Must Be The Budget Cuts

Never push your luck. I got through security at Heathrow with only a minor rearrangement of my knickers. (It ought to be against the law for them to deliberately give you a wedgie.) Although the flight was delayed by a half hour, it wasn't full and the child sitting opposite us settled down and went to sleep relatively early into it. Very little turbulence and I finished the book I was reading. We landed on time in spite of the late start!

And that was when my luck got pushed. There were a total of five customs agents working the passport control gates. We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited some more. It was worse than waiting in line at six flags. It could have been worse - we could have had a connecting flight - many people did and I imagine they didn't make their connections. One poor woman was in tears by the time she got to baggage claim. At least after waiting all that time to clear passport control, all of the bags had been delivered and the conveyor belt had stopped - very easy to spot your bags, especially if one of them is hot pink.(I love my hot pink bag!). But the tearful woman was pleading (in an Eastern European accent) with one of the dog handlers to help her get through this process "more quickly". (By the time you get your bags, you only have to hand in your card and describe any food items - tea, chocolate, mustard, cheese, marmite. But what usually takes 15 minutes took well over an hour. I have no idea why, except that there were so few people working. It's not like we landed in the middle of the night. Nor were we the only flight. There were lots of people in line with sandals and fresh tans. It must be that the budget cuts have started and we can no longer afford an effective number of border patrol agents. I am learning patience.

Lunch at The Bread Bowl Cafe

On our drive from Manchester to Lowick, we stopped in the town of Richmond for lunch. Mark remembered eating at The Bread Bowl Cafe some 10 or more years earlier. He said it was good.

We went in and took a table. The waitress came and took our drink order and left us with menus. As you would expect in a place called "The Bread Bowl Cafe" the first half page of the menu was filled with soup and other items that came in a bread bowl. Then there were sandwiches and then a page of German specialties.

When the waitress came back, I inquired about the soup of the day.

"Potato Leek"

"Sounds good. I'll have the soup...in the bread bowl, please."

"We don't have any bread bowls."

"Okay, than I'll have it in whatever it comes in. I just thought that in "The Bread Bowl Cafe" I'd have it in a bread bowl."

"We've had difficulty sourcing the bread bowls."

Best to have left it at "we don't have any" - I was thinking that they made them in house and had just run out. Now that I know they are "sourced" I have suspicions about the soup.

My suspicions about the soup proved unfounded. The soup was obviously homemade and very tasty. It just wasn't in a bread bowl.

Mark said that he thought the place had probably changed hands. The furniture wasn't as nice as he remembered (although it had been longer than 10 years and things do get worn) and the huge coolers full of soft drinks hadn't been there before.

But the real clue came as we were leaving when the owner was explaining to another customer about the lack of bread bowls.

"They're impossible to source and a bloody nuisance to make. I'm going to have to change the menu and the name of the cafe. I'll probably change it to The Salad Bowl."

Perhaps she should add some salads to the menu.

A Seasonal Business

The pool at our country club closes after Labor Day and doesn't reopen until after Memorial Day. It's actually a very short season when you consider that the weather in Texas is warm considerably longer than June, July, and August. Those are the same months that the Dairy Queen in North Eaton, Ohio used to be open when I was a kid. The assumption there was that people did not want to eat soft-serve ice cream in cold weather. I think the assumption with the country club pool is that it's primarily used by children and once they're in school, there's no need to keep the pool open. And since I don't really use the pool, I don't concern myself with it.

I've just been having some thoughts on why some things are considered seasonal and others are not.

For example, last week we wanted to visit Hatfield House. It's figured into a number of books I've read about Queen Elizabeth I. It is still owned by the Cecil family, and is home to the Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury. So I guess they are the people who have decided that the house should be operated like a Dairy Queen or a pool and close from November until Easter. I'm not sure what the assumption is but it seems to be common. Last year we wanted to visit Haddon Hall, in Derbyshire, but it was also closed until Easter. And several years ago we were in Whitby in February and the museum was closed until summer.

It makes no sense to me why museums and "stately homes" (which are really museums with people living in them) should be closed for the winter. I think they're missing a trick. I don't think people will track any more mud through than they do in April or May. I've been willing to part with money on three separate occasions only to be told to come back in the spring. I live in Texas, it's just not that easy.

The Lord Lister

We were looking for a place to stay in Hertfordshire. Mark wanted to see some of his old Morris mates so we thought that Hitchin or Letchworth would be best. We've stayed at the Broadway hotel in Letchworth. It's fairly awful. We've also stayed at Letchworth Hall and thought it was exceptionally nice, but a bit limited on nearby pubs and restaurants. Oddly, both hotels had the same rating on TripAdvisor - 3.5 out of 5. I was surprised because having stayed at both, I would give Letchworth Hall a significantly higher rating that I would give the Broadway.

We decided to look at Hitchin where there are far more pubs and restaurants. Several of the listings with the 4.5 ratings were like Letchworth Hall -- not in easy walking distance of pubs and restaurants. But then there was the Lord Lister - a 4 rating and conveniently located to everything. The hotel is within easy walking distance of the town center, the market and St. Mary's church with any number of pubs and restaurants to choose from. And free parking!

We checked in on Valentine's Day, so of course we wanted to have a "nice" dinner that evening. The young lady at the desk who checked us in immediately went to work to try to secure us a reservation for our Valentine's dinner. We didn't get our first choice of restaurant or dining time, but it was better than waiting until 9:30 or 10:00 or having horse meat at Burger King. We ate at La Bella Vita and it was "bella". But I know that the young lady went way beyond average customer service levels in order to help us secure a table.

Our breakfast was cooked to order - we could choose any combination of Full English Breakfast items, cereal and toast. Exceptionally good, especially when compared with the breakfasts served up by most of the franchise hotels.

We had the double executive suite. Sounds really big, doesn't it? It's not. The desk is tucked into the corner. There is a double bed, but we needed to be careful not to trip over one of our bags because only one of them would fit in the closet. The room was spotless, but it was small. But the hotel is old and has a great deal of charm and character. Charm is often defined as small and character consists of things like two walls of the bathroom being tiled vertically while the other two are tiled horizontally. I'm sure that's character. Keep in mind that this building started life as a school, later became a home for mentally weak and deficient girls and is named after the doctor who pioneered antiseptics. - (Hmmm. Do you think Listerine was named for him?)

I'm not sure why it wasn't mentioned in any of the TripAdvisor reviews, which were all positive, but there is no elevator - nor are there any ground floor rooms. The hallways and stairs are somewhat narrow and even though we're only staying in this hotel for two nights, we're in England for two weeks - and we have the legal limit on baggage. It was a bit of a struggle to get it up the stairs and into the room. But fortunately, we had help getting it back down.

The other thing that no one mentioned is the lack of mixer taps. This may fall into the category of character or charm, but I think it's dangerous. When you have one tap for hot and another for cold, you end up burning yourself when you're trying to wash your face. Maybe I'm just being picky, but I find it extremely difficult to wash my face in sinks that don't have mixer taps.

Other than those two little things, it's a very charming place and it has a lot of character. But the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff make for an exceptionally good experience!

The Charming Chudleigh

First of all, my best recommendation is don't go to Clacton. There are other seaside towns with far more charm and far less trash in the street. (Yes, I know the seagulls did it.) But if you must go (as we must), try staying at The Chudleigh.

It's a small hotel - one website I looked at said there were 10 rooms. We stayed in Room 14, so I'm not certain how many rooms there are. We knew before we made the reservation that there was not an elevator, but they had such high ratings, we just had to give it a try.

Once they discovered that we'd flown in from the U.S. we were offered a ground floor room. It was spacious enough for a queen-size bed (comfortable), a sitting area with two chairs, and a desk. We could walk all the way around the bed without tripping over anything. Wonderful! In addition to the typical room amenities of toiletry items, we were also supplied with some cookies, tea and organic chocolate. It even had free wi-fi!

It was a short walk to the seafront - although the weather was a bit too cold for strolling by the sea. It was conveniently located to pubs and restaurants and it was very quiet.

The breakfast was cooked to order and was exceptionally good. Very telling that of the three small hotels on Agate Street, The Chudleigh was the only one with no vacancy. I'd say that's quite a feat in February.

Hertz is Number One

At least in our book - Hertz is number one. We tried a cheaper option once - we booked and paid through EasyCar, picked it up at Alamo and then had problems with Europcar trying to bill us for two tires. The place where we picked the car up had an atmosphere somewhere between carnival and bedlam. People were told that the keys were in the cars and to just go outside (in the snow, mind you) and pick a car. In the midst of this chaos we had a rather expensive camera stolen while we were choosing a car. We didn't even notice it was missing until the next day. Of course when I called the place to see if someone had turned it in, it was just as I expected - "No, nothing like that here." And why would it be? It's not like we drove away and left it at the curb - someone took it. To make matters worse, they had given us a car without working windshield wipers - a bad idea when it's snowy and slushy. They were not prepared to bring us another car; we had to return that one and pick up another. Thankfully, we were able to turn it in at Luton instead of driving all the way back to Heathrow. When we got our Citibank MasterCard statement, we saw that we had been billed $400 two times by Europcar. When I called to find out what that was about we were told that one of the tires on the Skoda was flat. The date shown on the flat tire was nearly 10 days after we'd turned the car in. There were more problems with that - 1. There were two charges for one tire. 2. No one in their right mind would pay $400 for an entire Skoda, much less pay that much for a single tire for one. 3. When we reserved the car, we paid for the "No Risk" Insurance option, which meant that no matter what happened to the car, it was covered by insurance. We went round and round over this for over three months until the good folks at Citibank finally decided that we had proved our point and reversed the charge. But the experience was a complete nightmare!

We don't know who was to blame for all that. It was all so confusing. Remember, we booked and paid through EasyJet, we picked it up at Alamo, but Europcar was the company that kept charging our credit card. I couldn't get straight answers out of anyone. We suspect that the folks at Europcar are scammers. They claimed that they didn't honor the EasyCar insurance - (How could they honor part of the rental agreement but not the other??). I was never sure who to call because there were so many people involved in the transaction. We got absolutely no help from Alamo on either side of the Atlantic and EasyCar is much like its parent company, EasyJet - nothing easy about it. And I had to get really upset with Citi Cards before they would do anything. But all in all it was a learning experience.

Now we stick with Hertz. And we pay with American Express. American Express is much quicker to take the side of the consumer over the merchant. And as long as we pay with American Express, AmEx insurance kicks in and covers any damage to the car. The other great thing about Hertz is that we always reserve the car and pay for it in advance. We always reserve a compact car. They invariably offer us an upgrade to a bigger car with more features for something in the neighborhood of $15 to $30 additional per day. We always turn it down and then end up getting it for the price of the compact car because they don't actually have any compact cars - even though we reserved one. I don't mind getting the roomier car with more options at the compact car price. This trip we have a VW Golf (turbo diesel) with a GPS system that was offered to us for an additional 15 pounds per day. When we said we'd prefer to stay with the compact, they informed us that there were no compacts and that we could have the VW at the compact rate. Sweet!

Trains, Buses, and Cars

Once upon a time, and not that long ago - public transportation in the UK was relatively inexpensive. In spite of the fact that it was (and still is) a bit difficult to handle baggage in the tube and at many railway stations (the Americans with Disabilities Act does not apply here) it was worth the effort. A car in London is actually a liability - there's the congestion charge, not to mention the hefty parking fees.

But then several years ago we noticed that the prices were going up. Finally, the price of a round trip train ticket from London to Manchester was almost as much as renting a car.

You can put up with traveling on someone else's timetable if you are saving a significant amount of money. But when a two week car rental is less than the price of a round trip train ticket, driving becomes a no-brainer.

The last straw came a few years ago when we had booked a train from Manchester to Essex on a Sunday afternoon. At the second stop, everyone was herded off the train and put on a bus for the rest of the journey - we're not talking about 10 minutes here. It was the entire afternoon. It was "rail maintenance" day and the trains just didn't run. - At least that one didn't. That same week, we booked a round-trip train ticket between two towns in Hertfordshire. It was a short distance and we ended up taking a taxi back instead of the train. We went to the ticket office to get a refund and the young man behind the counter suggested that we had actually used the tickets but hadn't had them validated and therefore we were not entitled to a refund. Seriously?? Do I look like I have nothing better to do with my life than try to screw British Rail out of 10 pounds?

That was it. Now we always rent a car. We can come and go without worrying about timetables. We don't pay train rates to ride a bus and the price of the car for two weeks is typically around $300. A much better deal!

Nothing to Say

Yesterday I mentioned to Mark that I hadn't posted anything on my blog for a while. (I just checked and the last post was January 31st). And he said, "Well, you've just been so busy."

Have I been that busy? I don't think so. I just haven't had anything to say. We've been out to eat a few times - the dinner at Steve Fields and the Valentine's Dinner at Hurricane Creek with friends was exceptionally nice, but other than that, not much to say about it. (I'm still waiting for Linda to post the pictures on Facebook.) We've been to a play and a few movies, but I didn't feel the urge to write any reviews. - Nothing to say.

We're leaving for England this afternoon so I'm sure that there will be something to say very soon. No doubt someone with the airline or TSA will do something appalling. Or I may get all of my food in a pie, or we may be snowed in. I've been reading hotel reviews on TripAdvisor so I'm hoping to avoid hotel horror stories. But whether it's horrid or charming, I'm sure something will happen!

But in case you think my life is getting boring let me tell you about my conversation with Mr. Pratt of the Internal Revenue Service. Most times lately when I've needed to talk to someone there, they've been very nice - polite and helpful. Let's just say that Mr. Pratt (I should have written his number down!) lived up to his name. He was a complete and total Pratt. I am fairly certain that I've double paid some of that tax, but I'll have to deal with it when I get back because when the IRS gives you a deadline, it's a deadline. (According to the Pratt.) Never mind that the notice arrived today and gave me a deadline of next week to pay it and I don't have time to go through all my records for the last two years to find it right now. But not to worry, if I've overpaid, they'll give me back my money and add interest to it. (Just like they did last year!) But really, who wants to talk about such unpleasantness? But other than that, I have nothing to say.

So stay tuned - our plane leaves at 5:30 (assuming that all of that ugly weather stays north of the Red River) and we'll be picking up our rental car and headed for Essex tomorrow morning. Until then, I've got nothing to say.