I've never written a motel review, but our experience this weekend at the 7-Hi Budget Motel in Hutchinson really needs to be told. If you find yourself in Hutchinson, Minnesota late at night without a place to sleep, you might be tempted to stay there. I advise you not to. Sleep in your car, in someone else's car, or in a shopping cart in the Wal*Mart parking lot, but under no circumstances should you stay at the 7-Hi Budget Motel.
For a nightly fee of $40, which cannot be refunded without 24 hours notice, you'll be given the key to a room which, if ours was at all representative, smells and is nauseatingly filthy.
The windows were covered with yellowed and broken plastic mini-blinds, which on the front window, would not close completely. Curtain rods were mounted above the windows, but no curtains were. Wallpaper was peeling off the walls, or torn off, and the bathroom wallpaper was moldy.
The bathroom wallpaper was torn off in places, and moldy in others.
The filth was the most disconcerting thing; what appeared to be dried peanut butter was smeared on the bathroom door, the furniture was dirty, and one look at the telephone was enough to induce vomiting.
The beds were not as uncomfortable as the rest of the room led us to expect, and the overwhelming smell of bleach was, in this case, comforting. And the office clerk who checked us in was cheerful and pleasant.
But these small positives were of negligible value compared with the dreadful state of our room.
Never stay at the 7-Hi Motel in Hutchinson, Minnesota.
Pros: Carpets appeared to have been vacuumed, friendly clerk.
Cons: Everything else.
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