Hobart
Erin O'Dwyer finds her quaint $30 digs just a bit too spartan.
There's a small part of me that relishes roughing it. Not all the time, mind. I like a luxury hotel as much as the next person. But when it comes to an opportunity to camp, caravan, or just generally cheapskate it, I'm there. So when I foolishly book a room at a Hobart B&B and pay just $30 for the privilege, this frugal side of my nature is suitably chuffed.
The rest of me sees the For Sale sign on the hotel's tiny patch of front lawn and reads it as a warning to stay away. Which is really what I should have done. Only it is too late.
Hobart ... chilly at night.Credit: Tourism Tasmania
I arrive in midwinter, in the middle of a Hobart downpour that has already lasted for two weeks.
I knock on the door and it's opened a crack by a short Indian man in a suit talking rapidly on a mobile phone.
He finishes his call and leaves me standing there. "I don't actually work here, so I don't actually have your booking," he says finally.
"I will have to check with my friend who is downstairs. You want to bring in your bags?"
Both me and my bags are saturated by the time I find myself lugging them up two flights of stairs.
But the three-storey Federation-style home is beautifully restored and the polished wooden floors and lofty caramel-coloured ceilings fill me with confidence. When I'm shown to Room 4 1/2, I even stifle a giggle.
There's a single bed, a single chair and the room is eight floorboards wide. How cute; how charming, I think. Surely this is going to be fun.
That night, the single bed and the three-bar heater are fighting a losing battle against the 2am chill and it seems neither cute nor charming. I'm cold and cramped and I'm woken by a woman having a much better time than me.
Next morning, I brave the shared bathroom. My breath fogs and the threadbare yellow towel barely covers me as I run back to the room with the 4 1/2 on the door.
It's then I realise that I'm squashed between Room 4 and Room 5. Proper rooms with proper beds, 16 floorboards wide. I realise with horror that I've paid half price for half a room and, worse still, half a bed. Even a global financial crisis does not seem a good reason for this. I curse the Guardian travel writer who has recommended the place.
By the second day, I have acquired a second heater and ask about another room.
"Sorry," says the receptionist, quickly closing the door on Room 6, whose lady-killer occupant she has just disturbed. "Fully booked."
By the third day, the pink neon of the Mercure Hotel around the corner has never looked so good. Nor has the spare room at my uncle's house.
As I drive over for dinner, I realise I am two hours early. And that the small part of me, which relishes roughing it, is frantically signalling that it is having second thoughts.
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