The woman get the advertisement from the radio. [originaltext]M: Well, how did y

M: Well, how did your trip go? Paris, was it?
W: It was an absolute disaster. In fact, it was so bad, it was really quite hilarious. I saw this ad in the colour supplement which offered "weekend breaks with a difference to the glamour spots of Europe for less than it costs to stay at home". Well, I suppose we should have been on our guard when we read the ad. It really was too good to be tree.
M: What happened? Do tell me.
W: Well, to start with, the ad said we would travel by air direct from London to Pairs with a well-known airline and be met at the airport and then be taken by taxi to a luxury hotel with a view of Montmartre. Well, what it didn’t say was the flight was with an unknown charter company. We did leave from London, but we flew via Brussels where we hung around for two hours waiting for passengers on another obscure charter flight from Bucharest. We finally landed in Paris six hours after leaving London, only to discover that our personal taxi service had turned into a coach journey.
M: What about the hotel? Did it live up to expectations?
W: You must be joking! The ad promised luxury double bedrooms with adjoining bath and toilet in a three-star hotel overlooking a unique historic area of Paris, within walking distance of some of the city’s best hot spots.
M: Sounds wonderful.
W: Yeah, it was. The deception, I mean. It was a real fleapit. The sort you read about but never expect to see. "Luxury double bedroom with adjoining bath and toilet" translates as a glorified cupboard at the end of a dark corridor with one toilet and bath for the entire floor. The sheets hadn’t been changed and there were cigarette ends in the ashtrays. Not to mention no soap or towels.
M: What about the view? Was it overlooking a deserted railway line or something even more awful?
W: Even that would have been more interesting than brick wall we could see from the window, if you climbed on a chair, you could just see the top of the dome of Montomartre—which I suppose justified the "view of Montmartre". And as for the hot spots, well, I’ll leave you to imagine what the neighborhood was like!
M: What did you do? Did you complain?
W: What could we do? We had no choice. It was terribly late when we got there. No, we decided to put up with the hotel and go out to the town. So we called a taxi and went to a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. And then we went to a nightclub and stayed there until the early hours. When we got back to the hotel, we were so tired that we didn’t notice our surroundings. We checked out at ten and moved into a decent place for the following night.
M: So you did have a good time in the end. But I suppose it cost a lot more.
W: An absolute fortune. But we’ve put in a complaint and we’re trying to get our money back.