So far; so good!
We ae still in line to leave for Germany for three weeks, Apr 29, returning May 21.
Keep tuned.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
We are trying again!
As of today, I am working on another German trip for June and I, with much the same itnerary as that planned for last September/October. Departure will be Apr 29, 2009, return will be May 21, 2009. Some rearrangement of the sequence of areas will be necessary, especially to fit in an opera or two, but otherwise it will stay much the same as what we had planned for last Fall.
So, keep checking, for details.
So, keep checking, for details.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Jamaica - Finally!
With the last remnants of Christmas, New Year's, our annual open house wine and cheese party on the 1st Saturday of January, finally out of the way, I can catch up the writing about Jamaica - even if the German trip blog from last May is still waiting for completion.
We left for Montego Bay on 10 Dec 2008, and after the winter-usual de-icing delays, and a rather bumpy ride down, arrived in MBJ about an hour late. And, about an hour later, we were at the Iberostar Rose Hall Beach resort. We'd booked an ocean-view junior suite, and were not disappointed, although it was a rather long walk and elevator ride from the lobby to our suite overlooking the very attractive beach. From the very beginning, the hotel staff were more than friendly and helpful, a pattern that would continue for the rest of our week there. For example, our room was missing an ironing board, which the porter bringing our luggage up noted, and an ironing board duly appeared by the time we returned from a reconnoiter walk around the property.
This Iberostar hotel was only in it's second season, with two more sections being still completed.
We left for Montego Bay on 10 Dec 2008, and after the winter-usual de-icing delays, and a rather bumpy ride down, arrived in MBJ about an hour late. And, about an hour later, we were at the Iberostar Rose Hall Beach resort. We'd booked an ocean-view junior suite, and were not disappointed, although it was a rather long walk and elevator ride from the lobby to our suite overlooking the very attractive beach. From the very beginning, the hotel staff were more than friendly and helpful, a pattern that would continue for the rest of our week there. For example, our room was missing an ironing board, which the porter bringing our luggage up noted, and an ironing board duly appeared by the time we returned from a reconnoiter walk around the property.
This Iberostar hotel was only in it's second season, with two more sections being still completed.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Montego Bay, Jamaica; 10 - 17 Dec 2008
Going away in the 2nd last week before Christmas was probably not a good idea - except it was warm, and very pleasant.
However, it does not leave a lot of time for writing the blog or posting photos on fototime, so keep checking back for both - I will get to it just as soon as we are finished with shopping, wrapping , slicing, dicing, broiling, boiling, and everything else that will lead to a wonderful Christmas dinner on the 25th.
Meanwhile, love, peace and the wishes of the season to all of you.
However, it does not leave a lot of time for writing the blog or posting photos on fototime, so keep checking back for both - I will get to it just as soon as we are finished with shopping, wrapping , slicing, dicing, broiling, boiling, and everything else that will lead to a wonderful Christmas dinner on the 25th.
Meanwhile, love, peace and the wishes of the season to all of you.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
We would / should have been home by now ...
All having gone well, we would have returned from Germany last Wednesday - and that would have been a very rainy, sad day!
As it happened, of course, we never went to Germany; for reasons obvious if you read below.
We did do a few side-trips - one to Toronto and the Scarborough Bluffs. The Bluffs are some very steep cliff-like "shore formations" along Lake Ontario, from somewhere west of Midland Avenue and Kingston Road, to somewhere east of Markham Road and Kingston Road. June had never seen them, so we went in one day, had lunch at Jerusalem (a mediterranen buffet) and thenwent out to Scarborough, Bluffers Park, to see the Bluffs from the bottom, then up to the top, along Cathedral Bluffs Drive (where I had my Rectory during my time as Rector of Christ Church Scarborough Village) to see the same view from up above.
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We also went up to Drayton, in the vicintiy of Arthur, ON, to a performance at the Drayton Festival Theatre - "Legends" - a revue of early rock music from the 50's to about the 80's. Lots of energy, lots of good music - recommended!
One of the problems with Drayton is that there is nowhere to eat! At least not in the afternoon. We ended up rushing into Arthur, for some very good homemade tomato and beef soup at a local greasy spoon - I'd recommend it, except I can't remember the name! If there is some entrepeneur out there - highly recommended, start a decent restaurant in Drayton - it can't loose!
On the way home, we stopped for supper at the "At the Crossroads" restaurant, south of Elmira on Hwy. 85. Basically, a Mennonite buffet (thus, no alcohol available), but with lots of choice for everything else! Avoid the tour buses, but otherwise this is a great place to eat - and unlike most buffets, everything is fresh - and save room for dessert.
As it happened, of course, we never went to Germany; for reasons obvious if you read below.
We did do a few side-trips - one to Toronto and the Scarborough Bluffs. The Bluffs are some very steep cliff-like "shore formations" along Lake Ontario, from somewhere west of Midland Avenue and Kingston Road, to somewhere east of Markham Road and Kingston Road. June had never seen them, so we went in one day, had lunch at Jerusalem (a mediterranen buffet) and thenwent out to Scarborough, Bluffers Park, to see the Bluffs from the bottom, then up to the top, along Cathedral Bluffs Drive (where I had my Rectory during my time as Rector of Christ Church Scarborough Village) to see the same view from up above.
-------------------------------------------
We also went up to Drayton, in the vicintiy of Arthur, ON, to a performance at the Drayton Festival Theatre - "Legends" - a revue of early rock music from the 50's to about the 80's. Lots of energy, lots of good music - recommended!
One of the problems with Drayton is that there is nowhere to eat! At least not in the afternoon. We ended up rushing into Arthur, for some very good homemade tomato and beef soup at a local greasy spoon - I'd recommend it, except I can't remember the name! If there is some entrepeneur out there - highly recommended, start a decent restaurant in Drayton - it can't loose!
On the way home, we stopped for supper at the "At the Crossroads" restaurant, south of Elmira on Hwy. 85. Basically, a Mennonite buffet (thus, no alcohol available), but with lots of choice for everything else! Avoid the tour buses, but otherwise this is a great place to eat - and unlike most buffets, everything is fresh - and save room for dessert.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Sometimes the system works, but not perfectly ....
I've had an interesting e-mail exchange with hotel.de, the hotel booking site that I have been using. As noted in the post below, a hotel south of Hamburg, that we were supposed to be staying in tonight and for the next 4 nights, claimed to have no booking for us when I phoned to cancel.
A very competent woman (with excellent written English-we've had a few e-mails back and forth) at hotel.de got back to me within 24 hours, having spoken to the manager at the hotel concerned, determined that they had indeed received our reservation, but that it had been misfiled by whoever received it. No foul, no harm - we will not be charged, and hotel.de will argue it out with the hotel.
Just out of curiosity, since no one seemed to be much concerned about a reservation in a prime property being lost, or cancelled on short notice, I dug around a bit on the Internet. It seems that by about tomorrow night, Hamburg time, 70,000 international visitors will be arriving for a major trade exhibition at the Hamburger Messe. I checked the availability at the hotel we had booked, nada. Then I checked the availability for the period we would be there at any hotel.de managed hotel within 100km of Hamburg - the first one was 48km out of Hamburg. I checked availability at hotels within 50km of our original booking, and the first one would have been 40km away in a direction that would have been problematical. No wonder no one was concerned about a booking gone missing!
Which leaves me asking; Who would have cared, had we arrived this evening, and there was no room at the inn?
Memo to self: When we re-book this trip next Spring, or any other trip before then with hotels booked on hotel.de, or on any other Internet booking site, a few days after booking, give them a call, to make sure they indeed have the booking!
The system is not perfect!
A very competent woman (with excellent written English-we've had a few e-mails back and forth) at hotel.de got back to me within 24 hours, having spoken to the manager at the hotel concerned, determined that they had indeed received our reservation, but that it had been misfiled by whoever received it. No foul, no harm - we will not be charged, and hotel.de will argue it out with the hotel.
Just out of curiosity, since no one seemed to be much concerned about a reservation in a prime property being lost, or cancelled on short notice, I dug around a bit on the Internet. It seems that by about tomorrow night, Hamburg time, 70,000 international visitors will be arriving for a major trade exhibition at the Hamburger Messe. I checked the availability at the hotel we had booked, nada. Then I checked the availability for the period we would be there at any hotel.de managed hotel within 100km of Hamburg - the first one was 48km out of Hamburg. I checked availability at hotels within 50km of our original booking, and the first one would have been 40km away in a direction that would have been problematical. No wonder no one was concerned about a booking gone missing!
Which leaves me asking; Who would have cared, had we arrived this evening, and there was no room at the inn?
Memo to self: When we re-book this trip next Spring, or any other trip before then with hotels booked on hotel.de, or on any other Internet booking site, a few days after booking, give them a call, to make sure they indeed have the booking!
The system is not perfect!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Sometimes when the system doesn't work, it's a good thing!
First of all, a note on how I usually do hotel bookings when travelling; and the usual disclaimer, I have no interests, financial or otherwise, in the company through which I do these.
I use an Internet booking site http://www.hotel.de/ for my bookings. This is a German organization, but they seem to be smart enough to look at the IP address that you are connecting from, and figure out that you want the English website. If that doesn't happen, there is a language button at the top right (with a flag representing the current language of the page your looking at - for English it is a weird combination of a Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes!), and you can use that to change the page to English. You can use this site to book a hotel just about anywhere in the world, and, you can set yourself up as a user, with your contact information stored, and even your preferrred payment option (all over a SSL-Secure Sockets Layer link), so that you can simply book without having to enter this information each time.
You can search for hotels using various parameters; within a particular city, within x km/miles of a particular city, within x km/miles of an attraction or event, etc. You can set up other parameters, such as more than x stars on their rating system, and below y $/Euro/whatever currency per night. Besides a star rating system based on what the hotel provides about their facilities, you also get a user score on a 0 - 10 scale for each hotel, based on user evaluations. If you book a hotel through hotel.de, you will get an e-mail on the day you check out, asking you to evaluate the hotel, with a link to the evaluation page. The user score is derived from these evaluations, and you can also read any written comments submitted as part of the evaluation process - although these are in the language of the user, and since this is an international site, may not be understandable by you.
On about 10 bookings both in Germany and in Canada, I have found this site very reliable - in one case they got me a room in a hotel (in Canada) at a lower rate when the hotel itself had told me that only their premium (about $100 more) rooms were available. And, they guarantee that you will get the lowest Internet rate, that is, the hotel cannot sell their rooms for less than this site offers, on-line. (If they do, and you bring a print-out of the web page on which they do, the hotel has to give you the lower rate.)
Rcommended! .... but
As I noted in the post about having to cancel our German trip, there was one hotel that I had booked whose cancellation policy required cancelling at least 14 days prior to arrival, else they would charge anything-unspecified- between 0 and 100% of the total cost of the booking. We were well within that period, and thus the hotel.de website, which allowed me to cancel all my other reservations on-line, would not cancel this one. I contacted the hotel - twice. The first time I talked with a very charming young (I think) woman, late evening German time, who didn't seem to know what to do, but assured me that the hotel would call me back, after they had figured out what to do.
That didn't happen at a time that made sense, given the time difference between Ontario and Germany (they are 6 hours ahead of us), and so at about 4:30 p.m. their time I phoned again. This time I got someone (a man as it happens) who, after some explanations about what I called about, informed me that they had no booking for us (today was Wednesday, this was for Saturday next) and thus as far as they were concerned, if we didn't arrive that was no problem for them; on the other hand, they didn't care to be charged for a booking that they never received by/from hotel.de. But he also agreed that we should not be charged, certainly not the 450 Euro that our full booking was for. After an exchange of contact information - he already had my phone number from call display, but e-mail would be cheaper - we left it that I would contact hotel.de, point out their failure, ask questions, and insist that no one be charged anything for failure to cancel a reservation that never was made. I am still waiting for a reply from them. (Questions asked; how would it have worked out if we had shown up at this hotel, after an overnight flight from Toronto to Frankfurt, then a 5+ hour drive, and they had no reservation, and no room?) To be fair, digging around on the hotel.de site, looking for a hotel and looking at user comments, very occasionally (maybe 1 in 100 to 200 comments) someone complains that they arrived at a hotel that had no idea they were coming, and always the hotel either had room, or went to great lengths to place them elsewhere, at the same level of quality, and the same or lower price(which may be a hidden policy for hotels that sign up with hotel.de).
So, the booking system failed, but it may have saved us something between 0 and 450 Euro!
In other good news, the Salzburger Landestheater, where we had tickets for an operetta, got back to my e-mail telling them we couldn't make it with the news that they would put our tickets back into the "for sale" pool, and if they were sold, credit us with the value against a future visit, when we try this trip again next Spring. I am still waiting to hear back from the Hamburgische Staatsoper, where we had tickets next Tuesday.
All together, this is not working out too badly!
I use an Internet booking site http://www.hotel.de/ for my bookings. This is a German organization, but they seem to be smart enough to look at the IP address that you are connecting from, and figure out that you want the English website. If that doesn't happen, there is a language button at the top right (with a flag representing the current language of the page your looking at - for English it is a weird combination of a Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes!), and you can use that to change the page to English. You can use this site to book a hotel just about anywhere in the world, and, you can set yourself up as a user, with your contact information stored, and even your preferrred payment option (all over a SSL-Secure Sockets Layer link), so that you can simply book without having to enter this information each time.
You can search for hotels using various parameters; within a particular city, within x km/miles of a particular city, within x km/miles of an attraction or event, etc. You can set up other parameters, such as more than x stars on their rating system, and below y $/Euro/whatever currency per night. Besides a star rating system based on what the hotel provides about their facilities, you also get a user score on a 0 - 10 scale for each hotel, based on user evaluations. If you book a hotel through hotel.de, you will get an e-mail on the day you check out, asking you to evaluate the hotel, with a link to the evaluation page. The user score is derived from these evaluations, and you can also read any written comments submitted as part of the evaluation process - although these are in the language of the user, and since this is an international site, may not be understandable by you.
On about 10 bookings both in Germany and in Canada, I have found this site very reliable - in one case they got me a room in a hotel (in Canada) at a lower rate when the hotel itself had told me that only their premium (about $100 more) rooms were available. And, they guarantee that you will get the lowest Internet rate, that is, the hotel cannot sell their rooms for less than this site offers, on-line. (If they do, and you bring a print-out of the web page on which they do, the hotel has to give you the lower rate.)
Rcommended! .... but
As I noted in the post about having to cancel our German trip, there was one hotel that I had booked whose cancellation policy required cancelling at least 14 days prior to arrival, else they would charge anything-unspecified- between 0 and 100% of the total cost of the booking. We were well within that period, and thus the hotel.de website, which allowed me to cancel all my other reservations on-line, would not cancel this one. I contacted the hotel - twice. The first time I talked with a very charming young (I think) woman, late evening German time, who didn't seem to know what to do, but assured me that the hotel would call me back, after they had figured out what to do.
That didn't happen at a time that made sense, given the time difference between Ontario and Germany (they are 6 hours ahead of us), and so at about 4:30 p.m. their time I phoned again. This time I got someone (a man as it happens) who, after some explanations about what I called about, informed me that they had no booking for us (today was Wednesday, this was for Saturday next) and thus as far as they were concerned, if we didn't arrive that was no problem for them; on the other hand, they didn't care to be charged for a booking that they never received by/from hotel.de. But he also agreed that we should not be charged, certainly not the 450 Euro that our full booking was for. After an exchange of contact information - he already had my phone number from call display, but e-mail would be cheaper - we left it that I would contact hotel.de, point out their failure, ask questions, and insist that no one be charged anything for failure to cancel a reservation that never was made. I am still waiting for a reply from them. (Questions asked; how would it have worked out if we had shown up at this hotel, after an overnight flight from Toronto to Frankfurt, then a 5+ hour drive, and they had no reservation, and no room?) To be fair, digging around on the hotel.de site, looking for a hotel and looking at user comments, very occasionally (maybe 1 in 100 to 200 comments) someone complains that they arrived at a hotel that had no idea they were coming, and always the hotel either had room, or went to great lengths to place them elsewhere, at the same level of quality, and the same or lower price(which may be a hidden policy for hotels that sign up with hotel.de).
So, the booking system failed, but it may have saved us something between 0 and 450 Euro!
In other good news, the Salzburger Landestheater, where we had tickets for an operetta, got back to my e-mail telling them we couldn't make it with the news that they would put our tickets back into the "for sale" pool, and if they were sold, credit us with the value against a future visit, when we try this trip again next Spring. I am still waiting to hear back from the Hamburgische Staatsoper, where we had tickets next Tuesday.
All together, this is not working out too badly!
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