As we walked down the beautiful, sloping streets of Old Quebec, toward the Furniculaire, and with the Chateau Frontenac lit up against the night sky as our guide, Dustin reached for my hand and said the following with an upbeat, hopeful tone: “I’ve been providing you with interesting memories and plenty of writing material for a very long time.”

He’s not entirely wrong, but I wasn’t in the mood. We had just walked a mile from our hotel, outside the city’s walls, and although it was 7:30 p.m., we hadn’t had dinner yet. No one was particularly cheerful.

Our trip to Quebec was meant to celebrate my upcoming 40th birthday. I had been planning it since July with stacks of travel books and recommendations for hotels and inns. Because we could not afford the hotel I really wanted to stay in (the Chateau), I booked us a room at a small inn across the street. Our view would be the Chateau’s iconic rooftop rising above the city, and we’d be within walking distance to everything.

Some time in September, however, Dustin called from work and asked, “Can you cancel the hotel in Quebec without being charged? I think I have a better place for us to stay in.”

“Better” means different things to me and Dustin.

I said exactly nothing on the other line, and Dustin floundered.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I’ve screwed things up in the past. But not this time. I’ve got a really great place!”

To get a sense of the situation, we have to go way back in the memory vault, and as Dustin rightly notes, my memory for these things is detailed and lasting. Dustin is known for being overly optimistic about, well, everything. In the beginning, his optimistic was infectious. Seventeen years later, it is a warning sign.

There are so many stories of Dustin cheerfully believing he has a “better way” to get to our destination, only to end up taking us on a “scenic route” that, in his words, “we would have missed otherwise.”

“Imagine all the people who don’t get to see this route,” he would say.

But my “favorite” stories involve his optimism for hotels. Never let Dustin pick out a hotel for you.

The worst was when I was almost eight months pregnant with our first son, Ford. We had Navy orders to move from our then-home in San Diego back to the East Coast. We planned to travel along the southernmost route of the country, stopping only at hotels that were close to major hospitals, just in case. So I was surprised when we crossed into New Mexico and Dustin mentioned that he had a “really neat” night planned for us near Roswell.

When you’re pregnant, you’re not always up for “really neat.” But I was young and naive, so I played along — until Dustin pulled up to an alien-themed motel that actually had green monsters and spaceships painted on the side of the building. Inside our room was a green toilet, more murals and carpet that looked like outer space.

I threw up in the bathroom, while Dustin ate nachos out of a Styrofoam to-go box.

So you can understand why I thoroughly questioned Dustin about the hotel he had in mind for Quebec.

Me: “Is it in the old city?”

Him: “Yes, right inside!”

Me: “Does it have enough beds for all of us?”

Him: “It has MORE beds than we will need!”

Me: “Will it be clean?”

Him: “Cleaner than any hotel you’ve ever stayed in.”

Me: “Then why is it so cheap?”

Him: “Because it’s THAT good!”

What I forget to ask is this: “Will our rooms have bathrooms?”

When we arrived, I was definitely impressed with Dustin’s accommodations. It was neat, just as he said, and there were pull-out beds everywhere. We’d even have two separate rooms all three nights, for the price of one night in the hotel I had picked.

The kids started fighting over which room would be theirs and which one would be ours.

“Dad and I get the one with the better bathroom,” I said.

Bathrooms?

And that’s when Dustin made a panicked face: We’d want bathrooms, too?

The place only had a shared bathroom and four open showers for the entire floor of guests. We’d need our own towels, robes and shower shoes, and we didn’t have them.

Dustin: You mean I needed to find a place that had towels? What?

It wasn’t easy finding a hotel last minute in Quebec City, which is why we ended up a mile away. But each time we passed the hotel that I had picked, Dustin took my hand and said some version of, “Don’t I provide you with lots of interesting memories?”

On our last night, I had to agree. It was a wonderful trip, despite the start.

But I pleaded with him, “Only the regular kind of memories from now on, OK? And I always get to pick the hotel.”