We arrived at the Tower Guest House in Ship St, Oxford in the early evening, not much later that we expected due to train delays. As we anticipated, the establishment was in a good position for our expected activities in the next couple of days. We were greeted at the door by a young girl who show us to the room. This is apparently a 17th century building and the narrow stairway was not the easiest to manage after a long day of travel interruptions. We were pleased to arrive. My wife was helped with her bag up the stairs, but I was left to struggle with the rest of the luggage, The room is spacious and has an en suite bathroom with a large roll top bath. It all looks very nice. However a quick investigation discovered that the supplied kettle (With Tea/coffee Etc), did not reach the AC outlet, the cable was too short by about 9 inches. I went down stairs to alert the staff and got the blank smile, indicating that the staff member was out of her depth. She did however offer me a chair to put the kettle on next to the desk, but as the chair was upholstered in what appeared to be red velvet, I indicated that I would seek out another solution. In looking at the situation and the way the room was technically set up with lighting/television Etc, my immediate thought was “amateurish”. The chair which was supplied was a wooden chair and vey old and when my wife sat in it one of the legs came apart, it was patently dangerous. So I decided to take up the offer of the chair, and remove the chair which was faulty to the side next to another plug outlet for the kettle and set up the functional chair for use at the desk. But interestingly, when I went down to get the chair, there were no staff members in view, so I just uplifted the chair which had been offered to me. But I did realise that the lack of staff and the lack of instructions in the room did tell me that this was a very “hands-off” affair. But we were tired after tumultuous travel and were happy to be there or even anywhere at this stage. The bed in the room is obviously an old bed frame and I was not of the opinion that the mattress on it was in great shape. My wife likes to have a bath before retiring, and some things were noticeable. The curtain/blind in the bedroom is noticeably grubby which is not a good sign. No actual soap but a couple on unmarked containers which one presumes contain soap. And the hot water temperature and pressure were both inadequate. The following morning (Sunday) we went out to get breakfast close to 10 O’clock and left the “Please make up the room sign” on the doorknob but noticing that there seemed to be no-one present we joked about not being optimistic. This turned out to be true. We did a second, third and fourth excursion from the hotel and in each instance, the room remained the same. Obviously there is no form of any level of service on a Sunday. So as we had run out of milk at the tea/coffee unit in the room, we purchased a small bottle from a nearby super
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