Full Moon and a view on St Jean Cap Ferrat
An excellent place for Super Yacht spotting, here the 90m Lauren L, built in 2002 in Germany
Last year we took a few days off from our hectic life as hoteliers to visit the south of France.
I was able to make a last minute reservation for one night in a suite of the magnificent Chateau Eza.
However, there are a couple of things to note:
- Eza is the old name for Eze. It is a little picturesque medieval and hence car free village on a rock approximately 500m above sea level with a magnificent view of the Mediterranean. It is the first village west from Monaco and not far from Nice and Nice Airport. It is draped like an Eagle’s Nest on a steep hill. Hotel Chateau Eza is situated on top of the village, about 20 minutes walking on a steep uphill path, partly with stairs. It’s an excellent place for Yacht spotting.
- If you travel by car like we do, you should be aware that Eze village is a bit of a tourist trap with few parkings. On busy days it is hardly possible to park your car somewhere in the neighborhood of the entrance to the village. Many buses drop by. If you want to make a day trip by car to for instance Monaco or Nice, it takes about 1/2 hour before you reach your car and you have no guarantee you’ll find a parking spot when you return after your trip.
- Eze can be foggy, even if the rest of the Riviera is sun blazed. Just be aware of this, if you booked for the view as we did.
- They run an excellent restaurant, but they don’t give hotel guests a guaranteed seat for a session in the restaurant, what amazed me for a 10 rooms only hotel.
- Checking in into the hotel is a somewhat peculiar experience, as there is a little office for the concierge in the main street not far from the car park, approximately a mile downhill form the hotel entrance itself. The hotel site is not clear about this feature. It should be in my opinion. The confirmation of the reservation gives some directions, but are not very clear. The porter does a good job bringing your luggage to the hotel. All in all it took us 2 hours from arrival by car until we were checked in.
- Friends of us stayed somewhere in the not too distant neighborhood, and we would have liked them to meet us at the hotel for lunch, however when we were settled Eza had closed the kitchen, notwithstanding they advertise, even today, on their site: Tapas service and à la carte salads are served from 12h30 to 18h00. Moreover with a 5 stars rating you may expect 24/7 room service for tapas and salads. No flexibility at all and that annoyed me most.
- As a final observation: The neighborhood is rocky. On the night vision photo above you look West and see the light glow of Nice behind the hill and the traffic on the secondary road. It means if there is no wind, there is a lot of traffic noise amplified by the steep rocks around. Traffic goes on all night.
All in all it was quite an, but not so quiet, experience which I won’t repeat.
After a wonderful, but bit hazy, breakfast on the terrace we left for the Burgundy region.
After I imported the posts of Happy Hotelier from the old server to the new server, this interview with Robert Pirsig came up as my first draft in my drafts ghetto.
Whenever I see or hear the term Zen I associate it with the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance.
Currently I’m awaiting the DNS switch from old server to new server as the two have been in the air next to each other. In the meantime I have replaced a keyboard because the w key kept hanging because of ash with coffee in it.
Well I was pondering the new set up for my categories as they seem to be misfits anyway.
Three notes to self evolve:
- Zen will remain as category
- Art as well
- Have to read this book finaly
The Seventies bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was the biggest-selling philosophy book ever. But for the reclusive author life was bitter-sweet. Here, he talks frankly about anxiety, depression, the death of his son and the road trip that inspired a classic.
Born 6 September 1928, Minneapolis.
Family Father was a law lecturer and mother was Swedish-born. Pirsig married Nancy Ann James in 1954. They had two sons: Chris, and Ted, now 48. Now married to journalist Wendy Kimball, with whom he has a 25-year-old daughter, Nell.
Education Judged to have an IQ of 170 at age nine. Went to University of Minneapolis at 15, but joined the army in 1946, serving in Korea before returning to the university to study philosophy. Then studied at Benares in India.
Last edited by Happy Hotelier on November 21, 2009 at 6:59 pm
The Helicopter search result
Actually I’m proud of my Zen series of posts. It describes from time to time how much effort it takes me to find a nice last minute hotel room. I consider myself reasonably knowledgeable about hotels and enough of a geek to find a cool hotel room via internet. But each time I am asked to find somebody a cool hotel, I find it becoming more difficult to find something special at a reasonable price via internet. It demonstrates to me time after time that the internet is not such a nice tool as everyone, including travel marketeers wants us to believe. To me these exercises demonstrate time after time again the Hospitality- and Destination marketing industry still has waaaay to go before they “get it”.
This time my unfortunate dance partner “Dancegirl” asked me to find her a nice hotel in or around Maastricht for tomorrow. As Asuncion Day is a Dutch Bank Holiday and the weather is nice, this is even more difficult, as there will be not many vacancies in and around Maastricht tomorrow.
So, actually the “Zen” tag is sometimes more of an euphemism for a good old rant….
This time my first search was on Hotelicopter. Please note it is spelled with one ‘l’ in the middle – just wondering why they didn’t scoop up the hotellicopter domain.
Recently I ranted really about them.
They rate the Maastricht Kruisherenhotel as the best of their Maastricht portfolio. That goes without saying, because I know, as my own review of the Kruisherenhotel on their site is a raving one. Only Dancegirl won’t be able or willing to pay their rate.
My rant about Hotelicopter is still valid: Despite Adam Healey promising me that “their own” – I mean their community’s, more precisely “our” reviews – which they hid when they relabeled themselves from VibeAgent into Hotelicopter, will be back soon, you still cannot check those reviews on their site. How long do we have to wait, Adam?
On a positive note: Their search machine doesn’t confine itself to an area within country boundaries. Especially important in the case of Maastricht as it is located near our borders with Germany and Belgium.
On a negative note: they didn’t catch the euro 150 no refund St Gerlach offer described here below.
I looked at Tripadvisor with and without availability search and it didn’t come up with something interesting quickly enough.
I looked at Booking.com, but got lost in the preferred position of various big chain hotels.
Then I looked at my favorite Dutch Hoteliers site. Already my favorite because I use them as a white label online booking engine for my Haagsche Suites (and consequently am always featured on their home page as the second best guest rated hotel of their portfolio in The Netherlands), but also because the site is easy to use. Their model is a fee based one. Nothing commissions from the hotels. They came up with a non refundable offer from St Gerlach, owned by the same owner as the kruisherenhotel and they happen to be a member of the same small chain of Historic Hotels of the Benelux we’re a member of.
In the meantime, via Twitter, I got two suggestions from twitter followers:
One very funny one from Patrick Geoff twittering as @HotelDesigns who suggested Haagsche Suites and referred to his own kind review. He wasn’t aware that my search was was for Dancegirl She actually does know Haagsche Suites by heart, as she replaces us in minding the guests occasionally. Some guests even prefer her minding them over this old goat:-).
The second suggestion came from Hotel Calculator. They did come up with the same St Gerlach offer, but now via Agoda. Hotel Calculator quoted Euro 154, but when you landed on Agoda, the price reduced by a sort of refund policy of Agoda… When I asked Hotel calculator about the difference, he answered that it probably is due to exchange rate imparities in the scraping process.
Agoda being the same OTA that Hotelicopter came up with, this also shows that not all meta search engines are equal. In an earlier post I commented that there was apparently a lag between Hotelicopter’s availability and Agoda’s availability. Hotel calculater claims their engine scrapes real time….
As Dancegirl liked this offer and booked it, this ends as a bit less time consuming and more zen alike post:-)
I’ll keep your posted about Dancegirl’s verdict of the St Gerlach.
In a Press Release dated April 9, 2009 Hotelicopter is presented as a “New” Totally Awesome Hotel Search Engine after “The Hotelicopter had attracted wide media coverage with its April Fools Prank”
Almost everybody in Bloggistan loves the way Hotelicopter was launched as an April Fools prank and then turns out as a hotel booking engine. “Good marketing” they say. I beg to differ.
Although I can appreciate a good joke or to be fooled and certainly can laugh about myself, I feel fooled by Vibe Agent in another way:
First the search engine is not at all new. Basically it is the same search engine as it was three days ago under the name VibeAgent.
Secondly I have been involved as a very active “beta tester” in the building of VibeAgent. I’ve posted two posts about it here and here and referred to it in many other posts.
I wrote:
It is meant to be a community that shares hotel reviews on the one hand and combines that with best price searching on the other hand.
The members are called Agents. They write the reviews. They are unpaid.
VibeAgent has teamed up with an impressive list of travel and hotel portals at the back end, like Price Line, Booking.com and many others.
So: It started out as a community driven hotel search engine. As a sort of mini Tripadvisor, but a bit more advanced. In the meantime Tripadvisor has overhauled its website entirely and became part of Expedia.
Now with this repackaging of the site as Hotelicopter VibeAgent has wiped away its entire own community.
Where are your approximately 5,000 plus Agents, Adam?
Was that part of the deal with TripAdvisor? You being able to show Tripadvisor reviews provided you did away with your own base of hotel reviews?
I’m not amused and I believe many with me.
Update April 9 16.00 hr (04.00PM) local time:
Again this is a matter of lack of communication: See the comments below. Feeling a bit better now.
During our journey to the Swiss Alps we’ve visited Strassbourg shortly “zum bummln” which is German for doing some shopping.
Usually we tend to race along without paying any attention to this French city bordering on the river Rhine which forms the border between France and Germany.
Its center is well preserved. My first photo shows the cathedral with its characteristic unfinished one spire tower. Apparently the canals are used for cooling some local industries, as they are not frozen and the swans can peacefully use them.
The second photo shows some of its ancient housing with an almost full moon.
For these posts I’m working on a new eee Asus netbook. First I tried to resize my photos with Irfanview, but that shareware programm crashed time after time. Now I’ve done the resizing with an ACDsee trial version. Not sure whether the photos are sharp enough as my working screen is only 9 inch….
