No Room at the Inn

I know it is the wrong season, but in the belief that our faith and life are intertwined, it's a cute heading.

WOW! I do not know if I have navigated the internet hotel price wars before. For those who know me, I am rather casual and laid back, not type Z, but definitely not a type A personality. I enjoy the journey. I prefer to find a hotel when I am ready to stop. I do not want the stress of HAVING TO GET THERE when I am tired or there is something really neat along the way I would like to see. Neither do I like having to stop when I'm in a mood to drive a few more hours.

This time is different. I know where I'm going. I know when I need to be there. I know how long I am staying. If there is no room at the inn, I do not just arrive at my destination sooner; I am now moving away from it. And what if I cannot find a room for another 20 miles? A friend is traveling with me as well and I do not want to risk putting her through that.

So today I have visited Priceline and Trivago as well as the hotel I am looking at and their national reservation line. The first reservation I pursued, through the national reservation line, started at $63 per night but taxes added a whopping 29%. (Again for those who do not know me, I live in the budget aisle.) So I went back to comparison. I clicked on one at $54 per night for the same hotel, which immediately opened another window giving the price as $63. OK, back to comparisons. On to $58.38, again for the same location, but it did not say smoking or non-smoking which is a critical issue for me. Fifteen minutes of on-line chat later I was told to just reserve and then call the hotel to get the room I wanted. And if they don't have it? Back to the drawing board. I called the hotel directly. Sometimes you can also get a better deal directly with them or check for available discounts. The receptionist gave me the price, then realized I wasn't checking in tonight and immediately transferred me back to the national reservation line. ARG!

This new reservation line agent, however, did help me and came back with a considerably better price than her coworker had proposed 40 minutes earlier. It was a very acceptable price. And I was afraid it might go up again if I kept looking!

This brings us back to the title. Would Joseph and Mary have had a reservation had they looked online before leaving home? Or is that precisely why they had no reservation; they had given up in frustration and decided to wing it? If they had tried the internet they might have been tempted to just skip the whole census thing entirely, but then we would be in a pickle:

"But from, Bethlehem-Ephrathah least among the clans of Judah,
From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel;
Whose origin is from of old, from ancient times."          ~Micah 5:1
                                                                       quoted from http://www.usccb.org/bible/micah/5

So maybe it is a good thing there was no internet back then.