Becca Jane St Clair

In honour of 09/09/09, Restaurant.Com is offering gift certificates at 90% off if you use code “NINETY” at check-out.

What does this mean? Restaurant.Com usually sells $25 gift certificates for $10, but with this sale, you only pay $1 per gift certificate! I stocked up to use as gifts for my friends and for myself to use. I have a lot of friends I want to give gifts to, and this is one of the best ways to give them something they’ll use!

You can use the gift certificates anywhere in the country (US only), so one option if you plan on traveling is to purchase some of these certificates and hang onto them until you travel, then redeem your certificate for a restaurant in the town you’re visiting.

Offer is valid only until September 13th, so hurry!

We leave on Monday for our trip across the pond, so I thought I’d share our rough draft of plans with you –

Monday – Depart PHL
Tuesday (AM) Arrive DUB (with a layover in CDG). Check into hotel (Fleet Street Hotel), relax, Guinness Store House
Wednesday – Writer’s Museum, Trinity College
Thursday – Dublin Castle, Cathedral
Friday – Stena Ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, meet up with Tim. Welsh Highland Railway
Saturday – Lancaster in AM, Beamish in afternoon
Sunday – North Yorkshire Moores Railway & Howard Castle
Monday – York
Tuesday – Coastal drive (lighthouses), to Tim’s house
Wednesday – Lincoln
Thursday – London
Friday – open
Saturday – open
Sunday – open (but Tim’s day off, so possible stratford?)
Monday – Rail and Sail from Lincoln to Dublin via Hollyhead
Tuesday – depart DUB 🙁

Eating while traveling is always a problem. You either wind up spending way too much money to eat three meals/day out, eat nothing but junk food and other snacks during the day but a full dinner, or you try to make food in your hotel room.

Some hotels offer rooms with kitchenettes (self-catering) consisting of a fridge, stove, sink, microwave, toaster, and coffee maker. With these at your disposal, all you need to do is make a trip over to the closest grocery store and stock up. Most self-catering hotels offer you all of the kitchen utensils, pots/pans, and dinnerware you will need either in your room or at your request. Some places even have a closet full of condiments and spices you can gain access to. While self-catering is the cheapest option for food while traveling, it does require that you spend some time doing the actual cooking. Trying to have Lunch at your hotel could become problematic if you were staying outside of the city center and needed to travel back and forth. Depending on how long the commute is, you could wind up wasting several hours each day just trying to save a few dollars. Your best option at a self-catered hotel is to eat Breakfast and Dinner at the hotel, and Lunch out.

Many hotels now offer rooms with an empty minifridge instead of the traditional minibar. You can use the fridge free of charge to keep food and drink cold. This could come in handy for bringing back leftovers from a restaurant, keeping some fruit or cheese for a snack, even for chilling a bottle of wine to enjoy later in the evening. If the hotel also offers a microwave, you’re in even better shape. Think back to your days of college dorm cooking when all you had was a microwave, coffee pot, and fridge and I’m sure you can come up with plenty of ideas. If the fridge has a freezer section you could even pick up frozen entrees from the grocery store.

Some hotels that do not usually have fridges or microwaves in the rooms give you the option of adding one to your room for an additional fee. Also, check the breakfast area of your hotel. If it’s out in the open, sometimes the microwave and toaster are available for use all day. Of course, if you have a medical condition that requires keeping medicine refrigerated, most hotels won’t hesitate to put a fridge in your room free of charge, and there’s nothing stopping you from keeping other food/drink in it with your medicine.

The above options are great if you can find them, and if you don’t mind paying extra for the amenities, but if it is not an option, you’re usually left with two things: a coffee pot (or kettle) and a bucket for ice.

Recently, my friend posted the following to her journal. Her husband sent her the link after she informed him she would be packing along food for their trip to Dragon*Con to help offset the cost of food.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMhQc8T7tqQ

My only response to this is “wow”. I personally would never dream of cooking something IN the kettle because someone else will always have to use it and you don’t want to be the jerk who makes their tea taste like pasta. But dehydrated pasta you add hot water to? No problem. As illustrated in the video, it was pretty easy to get a bowl and utensils from the hotel. Some convenience foods even come in a container you add hot water to, such as instant oatmeal or Pot Noodle.

Another example of extreme hotel cooking was found via this link:

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEZ2aIQhVSU

Again, this is something I would never do. Though a very clever idea, you really could do damage to the hotel’s iron if you tried this. Some hotels have sensitive smoke detectors in the rooms, and attempting to cook with your iron could result in setting it off.

So what can you do in a hotel room with few amenities? Like I said above, look for food you only need to add hot water to – soup, oatmeal, and pasta are three popular choices. For a quick vegetable soup, dissolve a vegetable bullion cube in some hot water and then add a can of mixed vegetables. The hot broth will heat up the vegetables. Many soups come in powdered form and you can jazz them up with some simple ingredients. For example, you might not be able to make that grilled cheese sandwich to go with your tomato soup, but you could sprinkle some Parmesan cheese on top of your soup and dip pieces of bread in it.

Another option is turning the sink into a wet bar, though this will mean brushing your teeth and washing your hands at the bathtub. Simply plug the drain on the sink and start filling it with ice from the hotel’s ice machine. Submerging your food in the ice will create the same effect as if you had things in a cooler and you can keep loads of food cold this way. I would still stay away from items that are overly perishable, but string cheese or Babybell cheese, yogurt, cream cheese, and lunchmeat are all items that would stay cold on ice. You might have to change out the ice every day and leave a note for housekeeping not to clean the sink.

If you’re driving to your hotel, you could pack a small crock pot and use that in your room. Plug it in in the morning and by the time you get back to the room, you’ve got a hot dinner. If you have your own electric kettle (we called them hot pots when I was in college) you could bring that along to cook soups or pasta in. Electric sandwich presses also could come in handy. I would avoid bringing along an electric skillet or grill due to the aforementioned smoke detector problem.

If your hotel doesn’t even offer an ice bucket and ice, you’re better off finding a new hotel if you really plan on trying to eat in your room. Either that, or you’ll have to stick to nonperishable and snack foods. When I used to go on road trips, I would pack a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jam, a loaf of bread, and a knife. It got a bit monotonous, but it was always filling, and nonperishable.

Some hotel food options include:

*Peanut Butter and Jelly
*Tuna fish in the can (use packets of mayo to avoid mayo going bad)
*Sandwich Paste (UK item)
*Hard cooked eggs
*babybell cheese or cheese in a can
*Fresh fruit and vegetables
*cup of soup/pot noodle
*instant oatmeal

The list could go on and on. What do you take along to eat in a hotel?

Posting this for my mom to load at work:

FOR SALE
Badge-a-Minit Kit

Includes both Bench Press & Hand press for making 2-1/4″ badges, magnets, keychains, mirrors, and more!
Comes with enough supplies to make 8 dozen pins and 10 mirrors.
You’ll get 2 sets of rings plus an extra blue and an extra green ring.
Directions are easy to print off the badge-a-minit website for free!

Worth over $200!

Asking $125 OBO. Shipping an additional $15 and will include DC and Insurance within the United States. This item is unavailable for International Shipping (unless you’d like to pay over $50 for shipping, as this item is heavy!)

I accept PayPal ONLY or CASH on local pick-up.

(click for larger)

Crafters: Please promote this item and link anyone you think might be interested to this post!

(no not this one)

I am selling the domain http://www.burn-gorman.com. Previously, it was a very successful fansite for the British actor Burn Gorman, but after some unresolvable differences with the others I was running the site with, we decided to disband it back in March.

Originally I had planned to get a new team and re-build the site on my own, but due to time constraints that is no longer possible.

http://www.burn-gorman.com is *still* ranked within the top 5 google results for “Burn Gorman” (it’s third, behind wiki and imdb last time I checked). Previously, this site ranked as the number one search result for Burn Gorman, so I know with the right people behind it, it can rise again.

I currently own the domain and in order for me to transfer it to someone else, you would need to have your own web hosting already set up, either through Dreamhost or another provider.

I also have in my possession 7 gigs worth of Screencaps I personally took that I am willing to add to the deal. Files can be put onto a 10GB flash drive and sent in the mail.

If you think you might be interested, please send me an email with your offer to admin(at)burn-gorman(dot)com.

Please pass this on if you think someone might be interested!

I wasn’t going to write a public entry about my issue with Walgreens. I posted something on my private Livejournal to my friends about it to let off steam, but then a friend of mine replied telling a horrible encounter she had, and another friend said “I’m boycotting Walgreens just because of that, and I’ve never shopped there”, so I thought I’d tell the tale.

Walgreens has been doing a 7 days of 7 deals thing with their photolab. Nearly all the offers have been free items or really cheap items (25 photos for .25, free 8x10s, free 4x6s, etc.). The freebies are posted all over the web, at blogs such as Deal Seeking Mom, Moms Need To Know, and at least a dozen other mom or frugal related blogs. So, the coupon codes went pretty viral.

I went in to pickup my free pictures in one large lot and was informed by someone claiming to be the “assistant manager” that he was going to charge me for my pictures. I did try to argue with him that since the website says to charge me $0, he should, but no luck. So we walked out. A few hours later, I received a notice that my order was canceled. I forwarded it to Walgreens Customer Service department along with a note explaining what had happened and this is the reply:

Thank you for contacting Walgreens.com customer service.
This is in response to your email regarding Walgreens.com photo
order xxxxx.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. You
have contacted customer service for Walgreens.com website.
Although I can not address your concerns directly, your
satisfaction is very important to us. According to our records,
your photo order was submitted at your local store. For
assistance, please contact the photo manager at that location
at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

If you have any further questions or need additional information
regarding our website, please reply to this e-mail, or contact
us at the toll-free number below.

We at Walgreens.com look forward to serving all
of your prescription, photo and drugstore needs.

So, their solution is to call the store that you already have an issue with. Nice. Well, I’m not about to do that, but I certainly won’t be taking anymore orders into Walgreens.

To cinch the deal for me and a few of my friends, let me tell you what happened to my friend, J.

J’s brother passed away and her family wanted some pictures of him to display at the funeral. J happened to have some digital photos from her wedding that included her brother, so she took the disc into Walgreens to get some prints made.

The person she spoke to at the Walgreens photo counter accused her of trying to re-print copyrighted photos and then when J explained the situation about her brother dying, she got accused of lying about the deathl in order to get the store to print her photos. Obviously, she walked out without getting anything printed.

I hope between my story and my friend’s story, you might consider not taking your photo orders into Walgreens, no matter how good the deal looks.

As I mentioned previously, Tim and I relied solely on public transportation during our week in Washington, DC (save for the day my friend Maggie picked us up at the Metro station). We relied heavily on walking and the DC Metro with the occasional taxi ride or bus ride.

Public transportation in the DC suburbs is strange. While the Metro runs several times an hour from 5 in the morning until midnight every day, the Fairfax Connector and the Metro busses do not. The Fairfax Connector busses that ran past our hotel to the Vienna Metro station only ran for about 3 hours during the AM commute, and 3 hours in the PM commute. Trips cost $1.35 one-way, and while they accept SmarTrip, they do not accept the weekly Metro pass. They also do not give change, so you must have exact change or be willing to lose money.

We were only able to use the bus system in the mornings on two of the days, because we did not learn about the busses until several days into our trip. The hotel had told us that the bus system wasn’t reliable and only ran before 8 in the morning. This was not true, as the busses ran until around 9:30. There also were Metro busses that could have helped us as well….if we didn’t mind a 45 minute bus ride. After my experience in York (UK) with getting sick from riding a bus, I really try to spend as little time on a bus as possible. 45 minutes was just a little too long for me.

Thursday morning we made sure we got out of the hotel early enough to catch the very last Connector bus for the day. It was super easy, we just had to walk across the street to stand in front of the 7-11 and the bus was there right on time. 15 minutes later, and we were at the Metro. Much faster than walking!

We were really glad we had decided to time our trip back to catch the bus, because it started pouring down as we reached the Vienna Metro station. But we ran into a problem. We were running to catch the bus in the pouring rain and right as we got to the bus, the driver closed the door and switched off his sign! Tim and I assumed that it was because that bus wasn’t the bus we were supposed to take, so we ran up the entire length of the bus area. We got to the front and didn’t see another bus, but we did see the bus driver who wouldn’t let us on his bus pull away, now with his signs turned on! Unbelievable. Since it was pouring down rain, we opted for the $7 cab ride instead of waiting an hour for the next bus.

Another trip not covered by our weekly Metro passes was the Georgetown Connector. For $1 each way, it connected the Rosslyn Metro station with downtown Georgetown. Not a bad price, to be honest. The connector uses a mini bus, and there also was a larger bus that connected from Union Station, though I’m not sure how much that cost.

We purchased special weekly passes for the Metro for $25. It was valid for 7 continuous days of travel, provided you didn’t travel between the AM or PM peak/rush. This worked out well for us since the museums didn’t open until 10am anyway,and they had extended summer hours until 7. If you can manage to work your transportation around the schedule and avoid the “no travel” times (it’s not really no travel, you just can only take trips that cost $1.35 during the AM and PM rush), it’s a much better option over purchasing either a regular weekly pass at $46 or a re-loadable SmarTrip card. Even with only using it for 5 days out of the 7, we still managed to get our money’s worth out of it.

When we were planning Tim’s visit, we decided to go away for a week of sightseeing outside of my local area. Our choices were pretty wide, but we needed to be able to move around via public transportation, since I knew we wouldn’t be able to borrow my mom’s car for a whole week away (I sold my car in July 2008), and a rental car would have been too expensive. We settled on taking a trip down to the nation’s capital, Washington,DC since we could take a train from Lancaster to Philadelphia, and then Philadelphia to DC. We also entertained the idea of going down to Orlando to visit my cousins, but I think the heat intimidated Tim a bit!

Anything in DC was going to be expensive, so I put on my research hat. I first loaded the Washington Metro website and then opened my regular search engines for hotels (Travelocity, Priceline, Orbitz, Hotels.Com, etc.) I cross referenced the search results with the Metro map to help find a hotel near a Metro stop, and the name Vienna stuck out at me. My friend Maggie used to work in Vienna (and as it turns out, we stayed at a hotel directly across the street from where her wedding reception was! I completely forgot!), so I started checking Vienna hotels.

The Vienna Wolf Trap Hotel stuck out at me, because I’ve been to concerts at Wolf Trap (for BNL, I know you’re not surprised!). A check on Trip Adviser gave out mixed reviews, but it still had an overall customer rating of 4/5. Then, I checked the hotel’s website directly and I was pleasantly surprised to find a summer special – rooms for $69/night! WOAH! So, we booked it. The person I spoke with on the phone was a really nice man named Jeff who answered all my questions and told me the Metro stop was about a mile away, and I was able to book us a room with a mini fridge and microwave to help save on food costs, too.

The hotel itself is pretty standard. It has a motel set up where the doors all lead directly to the outside. Two buildings of three floors. No attached restaurant, but there was a Mexican place next door, and several other restaurants all within walking distance. There also was a 7-11 and a grocery store nearby. We were told our stay included breakfast in the morning, which was served from 6am until 9:30AM.

The room was pretty basic. Two Queen-sized beds, a large TV, a table/desk, a fridge, microwave, and coffee pot…but only one chair. The toilet and shower were in the bathroom, but the sink was at a separate vanity outside the bathroom. The sink was a little dingy and miscoloured with cracked enamel, but fortunately the shower was clean. And boy, did they have lots of TV channels! The hotel had more channels than Comcast in Lancaster has!

The air conditioning really worked overtime in our room, too. We finally learned to leave it set somewhere between the cold and hot dial in order to make it comfortable, otherwise we started to freeze overnight!

Other hotel amenities left something to be desired. The cleaning service wasn’t all that great and several times they failed to replenish the cups for the coffee pot. Fortunately we were able to make do with what we had. But they did make the bed and provide clean towels every day, so that really was my only complaint. Breakfast….left a LOT. They converted the hotel room next to the lobby into the breakfast area, with 2 tables to sit at and a long table for the food. Our choices? Coffee, Sunny Delight (yes, Sunny D. Not OJ), bagels & donuts from Dunkin Donuts, bread (for toast), and a few sad looking pieces of fruit. They also provided cream cheese, butter, and jelly. Not exactly the greatest breakfast in the world, but it was enough to keep us going until Lunch, so really, that was all that mattered. It’s just funny comparing it with the hotel breakfasts I got used to in the UK (a hot breakfast, usually full English).

We only had one problem during our stay. There was a really bad thunderstorm, and it managed to knock out the keycard system at the hotel. There was only one person on desk, so he had to run around to let everyone back into their rooms each time someone wanted in. He also had to create new keycards for every single room that was occupied and had to call each room to tell the occupant when to come pick up their new key.

The walk to the station was long. Longer than one mile, I don’t care what they said. My pedometer (now lost in DC) said 1.46 by the time we got to the station. Fortunately, in the mornings there is a Fairfax Connector bus you can take, and it also runs in the evenings, but more about that in a different post. A taxi ride was just around the $7 mark. There also were several Metro busses that passed near the hotel, but none of the routes and times seemed to work for us. The Metro busses also seemed to take the long way around to get to the stations, and we really didn’t want to spend 45 minutes on a bus, when the Metro ride was about 40-45 minutes into DC.

If we were going back to DC again, I think we’d probably stay there again, now that we know what times the Connector runs. The price was right, and the addition of the microwave/fridge meant that we saved on food 2 days (which was good, considering one of our days we ate out with friends twice!), and had a place to keep a gallon jug of water cold to refill our bottles in the morning.

Our total bill for the 4-night stay including tax was $303. I’d say it was a pretty good deal!

I’d like to Apologize to all my readers who may have been wondering where the updates about Tim’s visit are. I promise, they’re coming. Tim left to go home 8 days ago. Around this time on the 8th, he and I were on our way to the R1 airport line at 30th street that was going to take us down to the airport, where I would have to part ways with him for a few weeks.

As you can imagine, this has been really hard on me. That’s not to say that I wasn’t sad when I left the UK in April…but there’s something so much worse about taking the return train ride back alone, going to bed alone, preparing breakfast the next day alone, and seeing all the things that remind you of the person who left. So I’ve been taking a break from everything, sort of. Paired with a few days of feeling really crappy (thanks to my stomach, and then getting a brief cold/flu bug), it’s just not been a good week for writing updates.

But I assure you, they are coming. Hopefully before I leave for my trip to Ireland and the UK on September 14th ;).

As some of you may know, I will be moving to the United Kingdom at some point, and I do not want to take all my books along. The following is just a SMALL Selection (believe it or not!)

All books unless otherwise marked are $1. Shipping is $2 for the first book, $1 each additional book within the United States ONLY (unless otherwise noted as for large books).

Prices will be higher for international, only because these things are heavy!

If you’re local and can pick up books, no shipping charges.

I will take offers on large lots, so please look over the list and make an offer.

First come, first serve. Cross-posted in several places.

The Dream Encyclopedia – Lewis $3/$4 shipping
10,000 Dreams Interpreted – Capella $3 shipping
Dreams – barns & Noble
Celtic Myth & Magick – McCoy
The Runes – Horisk Svensson (comes with a burlap bag of runes) ($4 shipping – cannot be shipped via media mail)
Runelore – Ihorsson (comes with a velvet pouch of runes) ($4 shipping – cannot be shipped via media mail)
Hello Midnight – Deborah Bishop & David Levy
The Mystical Art of Palmestry – Lauren David Peden
Whole Body Meditations – Lorin Roche
Dragons – Dr. Karl Shucker $3/$4 shipping
Candelmas – Amber K & Azrael Arynn K
How to Read Palms – Gibson
The Witch Book – Buckland $3/$4 shipping
The Book of Druidry – Ross Nichols
The 21 Lessons of Merlyn – Monroe
The Earth Path – Starhawk
The Spiral Dance 20th Anniversary Edition – Starhawk
Irish Fairy & Folk Tales – Yeates $3/$4 shipping
Living Buddha, Living Christ – Thich Nhat Hanh
Tea Cup Reading – Fenton
The Path to Tranquility – His Holynes the Dalai Lama
Eragon – Christopher Paolini

Little House on the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder
On the Banks of Plum Creek – ”
Lord of the Rings Trilogy + The Hobbit $3/$4 shipping
The Hardy Boys 1-4, 6, 8, 52, 57, 58, 77, 79 $1 EACH
Mother Speak – Christopher Kubasik
Star Wars Trilogy
Star Wars Radio Drama Script
Elizabeth & Mary – Cousins, Rivals, Queens – Jane Dunn $3/$4 shipping
Sleeping Arrangements – Laura Shaine Cunningham
Confessions of a SHopaholic – Sophie Kinsella
Shopaholic Takes Manhattan – ”
The Birth of Venus – Sarah Dunat
Portrait of an Artist The Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe
The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories – Tim Burton
The Queen’s Fool – Philippa Gregory $2/$3 Shipping
Earthy Joys – ” $2/$3 Shipping
The Boleyn Inheritance – ” $2/$3 Shipping
The Other Boleyn Girl – ” $2/$3 Shipping
The Virgin’s Lover – ” $2/$3 Shipping
The Woman Warrior – Maxine Hong Kingston
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon $3/$5 shipping (BIG book)
Carpe Jugulum – Terry Pratchett
Soul Music – ”
Witches Abroad = ”
Small Gods – ”
Reaper Man – ”
Wyrd Sisters – ”
Lords and Ladies – ”
Mort – ”
Hogfather – ”
Star Wars: Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina
Coyote Blue – Christopher Moore
Ghost of a Chance – Yasmine Galenorn
Let’s Meet on Platform 8 – Carole Matthews
The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
Emma – Jane Austen
The Shining – Stephen King
Secrets in the Attic – VC Andrews
Sweet Valley Saga – The Patman’s of Sweet Valley
Sweet Valley High – The Return of the Evil Twin
Babysitter’s Club Special – Graduation Day
Written on Silk – Linda Lee Chaikin
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail – John Gottman, PhD (used textbook)
Love Poems by Women
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles – Margaret George – $3/$5 shipping (BIG book)
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn – Robin Maxwell
The Last Boleyn – Karen Harper
Please Don’t Go – Elizabeth Benning
Anne of Green Gables – (hardback Barnes & Noble’s Edition) $2/$3 shipping
Rilla of Ingleside – LM Montgomery
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (UK Children’s Paperback)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (US Paperback) $2/$3 shipping
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (US Paperback) $2/$3 shipping
Mary Called Magdalene – Margaret George $3/$5 shipping (BIG book)
A Guide to the Star Wars Universe (second Edition)

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me.]

Mom and I are headed over to Ireland in September, and then plan on meeting Tim in Holyhead (Wales) over his long weekend to travel around the UK. Mom kept making lots of suggestions for things she wanted to do, so Tim and I decided to buy her a guidebook and map. We picked out Great Britain (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE) as it looked like it was the best guide book in terms of lots of information and pictures, some Post-it brand tabs, and MapEasy’s Guidemap to England.

First, we went through the guidebook and marked EVERYTHING she expressed an interest in seeing, as well as places Tim or I thought she would like. Then, we started looking at the map and mapped out three different routes making lists of the places we could stop along the way. The Easyguide map was perfect for this, as it’s more of an artistic map and you can easily view the town names. However, I do not recommend liquid highlighter. A week later, I had to break down and cover the routes with clear tape since the marker was still wet!

We presented this all to mom, and told her she was free to pick from the three options for this trip (noting that we would at some point do all three trips. After all, we’ll be going back!). She picked option one, so we will be visiting:

Liverpool
Lancaster
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Beamish
North Yorkshire Moors Railway
Castle Howard
York
Flamborough Head

before returning to Lincoln. IF we have an extra day with Tim, we will also visit:

Stratford-upon-Avon
Warwick Castle

In addition to this, Mom and I will be going down to London on our own for at least one day, and possibly other day trips.

[LJ readers reading this on the LJ RSS feed: Please click on the link at the top of the entry to go directly to my blog to leave a comment, as comments left on the LJ RSS do not get seen by me.]

Tim left yesterday (and I will be updating the blog with our adventures over the next week or so), and I accompanied him down to the Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) via Amtrak to 30th street and the SEPTA R1 regional rail line.

We had no problems getting there, other than a surely woman at the SEPTA ticket booth, but I ran into a problem on the way home…

Because of the time of Tim’s flight (9PM), and the time of the last train back to Lancaster (8:55PM), I knew I’d wind up spending some time at 30th street waiting for the train. Tim needed to be at his gate no later than 8, so we parted around 7:15 (and it was sad, but it’s how things go when you’re LD!). SEPTA had no problems getting me back up to 30th, and I prepared myself to wait out the hour until my train. Around 8PM, the message board flipped my train to “Delayed”. The person at the information booth didn’t have any further information, he only knew that the train attempted to leave NY-Penn and had engine trouble, so it went BACK to NY-Penn to wait for a fix or different engine. *sigh*. So, I sat down, got out my N810, and started IMing people. Meanwhile, I checked the status of Tim’s flight and found out he was leaving at 9:15 instead of 9. He and I were in the same city, but separated by more miles than we had been for the past three weeks of his visit! I don’t think we were ever more than 30 or so feet apart his whole visit.

But it really can’t be helped, and it’s not Amtrak’s fault they had a faulty engine. The problem, however, is the way Amtrak handled the issue. When the train got back into NY-Penn, I am told passengers had been advised to take other NY-Penn to 30th Street trains, since the NY-DC trains, and the Boston-DC trains all pass through Philadelphia as they did not expect to get the Keystone running. But….here’s the problem. They had 50 or so people waiting in Philadelphia for this train as it was the LAST TRAIN OF THE DAY between Philadelphia and Harrisburg.

Since dating a railway man, I’ve tried to be a little more understanding about delays and problems because I know what Tim has to deal with sometimes, but it’s still upsetting to find out that one set of passengers had one piece of information, while another set was told something else entirely! As far as those of us waiting in Philly were concerned, we were still going to have a train out to Harrisburg that night.

They didn’t cancel the train. They got a different engine, and our train was listed as “40 minutes late”. I calculated it out, and the train was traveling an average of 90 mph to get to Philadelphia from NY-Penn in an hour!

Another problem Tim and I encountered yesterday is how ridiculous the Philadelphia International Airport is set up. When you get off SEPTA, you have to go upstairs to a breezeway that connects you to either arrivals or departures. However, it does not connect you to several of the European airlines (BA, KLM, Air France, etc.). It connects you to USA 3000, Air Jamaica, and Frontier. The two check-in areas are NOT connected on the inside, so Tim and I had to exit the terminal at Air Jamaica and walk along side the car loop around the airport dragging his bags (there was a sidewalk, but it still would be loads safer to have people walk inside!) to enter at British Airways. When we first entered, the information monitors said “BA Flight 68 is now departing at 1:15AM”. This caused a minor panic. Firstly, Tim didn’t have a mobile on him to call anyone to update about the time. Secondly, a 1:15AM EST departure time meant he wouldn’t land at LHR until almost noon BST and he still had to get a train up to Lincoln. Not to mention being stuck past the boarding gate for over 6 hours. And I had to leave no later than 8 to catch the train back.

Fortunately, the woman checking in Tim’s bags told us there were no delays and it was on time. We mentioned the sign we saw on the other side of the terminal and the woman said that they “have nothing to do with that side”. So then, why was there a random message board listing one of their flights as being delayed so badly? I hastily scribbled more phone numbers onto a piece of paper for Tim (since he didn’t have his phone, I needed to give him my US numbers) in case it really was delayed so he could call me from a payphone or use my Skype-to-Go to call his parents.

In the end, everything was fine. Tim’s plane took off at 9PM as scheduled (though it landed in LHR 40 minutes late and didn’t have a gate so people had to be bussed to the terminal), and I made it back to Lancaster. That’s all that really matters.

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Just because Google offers walking directions, doesn’t mean you should follow them.

On Friday, Tim and I made plans to go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I knew where the movie theatre was and I knew how to drive it, but Tim and I would not have access to a car on Friday. I used Google’s new walking direction feature, and it surprisingly took us the same route as we’d go via car.

Problem: The road (Schoolhouse Lane in Manor Twp) doesn’t have a sidewalk for most of the road! It doesn’t even have a shoulder at parts of it, and some of the homes along the road have Poison Ivy along the curb, so you don’t want to walk on the edge of the lawns. It was hard going and we kept getting dirty looks from the cars whizzing by us, but we finally made it over to the cinema.

As for how we liked the movie, that’s probably best for a different entry.

We’re leaving in a few minutes to head down to DC for a week, so see you on the flip side!

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I started this blog exactly a year ago today! How exciting! My blog was originally started so that my mom (and other family/friends) could keep up with what I was doing while I was spending two months in Manitoba and whatever other trips I took. This expanded into becoming a log about 6 months traveling/visiting the UK, then into including video logs, personal stories, etc.

In 2008, I visited 5 countries (if you count England and Wales separately), and in 2009 so far I’ve visited 2 (and plan on adding France (okay, it’s just for a layover), Wales, and Ireland by the end of 2009). In the year that this blog has spanned so far I’ve spent 2/3 of the year outside of the United States! That’s pretty impressive for me.

So what’s in store for the blog for the next year? I’m not really sure. There’s a week in DC coming up while Tim is visiting, followed by 2 weeks in Ireland and the UK this fall, and then after that….we’ll see where it goes. Current plans are to spend Spring/Summer 2010 in the UK, but I hate having such a long gap between visits!

If I’m not actively traveling, I intend on updating the blog at least once/week with articles about traveling, and maybe some local or personal entries so the updates don’t die.

To all of you who have been reading this: Thank you. I hope you continue to read and please leave me comments! I love hearing what you think.

Don’t forget, you don’t need to come directly to my blog in order to read it. You can subscribe to the RSS feed in your favourite RSS reader, add the LJ RSS feed if you are on LJ, or read the entries on my Facebook. Comments are always welcome, just remember if you are reading it via the LJ RSS to head over to the blog site to leave a comment. The LJ comment feature doesn’t actually send comments to me, it only shows them to other LJers.

I think I’m all caught up on the UK trip that spanned October 2008 – April 2009! And just in time, too, since Tim arrives in ONE WEEK for his three week visit to me! 😀

[This entry refers to a day trip taken in March 2009. As requested, I will be going back and blogging the trips from January – April.]

Tim had a day off mid-week, and since it had been such a gorgeous week so far, we decided to head towards the seaside. Previously, we went North to the seaside in Yorkshire, but this time we decided to stay in Lincolnshire.

We started our trip by driving through some of the small towns along the way, including Market Rasen and Louth. We explored the small town shops for a bit before heading on a drive through the Lincolnshire Wolds. We actually pulled over to the side of the road to enjoy a brief snack and just to enjoy the scenery.

I can’t remember where we made our stop for Lunch (hopefully Tim will comment and let me know!), but it was a small walking path surrounded by a wetlands/wildlife area. The carpark even had a port-a-john. We sat down for our picnic lunch at a small pavilion platform built out on top of some of the wetlands. It was quite windy and chilly, and I actually wound up putting on extra layers while we ate! [*edited to add* Tim informs me we stopped at Tetney Marsh]

After Lunch, we followed the coast all the way up to Mabelthorpe, where we happened to spot a sign for the Seal Sanctuary. We checked and the place was open, so we decided to visit the seals. We soon found out that not only were there seals, they had all sorts of wildlife from around the United Kingdom as well as animals formerly native to the United Kingdom, from wild cats to pheasants, beavers, foxes, owls, ducks, and a whole slew of other animals. We stayed until it was closing time for the facility, since we were having fun wandering around and seeing all the animals.

I think we spent the most time looking at the wildcats – Tim told me it had been one of his goals to see one up close, and we were lucky enough to see three! These cats were huge, but I still think my own “little” housecat could pass for a small wildcat.

We were super tired when we left, but we still managed to stop off at Tim’s grandparent’s house to visit his granddad for a bit. I was yawning and was very unsociable, but Granddad didn’t seem to mind.

For dinner that night, I had Brown Sugar Chicken in the crock pot, from A Year of Slow Cooking, but since we were out of the house for over 10 hours, it wasn’t too great. Oh, well. Can’t win them all.

(photo by Tim) A random tank on the side of the road….

(photo by Tim) Wildcat!

(photo by Tim) Me looking at Geese

For more photos (most of them taken by Tim), please see: http://photos.beccajanestclair.com/uk-trip-2008/mabelthorpe/

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Tim walking the boat:

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFYNl5MnksI

It *does* get brighter at the end, I promise!

[This entry refers to an event from March 2009. As requested, I will be going back and blogging events from January – April.]

Tim’s cat, Prudence, likes to be outside when there are people around. She also likes to walk around on the garden rail tracks:

Watch out for the that train!

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[This entry refers to a day trip taken in March 2009. As requested, I will be going back and blogging the trips I only posted vlogs about January – April.]

While we were going through brochures at Little Chef on our overnight in Oxford, we snagged a brochure about the Black Country Living Museum. It looked to be similar to Beamish, and since we had such a great time at Beamish, we put the brochure into our stack of “visit later”. We decided we really needed a full day for that museum.

One of the last trips Tim and I took together before I left was the trip to the Black Country Living Museum.

Similar to our situation when we went to Beamish, only certain portions of the museum were open while we were there. Fortunately, we were still able to walk around the areas that were closed, we just were unable to go inside the buildings.

When we walk in to pay our admission to many sites within the UK, we often get asked if we’d like to gift aid our admission. Since Tim is a UK taxpayer, he can opt for this option which then allows the charity (site) to claim back the tax he pays on our admission. In order to do this, they need to know your full name and address. Imagine our surprise when as we’re looking at the displays in the main entrance, a man walks up to Tim and says “Is your last name L_____?” Turns out, the people behind us in line shared the same last name and were most likely distant cousins of Tim’s!

We were disappointing to find out the tram was not running, but we were soon on our way on foot. We checked out a “mini” coal mine/railway before heading over to the model coal mine. After being given hard hats and flash lights that only shined as bright as a candle (what the original coal miners had to use to see!), we went down into the mine with a guide. Once again, we were in a location with low ceilings and were told “you might have to duck down”….and I was able to walk the entire mine without ducking! I’m not the type of person who usually gets claustrophobic, but I really couldn’t wait to get back to the surface.

After exploring the coal mine, we went and saw a crooked house and a house entirely made from aluminium. The house (and many houses in the area) actually started to sink and become crooked based on the activity going on in the mine below! We also checked out the village school, the pub, sweet shop, garage, and the chippy.

Eventually, we wound our way down to the Dudley Canal and discovered the opportunity to travel through the Dudely Tunnel by canal boat. Fortunately, we were able to get on the next boat and headed off to explore the Tunnels and learned about the history from our guide.

Our boat only had about 7 people total on it, so when it came time to take volunteers to “walk the boat” through the tunnel, Tim volunteered along with a girl from another group. (video currently being uploaded to YouTube) Before canal boats had motors, husband and wives moving their goods through the tunnels had to “walk the boat” through each tunnel by laying down on wooden boards and placing their feet on the walls of the tunnel. Tim said it was hard work!

After the boat ride, we explored a little more, and we found the tram shed open, so we peeked inside and got invited in by the man working in there. He and Tim got to talking, and the man offered to give us a ride on the tram back up to the entrance!

We had a fantastic time, and I’d love to go back in the future when everything is open.

The rest of the pictures and video will be posted later. I need to see if Tim took any pictures, but for now, here’s a few:

Tim walking the boat

one of the closed tunnels

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