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April 6, 2015April 6, 2015

Sometimes we get lucky

International business travel generally sucks, unless you’re unfortunate enough to have to do it all the time and can reap the rewards of perks from airline and auto rental memberships. Even then the amount of effort you have to put into it simply doesn’t make it attractive to me.

On my recent trip to the United Kingdom, I rented a car from Hertz.

Why do you need a car in London you might ask. Generally when I travel to our London office I’m taking equipment over or bringing something back or in 50% of the trips helping them move offices. Our offices are also on the outside of London, just outside of the reach of most of the tube. That’s why I need a car. What about taxi’s? Taxi’s suck. So there.

I’ve rented a car there 4 times now. That process itself is usually pretty hateful. In fact the last time through “National”, we were basically scammed. I had initially booked the reservation through Kayak and rentalcars.com, but the agent at the airport capitalized on my over-night red-eye fog to bait and switch me. So needless to say, National will never get any of my business again, ever. But that’s not what this article is about.

This article is about the awesome service I received from Hertz. A magnificent upgrade to a brand new Mercedes CLS350 AMG Estate wagon. When I say brand new, it had 9 miles on it.

I price shopped via Kayak again, but actually booked the car through United.com. Then hooked up my (new to me) Hertz Gold membership to the reservation. This means other than having pre-done the Hertz Gold membership, they knew nothing about me. I had not previously rented 10 vehicles from them. They just treated me like gold. I hopped on the shuttle, they dropped me off and told me where my parking lot stall was. I got there, and found the car. Checked the bill, and was ready to set sail. The only thing that was missing was the need to add the insurance to the reservation as our corporate insurance doesn’t extend overseas. So we hopped into the reservation counter, handed them the invoice and they just took care of it. Easy peasy.

Basically what I got to tool around in was this:

So how awesome was it?

It was awesome. Of course the steering wheel was on the wrong side, but it was super comfortable. Had plenty of power, and got decent mileage on top of it all.

It was a turbo diesel, with ‘eco’ features. This ‘eco’ feature is a new thing over there where the car shuts off when you’re stopped. You pick your foot up off the brake and the car just starts back up. Every time you stop. At lights, at parking stalls, at roundabouts, when you’re about to pull out. Yeah, all of those times. I hate it.

Thankfully you can turn it off. I couldn’t however figure out a way to have it turned off by default. I would change that if I owned one.

I didn’t take photos of the interior, but there was plenty of room in the trunk for two large checked bags.

It simply drove and handled like a dream and I put 500 miles on it over the course of 7 days on a trip to Dover and a trip to Brighton beach and some tooling around in the country.

So would I drive this car again? You bet. Would I buy one? You bet, if money wasn’t an issue. Would I rent from Hertz again? Absolutely.

Fun times.

Actual car driven on real roads to real destinations, not on a closed course:

October 25, 2014October 25, 2014

Family Photos

We took advantage of the good weather today and hit Sharon Woods for some family photos. Of course everyone got along and nobody died so it was successful Winking smile Kind of a family, engagement photos for Maggie, and senior photos for Molly.

August 23, 2014August 23, 2014

Europe 2014 (Part 6 of 6) | Germany – Castles

Wednesday morning started early. Turns out, if you want to actually see the inside of the Neuschwanstein Castle you need tickets. In order to get tickets you need to reserve them. In order to reserve them you should do so no later than 3 days prior. That didn’t work for us. Your other option is to show up early and stand in line. We heard and read about long lines. We had a back up plan though and that was to hook up with the free tour from the same folks that handled the Munich tour. They start their tour from Munich and the bulk of the cost is the train tickets to the castle, and when you get there you still have to buy the tickets but tour guides have an in and can get them. So that was our goal to drive down and meet the group at the train station.

We left Munich about 9am, it’s roughly a 2 hour drive, but we wandered through some small German villages on the way and pulled into the town beneath the castle just prior to noon. We made the call to just stand in line. The line was about 30 minutes long and our tours for the castles were at good times. 12:50 for Hohenschwangau the castle the crazy king lived in, and 3:20pm for the fancy castle.

Words cannot describe the beauty there.

You have lots of options to get up the mountain to the castle. Busses, or horse drawn carriages. But you still have a good 15-20 minute hilly walk in front of you.

The views are amazing though. So, the short version of the story is, this King, King Ludwig II was kind of a nut. He never married, lived alone and like to decorate and build ‘fancy’ castles. You can draw your own conclusions. He started on this castle well after the home we live in was built, so in the scheme of castles it isn’t very old. It is cool though, and it was a good idea to finish it even after he died. It would have been a shame to let that go to waste.

They don’t let you photograph anything inside either of the castles, primarily to keep the tours moving and motivate you to buy a book.

After touring the castles, we beat feat south, through the Alps. There’s no point in taking photos in the Alps. You cannot do them justice with a point and click camera. The shear beauty of the

We have some pretty impressive vistas here in the states, out in the Rockies, but they still don’t compare. After rolling through the Alps we stopped in Innsbruck, Austria for dinner. We found a quaint Italian restaurant in town and dinned there. It was late and again just about everything was closed so once again we ended up with Italian.

Claudine was beat, I think it was the yarn shopping on the prior day that did it. 😉

On Thursday we stayed in town. I walked Freising with her, and we stopped in at the local cathedral. It was simply amazing.

After spending the morning in Freising, we headed north to Landshut where both Martin and Rob live. Trausnitz Castle is there at the top of the hill, and it dates back to the 1200’s. We didn’t have time to take the tour, so we walked the grounds and all the public places. It was amazing.

The park and surrounding grounds of this castle were amazing. We saw deer in the forest on the way back to the car. We then headed back to Freising to have dinner at the Weihenstaphan Brewery Beer garden. The oldest continuously operating brewery in the world. The food was great and the beer was great what more could you ask?

After dinner we drove Mark to his hotel and returned to ours to pack for the flight home in the morning. We got up early for the long day, only made longer because both of our flights home were delayed.

So there you have it, 2 countries, and a whole bunch of stuff visited in about 4 and a half active days of vacationing.

Now I need a vacation from my vacation.

August 23, 2014August 23, 2014

Europe 2014 (Part 5 of 6) | Germany – Munich

Monday morning started off well, we got up early and got to the airport and through security with plenty of time to spare. We had breakfast at the airport and it was surprisingly good. Our last shot at English breakfast, but again, scrambled eggs on smoked salmon hit the spot for me.

Shopping there was pretty much a bust, given the exchange rates it just doesn’t make sense, and I’m not paying £30 for a T-Shirt (almost $50 us). I’m just not going to do it.

We arrived at the Munich airport on time, made it through customs without an issue and collected our bags. Straight to the rental car facility, which had a line, but was uneventful. Thank you Budget for not doing the same bait and switch that Alamo in the UK did.

We retrieved our car and were off, straight to the office.

Like the UK office, our Munich office isn’t in Munich, it’s technically in Hallbergmoos, near the airport about 3o minutes north of Munich. The highlighted area in the map above shows where we spent our time in Germany. As far north as Landshut, and as far south as Innsbruck, Austria.

Upon arrival spent the day handing out new laptops and prepping for the router swap. Claudine just hung out in the office embracing her down time watching some flicks on the iPad. We took a break about 4pm and headed to the hotel to check in, and change. We headed back to the office to to the dirty work after hours.

Upon completion it was late, like 10pm late. We hadn’t though through where we’d eat but I was pretty sure the hotel restaurant would be closed. On our way to the hotel we spotted a little Italian restaurant and popped in there.

The place was about closed but they seated us, and didn’t speak a lick of English. Only German and Italian, but from a German/Italian Menu you can pretty much figure out what you want. My Rosetta stone was coming back to me and I could pick out a few things, we used google translate on the iPhone for a few key words.

Best Calzone I’ve ever had.

The following morning, Tuesday, I headed into the office and left Claudine to explore Freising on foot. Of course she found a yarn store and met a new friend.

I wrapped up my work around noon, picked up Claudine and headed to Munich for a Free Guided Tour of the City. We took the New Munich FREE Tour in English and it was worth every penny. Our guide, Colson, was in Germany playing American football with the Munich Cowboys. His wife was completing a 3 year over-seas commitment for the company she worked for and he gave the tours for beer money. They are free but you tip the guide after the tour. He earned his money.

The tour started at MarienPlatz, in front of the Glockenspiel.

From there we wandered through the city seeing the sights and learning about the Bavarian kings, and a little about the 3rd Reich. Colson also gave the 3rd Reich tour so he mixed a little of that in as well.

At the close of the tour we got to watch the Glockenspiel do it’s thing. Our tour guide was right, I can see why it’s the #2 most over-rated tourist attraction in Europe. After the tour we ended up at the Hofbräuhaus for dinner.

There was an oriental family seated at the table next to us. They just assumed we were natives and were very happy to have their pictures taken with me, almost all of them. It was hilarious.

We stood in the courtyard where Hitler painted one of his famous paintings. Of course we bombed the hell out of the surrounding buildings but the tower remained in-tact.

We even found another Yarn store for Claudine. I mean I knew it was there, right there and I took her to it, specifically. 🙂

After we the yarn shopping extravaganza we walked around Munich some more than drove around for a bit and headed back to the hotel to get some rest, Wednesday was going to be a big day.

August 23, 2014August 23, 2014

Europe 2014 (Part 4 of 6) | The UK – Not London

Saturday morning we checked out of the hotel early. We ate breakfast at the hotel each morning because it was included. Breakfast was good, because breakfast wasn’t an English breakfast. I ate scrambled eggs on smoked salmon on an English muffin. This was the last morning hear so I suggested Claudine try a traditional English breakfast. You can see she was thrilled with it but she tried it, all of it including the baked beans and blood pudding.

Then we were off, out of London and into the countryside.

Which is amazingly beautify, and again questions why in the world so many people in London need to cram into such a small place. Spread out for crying out loud.

Our first stop (of many) was at Burton on the water.

Where we had probably the worst meal of the trip, and the worst Fish-n-Chips ever. Extremely fishy, and just not good overall. When the best part of your Fish-n-Chips meal is the peas, something’s wrong, seriously wrong. So beware, the restaurant to the left of ‘The Croft” is no good, at least their Fish-n-Chips are no good.

From there we hit Chipping Campden. Which was cool, but people like live there.

And it’s crowded and I’m talking about right on the main drag are homes. And if you live in a tourist trap, and you are going to sit on the couch in your undies and watch the tele, you should probably close your blinds. Just sayin.

The little market hall in the center of town was built in 1662, so older than America which is amazing.

From there more driving, we didn’t really stop for long in any of the other little towns but we did roll through quite a few as we circled back around to Bath.

Bath, words cannot describe Bath.

We got into town about 7:30pm and headed straight for the Roman Bath.

We paid our money and took the tour of the bath.

Sadly you cannot bath, in the bath and looking at the water you can see why you wouldn’t want too. The spring still flows but I’m not sure where that water’s coming from cause it’s pretty nasty looking. There was a late night torch lit tour of the bath that we had planned to stay for, but we got a little museum’d out on the self guided tour and hadn’t eaten since 2pm and needed to eat.

We ended up eating down the street from the bath at Bill’s I had the fish pie and it was delicious.

That evening we stayed at the Bristol Royal Marriott. I would highly recommend this old hotel, if you want an old hotel but don’t want all the old hotel things. This has been very tastefully renovated. We got in late and didn’t take any photos of the hotel, at least I didn’t.

We slept well, got up and headed back to Bath.

We toured more of the town, stopped at all the highlights, the Circus, the Royal Crescent, and the beautiful park in front of the Crescent. There was a 1700’s garden recreated behind one of the homes that was on the Circus.

After spending a good part of the morning in Bath, watching street performers and doing a bit of shopping we headed south, to the Ocean/English Channel to get Claudine some beach time.

Our travels took us through the New Forest, which is an amazing area where cattle, goats, and horses run free, in an open range habited area. We saw a lot of cattle including bulls, literally on the roads. I don’t think Claudine believed me about horses running free until we encountered a heard grazing by the road on the way out, some of them, on the road.

We finally found beach at Milford on the Sea.

Rocky beach, but beach none-the-less.

We stayed there for about an hour.

Then we beat feet back to the Marriott at Heathrow for an early flight to Munich the next day. Returning the rental car was a real treat, the rental car company’s drop off is at the airport or along side of it. They give you a free shuttle back to the airport, not to a hotel. From the airport we took a normal bus using our Oyster card left over from the trains to ride back to the bus stop in front of the Marriott. Thanks for nothing Eurocar/Alamo.

The Heathrow Marriott has been renovated/cleaned up since the last time I was there. The restaurant food was good, expensive but good.