B1–1

I was on holiday in Miami a few years ago. I was staying in a really nice three-star hotel. On the first morning I got up early because the weather was fantastic and I wanted to go sightseeing and take some photos. I was walking down a narrow road which was completely empty and suddenly a man’s voice behind me said quietly:” Don’t turn round! You’ve got a gun in your back”.

I could feel something very hard pressing my back. Then he said:” Don’t say a word or you’re a dead man. Give me your camera and your money!”

I was absolutely terrified. I gave him my camera, all my money and all my credit cards. Then he said:” Don’t move and count to twenty.”

Well, I counted to about fifty and when I looked around, I was alone on the road.

I’d only been in Miami for a couple of hours and I’d been robbed! But the worst thing is that perhaps he didn’t really have a gun in my back. Perhaps it was just his hand. I’ll never know.

You know, it started out well enough. We drove along a nice road and stopped at a wonderful place on the coast for lunch, and that’s where everything started to go wrong. When we got back to the car, we found we had a puncture. Then, when we looked in the boot, we found there was no spare tyre. I tried to call a breakdown service, but the battery in my mobile phone was too low. At least it didn’t rain. Finally, someone stopped and gave us a lift to the nearest town. Next time, I’ll be better prepared, believe me.

I definitely won’t be staying there again! I knew as soon as I arrived that I had made a mistake. The hotel was only half finished. My room wasn’t too bad, quite spacious in fact. But what with all the hammering and banging the builders made, it was too noisy to sleep. On top of that, the pool wasn’t finished.There was just a big hole in front of the hotel. When I left, they gave me quite a big discount, but that really didn’t make up for it!

I had an awful time on my holiday. Everything went wrong. I got to the check-in on time, only to find out that the flight had been delayed. I had to wait for four hours, would you believe it? I had taken a travel sickness pill before I left home, but of course, because of the delay, it didn’t work! I was so worried about my luggage being lost that I packed too much in my hand luggage. They said it was too heavy and I couldn’t take it onto the plane with me. What a nightmare!

This happened to me a couple of years ago when I was a student. I was travelling in India, and I didn’t have much money so I always stayed in these really not expensive hotels. Well, I arrived in Delhi one evening, and found a small hotel near the station. I’d been travelling all day and I was absolutely exhausted so I went straight to bed. In the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up because I could feel something on my pillow. I switched on the light and I saw that it was an enormous cockroach. I jumped out of bed and then I saw that the whole room was full of giant cockroaches.So I ran out to the reception and I shouted at the receptionist:” Come quickly, my room is full of cockroaches.” The receptionist didn’t seem at all surprised. He just gave me a can of spray and said:” Here you are. Spray your room with this.” But I couldn’t go back in there, so I asked the receptionist to do it. In the end, he sprayed it, but I was so terrified I spent the night on a chair in the reception. Next morning when I went back to my room, it was full of dead cockroaches. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.