Ramada Inn in Deerfield Beach, Florida - Skip This Dive

As we often do, we set off on this particular vacation with no hotel reservations and no clue what we were going to be doing other than heading south from Richmond to Miami. We wasted some time on the way in the Carolinas so when we hit the Boca Raton area it was like 5:30AM and we were both exhausted. Being the end of December, it was high season down there... which means hotel vacancies were scarce. Our bad!

Finally we find a room at the Ramada Inn Deerfield/Boca. We didn't want to stay in the area and only really needed a place to rest awhile so we were a bit miffed to pay a total of $99.85 once taxes were added in, but we really had little choice. Ah well. The life of the spur-of-moment traveller... What made me maddest though, besides the sorry state of the room, was that when we asked for a late check out, they only extended it one hour. So we paid 100 bucks for 5 hours sleep. Grrr Argh.

Anyway, if you're running down Highway 1 to check out Florida's sights (I-95 is boring), then you will turn right on Hillsboro Blvd to get to this one... but don't bother. Seriously. I'll tell ya why.

The room at this Ramada looked like a $15 special. I'm serious. I've stayed at Ramada Inns before and while I don't love them, I don't particularly have a hatred for them either. I'm pretty neutral on that chain. Some suck, some are just fine. This one is the bottom of the barrell. The carpeting was torn and faded, the bathroom was not clean... there were stray hairs in the tub... just ewwwwwwwwwwww. I can't find my notes for the color scheme but really, you shouldn't care in this case. It was drab, I do recall that.

The whole room was dirty. Not filthy, but just not clean. Had we not been to the point of passing out, I would have gone back to the small lobby and complained immediately. As it was, we just fell on the bed in our clothes and died. Even as tired as we were, neither of us slept well at all in that bed. It was lumpy, like a broken down mattress type of lumpy.