Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vacation. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Last Day in Albuquerque and Trip Home
This morning I awoke happy to find a working 4-cup coffee pot at the Hawthorn Suites. Turned the cold water on in the wet bar and the spout fell off. Oh well, the bathroom sink works fine so made coffee, fixed the wet bar spout and read email.
Continue to have trouble Hotsyncing my Sprint Treo-755P smartphone with my laptop. This is a long existing problem that Sprint has been unable to help with. It hangs while Hotsyncing media, pictures and video. Removed the "Team 2.0GB miniSD card" and the Hotsync went fine so I suspect the SD card is bad.
These are the sort of things I do while staying in a hotel before Toni (Martha) wakes up. I will sit for hours playing on the computer.
While we were leaving the hotel, I noticed someone on the elevator who was wearing a "Witchcraft" cap. I asked if he had flown on the B-24 Liberator now known as "Witchcraft" and he said yes. He said he had flown in Texas and I told him I had flown in Omaha. What are the odds that two people would meet in Albuquerque on an elevator who had flown this most historic of aircraft owned by the Collins Foundation?
Well, it worked like a charm, almost like someone planned it all out. Checked the car in at Avis and it was $40 less than their estimate. Got to the airport and checked in at United smoothly without much of a wait. Went through security remarkably quickly given how long the line was. The plane left Albuquerque about 10 minutes late, but arrived roughly on time. Got a $9 AAA discount at the car park and drove home without incident. We're home safe.
Continue to have trouble Hotsyncing my Sprint Treo-755P smartphone with my laptop. This is a long existing problem that Sprint has been unable to help with. It hangs while Hotsyncing media, pictures and video. Removed the "Team 2.0GB miniSD card" and the Hotsync went fine so I suspect the SD card is bad.
These are the sort of things I do while staying in a hotel before Toni (Martha) wakes up. I will sit for hours playing on the computer.
While we were leaving the hotel, I noticed someone on the elevator who was wearing a "Witchcraft" cap. I asked if he had flown on the B-24 Liberator now known as "Witchcraft" and he said yes. He said he had flown in Texas and I told him I had flown in Omaha. What are the odds that two people would meet in Albuquerque on an elevator who had flown this most historic of aircraft owned by the Collins Foundation?
Well, it worked like a charm, almost like someone planned it all out. Checked the car in at Avis and it was $40 less than their estimate. Got to the airport and checked in at United smoothly without much of a wait. Went through security remarkably quickly given how long the line was. The plane left Albuquerque about 10 minutes late, but arrived roughly on time. Got a $9 AAA discount at the car park and drove home without incident. We're home safe.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Our Day at the Albuquerque National Hispanic Cultural Center
What a wonderful, beautiful and huge place! We spent the day from 10:45 to 4:30 at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The NHCC is located at 1701 4th St SW, Albuquerque, NM 87102 (Ph: 505-246-2261 FAX: 505-246-2613). Their website is: NHCC. We even had lunch there which was some of the best mexican buffet I've ever had. Toni (Martha) spent most of the time until 1:00PM researching the Mares family. She didn't find much new information but found the staff there eager to help in the research. We found one of the staff was even married to a Mares. They also suggested she try going to the Special Collections Library, located at 423 Central Ave NE, Albuquerque, NM (404-848-1376 SpecialCollections@cabq.gov) Their web site is at Special Collections Library.
At 2:00 PM after eating lunch we went to the Performing Arts Center in the NHCC to listen to lecture by Louis Serna and Ema Moya. The lecture was intended to explain the history of the Cryptic Jews of New Mexico and more pertinent to Toni (Martha), Southern Colorado. The format was each speaker was given 20 minutes to explain their portion of the history of the Spanish people of New Mexico. Louis started by going back to Mesopotamian times and due to time constraints quickly covering the 40,000 years since then to illustrate how all the peoples of the world could be traced back to Mesopotamia. Ema then explained the relationship of all the Hispanic names and their role in surviving what they called the Mexican Inquisition which was a derivative of the Spanish Inquisition. We found the Rodriguez family lineage had suffered the most severe retribution of all the families due to the Inquisition. Ema explained why she did not care for the current use of the term "Cryptic Jew" since the expression "Cryptic Jew" was first coined in 1838 to describe the conversion of Jews to Islam under the same threats and intimidation used during the Christian Spanish Inquisition. After the lecture we spoke with both Louis and Ema. Both were delightful to talk to one on one. Toni (Martha) had been emailing with Louis for some time and both were delighted to finally meet. I don't know what it is about me, but after the meeting I voluntarily picked up some copies of two papers that Ema had prepared for the meeting and ended up mobbed and handing out papers for 10 minutes. After the discussions following the meeting I again ended up packing up Ema's pictures and documents and carrying them to her car. This ended up being a unique and treasured experience. Some of Ema's material showed a Albuquerque Mares cemetery stone with Mares and a star of David. Ema explained that there had only been six Mares brothers originally and that she to was related to the Mares family herself. Both Toni (Martha) and I found we would love to spend much more time with Ema as she has so much experience to share.
In just the nick of time we managed to reach "Old Town" to buy gifts for our granddaughters. We found we had plenty of time since typically the New Mexican practice is to close on their own time. Last night Alexis had told us she wanted a Indian feather hat which we interpreted as a Indian Headress. As we drove through the Old Town Square I dropped off Toni (Martha) expecting to circle until she bought what we needed. Instead on my first trip around the square I found a parking place directly in front of the San Felipe de Neri church built in 1706 (see pictures). After that Toni (Martha) and I walked the square buying gifts and a book on Cryptic Jews. For the girls we bought a Indian Headdress, a drum, a Tom-Tom drum and two small dream catchers. Hopefully the girls can keep the dream catchers throughout their long lives and have only good dreams involving their grandmother and grandfather. We also bought Green Chili stew packages and Green Chili peanut brittle. If you haven't already noticed, we love Green Chili.
After shopping, we had an early dinner at the Church Street Cafe behind the San Felipe de Neri church. Toni (Martha) had sopapillas and I had Green Chili Chicken soup and a Chef Salad. I'm catching a theme here involving Green Chili. We left Old Town after dinner to return to the hotel and post this blog.
Stay at Hawthorn Suites - Albuquerque, NM
We booked our hotel through Hotels.com again. My main search criteria was breakfast and in Albuquerque. The price seemed more than fair at the Hawthorn Inn & Suites and it was not too far from either the airport or the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the reason for our visit. The complimentary wireless access played a part in the decision too. According to our reservation with the hotel we had made them through Expedia so they must be related to hotels.com somehow.
To explain my state of mind on our arrival I went through Travelzoo.com to arrange our flight. I chose Friday "morning" for Denver departure and Sunday afternoon for our Albuquerque departure. One of the recommended sites was CheapOair.com. The price they quoted was $157 per person round-trip with a $20 total discount to "purchase now". No mention of the additional fees. I booked them immediately. We got to the airport yesterday at 7:30AM and the Frontier check-in kiosk informed me it was too early to check-in for our flight. We spoke to someone at the counter and they informed us our scheduled flight was not until 9:23PM!!! I checked and sure enough the flight from Denver was 9:23PM and the tickets were Economy so to change the flight cost an additional $150 per person. Frontier changed us to a 11:42AM flight for the extra $300, waived the $15 checked bag fee and we waited till then. Somehow our departure dates and destination were transferred from Travelzoo.com to CheapOair.com, but our time-of-day preference was not, or apparently there was no notice that it was being ignored. I intend to pursue this matter with both Travelzoo.com and CheapOair.com and I'll comment on their response. I'm expecting to get to the Albuquerque airport tomorrow and find that Frontier canceling our original flight caused our E-ticket with United for the return flight to be canceled. So far the score is: Frontier +15, Travelzoo.com -150, CheapOair.com -150.
Now on to the hotel ...
We arrived at 2:00PM knowing the room would not be available till 3:00PM, but we had nothing else to do until then. The person at the front desk called house keeping and found us a room on the third floor of four floors. As we've always experienced the people of New Mexico and Albuquerque are really friendly and easy going. It's an intentional slow pace here. We got to the room to find the promised very comfortable king size bed with a wet bar, fridge, and microwave. Overall the room appears pretty clean. The room has all the normal accoutrements including a hair dryer, hand along with bath soap and body lotion. The room also has a regular ironing board and iron. The minor downside was that we quickly learned the light switch in the bathroom turns on the fan which could wake the dead from the noise. We also found the light on one side of the bed and the florescent light over the wet bar don't work.
We had dinner at the Cervantes restaurant at the corner of the Gibson and San Pedro. The food was excellent, as is anything with Green Chili. We had the Chili Renos and beef enchiladas. The "silver" margaritas were okay and a little expensive.
The wireless Internet works fine, albeit a little slow. The signal strength varies from low to very low with the transfer rates varying from 11 to 24 Mbps. There are two WAPs and I didn't find any difference between them. The connection has proven reliable.
A simple thing, but one that can annoy you are the waste baskets. In the past I've stayed in hotels with one trash can in the room. Our room at the Hawthorn Suites had three trash cans. One in the main room, one under the sink and yet another in the shower/toilet room.
Now serious issues. As we were going to bed around 9:30PM the guests in the room above ours began doing gymnastic floor exercises, or at least it sounded that way. Then guests next door apparently staying with someone directly across the hall started visiting one another frequently and slamming the doors to each room. Sound isolation between rooms and floors is poor. Then I found the bottom sheet on the bed had a torn corner which didn't allow it to stay fixed to the bed. I awoke at 4:30AM and as expected found I was sleeping on the mattress and tangled in the bottom sheet. THEN at 4:30AM I found the carafe to the coffee maker didn't match the coffee maker and the coffee maker would not stay turned on. To adapt and overcome, I stood there holding the "On button" with my left hand while lifting and pressing the coffee carafe against the bottom of the coffee filter to activate the shutoff valve with my right hand for the entire time it took to brew. I did this twice - once for the regular brew and once for the decaf. 4:30AM is not a good time to mess with someones coffee!
The bathroom facilities are a separate room for shower and toilet. A sink and mirror along with the hair dryer are just inside the room door. The shower is wonderful. The water stream is strong. The shower curtain is on a curved rod so that the curtain doesn't cling. The room has several mirrors the one on the bathroom door is full length.
The hot breakfast was wonderful. It consisted of hash browns, scrambled eggs mixed with ham and biscuts with gravy. The cold breakfast available included fruit, cereals, etc. I was very pleased with the breakfast which runs from 7-10AM on weekends and is meant for hotel guests only.
Before breakfast I spoke to the desk person about the lighting and coffee pot. He said he would take care of the issues while we were out. After breakfast we went back to the room and found the light next to the bed turned on. Appears we had missed the independent light switch for that single light fixture, thus our problem not the hotels. The coffee pot and florescent light remain broken. Quick response to our reported problems, the staff are trying.
We spent the day at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) and had a wonderful time. When we got back to the room, the coffee pot had been replaced and seems to work. Since housekeeping left two decaf packets and no regular coffee packets, I went by the front desk and traded for three regular coffee packets. So the problems appear fixed.
The next post will give a brief summary of the day at the NHCC.
To explain my state of mind on our arrival I went through Travelzoo.com to arrange our flight. I chose Friday "morning" for Denver departure and Sunday afternoon for our Albuquerque departure. One of the recommended sites was CheapOair.com. The price they quoted was $157 per person round-trip with a $20 total discount to "purchase now". No mention of the additional fees. I booked them immediately. We got to the airport yesterday at 7:30AM and the Frontier check-in kiosk informed me it was too early to check-in for our flight. We spoke to someone at the counter and they informed us our scheduled flight was not until 9:23PM!!! I checked and sure enough the flight from Denver was 9:23PM and the tickets were Economy so to change the flight cost an additional $150 per person. Frontier changed us to a 11:42AM flight for the extra $300, waived the $15 checked bag fee and we waited till then. Somehow our departure dates and destination were transferred from Travelzoo.com to CheapOair.com, but our time-of-day preference was not, or apparently there was no notice that it was being ignored. I intend to pursue this matter with both Travelzoo.com and CheapOair.com and I'll comment on their response. I'm expecting to get to the Albuquerque airport tomorrow and find that Frontier canceling our original flight caused our E-ticket with United for the return flight to be canceled. So far the score is: Frontier +15, Travelzoo.com -150, CheapOair.com -150.
Now on to the hotel ...
We arrived at 2:00PM knowing the room would not be available till 3:00PM, but we had nothing else to do until then. The person at the front desk called house keeping and found us a room on the third floor of four floors. As we've always experienced the people of New Mexico and Albuquerque are really friendly and easy going. It's an intentional slow pace here. We got to the room to find the promised very comfortable king size bed with a wet bar, fridge, and microwave. Overall the room appears pretty clean. The room has all the normal accoutrements including a hair dryer, hand along with bath soap and body lotion. The room also has a regular ironing board and iron. The minor downside was that we quickly learned the light switch in the bathroom turns on the fan which could wake the dead from the noise. We also found the light on one side of the bed and the florescent light over the wet bar don't work.
We had dinner at the Cervantes restaurant at the corner of the Gibson and San Pedro. The food was excellent, as is anything with Green Chili. We had the Chili Renos and beef enchiladas. The "silver" margaritas were okay and a little expensive.
The wireless Internet works fine, albeit a little slow. The signal strength varies from low to very low with the transfer rates varying from 11 to 24 Mbps. There are two WAPs and I didn't find any difference between them. The connection has proven reliable.
A simple thing, but one that can annoy you are the waste baskets. In the past I've stayed in hotels with one trash can in the room. Our room at the Hawthorn Suites had three trash cans. One in the main room, one under the sink and yet another in the shower/toilet room.
Now serious issues. As we were going to bed around 9:30PM the guests in the room above ours began doing gymnastic floor exercises, or at least it sounded that way. Then guests next door apparently staying with someone directly across the hall started visiting one another frequently and slamming the doors to each room. Sound isolation between rooms and floors is poor. Then I found the bottom sheet on the bed had a torn corner which didn't allow it to stay fixed to the bed. I awoke at 4:30AM and as expected found I was sleeping on the mattress and tangled in the bottom sheet. THEN at 4:30AM I found the carafe to the coffee maker didn't match the coffee maker and the coffee maker would not stay turned on. To adapt and overcome, I stood there holding the "On button" with my left hand while lifting and pressing the coffee carafe against the bottom of the coffee filter to activate the shutoff valve with my right hand for the entire time it took to brew. I did this twice - once for the regular brew and once for the decaf. 4:30AM is not a good time to mess with someones coffee!
The bathroom facilities are a separate room for shower and toilet. A sink and mirror along with the hair dryer are just inside the room door. The shower is wonderful. The water stream is strong. The shower curtain is on a curved rod so that the curtain doesn't cling. The room has several mirrors the one on the bathroom door is full length.
The hot breakfast was wonderful. It consisted of hash browns, scrambled eggs mixed with ham and biscuts with gravy. The cold breakfast available included fruit, cereals, etc. I was very pleased with the breakfast which runs from 7-10AM on weekends and is meant for hotel guests only.
Before breakfast I spoke to the desk person about the lighting and coffee pot. He said he would take care of the issues while we were out. After breakfast we went back to the room and found the light next to the bed turned on. Appears we had missed the independent light switch for that single light fixture, thus our problem not the hotels. The coffee pot and florescent light remain broken. Quick response to our reported problems, the staff are trying.
We spent the day at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) and had a wonderful time. When we got back to the room, the coffee pot had been replaced and seems to work. Since housekeeping left two decaf packets and no regular coffee packets, I went by the front desk and traded for three regular coffee packets. So the problems appear fixed.
The next post will give a brief summary of the day at the NHCC.
Anniversary Stay at downtown Denver Hyatt Regency
Now that I've rediscovered my blog, I thought I would share my experience staying at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Denver for our 36th Anniversary. I originally created this for Hotels.com, thinking I could post this as my comment on the stay. Apparently Hotels.com wasn't able to accept the comment. Here's the post:
We stayed two nights to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary in a "Mountain View 1 King Bed" room. Our bed at home is king size and I doubt the bed in our room was really king size, but instead perhaps queen size or maybe something in between. Never the less the sheets were not big enough and each morning we awoke to the bottom sheets pulled out.
Parking is in a public parking lot under the building. While you are supposed to be able to use your room key to get into the lot, we spent 5 minutes sliding our key up and down with cars piling up behind us. Finally just took a ticket at $6 for the first hour and went back to the front desk. They quickly fixed the problem and changed my charge for parking from $21/day to $10/day. I wasn't even aware parking cost anything if we were guests at the hotel let alone $21 a day. Yikes - we could have taken the light rail to the hotel. The "parking fee" adds to the price of your stay at the hotel.
Internet choices are to either establish a T-Mobile Hotspot service plan account for wireless, or pay $9.95 per 24 hour period for wired. My laptop was prepared for either so I chose the wired rather than establish a service plan I might never use again. Since check-in is at 3:00PM and Check-out is at 11:00AM which is only 20 hours rather than 24 they are charging for at least four hours you can not use. In our case, we didn't get settled in our room and get the Internet set up until 6PM, thus I could only use 17 hours for the last day's service. When are hotels going to learn that people are migrating to hotels that don't charge for internet access?
Other premier hotels offer a free breakfast or at least free coffee. This hotel has an awesome buffet breakfast, but it costs $15 per person plus tax and tips. This added an additonal $60 for our stay which I consider another fee for staying at the hotel. The server and other restaurant personnel were very friendly and service was great.
Speaking of costs, there were two Aquafina bottles of water in the room. They had tags around the necks saying they were $6 each. Room temperature tap water at $6 a bottle is a bit much.
As soon as we checked in and got to our room we used the ice maker on our floor without problems. The second day after spending the day walking the 16th Street Mall in 100 degree weather the ice maker could not fill the ice bucket. As I walked back to the room I noticed that there was some sort of rust/white coloring in the ice. I tried to explain to the housekeeping person about the ice, but only got a blank stare due to a language barrier. I went to another floor and hopefully got good ice. Now I wonder what was in the ice I used the day before.
Around 4:30AM on the first night we began hearing pounding or banging noises from the room next to the head of our bed. The next afternoon at around 5:00PM we heard some banging noises in the room on the other side of ours. Don't know what this was all about, but you'd think making this kind of noise in a modern hotel would require pounding directly on the wall. You could also hear conversations and other noises in the bathroom next to our bathroom.
Service people were very friendly especially the people working in the Altitude restaurant.
The room was clean, but nothing special other than the gorgeous view of the mountains. There was no mattress pad and the sheets came loose during the night. The mattress was comfortable.
Bottom line: Would I recommend staying in this hotel, well yes but ... expect what you see in modern society by greedy companies who don't care what you think and run for stock holders rather than customers. Bring your big coin purse for all the nickels and dimes you'll need.
We stayed two nights to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary in a "Mountain View 1 King Bed" room. Our bed at home is king size and I doubt the bed in our room was really king size, but instead perhaps queen size or maybe something in between. Never the less the sheets were not big enough and each morning we awoke to the bottom sheets pulled out.
Parking is in a public parking lot under the building. While you are supposed to be able to use your room key to get into the lot, we spent 5 minutes sliding our key up and down with cars piling up behind us. Finally just took a ticket at $6 for the first hour and went back to the front desk. They quickly fixed the problem and changed my charge for parking from $21/day to $10/day. I wasn't even aware parking cost anything if we were guests at the hotel let alone $21 a day. Yikes - we could have taken the light rail to the hotel. The "parking fee" adds to the price of your stay at the hotel.
Internet choices are to either establish a T-Mobile Hotspot service plan account for wireless, or pay $9.95 per 24 hour period for wired. My laptop was prepared for either so I chose the wired rather than establish a service plan I might never use again. Since check-in is at 3:00PM and Check-out is at 11:00AM which is only 20 hours rather than 24 they are charging for at least four hours you can not use. In our case, we didn't get settled in our room and get the Internet set up until 6PM, thus I could only use 17 hours for the last day's service. When are hotels going to learn that people are migrating to hotels that don't charge for internet access?
Other premier hotels offer a free breakfast or at least free coffee. This hotel has an awesome buffet breakfast, but it costs $15 per person plus tax and tips. This added an additonal $60 for our stay which I consider another fee for staying at the hotel. The server and other restaurant personnel were very friendly and service was great.
Speaking of costs, there were two Aquafina bottles of water in the room. They had tags around the necks saying they were $6 each. Room temperature tap water at $6 a bottle is a bit much.
As soon as we checked in and got to our room we used the ice maker on our floor without problems. The second day after spending the day walking the 16th Street Mall in 100 degree weather the ice maker could not fill the ice bucket. As I walked back to the room I noticed that there was some sort of rust/white coloring in the ice. I tried to explain to the housekeeping person about the ice, but only got a blank stare due to a language barrier. I went to another floor and hopefully got good ice. Now I wonder what was in the ice I used the day before.
Around 4:30AM on the first night we began hearing pounding or banging noises from the room next to the head of our bed. The next afternoon at around 5:00PM we heard some banging noises in the room on the other side of ours. Don't know what this was all about, but you'd think making this kind of noise in a modern hotel would require pounding directly on the wall. You could also hear conversations and other noises in the bathroom next to our bathroom.
Service people were very friendly especially the people working in the Altitude restaurant.
The room was clean, but nothing special other than the gorgeous view of the mountains. There was no mattress pad and the sheets came loose during the night. The mattress was comfortable.
Bottom line: Would I recommend staying in this hotel, well yes but ... expect what you see in modern society by greedy companies who don't care what you think and run for stock holders rather than customers. Bring your big coin purse for all the nickels and dimes you'll need.
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