last, pithy lines, a photo.