Day 95 - "You don't have a reservation"

Lima

We were changing to different accommodation today, in Miraflores which is the upmarket beachside suburb of Lima. We had decided to treat ourselves to a nice modern apartment for a few days and do a bit of self catering as well.

We turned up to a lovely apartment building with a beautiful foyer and went to reception to book in. We had read on some reviews that the man at the desk was quite rude but nothing could prepare us for the way we were treated. He said "You don't have a reservation" and then put his head back down and ignored us. We argued that we did have a reservation and showed him our confirmed booking through booking.com. He ignored us and left us standing there!! We got booking.com on the phone and passed the phone to him but he just told the booking.com people the same thing! There was nothing we could do but find alternative accommodation which wasn't easy for the same day, similar location and similar price.

We finally booked somewhere else close by and walked to the address shown on booking.com. This place also didn't have our booking, but at least this time the man at the desk went out of his way to help us figure out what had gone wrong. It turns out that as there are so many apartments in Miraflores in varied locations rented by different companies, they either use their office address, or as in our case, use an address that is unrelated to the either the apartments or their office!

Eventually someone came and met us and we all caught a taxi to the apartment - third time lucky. This apartment was almost brand new and quite modern, and though it didn't have the ocean view we had hoped for, it was still in a good central location.

By the time this had all been sorted it was late in the afternoon, so we headed out for a coffee at a nice french bakery nearby, then did the round of the local supermarkets - at least there were plenty to choose from.