Bainbridge Vacation Rentals: Fail

We were going to rent a cabin yesterday for my fortieth birthday. Ennie picked out a cabin on Bainbridge Island nestled in the woods with a hot tub and reserved it.Yesterday we hopped on a ferry to get from Seattle to the island and picked a park to hike about in. The park, Gazzam Lake Park, was pretty damn spectacular. We took a challenging trail down the edge of the island down to the sound. Honestly, it was a lot easier going down 400 feet worth of elevation than coming back up.But that's not what this is about.We had the confirmation printed out with the check-in time of 4:00 PM and decided to swing by a tad early to see if we could get in -- or at least scope the place out if we couldn't. We arrived at around 3:40 or so and were met by a confused guy who turned out to be the owner. When we told him we were checking in for the night he looked concerned and mentioned that he had just painted the loft (where the bed was). Looking like he was going to crawl into his skin he fetched his wife.She was just as confused.Through a lot of finger pointing and general confusion it turned out that somewhere along the chain the ball was dropped, rolled into a corner, and started a dust bunny collection.Eventually when we got ahold of someone at the rental place they first blamed the property owner, then eventually fell on their sword themselves. The story was they forgot to tell the cabin owner about our reservation.We had some options:

• We could sleep in the newly painted -- and sure the be migraine-inducing -- room for free
• We could get a place in the city; both a duplex or a bungalow were available. Neither of them had a tob tub.

<eye-roll/>We already have a house in the city without a hot tub. Why bother.When they overheard me mention Yelp they quickly said that they'd comp us a night later on.So after almost $50 in ferry charges we had a nice walk in a park.

- = -

All was not lost, however. On the ferry ride home Ennie gave me her present: a vintage Pelikan 140.  :heart:I'll write a lot more about it (and with it) in soon!We settled into a superb dinner at the Stumbling Goat on Greenwood, had some awesome Dobos Torte at home and called it a day.