Friday, September 20, 2019

70. Booking.comedy

The spouse and I are both pretty hopeless at planning vacations and booking spots. We procrastinate. We're not brilliant at finding good deals, although we are pretty thrifty. Ultimately, I tend to be the organizer although—bless him—in this case, because I've been busy-ish at work and we had just a little more than a week, Pat found and sent me numerous links to affordable hotels for us to stay in for a few days because we don't want to rudely and with short notice descend upon our beloved friends.

Most of the hotels seemed to be fairly corporate, as if an algorithm finds big hotels with extra rooms and not too charming, but at this late date, beggars can't be choosers. We both noticed a hotel named Henry VIII, which has decent rates, so I booked it. Located at 23 Leinster Gardens, it's not too far from Paddington Station, from which we'll leave for The Cotswolds. It IS in an area farther Wwest and South than I'm used to (we're used to staying with dear friends in the Southeast, in Forest Hill and I used to live in Chalk Farm, in the Northwest).

As much as I'm bad about vacation planning, and as little as I could afford to lose a few hours to preparation for a Friday class (I'm slow and quasi-methodical), I vastly enjoyed tooling around on Google Maps, virtually visiting London, and then even more satisfyingly taking a Google Maps satellite trip to the house where I lived in a (cold!) bedsit over 40 years ago.

The booking.com experience wasn't as tragic as I feared. In fact, it was fun.







(For September 18, 2019; posted September 20)

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