Saturday, February 6. 2010
Day one of our adventures...
Well hello there! I have missed blogging the last few days...and I am sure some have missed my scintillating running commentary on the non important details of my life!
Found this on my camera, this is looking out our RV window in our driveway in Victoria. There is some pretty sunsets there too.
Being on the 27th floor of an apartment hotel downtown in Brisbane is interesting watching the lighting storms that came through last night. I kept on waiting for the building to shake being so used to both the boat and the RV doing that!
TIme to catch up on this blog somewhat...It has been a very busy whirlwind few days and I have not had to worry about getting any walking in as by the end of the days I can barely pick up my paws to place them one in front of the other!
Since we had quite a good sleep on the plane I have a new strategy. Get seats in the back of the plane when you have to fly economy and book one on either side of the row to hopefully make the seats between you the last ones to fill up! When we were in the Admirals Club at LAX the Qantas rep switched our seats around like that and it worked! Both mom and I took up 3 out of the 4 seats in the middle and basically slept all night. Dad, well, apparently dads count on the flight was about 6 movies!
Still, all in all, good strategy. Funny I looked at the seats in Premium economy on our way by on the plane and they did not look any better then the economy class. I understand that Qantas is taking out the bulk of their first class flights, as they make more money on the lower price with more people on board. Apparently that is a trend, as my parents tell me that many casinos' have put back in MANY many 1 cent slot machines, as they make more money on them. Decades ago they were all taking them out for the higher priced machines. I have noticed this a few other places as well, and it just may be a trend happening. In certain ways, it is a trend that I think works well on charter boats as well, the only problem is, we have a finite number of weeks in the calendar year! It has always been easier to keep the boat full with a lower charter fee and do more charters..
Anyways, back to Oz, we picked up our vehicle, a decent sized Pajaro, and made our way downtown to Oak Bay Festival, and apartment hotel located downtown, really only a block or two off of the Outdoor mall on Charlotte and Albert. Took some time to figure out the parking (no valet) found out our rooms would not be ready for hours so off we went for a drive.
In a weird moment, even though we had gotten a GPS navigator in the car, my husband was bound and determined that he was going to relearn his driving directions around Brisbane all by himself. Which meant there was a lot of face scrunching at each intersection and intersections trying to decide which way he should be going. Hey, whatever makes you happy Bazza...we all need a mental challenge every now and then!
We stopped at McDonalds for a bite to eat (where else would you go when you first arrived in Australia?) where mom delighted in seeing the first parrots/lorikeets in the trees and the first of many pictures was taken. I had forgotten how much my parents like flowers and trees. My sister will understand exactly what i mean here, as my mother is always pointing out flowers to us and typically Syd and i are rolling our eyes back in our head. It keeps them happy seeing and taking pictures of all these and I believe in the first hour mom had exhausted Bazzas knowledge of the local fauna and was telling him what the vegetation was that we passed!
We stopped to look for Cane Toads, none to be found, but we did find spiders and birds... and then made our way out to Samford area. When I first met Bazza he had a house back here, that we sold. For about $125,000 and houses are worth about $800,000 now there. Yeah. Another one of our brilliant financial moves! We don't think we could afford to live here now, or this is about what we could afford!
Continued driving out in the hills.
This is looking over the Samford plains.. It is very green right now in this part. Bazza says it is more green then he has seen it for a long time...
By the time we made it back to the city boy did we need a shower!!! All of us. After a quick clean up we went out for a walk to the outdoor mall and to show the parents this area. Walked by the casino, got some money out of the ATM and I am sure we ate something somewhere but I don't quite recall. It almost felt like we were in Times Square in New York there were so many people walking around. AND, unlike Victoria and Vancouver, we did not see one single panhandler or homeless person. The city is very clean. I cannot get over how many Asians there are here.
I found a big bag of ice and it was into bed early and to sleep for us. I have to say getting into those clean sheets sure felt good, even though the bed was way too hard for me.
******
Review of our hotel. I am fairly obsessive while booking hotel rooms. Mostly because i know myself well enough that I make Bazzas life miserable if I do not have very good beds and pillows (and I need many of these...), air conditioning that works, internet and good tv. So, I tend to look for more expensive as opposed to less, and I search all over the place for reviews like Trip Advisor etc. I also often don't like booking them through one of the discounters like Expedia, hotels or whatever, as my experience seems to be at times when I do that, I may get it for a few dollars cheaper, but I also get the oldest, tackiest, smelliest room in the place. Sometimes I do really well, with all my searching, other times, well, lets just say I wish I had not prepaid the room at times.
Location for downtown is great. The parking is a bit of a problem. You make your way down an underground parking garage that I was sure we were three times too large for, tires squealing the entire way and pass through about 3 control points that you have to use a fob on to get into. We parked our large SUV in a miniscule spot, and quickly found out that they do not waste any money cooling the parking garages, hallways, elevators etc. Felt like a sauna, most of the time.
Found in quite strange in the underground parkade, as obviously long term rentals here have storage lockers down there. However, the storage lockers are nothing more then pens of wide spaced link fence type corrals, which leaves every treasure you think you have on display for everyone driving through and EVERY item you have coated with the cement dust, and soot from the cars. Personally I would have thrown in the garbage most of what we passed. By the second day I was doing whatever I could to avoid going into that parkade. Hot, dirty, dusty, claustrophobic and you waited forever for the elevator to get down to you. I had hoped, no indeed, expected, valet parking to avoid all this, but apparently my research was lacking.
Upon checking in, we received good old fashioned keys, which are really becoming passe for key cards most everywhere. You also had a fob that you needed to operate the elevator, get in every door, the parkade etc. Fine, etc for 4 of us they only had 1 to give us. The hallways, again very hot and smelt like boiled cabbage or old curry like apartment buildings do. We had plenty of time to figure out the heat and smells as elevator wait time averaged about 14 minutes! For the first couple days we were convinced that only 1 out of the 3 elevators worked, and maybe 2 at times. We found the elevator waits in hot smelly conditions probably our least favorite part of the hotel.
The room itself, except for the lack of any soundproofing (while at the elevator you could hear the conversations in the rooms plain as day) was good. Full apartment with 2 rooms, 2 bathrooms, full size kitchen including washer and dryer (which came in handy!)
The beds were way too hard for me and although they had satellite or cable channels on the tv in the living room there was only to air tv channels in the bedroom??????????????
The A/C appeared to be building wide and not really adjustable apartment wide, with no fans, we found it quite warm sleeping at night in our rooms. Even the others in our party were hot, so it was NOT just my personal summers happening! Funny showers that had great pressure, but was flat throughout the bathroom with just a half an inch decline going to the drain... First time I got in, I turned on the shower nice and strong and quickly watched the entire bathroom floor fill up with water, meaning I had to turn down the shower to just above the trickle to avoid flooding the place.
Although comfortable, not one of my better choices for hotels and I would not stay here again.
******
I leave you today with a pictures of a Magpie...so ends day one in Oz, next time day 2...
Found this on my camera, this is looking out our RV window in our driveway in Victoria. There is some pretty sunsets there too.
Being on the 27th floor of an apartment hotel downtown in Brisbane is interesting watching the lighting storms that came through last night. I kept on waiting for the building to shake being so used to both the boat and the RV doing that!
TIme to catch up on this blog somewhat...It has been a very busy whirlwind few days and I have not had to worry about getting any walking in as by the end of the days I can barely pick up my paws to place them one in front of the other!
Since we had quite a good sleep on the plane I have a new strategy. Get seats in the back of the plane when you have to fly economy and book one on either side of the row to hopefully make the seats between you the last ones to fill up! When we were in the Admirals Club at LAX the Qantas rep switched our seats around like that and it worked! Both mom and I took up 3 out of the 4 seats in the middle and basically slept all night. Dad, well, apparently dads count on the flight was about 6 movies!
Still, all in all, good strategy. Funny I looked at the seats in Premium economy on our way by on the plane and they did not look any better then the economy class. I understand that Qantas is taking out the bulk of their first class flights, as they make more money on the lower price with more people on board. Apparently that is a trend, as my parents tell me that many casinos' have put back in MANY many 1 cent slot machines, as they make more money on them. Decades ago they were all taking them out for the higher priced machines. I have noticed this a few other places as well, and it just may be a trend happening. In certain ways, it is a trend that I think works well on charter boats as well, the only problem is, we have a finite number of weeks in the calendar year! It has always been easier to keep the boat full with a lower charter fee and do more charters..
Anyways, back to Oz, we picked up our vehicle, a decent sized Pajaro, and made our way downtown to Oak Bay Festival, and apartment hotel located downtown, really only a block or two off of the Outdoor mall on Charlotte and Albert. Took some time to figure out the parking (no valet) found out our rooms would not be ready for hours so off we went for a drive.
In a weird moment, even though we had gotten a GPS navigator in the car, my husband was bound and determined that he was going to relearn his driving directions around Brisbane all by himself. Which meant there was a lot of face scrunching at each intersection and intersections trying to decide which way he should be going. Hey, whatever makes you happy Bazza...we all need a mental challenge every now and then!
We stopped at McDonalds for a bite to eat (where else would you go when you first arrived in Australia?) where mom delighted in seeing the first parrots/lorikeets in the trees and the first of many pictures was taken. I had forgotten how much my parents like flowers and trees. My sister will understand exactly what i mean here, as my mother is always pointing out flowers to us and typically Syd and i are rolling our eyes back in our head. It keeps them happy seeing and taking pictures of all these and I believe in the first hour mom had exhausted Bazzas knowledge of the local fauna and was telling him what the vegetation was that we passed!
We stopped to look for Cane Toads, none to be found, but we did find spiders and birds... and then made our way out to Samford area. When I first met Bazza he had a house back here, that we sold. For about $125,000 and houses are worth about $800,000 now there. Yeah. Another one of our brilliant financial moves! We don't think we could afford to live here now, or this is about what we could afford!
Continued driving out in the hills.
This is looking over the Samford plains.. It is very green right now in this part. Bazza says it is more green then he has seen it for a long time...
By the time we made it back to the city boy did we need a shower!!! All of us. After a quick clean up we went out for a walk to the outdoor mall and to show the parents this area. Walked by the casino, got some money out of the ATM and I am sure we ate something somewhere but I don't quite recall. It almost felt like we were in Times Square in New York there were so many people walking around. AND, unlike Victoria and Vancouver, we did not see one single panhandler or homeless person. The city is very clean. I cannot get over how many Asians there are here.
I found a big bag of ice and it was into bed early and to sleep for us. I have to say getting into those clean sheets sure felt good, even though the bed was way too hard for me.
******
Review of our hotel. I am fairly obsessive while booking hotel rooms. Mostly because i know myself well enough that I make Bazzas life miserable if I do not have very good beds and pillows (and I need many of these...), air conditioning that works, internet and good tv. So, I tend to look for more expensive as opposed to less, and I search all over the place for reviews like Trip Advisor etc. I also often don't like booking them through one of the discounters like Expedia, hotels or whatever, as my experience seems to be at times when I do that, I may get it for a few dollars cheaper, but I also get the oldest, tackiest, smelliest room in the place. Sometimes I do really well, with all my searching, other times, well, lets just say I wish I had not prepaid the room at times.
Location for downtown is great. The parking is a bit of a problem. You make your way down an underground parking garage that I was sure we were three times too large for, tires squealing the entire way and pass through about 3 control points that you have to use a fob on to get into. We parked our large SUV in a miniscule spot, and quickly found out that they do not waste any money cooling the parking garages, hallways, elevators etc. Felt like a sauna, most of the time.
Found in quite strange in the underground parkade, as obviously long term rentals here have storage lockers down there. However, the storage lockers are nothing more then pens of wide spaced link fence type corrals, which leaves every treasure you think you have on display for everyone driving through and EVERY item you have coated with the cement dust, and soot from the cars. Personally I would have thrown in the garbage most of what we passed. By the second day I was doing whatever I could to avoid going into that parkade. Hot, dirty, dusty, claustrophobic and you waited forever for the elevator to get down to you. I had hoped, no indeed, expected, valet parking to avoid all this, but apparently my research was lacking.
Upon checking in, we received good old fashioned keys, which are really becoming passe for key cards most everywhere. You also had a fob that you needed to operate the elevator, get in every door, the parkade etc. Fine, etc for 4 of us they only had 1 to give us. The hallways, again very hot and smelt like boiled cabbage or old curry like apartment buildings do. We had plenty of time to figure out the heat and smells as elevator wait time averaged about 14 minutes! For the first couple days we were convinced that only 1 out of the 3 elevators worked, and maybe 2 at times. We found the elevator waits in hot smelly conditions probably our least favorite part of the hotel.
The room itself, except for the lack of any soundproofing (while at the elevator you could hear the conversations in the rooms plain as day) was good. Full apartment with 2 rooms, 2 bathrooms, full size kitchen including washer and dryer (which came in handy!)
The beds were way too hard for me and although they had satellite or cable channels on the tv in the living room there was only to air tv channels in the bedroom??????????????
The A/C appeared to be building wide and not really adjustable apartment wide, with no fans, we found it quite warm sleeping at night in our rooms. Even the others in our party were hot, so it was NOT just my personal summers happening! Funny showers that had great pressure, but was flat throughout the bathroom with just a half an inch decline going to the drain... First time I got in, I turned on the shower nice and strong and quickly watched the entire bathroom floor fill up with water, meaning I had to turn down the shower to just above the trickle to avoid flooding the place.
Although comfortable, not one of my better choices for hotels and I would not stay here again.
******
I leave you today with a pictures of a Magpie...so ends day one in Oz, next time day 2...
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