Mr. Drake-Jones of the supposed Wellington Society cast a pall on our otherwise marvelous two-week holiday in Spain.
A month in advance, five of us arranged to partake of his Hemingway walking tour (including tapas and wine) of Madrid. We paid him 400 euro in advance. He confirmed shortly thereafter and noted that "the Society's January Calendar (is) in front of me and down for the 3rd is my singular Hemingway´s Madrid tour."
When the day came, we raced from Barcelona to Madrid by train. We waited at the appointed place (in our hotel lobby) at the appointed hour (7:00 p.m.).
Infuriatingly, Mr. Drake-Jones never appeared to give us the tour. While we were cooling our heels, we emailed him, tried to text him and left a voice mail on his phone- all to no avail. Finally, after waiting nearly an hour, we struck off on our own on a Saturday night to find a place to dine and wonder what could have been.
When Mr. Drake-Jones finally contacted us he had some lame excuse for standing us up, but at the same time, trying to deflect his absolute culpability, referred to it as a "mix-up." . He claimed internet issues- an excuse belied by his previous month's message that he had written us into his calendar. There was no "mix-up." He chose to do something else and would not take responsibility for it.
After a week, we were finally partially refunded our money. I say "partially" because, despite repeated requests (to which we did not even receive a lip service reply) to reimburse us for our direct out-of-pocket expenses and the significant exchange rate differential between when we paid him and his delayed refund, we received nothing.
Mr. Drake-Jones is not someone to whom you should trust your enjoyment of the fine city of Madrid. Our disappointment and anger is palpable and continues to this day. Drake-Jones and his Wellington Society showed us to be untrustworthy and, later, even disingenuous.
To paraphrase Papa, "It was not a good night in Madrid, and that was it."