Rob The Writer

Second time for me staying in this hotel. Though it is far from the airport, it is right in the Business park, so you trade proximity for proximity. At the entrance, there are two sliding glass doors. You can only walk in on the right side as the left side has been disabled due to a security requirement. So when you walk in sliding glass doors, you have to immediately turn right to go through a body scanner . There is no one there to monitor it but the requirement of security has been met, Saudi style. Front desk is not facing the entrance and a big pillar hides reception area but once you find reception the staff are courteous and knowledgeable with one overlying caveat that goes not only for NOVOTEL but every other hotel in the country - not one woman to be seen working. Hopefully soon Saudi will begin to be less strict and allow the better half of their population some freedom to begin to work, at least. Anyways, this is not a condition that is fault of the hotel, only that lots ...

For the past five years I have been coming to London twice a year for training on new products for our company and in those five years the majority of the stays have been at the Copthorne . It is a four star rated hotel and one of its nicest features is the proximity to Heathrow . Within 15 minutes you're there. It really is nothing to scoff at when comparing to many of the other offerings either nearby or further afield the airport. Reception continues to be quick and efficient. Every time I've been too it seems to be at least one or two new young faces. Along with the kind and stalwart long term staffers the hotel has had a steady flow of interns and exchange students from many different countries minding reception, tending bar, and serving breaky. The rooms are standard four star rooms. The view out the window looking into Slough is to be honest pretty dreary but in that London, comforting, homey way..... Row after row of row houses built of red fired brick. Slough of cou...

On the morning we went, clouds were still obscuring the upper cable car station and the last third of the ride had us engulfed in mist. The ride is wonderfully steep and the suspended cable is well above the ground all the way up, also fast - exciting. The gondola is smaller than you might expect - total of five to six adults by my estimation. The station is set into a cliff and beyond the edge of that cliff is big bowl formation at the top of the mountain - not volcanic-ally formed as I had thought originally, rather by the gradual sinking down of the rock and gravel-based center of the mountain as the ridges remained solidly in place. I'm no geologist, of course, but I in my more recent years I have become more and more of a tourist-info junkie. So what's it like at the top? Cold. With the clouds still hanging around we couldn't see anything. I was with my 11 year old and we decided to take the hiking path up to ridge behind the bowl . We made it about half way up and a...

I booked my annual leave this year in the last two weeks of July. I went to Germany with my son. We chose the small resort town of Mittenwald for no other reason than the hotels in this town appeared to have some pretty good prices. But later some nicely surprising reasons to chose Mittenwald as a holiday spot began to reveal themselves. We flew from Dubai to Munich Airport and then hopped on the Deutsche Bahn S8 from Munchen Terminal to Munchen Pasing station , 40 minutes. After that we switched trains to a regional train - more comfortable seats, lots of room for our holiday luggage and a nice scenic ride through the Bavarian Alps - which stopped at about 15 places and in about two hours we arrived at Bahnhof Mittenwald . We chose the Gaeste Haus Doering which is a boutique hotel with around 12 rooms, about 5 minute taxi ride from the Bahnhof, six euro. Gaestehaus Doering is situated at the base of Mount Karwendel , the highest of the range in the area. It is also situated a fe...

Beeswax candle burning - it is a smell that I will never have enough of. We went in the main door which is at the back of the Church and immediately were greeted with that familiar waft of burning beeswax and the same time a hush that put one in the mood of reverence in the blink of a soul - from the hustle and bustle of the tourist traffic just outside the ancient door to a quiet and yes quite far from a "...fanatical devotion to the pope..." The chairs were not comfy and not a fluffy cushion to be found, no (wee bit of an impish reference to Monty Pyton's " Spanish Inquisition " Skit - for those who want to know). In stark contrast, the solid white oak benches with folding knee boards here were deliberately joined to invoke the posture and patience of the discipline of nothing less than benedictine-like supplication; after all, the church was completed in 1749 and first mentioned in the history of the region in 1315. Wikipedia tells us that master builder ...

Kemet , ( the Black Land ), Deshret ( the Red Land ), Hout-ak Ptah , ( Temple for the Ka of Ptah - earliest of the Egyptian Gods), Aegyptus (Ancient Greeks name), copthi (name for Egyptian citizen back when the country was predominantly Christian), Misr El Mahrosa ( Castellated or Fortified country that keeps out invaders, name when the country became predominantly Muslim), or Egypt, as you can see has many names and is many things to many people, even in modern times. There are layers and layers of Ancient Egypt evident each time you turn your head here, horse and buggies straight outta 1890’s London. Papyrus industry going strong – mostly for tourists now, and myriad old old buildings that take a second look to confirm just how old they are – 100 year old elevators, marble worn concave on the entrance way steps of those same buildings. And all this ancient history presses its persistent presence on the modern place that is Egypt and its citizenry now. It is very noticeable, es...

Twice I have eaten here now; both times were excellent experiences. There is a big black solid wood door that opens up to a small flight of stairs that raises you up to a dining establishment that you may not be expecting. Abu el-Sid is pretty famous for expats and tourists passing through, and its staged authentic atmosphere doesn't really seem all that staged, especially after two Stellas —not the Artois variety but rather the authentic Egyptian beer variety . I asked my colleagues what I should order, and they recommended the best Egyptian delicacy they knew— stuffed pigeon . When it came to the table, I started thinking okay, just like oversize Cornish hens . Not just hen, hens. Plural because on the plate were not one but two stuffed pigeons. Well. In Canada, we shew pigeons away from us because they eat everything in sight. " Rat with Wings ," they have been dubbed in Canada. And so all this is going through my mind, of course, as there in front of me was this de...

We know that mountains have long been deified by us humans and high places sanctified since they are closest to heaven we ever got until we figured out flight, at least. Mountains figure largely in all the colorful metaphors of facing obstacles - our big human struggle to climb them, get over them, etc. Mountains are the places our holy people go up an receive instructions from God. Mountains are places where miraculous encounters between the son of God and his angels occur. Mountains play a big role in our fairy tales and mythologies. And the Leutasch Mountain framing the south west corner of Mitten Wald , in the Southern Bavarian Alps is no exception. The story of the spirit of the mountain here is well embraced and played up nicely in the tourist information signs at the base of the hiking path up. And beside, in a field of grass, statues constructed of sticks and hay with human clothes on them, looking for all the world like chubby scarecrows gone mystical, stand, over-guarding t...

I have not one musical instrument playing bone in me body though I can at least carry a tune in a bucket. My voice it is that saves me from the flats and sharps of a life without appreciation for tone and tune. I do on 'tother hand, have a deep seeded love for fine wood work. In my childhood well into my twenties and thirties, I built many a scratch built and plans built wood based model aircraft that needed to fly and therefore needed conformed to a very specific set of specifications and tolerances. I built carefully and meticoulously. So you begin to see I suppose what the draw is for me in going to a violin museum. It is nothing less than the build processes of the instrument itself. My younger brother Bern is half way through building his violin back in Canada (90% done, 90% to go). He's a cabinet maker by trade and I have always been fascinated by the furniture and other wood pieces he creates, including the meticulous and exacting process that goes into the present carv...

Four score and twenty years ago… Actually it was about one and a half years ago I stayed in the “Four Ways City Lodge” most recently. Up on a hill looking down into the Monte Casino Entertainment and Shopping Complex across the street, the hotel is just far enough away from Monte Casino to make you decide to put out the effort to cross the road in the evening and have a supper outside the hotel that is still within the “per dium” limit provided, barely. Once again I sing hail to the number watchers & cost cutters that we so glibly hand the reigns to and allow them to dictate summarily & handily the direction of our profits and losses…. There are four restaurants in the next building as you walk out the doors of City Lodge. The First is Black Steer Rib Ranch and this is where I sat and ate one of the best sirloin steaks EVER. Next to that is a Japanese restaurant called Tataki. Referring the ever trustworthy source of Wikipedia, Tataki in Japanese is a method of cooking fish; ...

I stayed in the Radisson Blu, Doha for five days (four nights). Resident in Dubai, I was in Doha to do some product training for new staff and our dealers for next quarter launches. Rooms were really comfortable - I travel quite a bit in GCC and stay mostly in 4 and 5 star depending on the market we are going into so when I say comfortable I mean no unexpected things, cleanliness, right sort of pillows and a choice of a harder and softer pillow material, a good blanket for the weather at hand, soap, shampoo, towels provided - the basics, really. I Chose Radisson as one of our approved hotels in Doha, the company uses it for to accommodate all of us and it was booked by the travel agency we use - FMC Travel. The breakfast was good. The omelette station was good. One thing - the omelette was still very hot when I tried to eat it - not the omelette's fault of course. I would say I am a bit jaded when it comes to considering the quality of hotel breakfasts because I eat a lot of them ...

What a cool place to hang out in between international training sessions. I had just completed a week of training in the FACOM automotive repair training Center in Moran-gees, Orly, Paris and had a day and a half before I needed to fly to London for the next training session in the Stanley Black and Decker University in Slough, on the edge of Windsor and so the good training head at FACOM suggested staying in a hotel in downtown Paris. It was the IBIS Lafayette Opera, named so for its proximity to the famous Paris Opera House. I had stayed previously in an IBIS several times booked for me in Riyadh, in the Kindom of Saudi Arabia which had quite frankly sworn me off the brand altogether, the builders of it having taken the utmost liberty with the architects’ and concept designers’ original intention, reducing the size of every room and careless placement of amenities to the point of being altogether nonfunctional. But here in the middle of Paris the IBIS designers’ original intent coul...

Isn’t it interesting how when we read, history sometimes just reaches its arm off the page and gently (sometimes not so gently), slaps us on the cheek, awaking the curiosity in our souls, the desire to find out more about a place, thing or being? I spent four days and three nights at Four Ways Southern Sun Hotel, in Johannesburg. It’s a part of a large restaurant and shopping complex called Monte Casino. And yes you guessed it, it is houses a casino, one of the largest and most lucrative, (from the owners’ point of view), in South Africa. The question that my slapped, awakened curiosity was having me ask is: “so why would the largest casino in South Africa want to seek legitimacy in its secular debauchery by associating itself with: “Terra Sancti Benedicti”, the land of saint benedict, an ancient Italian Abbacy, presided over by none other than he, who is, even in modern times, considered the father of Western Monasticism? Perhaps the same reason any of us would, I suppose – that inde...

FlyNas flight XY 4whatever, with me and maybe 50 other PAX on board an A-320, landed in King Abdul-Aziz International, Jeddah KSA, about 11:30 pm, flying in from King Fahd International in Dammam. I had called ahead to our company travel agent from the gate in Dammam while waiting for the flight, to make sure they had booked for me an airport transfer to Mercure hotel, in Al Hamra'ah district. On arrival, I wandered about like a lost child looking for a sign that said my name and the Mercure hotel on it. But, no one in the arrivals area were looking remotely like an airport transfer driver. I phoned to the hotel and Front desk attendant told me no reservation was made! Well, isn't that interesting, I thought calmly to myself, silently lauding the efficiency, and ethics of our great travel agents over at FCM travel, yes I named them because it sure wasn't the first time they did this to me! Then, in the back-light of a Krispy Kreme Donut sign, I found Arabic JESUS. A local ...