Back in the UK.....(update take 2)

This is my second try at updating my post.... I had written a clever and witty (for Shannon) addition to my blog about things I had forgotten to mention and unfortunately Alyn decided to hack into my computer to see what I was writing and then close my browser window (by accident he says) and I lost the whole thing!!!! So if you have read this port (post I mean... port is what I am drinking, post is what you are reading!) already today (Andrew Gaz) then please skip down to the section marked update!

First our weird life looks like this Sunday in Texas, Monday in Toronto, Tuesday in London, Wednesday in Edinburgh.... yip I'm tired.

There are many things I like about the UK but the service is not one of them. So we get off of a 8 hour flight and go to find out couch to the hotel we have booked. There are 14 shuttle buses and 14 bus bays so we look at the Shuttle bus listing and conclude that we need bus 4 and therefore perhaps bay 4? OH NO that would be far to easy….. so finally after fighting with the handy automated ticket machine that was neither handy nor particularly automated (nothing a good swift kick couldn’t fix) so we go out to the bus bays. I see a bus pull into bay 4 and go to see if that is our bus. I walk up to the bus driver and ask very nicely if he is shuttle bus 4. He looks at me like I have horns and yells “No the shuttle arrives over there” pointing to an unmarked platform with no number above it. Of course it does I think to myself and wonder over to the area that apparently should have been obvious to me by the look on this mans face.

So we get to the hotel where we have booked a Queens size bed in a Non smoking room (although I hope non of the rooms smoke on their own or we have a problem!) We are then informed that while we had called from Canada to conform the day before they still only have a queen size smoking room or a NS room with 2 single beds. Alyn in his very nice but firm way informed them that neither was a good option and why had our room been given away. In the end after say 20 minutes at the desk they put us in a NS suite with a queen bed which apparently had appeared out of thin air when Alyn inquired what they were going to do to compensate us for their error?

Update take 2 So we get into our suite seen in the picture somewhere in this blog and realize that everything is automated. Yes there are buttons on the bed to open the curtains and turn the lights on and off which is pretty cool except when you are trapped in a small room late at night with the button boy of Dundee. In addition we had some people move into the room next door after midnight. Sadly they had apparently experienced some kind of hearing damage from their flight over from America and they also apparently need to share which each other with incredible volume how much the liked the hardwood floors! So Alyn being the sweet man he is (except when invading my computer and dumping my blog.... Forgive AJ forgive!) offers me the only pair of ear plugs we have between us as I am the lighter sleeper. So Alyn gets into bed and I turn off the bathroom light and head for the bed. I get in and then the bathroom light comes back on by itself. I of course think that Alyn had played with one of the buttons and so I hit the "master" light button and it goes off again at which point I felt very superior having mastered the trick yet oh so “handy” buttons. About 30 second later the light came back on again! So we have loud nabours, jet lag and a bathroom light that apparently feels a call to be a disc light. Yep so eventually we turned our backs to the bathroom light which conveniently shined out the vent near the ceiling (no doubt built in for ventilation rather then providing club atmosphere) into our sleeping area with a reddish pink huge and fell asleep to the rhythm of automation and the wonder of hotel flooring.

For any of you that have read Krista’s blog on the joys of public toilets I would like to add that second only to German toilets (see August blog on said item) I believe that English toilets are quite disturbing! Why you ask? Well for one thing they are so big and deep that any little sound reverberates until the sound is surely at least 4 times as loud. Add to that the fact that the houses are often smaller and many of them seem to have the Bathroom beside the kitchen or dining room …. Well you know what I mean. If you are bathroom self conscious my advice to you is carry a large ghetto blaster and casually plug it in beside the bathroom door while blasting some sort of dance music and then hope for the best.

Lastly I have to say nothing beats the UK for their wonderful Indian food (except perhaps India) and the chocolate. We went to ASDA yesterday and they have fresh made Tikka Masala and Chicken Korma that you can buy and take home and eat right away! Fabulous! Not frozen but right there ready to go….. OK so little things excite me but hey I am jet lagged and really cute so you will have to forgive me. Oh and the chocolate? Well let’s just say Alyn is in heaven and eating his way through it, and I have had a package of Maltesers so I am happy as a clam. (Are clams happy or did my mom make that one up as well?)