Hotel | What Up, Vienna?

1May/107

i need a raincheck, england (part two)

And the saga continues. So after my weak few days in London, we finally headed off to Alex's first stop in his two-stop world lecture tour, The John Innes Center at the East Anglia University in Norwich. We opted to take a cab to the train station just to reserve my movin' around energy for the potentially gruelfest of a train ride. And much like the plane ride, I built it up so much in my head to be so terrifically uncomfortable, that it was actually quite tolerable. Granted, I took some awesome PRESCRIBED drugs before the trip. And on the train ride, I partook in my new favorite British OTC drug, cheese and onion potato ~~chips~~ crisps. I was bananas about those things. You know what, eff bananas. From now on, when I like things, I am CHEESEANDONIONCRISPS for them!

Passing through the town of Diss.

It is really a shame that I was such a cripple (oh, lighten up) for this whole trip. I vacillated from five minutes of "This discomfort is completely manageable!" to "I will never ever get better ever again." And when you have back problems, everybody wants to tell you some dire tale of lifelong chronic pain. Even when that tale is told with a British accent, it is not cute. Here's a tip for all the people of the world: Somebody's very present tale of woe is not your segue to tell any story other than one that ends in puppy dogs, rainbows and chocolate bars. Please retweet.

We took a taxicab from the train station to the inn where we were staying. It was pretty super duper. The property had an attached garden. Before we departed the next day, we decided to take a saunter through it. We had already brought our bags down so we asked the innkeeper if she would watch them at the front desk while we took a walk. She obliged ,however, she then inquired as to whether we had any sort of problem with frogs. "Frogs? No, not really. I like frogs," I said. Then we actually went to the garden and realized she had omitted a detail in her strange frog warning. These frogs was doing it. Or as my mother as a child used to describe cows mating, "Oh, look. That cow is giving the other cow a piggy-back ride!" And I welcome the clarification we're guaranteed to receive in the comments from said mother.

Frog-catching makes my people happy.

You have to go to Norwich, England to get yourself in this type of awesomeness.

The rest of this day involved a cab ride back to the train station, train to London, long cab ride to another train station in London, train to Warwick and then a car ride to our B&B in Stratford-upon-Avon. This was a day that all the drugs in the world could not save. When we got to the second train station in London, I was pretty much ready to call 999. Somehow by the grace of Vicodin, I made it all the way to Stratford.

We were there for two nights. I know I'm sounding like a whiney broken record, but I didn't really do anything of substance for those few days. Stratford is known for being the home (and death) of Shakespeare. When we originally made plans to stay here, we were going to do all the requisite touristing about town. The next night, we did make the short walk into the town center for some dinner which involved a walk by Shakespeare's alleged birth house. Had I been a bit more mobile, I would probably have hit the theater there to see a play and then also gone to see Stonehenge which is supposedly a bus ride away and partaken in a bit more of the scenery at a pub or three. However, whine, whine, complain, complain, woe is me, I didn't do any of those things because my back is a jerk.

Before we took off the next morning, we had our last deserved breakfast which is, in name, 50% of the agreed deal. And I felt that because breakfast was included, I had to partake in everything that was offered to me. This involved a nice appetizer of a bowl of granola with milk. Followed by a full English breakfast and a pitcher of fresh orange juice. The B&B lady visited with us a little as she brought us our heavy plates filled with scrambled eggs, sausages, rashers of bacon, cooked tomatoes, mushrooms and toast. I don't remember what I said but knowing me it was some sort of kiss-ass compliment about how much I love English breakfasts. She then responded with a diatribe how the British are the only ones that do cooked breakfasts. On and on, she went. Now, I do love English breakfasts because I do love breakfasting, however, she has obviously never heard of the American institution of IHOP. Call me when you have fruit-and-whipped-cream-topped-cheesecake-stuffed pancake stackers in your full English breakfast.

We took the train back into London. We had one more night there before leaving for Vienna. I had really hoped by this last night, I would have been recovered enough to take in a few sights. However, all the traveling about England really threw a wrench in my progress. So we just got a nice hotel room at the InterContinental in Mayfair and we stuffed our faces with BBC and room service. BBC America provides a nice sampling of what you can get but nowhere near the breadth and depth of what there is to be had at the source. Highlights were some hare-brained Andrew Lloyd Weber casting a production of Wizard of Oz American Idol-y show, this awesome game show Mastermind (?) and a marathon of this reality show to see who the could host the best dinner parties. It was all pretty great and made me a lot less sad I never got to try and make those guard guys at the palace place laugh.

Oh, no. We're staying across from the hall from the Beast!

Oh, no. We're staying across the hall from the Beast!

Don't worry, England. I'll be back. And I'm going to rip shit up properlike. Promise.

Tagged as: animals, blogsherpa, breakfast, drugs, england, food, hotel, london, norwich, pitfalls, sick, sightseeing, stratford-upon-avon, train, travel, warwick 7 Comments

10Apr/103

i need a raincheck, england (part one)

One week before I was to leave for London to meet Alex, on my way out the door of my apartment building to meet my trainer at the gym CRASHBANGBOOM my back went out. As I was crumpled on the ground in the lobby, I thought, "Wow, it is indeed like your back has done gone out. What an apt phrase that is!" I somehow managed to gather myself up enough to hobble up the stairs back to my apartment. After a grueling 24 hours, I got my hands on (read: prescribed by my doctor) some pain pills and muscle relaxers which brought me back to the land of the living. Now, I just had one week to recuperate before flying to London. That's possible, right? Right? Come to find out, no, it really is not.

Armed with my drugs (read: PRESCRIBED drugs) and a request for a wheelchair, I headed to LAX Saturday evening. Now, reserving a wheelchair was something I had never done before. And it was really surprisingly easy to do (just call your airline a few days before your flight), completely free (excluding a tip which is up to your discretion) and totally worthwhile. After checking in, I was directed to wait in a little cordoned off disabled person's corral where at about five minutes before my flight was about to board, I was picked up by my "driver." I don't want to say it was worth throwing out my back to have the opportunity to have an excuse to be wheelchaired at lightning speed through the airport in front of every line through secret doors directly to my seat on the plane, but it was definitely the silver lining of the week.

The flight was a Vicodin, Soma and a glass of white wine induced blur. And when we finally did get to London, my brain didn't even necessarily put together that my wheelchair reservation included a wheelchairing through Heathrow. It was a nice and welcome surprise. I was picked up by an Ali G sounding youngster who went above and beyond his duties. He whizzed me through the miles-long airport, through customs, got my luggage, brought me to an ATM, helped me purchase the right train ticket to get into London and dropped me off on the bench to wait for it. And he refused to take a tip which he greatly deserved. So Booyakasha and Respek to you, young man. Thank you.

I made my way to our hotel and crashed in the room. I was still in a pretty deep drug-fueled, jet-lagged travel coma when Alex arrived a few hours later. That night was uneventful. Some dinner was involved. More sleeping ensued. Let me just point out here that this was my first ever trip to London, England or anywhere in the United Kingdom for that matter. We had three days in London and I was still naively hopeful that I could get some touristy sightseeing checked off my list in the morning after a good night's sleep.

Double-decker bus. Check. Driving on the left side of the road. Check. Trafalgar Square in the background. Oh, you betcha. Check!

Double-decker bus. Check. Driving on the left side of the road. Check. Trafalgar Square in the background. Oh, yah, you betcha, we're in London!

Our hotel was really in a great location right on Trafalgar Square. Jetlag woke me up pretty early. When Alex roused, we made our way outside to go track down a nice full English breakfast. We surprisingly had a very difficult time finding a decent place to eat in our area. It was a bit before 8am and it seemed a lot of places weren't open yet. From this situation, one could surmise that London isn't as crazy about breakfast as we are in the States apparently. Finally, we had to settle on this chain that was right next to our hotel. I don't know if it was just an off day for this place, but they appeared to be opening their doors at the same time as they were receiving deliveries for the day and didn't seem to have any sort of back loading dock type entrance. So as we entered the restaurant, we were followed by carts of groceries. Unfortunately, it seemed that we beat the arrival of the potato truck so we were unable to have hash browns. We should have taken that as a warning sign for the quality that was to come. The breakfast was cold and blah. The coffee tasted like burnt dirt. However, I am smart enough not to judge the whole of England on this shitty franchise's version of their breakfast. Better breakfasts were to come.

After that bold jaunt through our temporary neighborhood, I spent the rest of the day convalescing in bed. However, that night we had reservations at Gordon Ramsey's Boxwood Cafe and I refused to miss it. It ended up being well worth it. We had their Monday Supper which was three courses with an amuse-bouche to start. I can't remember everything I had but I do remember I chose a Shepherd's Pie as the entree. The food was all fantastic. And my body managed to even keep it together until the middle of the second and third course. I popped some pills and carried on. I'm a star!

The sum of my sightseeing these three days were as follows: Seeing Buckingham palace on the way to the Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Well, let me say first Alex pointed the palace out to me and then a few blocks later, I see a fancy building and I ask the cab driver what it is and he answers, "Why, that's Buckingham Palace." This makes me wonder how much of what Alex says is really the truth. We also went to the National Musuem in Trafalgar Square. And we ate a great English breakfast in a crypt below a cathedral. That was pretty awesome. So that was it. The rest of my time I spent on the bed watching BBC which really ain't nothing to shake a stick at. BBC is great hotel TV watching.

We just went to a museum. We're so smart now!

Stay tuned for Part Two of our adventures...

Tagged as: airplane, airport, blogsherpa, customer service, england, hotel, london, pitfalls, sick, sightseeing, train, travel, united kingdom 3 Comments

10Feb/104

take your prague and shove it

First off, let me just say that we didn't really think things through when we planned the trip to Prague. We already had this five day trip to Venice planned. While we were in Venice, our friends C.J. and Mather were going to be in Vienna and we were going to completely miss them. So we thought, why not meet them in Prague at the end of their trip? We haven't been to Prague. We've heard great things about Prague. Let's do this. This gave us about a three day break between trips. Those three days included Christmas Eve and Christmas. I might also note that we had a terrible sleeper train ride back from Venice which pretty much rendered Christmas Eve a wash as I slept through most of the day. At some point, I might write a sidepost about this, but for right now, suffice it to say, I slept nary a wink on that train trip due to an unfortunate and unexpected downgrade in service.

So after the wasted Christmas Eve, the decent Christmas Day and maybe a day or two of recuperating in between, we headed off to Prague in the Czech Republic. The train to Prague is about three hours. Here are a couple things about Prague that are good to know. They don't use Euros. And they don't speak a language you can even hope to decipher. Well, maybe I am stereotyping you, but if you are anything like me (and that's decently awesome), then good luck with reading or eavesdropping Czech. When the young train ticket-taker came by, we asked him to teach us a few key words. I don't think I mentioned this before, but in my opinion the number one most important word to learn in any language is the word for "Excuse me/Sorry." In German, it is "Entschuldigung." In Italian, it is "Scusi." In French, it is "Pardon." And in Czech, as we learned, it is "Promiňte." Closely following that in importance are the words for "Thank you," "Please" and it's always nice to learn your "Hi's and Bye's." I can't remember those words. And in full disclosure, I had to look up "Promiňte" just to make sure I had the spelling right. Even fuller disclosure: I did not.

The train trip was uneventful. When we arrived to Prague, we managed to navigate to our hotels via public transportation relatively easily. Also, in a stroke of lucky coincidence, using Hotwire we managed to get booked at the same hotel that CJ and Mather were at. For those unawares, Hotwire is a travel site where you can search hotels (among other things) via location, star ratings, amenties, price, etc but you can't find out the name of the hotel until you actually make your purchase. I love it. And you usually get pretty good deals. They are not paying me, I swear. (But if you read this Hotwire, why don't you throw some more hotdollars my way.) Anyhow, our hotel was right on the river. And for whatever reason, we got a room upgrade. It was a round bed, mirror on the ceiling and white tiger short of being the master bedroom of a Czech drug kingpin pimp. We were ballin'.

Are you jealous of my frosted closet mirrors?

Later that night we ventured out with CJ and Mather into the city center. We went to supposedly one of the oldest pubs in Prague. You sit down, they come over with a tray full of Jagery type of shots and you take a few, then they come over with a tray full of beer and you take a few, then the shots again, then the beer, and so on and so on. It's like a Brazilian churrascaria but replace the meat swords with alcohol. I took a gander at the all-too-familiar menu and it was kind of the beginning of the end for me then. At that point, I came to my breaking point with the food of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. No offense, Hapsburg! Fighting the urge to storm out, I played it safe and ordered sausage and kartoffelpuffen. Alex thought he was playing it safe but he ended up with something that looked like a beef sundae.

Alex ordered this puzzling dish.

After dinner, as we were walking around the city, I was just exhausted. Prague really looks a lot like Vienna. The architecture is very similar with the differences being the tops of the buildings. And as aforementioned the food is the same Grandma's food I had been eating for three months. There were just more people. More tourists. It was basically just a dirtier version of Vienna. And I'd rather just be in Vienna. That was when I went on vacation strike.

The next day, CJ and Mather wanted to take the train to go see a bone church two hours outside of Prague. I woke up, opened one eye to look at Alex and said nope, then I turned over and went back to sleep. They were gone for the whole day. And I could care less. I lived it up! I used the free internet in the lobby! I had a decent Ceaser salad in the hotel restaurant! I took a bath! On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is gazing upon plague-infested bones and 10 is ballin' Czech drug kingpin style, my day ended up being a strong 9.5.

Alex contemplating becoming a serial killer. Look at the art he could make!

We left the next day. It was a short trip. Perhaps Prague really didn't get a fair shake. Or perhaps Prague didn't step it up enough. I don't know. I would like to blame the circumstances leading up to this trip for my poor impression. And I'd like to give Prague a second chance, but I don't know if that will happen. We might be forever starcrossed. And if you're some Prague person reading this, cut me some slack. You're telling me that you never went to the U.S. or something on a crosscountry tour and after seeing Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago, you just weren't having Des Moines? And if you're some Des Moines person reading this... I don't know what to tell you, I can't imagine your city being anything other then a snoozefest. Good job on the gay marriage thing though! I don't know how to end this paragraph. I'll just end it right here.

Tagged as: czech-republic, drinking, food, hotel, language, prague, travel 4 Comments

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