Tag Archives: Expedia

adventure, C.G. Jung, Education

Swiss studies… Bill decides to go to “summer school”… (part one)

Several months ago, Bill told me he wanted to spend about a week in Küsnacht, Switzerland, a suburb of Zürich. He hoped to attend a summer intensive course at the C.G. Jung Institute, a learning installation founded in 1948, and centered around the study of Jungian analytical psychology.

I knew this was coming, because Bill had been talking about wanting to take this summer course for years. We first came to Zürich in the summer of 2021, and Bill and I visited C.G. Jung’s house, on the banks of Lake Zürich. Bill also started speaking to a Jungian therapist that year. The work he’s done with the analyst over the past four years has done wonders for his mental and emotional well-being. He thinks he might have a knack for Jungian psychology. He definitely has an interest in it.

Naturally, I agreed that it would be a good thing for Bill to go to the Jung Institute. Once we had the dogs booked in their usual Hundepension, I set about looking for a place for us to stay for the week. We had specific needs for our lodging. I wanted it to be in a place where it would be somewhat easy for me to get around and see and do things. It needed to be near a tram station, so Bill could easily get to the Institute. We planned to drive our car, so the place needed parking. And I hoped for air conditioning, which even in “spendy Switzerland” isn’t always a given.

I was about to spend about $10k to book a regular hotel room on Expedia.com, when I noticed a listing for a place called Apart-Hotel Hugenschmidt. On Expedia, the Apart-Hotel Hugenschmidt had no availability for our dates. Under normal circumstances, that might have been the end of my curiosity and I would have kept looking. But then I decided to check Booking.com, as sometimes they have things available that Expedia doesn’t. On that site, I could book a one room suite at the Apart-Hotel, which included a kitchenette and a living room– better for a week than a hotel room. The price was also roughly one-third of what I was about to pay for the hotel, and there was parking available, and air conditioning.

We booked the Apart-Hotel Hugenschmidt, and then, just to make sure all was well, Bill called them to confirm that booking and reserve a parking spot. It was a good thing we confirmed the parking, as the hotel, which first opened in 1969, only has two spaces! Besides small apartments, the Apart-Hotel Hugenschmidt also offers regular hotel rooms of varying luxuriousness. A person could opt for a spacious two bedroom place, or get a single economy room with a shared toilet in the corridor. Although shared toilets used to be somewhat common in European hotels, I haven’t seen a place with a communal toilet in years!

With that settled, we looked forward to our third trip to Switzerland this year. Regular readers might recall that we went to Basel, Switzerland in January of this year, just to get away over the MLK weekend. We stopped in Villa Morcote, Switzerland on the way to Italy in March. And now, we’ve been to Zürich– specifically, the Seefeld quarter of the Mühlebach district.

Our trip began on June 28th and would end on July 6th. For me, it would resemble business trips on which I have accompanied Bill. When I go places with him on business trips, I usually end up doing a lot of loitering and picture taking while he tends to his work. This trip was not for his current job, but it could end up leading him to the work he’ll do in the future. As I mentioned up post, Bill has a real knack for psychology. I think of him as a healer. He’s an unusually kind, sensitive, empathic, and introspective person. Analysis has given him insight into who he is, and that has given him much needed peace.

As usual, Noyzi was ready to go!

On the morning of Saturday, June 28th, Bill took the dogs to the Hundepension, while I packed my bags. Then, we set off for Zürich. The GPS sent us down the familiar way to Stuttgart, where we used to live. Although we have lived in Wiesbaden since late 2018, we still go to Stuttgart to see our dentist and sometimes Bill goes there for business. And yet, even though we continue to visit, I’m always shocked by how much has been built since we left. I was especially surprised as we drove through Sindelfingen on A-81, a road Bill used to take every day to get to his job. There’s a whole shitload of construction going on there!

Below are some photos from the drive:

Construction in Pforzheim.
The Thyssen test elevator facility, outside of Rottweil. We visited there in 2018, and went to the top of the tower!

On the way to Switzerland, we stopped a rest area to get lunch and enjoy a pee break. It was nothing special, and we’d been there before. I took a couple of photos, anyway…

Seelachs and chips… Could have been better.

The Apart-Hotel Hugenschmidt is a family run business. It doesn’t have a regular front desk. We were asked to let them know when we were going to arrive, so someone would be there to meet us. Bill told them we’d get there between 5:00-6:00 PM. We were well on our way to making the time as we approached the Swiss border. An older gentleman in a Swiss Polizei uniform looked like he was flagging us down, so Bill stopped and opened his window.

The cop said, “Do you want to go to Switzerland?”

Bill said we did.

The cop said, “On holiday?”

Again, yes…

“Bye!” the cop said.

I guess he didn’t actually want to talk to us, after all. Too bad all borders aren’t that easy and uncomplicated.

We got to Zürich at about 5:45 PM. It was sunny and hot, and I noticed a lot of people in bathing suits, carrying pool toys and such. I had come prepared to enjoy the lake. I had a bunch of towels and two bathing suits in my bag, and I envisioned jumping in the water. I thought maybe we’d go to one of the public beaches… and I’d totally forgotten that the hotel was actually in Zürich, rather than closer to Küsnacht.

It took a few minutes to navigate through the busy city, and then once we found the right street, the turn off was so sudden that Bill missed it. Fortunately, the next street took us straight to Karlstrasse 5. Bill nervously pulled into a parking lot across from the hotel for an apartment building, where all the parking spots are taken by the residents. The proprietor was there, waiting for us, and she unlocked the gate behind which our car would be for the week. Bill pulled into the tight space, knowing that we were destined to be blocked in. 😉

After we parked, we signed into the hotel, picked up our keys, and got a tour of our new digs for the week.

By the time we were checked in, it was past six o’clock. And although there are several good restaurants near the Apart-Hotel Hugenschmidt, Bill and I were both pretty tired from the drive. We decided to visit one of the two COOP grocery stores near the apartment to pick up essentials, then ordered pizza from an outfit called Pimp Your Pizza. We got Pizza Hawaii and Pizza Missouri… ordering large, so there would be leftovers. There were leftovers, alright! That pizza lasted almost the whole week! But it was surprisingly good, especially on the first night!

We watched German dubbed American movies on TV, while we enjoyed the pizza and Swiss beer. Then we went to bed. The bedroom in our suite had a fan, which was helpful, but not as good as air conditioning would have been. The unit just has one air conditioner, and it’s in the living room. It doesn’t cool off the whole apartment. Most of the year, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we happened to visit during a heatwave.

Ah well…

The next day, we discovered the lake through a new perspective. Stay turned for the next post for that!

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Champagne Bucket trips, former Soviet Union, Lithuania

The Vilnius series… What made us decide to visit Lithuania! (part one)

The featured photo is of a cell that was once used in the KGB detention facility. That facility has now turned into the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius.

You might be wondering how a proposed trip to Paris, France turned into a trip to the former Soviet Union. Bill had asked me months ago where I wanted to celebrate my birthday. He said maybe it was time we visited Paris again. Our last visit there, and first time visiting Paris together, was in May 2009.

I like Paris fine, and truly have been wanting to go there again. At first, I was all for the idea. But then I started thinking about the crowds. June is the beginning of the high tourist season in Europe, and people from other countries are currently swarming the most popular European cities. So then I started thinking of other places I’ve never been and want to see. We did a champagne bucket draw, and it came down to the Loire Valley in France (which I did visit in September 1997) and Vilnius. We flipped a coin and Vilnius won.

So, we arranged for five nights in Lithuania’s capital. I was excited about it, because we have already been to Latvia and Estonia, the other two Baltic countries. I was eager to see what the largest one would be like. Then I started reading about Vilnius, which people described as a “gem” of a city. I remembered a couple of really nice people from Lithuania who were working on SeaDream I, a gorgeous mega yacht Bill and I have sailed on three times. And, as an informal Soviet Union history buff, I was curious to go to another former republic from that failed regime.

Now that I’ve been to Lithuania, I’ve come away from the experience deeply moved and newly educated. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I heard a lot about the Soviet Union. Not knowing the history behind it, I assumed that the countries within it were “happy” to be in the Soviet Union. What can I say? I was an ignorant child, and didn’t have the greatest critical thinking skills. We weren’t necessarily taught about the Soviet Union’s history when I was in school. We were just taught that the “commies” were “bad”. It didn’t help that we had right wing movies like Red Dawn promoting stereotypes and propagandizing. Red Dawn came out when I was 12, and it was the very first PG-13 movie. Of course I watched it, and was seduced by its ignorant scaremongering messages.

Eleven years after I saw Red Dawn for the first time, I moved to the former Soviet Union to work for 27 months. I never thought I’d ever visit the former Soviet Union, let alone live there. I went to Armenia, which is not at all like Lithuania, except for the fact that it was also a Soviet country. The Armenian attitude toward Russia seemed to be somewhat more grateful, as Armenians were being threatened by Turks.

Armenians definitely don’t seem to have the same attitude about Russia that Lithuania and other Baltic countries have. Maybe that’s changed since Russia basically abandoned Armenia when Azerbaijan, another former Soviet republic, basically evicted Armenians for Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, part of Azerbaijan that is historically Armenian.

My time in Armenia didn’t inform me that not all of the former Soviet republics appreciated Russia. My much briefer time in the Baltic countries has taught me that, indeed, the Soviet Union was an extremely vast country with many different peoples, divergent attitudes, religions, languages, cultural traditions, and mores… and no, they certainly weren’t all “happy” to be Soviets.

I did have a basic understanding of this concept before we traveled to Lithuania, but the idea was definitely driven home when I visited museums and churches and looked around the city of Vilnius. Just seeing all of the pro-Ukraine flags, as well as this huge sign atop of a high rise building, was a big clue about how many Lithuanians feel about Russia. (I won’t say all Lithuanians, because I don’t actually know if they all feel like that…)

Putin is definitely not widely esteemed in Vilnius…

Once we had decided to visit Lithuania, I set about making plans. It wasn’t easy, because our trusty dog hotel staff was on vacation when the decision was made. We had to wait for them to come back to work before I could book plane tickets and get the hotel reserved. But once they were back to work and confirmed the dogs were welcome, I booked us five nights in a deluxe room with a balcony at the Grand Hotel Vilnius, Curio Collection by Hilton.

It had been years since I last stayed at a Hilton. I think I chose it because of the location, the fact that it had a pool and hot tub (which I sadly didn’t get to use), and because Bill collects Hilton Honors points. I am a member of Hilton Honors, too, but I had never actually collected any points. When we’ve stayed in Hilton hotels before, it was because Bill did the booking. Then I did some reading and figured Bill wouldn’t be able to get points unless he booked straight from Hilton, which was much more expensive than booking the hotel and flights through Expedia (where I also have a lot of loyalty points). So the booking was under my name.

I also booked business class flights on Lufthansa, because we can afford it, and I prefer to travel in comfort. Business class on flights within Europe isn’t all that special. You get access to the lounge, expedited security screening, a meal and drinks, and no one sits in the middle seat of your row. You also get “priority” baggage handling, and checked bags are included in the price. But the seats on the plane are no different than what you get in economy. You just don’t have to worry about offending a stranger who might be sitting next to you, or vice versa. To be honest, that’s really the number one reason why I try to book business class when I fly.

Once all of that was booked, we waited for the big day– June 18th. I was stoked, but kind of wondering what we were in for… I do love what little I’ve seen of Estonia and Latvia. This break would be a longer look. I was thinking maybe we’d be ambitious and take day trips or something. We didn’t end up doing any day trips, and yet it was still a very educational visit. More on that in the next parts…

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Bavaria, booze tourism

With a mere flip of a coin…

Yesterday, Bill and I decided where we will be visiting next. Bill’s mom, Parker, is coming to visit us during the first full week of February. As is our habit, we are taking her on a short trip. Last time she visited, we went to Alsace, in France. The time before that, we were in Berlin. When she visited during our first Germany tour, we went to Oberstaufen, near the Austrian border…

This time, we decided we wanted to go to Bamberg, a Franconian city in Bavaria known for its smoked beer and fabulous architecture that wasn’t ruined in World War II. I had heard a lot about the town over the years, but never got the opportunity to plan a visit. But, we have four nights… and Bamberg isn’t a big town. A lot of people spend a weekend there and are good with it. So I thought maybe it would be better to go to Nuremberg, which is about a 40 minute train ride away from Bamberg… I started looking for properties that would accommodate us.

Then I realized that Nuremberg might be overwhelming. It has a lot of fabulous museums, and a beautiful downtown area. But a lot of its original buildings were destroyed in World War II. I also figured that if we went to Nuremberg, we might never get around to Bamberg.

So then I thought maybe we should visit Würzburg, which is also a well-known Franconian town in Bavaria, with lots of history, beautiful buildings, and wine! Würzburg is about an hour train ride from Bamberg. At that point, we decided to take Nuremberg off the table for this trip and focus on Bamberg and Würzburg, which is only about a 90 minute drive from where we live.

I spent several days agonizing… because I really wanted to see Bamberg, but the more I read about Würzburg, the more I figured it was worthy of a visit, too. And then I saw a very attractive rental property, which I thought would be great for us. Weingut Am Stein is a functioning winery that has a guest house next to the vineyard. It’s very close to the train station, offers parking, and we’d have separate bedrooms. I went looking for something similar in Bamberg and, although I found a couple of appealing hotels, I found that booking two hotel rooms in a nice place would cost about as much as the house would.

Still… I wanted to be fair, so Bill and I flipped a two euro coin. Heads for Bamberg– tails for Würzburg. Bill flipped, and we got tails. So I booked the guest house for four nights. Truth be told, I’m not surprised it worked out this way. The minute I saw that property on Expedia, I had a feeling I’d end up booking it. Although the idea of staying in a cozy hotel with a nice restaurant is very appealing, it’s not so practical. I also heard that Bamberg is best when you just want to relax and take in the atmosphere. February isn’t exactly Biergarten weather, but I could totally see us holing up in a wine bar. The guest house is right next to the Weingut, which has a wine bar and a restaurant (which I hope will be open). 

We will visit Bamberg on this trip, and if it’s as enchanting as everyone says, Bill and I will plan to visit it properly at a later date. I do like the smoked beer… have had it before, but it would be nice to try it fresh from the brewery. We can do that on this visit. We’ve already been to Rothenburg, which is another Franconian town that is very tourist friendly. But my German friend, Susanne, says that we should visit Bayreuth, too. Sigh… yet another town to add to the list of places to go!

I did watch some videos to help inform me. And I look forward to writing up this trip and collecting a lot of photos. Both towns are notably beautiful, and not actually that far from Wiesbaden. So stay tuned!

I like this guy’s channel. He’s done some great videos about German towns!

And one or two about Würzburg…

It sure is nice to have this problem. We’re definitely spoiled for choices as to where to go on short breaks. I wish we had another day or two, so we could properly do both towns. I did consider booking hotels for two nights each in both towns, but the house at the vineyard just seemed too appropriate. I don’t like booking a house for two nights, either. Anyway… it’s bound to be a blast! I think it will go down as a great trip… but then, most of our trips are awesome. I may not be the world’s most successful person, but I have managed to have a lot of fun in Europe with the best travel companion, ever!

Special thanks to Christian Horvant on Wikipedia for allowing public domain use of his photo of the Marienberg Castle in Würzburg. I look forward to taking some of my own photos when I visit, but I doubt we’ll have such pretty weather!

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Part one of our Hamburger Saga…

Bill and I arrived home tonight at about 8:00pm.  I should probably just cool it and wait until tomorrow before I start writing up a storm.  But the dogs are still being boarded, so I have nothing to distract me.

Things got off to a somewhat rocky start on Friday morning as I was waking up.  I checked Facebook, as is my habit most mornings, and Stuttgart Friends was abuzz about the strike at the airport.  Bill and I knew nothing about this strike, which involved the security people.  I don’t know what they were striking for, only that my fellow Americans who were also flying were talking about how backed up the airport was in getting through security.  Some people were reporting lines that were taking 3 hours to get through.

The security line from hell…


In the distance, you can see the flag waving strikers…

Bill and I gave some thought to canceling Hamburg and just driving somewhere.  I had purchased optional trip insurance and we would have been allowed to change our plans.  But then we decided to tough it out and see how bad it was at the airport.  It turned out the lines were still pretty long when we got there, but as strikes go, the one on Friday was pretty civilized.  Airport employees were handing out free juice and water.  One guy was even given a chair to sit on.  And those who had flights that were about to board or small children were escorted to the front of the line.  Even still, we did hear of some people missing their flights.  It took us two hours to get through, though the process of getting through the line wasn’t too bad.  People were mostly lighthearted about it.  Even the lady who screened me was nice when she realized I wasn’t a German speaker (I’m working on it, though).

Bierzeit!

A handy stop in the Stuttgart Airport. 

It was good that we got to the airport when we did.  We allowed three hours and got through the security line in two.  By the time we were done with security, I was really hungry.  We had a snack of beer, a pretzel, and weiss sausages.  The sausages were very fresh, but kind of bland.  Still, I felt restored after our little repast.

Our flight to Hamburg on Air Berlin was supposed to be 75 minutes, but actually lasted less than an hour.  It was a very pleasant flight, if not a bit crowded.  No nickel and diming on luggage (one bag can be checked free) and a beverage and snack, even though the flight was very short.  And once we landed, I felt like I was back in Raleigh, North Carolina.  The Hamburg Airport, at first blush, reminded me a lot of RDU.

The cabbie who took us to the Sofitel Alter Wall was very friendly and talkative.  He was from Sicily and even showed us the beachside town where he came from as he was driving.  He held up an iPhone with a photo.  I was kind of glad Bill is such a safety fanatic, since the guy was talking on the phone and using an iPad while driving as well as showing us pictures of Italian beaches and playing U2’s latest album and music by some Italian guy named Vasco Rossi.  Actually, I liked the music the cabbie was playing.  He had good taste.  His driving, though, was a little scary.

Check in at the Sofitel was a breeze.  We were given a room on the first floor, though it was actually on the second floor and was even numbered with a two.  Our room was very nice and I got it for a great price on Expedia.com.  Unfortunately, because I was so focused on the strike at the airport, I forgot to pack a bathing suit.  That was a real bummer, since the Sofitel in Hamburg has a really nice spa and indoor pool area.  Worse yet, Bill remembered his bathing suit.  Usually, he’s the one who forgets.  Anyway, if we ever go back to Hamburg, I would happily stay at the Sofitel.  It’s a very nice hotel and the employees are super nice and very professional.

Ponti…

 

We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant past the shopping district.  But before we got to the restaurant, we were accosted by a tall woman who asked in German if she could “ask us a question”.  I got the heebie jeebies, especially since I don’t really speak German and had only been in town for an hour.

Bill peruses the English menu…

 

Our entrance at “Ponti“, the Italian place where we had dinner on Friday night, was memorable.  Somehow, we managed to knock both sets of silverware to our two-top onto the floor.  The ladies at the table next to us were amused and said something I didn’t quite understand.  That’s probably a blessing.  Ponti is in a charming old building and our waitress was very beautiful and friendly.  Her English was perfect, too.  I thought the food was pretty good, though I did notice they were turning people away for some strange reason.  Based on the way the waitresses were talking to people, I got the feeling maybe they ran out of something.  It looked like they were telling people something and they were deciding to leave, rather than being told they couldn’t be seated.  But the issue didn’t affect us, so we didn’t ask about it.

Bill had penne pasta with mushrooms and chicken and I had cannelloni with spinach and cheese.

After dinner, we were tired and I was dying to try out the very nice rainfall shower in our room.  It was also very cold outside.  We made our way back to the hotel.  On the way there, we ran into another woman– perhaps the same one who tried to talk to us before.  She had another woman with her and I got the sense that perhaps she was a prostitute, based on her aggressive behavior and the way she was dressed.

We got back to the room.  I took a shower; and then we collapsed into the very nice king sized bed.  One weird thing about the Sofitel was that there were colored “spotlights” over the bed.  There was also a photograph of a man and his toddler aged son posted in a frame on the left side of the headboard.  I have no idea who the guy was.  Maybe he’s the Sofitel head honcho or something?  It was weird, though.  And so was the staff’s insistence in greeting us in French and German.  The desk doubled as a vanity, too.  You could lift up the top of the desk and there was a mirror under it, as well as a bunch of German magazines and an ethernet cable in case you needed one.  WiFi is free, though they also have a paid Internet service that supposedly offered faster speeds.

Note the weird framed photo…

I liked that egg shaped ottoman thing… it was like a very firm pillow covered with felt.

Spotlights… and they put off red and pink lighting.

 

The TV welcomed me.  And the little drawer on the right had a split bottle of pinot noir in it… obviously way overpriced.  Leave it to Sofitel to make a special drawer for a bottle of wine.  The cabinet above it was the minibar.

The rainfall shower rocked, though… once I figured out how to turn it on and adjust the temperature.

Nice tub.  We didn’t use it.

And a nice sink with a cool trash can that folded out from under it.  

Near the Rathaus…

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Expensive temptations…

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk minding my own business, when I got an email from SeaDream Yacht Club.  It was from a SeaDream executive who thanked us for sailing SeaDream recently and noted the positive comments we’d left on our “end of the cruise” comment cards.  The executive specifically mentioned a couple of comments I’d made, especially about the raw food menu, which I tried and liked on the last night of the cruise.

The executive then wrote that she noticed we didn’t pre-book on our cruise and offered to give us an extension on the onboard booking discount, which would entitle us to a 15% discount on a future cruise.  If we were able to book a specific cruise, we would just have to make a deposit based on the actual fare– though I’m not sure if the savings would still be 15%.  If we did an “open booking”, we’d have to put down $2500, but then we’d get a 15% price break.

I was very surprised to get this email, since in the past it seemed like that deal was strictly for the folks who book while on the ship.  A former SeaDream exec once told me that it’s a lot easier to “convert” people to being loyal to SeaDream when they’re onboard and actually enjoying the cruise.  Seems like that generous discount would also help seal the deal.

I thought I’d managed to break the SeaDream addictive cycle when I got off the ship without putting down a lot of cash, but those sneaky business people might have caught me.  I have to admit I’m tempted… especially since SeaDream is going to Costa Rica this fall and I’m very interested in those sailings.  They are also reasonably priced… for SeaDream, anyway.

Unfortunately, we are still moving and we still have a lot of expenses that come from having to move.  And I still feel pretty much the same way I did a couple of days ago when I posted about why I didn’t pre-book onboard.  But I do have until the 15th to decide if I’m going to go for it…  I’m still leaning toward not doing it, but I might change my mind.  I do have a birthday coming up, after all.  Bill and I might have to break out the champagne bucket to see if it helps us decide.

In the process of pondering the SeaDream offer, I went to Delta.com to get an idea of what it would cost to get to Costa Rica in the fall.  If the cruise fare is cheap but the plane tickets are insane, that wouldn’t be a bargain.  Much to my delight, I noticed my upcoming Delta flight was already in the system and showing up.

Unfortunately, Expedia.com had us in the ass of the plane on all four flights.  Remembering what we went through on our last flight, I decided to take Delta up on their offer to upgrade to Economy Comfort.  I ended up spending another $216 to move out of the ass of the plane.  It probably won’t make that much of a difference… but I figured a slightly more comfortable flight could be worthwhile for Bill, who might be spared my airline induced crankiness somewhat.

I never did find out how much the tickets to Costa Rica would be because I got sidetracked by upgrading our seats.  Guess that’s a task for this morning.

Champagne has a way of getting me to do frivolous things…

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Next trip is booked…

Bill and I are spending the first week of July in San Antonio, Texas.  We’re going there to find a place to live and see his mother.  I doubt we’ll need all the days to find quarters; we’re usually pretty quick when it comes to that.  I find ads for the types of places we prefer and then we check it out in person to see if we still like it.

It’s hard to believe in less than two months, we’ll be leaving North Carolina.  We’ve only lived here since April 2011.  I’ve mostly liked it here… if we were staying, I’d be looking to find another house in a different community, I think.  The town we’re in now is pleasant enough, but there’s not that much going on here.  It has going for it the fact that it’s almost exactly between Raleigh and Fayetteville.  People here are nice, though, and most everything we need is in the vicinity.

San Antonio looks like it will be a lot more exciting, but I fear we’ll also have trouble finding the right place to live.  So this trip is important.  It’s also expensive!

I ended up booking the trip on Expedia.com because we needed plane tickets, a hotel, and a rental car and they could give us a package deal.  Maybe I would have done better some other way, but I’ve used Expedia a lot over the years and am comfortable with it.  So that’s what I did…

We’re flying out on Delta, which makes me happy.  I have more frequent flyer points on Delta than the other airlines and I somewhat prefer it to American and US Air… and definitely to United.  We have seven nights at The Menger Hotel on the Riverwalk.  Last time we were in San Antonio, we stayed at Hotel Contessa, which we liked.  But staying there would have cost significantly more.  Last time I stayed at Hotel Contessa, I got an excellent deal.  We’re renting a car from Alamo…  It’ll probably be a boring sedan.

The grand total for all of this?  About $2100.  I’d rather spend that on a transatlantic flight to Europe.  But finding a place to live is important.  I’ll feel better once we do that and can get this move out of the way.  Hopefully we won’t have another one anytime soon.  I’d like to put down roots somewhere.

I also hope I don’t excite the TSA this time…

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