Have you ever been lost? Not the kind of lost where you really don’t have a clue where you are, but being lost in familiar territory. Confused yet? Well I was too.
I had just arrived in London. I’d traveled most of the day from hot and sunny Madrid to wet and soggy London. The Thameslink train dropped me near Kingscross Station and I hoped on the TUBE to my hotel. When I emerged from the TUBE station at Tower Bridge I knew, according to the directions given by the hotel operator, I was just a short walk from my bed for the night!
The Tower Bridge station is right across the road from the Tower of London, just on the west side of the Thames. When I couldn’t see the hotel from my location, I decide to do the smart thing and call the hotel for more detailed directions. Little did I know I would get “central reservations” located in who knows what little podunk town in the depths of England. The reservations agent sounded like she knew what she was talking about, so I believed her when she said ” it’s east, just walk from your present location and follow the road away from the Thames. “Don’t go across the river” she exclaimed.
Well, I took her at her word and proceeded to walk (with my 30 pound backpack). Twenty minutes later there was no hotel in sight. Instead, I’d crossed over into some industrial zone in London where the prevailing industry was shipping and loading boxes from trains to freighters. So I did the logical thing, I retraced my steps to Tower Bridge. Knowing my hotel was NOT across the river, according to the previous directions, I took another route away from the bridge! On this I ended up almost all the way back to Kings Cross Station. The spot I had left over two hours ago!
By now I was frustrated, hot and worn-out! I decide to hail a taxi. Being in London there are tons of taxis. But out in the boondocks of the city they all had fares. So I had to make my way to a Tube station to find a taxi stand. Finally! I was in one of the big black sedans. The driver asked where I was going. I gave him the address and off he went. Soon we crossed the Thames by way of the Tower Bridge and just two blocks later I was dropped at my hotel!
My lesson here is a TAXI is sometimes worth the expense. If you’ve got less time than money, then a taxi can be a lifesaver. It cost me about $7 to get that taxi to my hotel. But the worst thing is that I wasted an hour wandering around looking for the blasted place!
Later in the evening I began to wander down the east bank of the Thames into an old seafaring part of London. My wandering took me past clipper ships, chic bars, and a wonderful view of the city. This was a different kind of wandering that I had done in the afternoon looking for my hotel. Tonight, I wanted to get lost in order to discover new ground. This is what I call exploring Europe!
It used to be that the most expensive part of a Europe trip was the flight. Once arriving one could live a pretty good life on less than $40 a day. I can remember my first trip to Europe. In 1977 I was a member of the Florida Junior College Chorale and we traveled to Europe for three weeks on a concert tour. Much of the tour’s expenses were funded by the College, however each of us were required to pay $900 to cover the tour expenses. NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS! That was for the flights, hotels, transportation, most meals, and tours.
Pictured in the photo above (from left to right) is Brian, Eva, Pam, David, and Doug on the canal in Venice. That’s Casanova there in the back pushing the gondola along.
My records from 1977 show that $1 USD = 877 It.lira. Here are my total expenses for my seven days in Italy:
$.57 – Cola
$5.81- Dinner
$1.42 – Breakfast
$.39 – Cola
$1.14 – Pizza
$2.28 – Hamburger (my, my…how my tastes have changed)
$1.02 – Banana Split
$2.28 – Lunch
$4.33 – Lunch
$2.77 – Lunch
$2.28 – Lunch
$3.42 – Lunch
$6.27 – Disco and drinks
$5.70 – Drinks and entertainment on Piazza San Marco (Venice)
Last month I was on a train in Italy when I received an incoming call from an “unknow number.” Upon seeing that, I cringed and my stomach sank. You see, I’d had that same “call” on two other occasions while traveling in Europe. It was from my web hosting company back in the USA notifying my account (meaning my website and my blog) had been suspended.
I have used the same web hosting company for over ten years, however in recent years things have made a drastic turn for the worse. It is long story and I’ll not bother you with the details, let’s just say I learned my lesson the hard way.
The odd thing is that I always got the “unknown caller” when I was not in a position to do anything about it, usually I was in Europe. The person I talked never varied, it was always the same voice, although he never used the same name twice. The story varied at each call beginning with “my website had overrun its space on the server and I need to pay more money to get unlimited space.” The next time the same guy (using a different name) said several of my domain names had expired and as a last ditch effort I would have to pay lots of money to reinstate them. The next call I got was because my webspace was using too much bandwidth and I should pay more money to get unlimited bandwidth. The final call came, as I mention, while on the train last month. This time my “problem” was that someone “hacked” my webspace and it was “gone.” They had a backup, but I would have to purchase new webspace and pay for someone to restore my data at a huge cost.
That was the last straw! I just let everything sit in limbo for a couple of weeks until I could get back home. Luckily, I had a full backup of my website and a backup of my blog from late-March 2010. So, over the last few weeks I’ve restored my BLOG and totally reworked my website. Hours and hours of my time, but with a reliable and well researched web hosting company, I feel a lot better.
The moral here is NEVER trust anyone without checking them out. When I got to digging into that web host provider, I found scores of complaints and very similar stories to mine. Apparently, he/they have fooled a lot of people. If you are insterested check it out on the web:
The crooks are : Global Internet Services (GISOL) http://gisol.com
My research revealed fraud at many different levels:
Historically, people have always butchered my last name. It’s pretty simple, and phonetic too… McGuffin. Yet all my life it has been pronounced incorrectly. Here are just a few of the variations: McGriffin, McGruffin, McGaffin, McGuhhh, McGovern, and so on.
I was in Ireland recently and had the opportunity to say or write my name on a daily basis. Only one aurally-imparied lady got it wrong. I guess that just goes to show you that the Irish and I have some common roots.
June 10, 1997
After all the travel yesterday it was nice to sleep in a bit before breakfast. Our hotel is located on the highway just outside Colmar so we really did not have an opportunity to experience the town last night. By 9:00 a.m. we had finished breakfast and were leaving the hotel for the short drive to Colmar.
As it turned out, Colmar is a nice little town- more German than French. All the houses are half-timbered with white stucco/stone walls. Lisa, our tour guide, took us on a walking tour of the town center. I got the feeling that she had never visited Colmar and was trying to show us the “guide book” descriptions of town. This was well and good for about thirty minutes, but after that the kids became restless and were ready to venture off on their own.
Finally, we split up and decided meet back at the bus after lunch. Charlotte and I wandered the cobbled streets, visited several fabric stores and dress shops, and decided on a spot for lunch. We chose an outside table and ordered a crepe filled with beef, onion, cheese, and potatoes…yummy! Then to top it off, we had a crepe filled with sorbet, raspberries, strawberries, an assortment of other fruits, and loaded with whipped cream. This was amazing!
We got back on the bus and everyone was on time! Guess my chat did some good. While planning this tour I had insisted on traveling the “wine route” that traverses small towns and vineyards just southwest of Colmar. This too was uncharted territory for both the driver and our guide. But we made the most of it! The countryside was dotted with little wine producing farms each with its own domain and producer. We kept seeing these great bird’s nests all over the place. Soon we discovered that storks were known to nest in this region. This got everyone on the bus on the lookout for nests in the crooks and crannies of steeples, silos, and towers.
David’s note – If you are just tuning in, let me get you up to speed here. Back in December, I decided to write about the first big group tour to Europe that I had a part in planning. The year is 1997 and we’re in Colmar, France.
June 9, 1997
Finally, we arrived in Colmar by 9:00 p.m. It was a long day with the trucker’s strike, the stop in Chartres, and then the long drive across the plains of central France. The staff was waiting dinner on us when we got to the hotel. The tables were set with water and the starter, all that was left for us to do was sit down and be served. The menu consisted of an onion tart, egg noodles and baked chicken, and an unsweetened and utterly bitter yogurt for desert. All was good except for the desert! We tried some Alsacian wine (a Riesling and a Gerwurtztraminer) and it was quite dry. I really did not care for it even though I had 50 ml of each.
Lots of little things had been going on over the last few days; you know how it can be traveling with a group of kids. Being in a foreign environment just seemed to complicate matters. Budding romantics, who would normally have nothing to do with each other, had suddenly decided to answer the mating call. Then, there were the girls who were mad at each other because they were hanging out with others than their little click. Also, there was the normal stuff that pops up on any tour like not following instructions, being late for a rendezvous, poor table manners, not paying attention to the tour guide, and other such stuff.
I had had enough, so I called for a group pow-wow in the back parking lot at 10:00 p.m. Our rooms were on the first floor so when the appointed time for the “big chat” came, I noticed everyone climbing out their hotel room windows. Ughhh…another thing to add to my list of don’t do’s! I had the chat, we all agreed to improve, and now it was time for bed. It was about that time we discovered there had been a bum sleeping in his make-sift home of cardboard near the dumpster. This freaked most of the girls out, especially when they realized their windows had been wide open for anyone, including the bum, to crawl in and steal their stuff. As it turned out nothing was missing, but the bum had been holed-up in one of the vacant hotel rooms until we arrived and started making such a stir.
Reflections: That ” unsweet and utterly bitter yogurt” I now know to be a French speciality. Little did we know at the time you were supposed to add sugar and berries to make a delightful dessert!
The Tower Bridge station is right across the road from the Tower of London, just on the west side of the Thames. When I couldn’t see the hotel from my location, I decide to do the smart thing and call the hotel for more detailed directions. Little did I know I would get “central reservations” located in who knows what little podunk town in the depths of England. The reservations agent sounded like she knew what she was talking about, so I believed her when she said ” it’s east, just walk from your present location and follow the road away from the Thames. “Don’t go across the river” she exclaimed. 
