Zurich and The Very Bad Hotel

The day started out with all the stars aligned.  We left our home without complications.  I packed us a yummy picnic breakfast which we ate about half way down. We found our hotel without complication though discovered parking was limited. We didn't let that get us down. Quickly checked out our room but it wasn't ready which also didn't fluster us because it gave us the opportunity to talk to the housekeeper requesting extra bedding for the children. Then we were off to meet a friend. Our good friend had a good laugh at us because apparently our hotel was located in the Red Light District. How was I supposed to know? I just shrugged it off because I figured we would be in our room before the action started and the children would never know the difference. We had a lovely day walking around the lake, eating ice cream, and playing in the splash pad with our friend Christoph and his daughter. Let's clarify, the children had fun playing in the water and we enjoyed watching them play. After saying goodbye to our friend, we stopped for dinner and made our way back to our room.  We opened the room to the hotel and we were hit with a wave of heat. Oh my! How did we miss that! The room was unbearably hot!  Zurich was blessed with lovely weather that day, but without air conditioning, we weren't sure how we were going to survive the night. We rushed to the windows but once again no luck because the window couldn't be opened.  I quickly stripped down the children, brushed their teeth and tucked them into bed. Cold showers were in order which helped some, but around 3 a.m. I woke up in a complete panic. I felt like I couldn't breathe. I grabbed the key to the room and rushed outside for some fresh air!  When I came back into the room my husband popped up his head and asked me what was going on and I told him that in the morning we were going to look for a new hotel room.  Yes, even seasoned travelers like me make mistakes and in this case a big one. I forgot to check for A/C, I forgot to look on Trip Advisor, and while 99% of the time booking through hotels.com is perfect in this case I had made the mistake to not check the cancellation policy before booking. This particular room had a no refund policy.  This also meant we had to eat the cost of the room; however, due to my husband's quick thinking, he booked a beautiful hotel room in Lake Como at a hotel we had stayed at before and knew with 100% assured that it had air conditioning. Lesson learned and an expensive lesson. You win some you lose some!