Guest #3 - Biddy the horsewoman

As I came back from New friend Ian's house after guest #2, I had a request the next day from Airbnb, another of the homestay websites. I had only put the most basic details on this one, such as photos, and this was my first guest with it.

The request was from Biddy who was coming to a horse class being held at one of the farms near to my corner of Essex. It was the weekend before Dubai, but the flat was still in super clean condition so I decided to take the reservation.

Biddy wasn't here so much, really only the overnight as the horse classes were all day Saturday and Sunday. However, I came home to some lovely flowers--such a great view from my entrance upon my return:

In addition, she managed to break one of my (ultra cheap) Turkish tea glasses from Germany that I keep as wine glasses. She very graciously left a 5 pound note to pay for a replacement, which was well beyond anything I would have expected, considering they sell in six packs for below 5 EUR. However, I left her with thanks, nice feedback, and a promise of a discount the next time around if she gets a chance to come back for further horse classes.

Overall I was pleased with Airbnb, payment through the site was quick and their take appears to be lower than Crashpadder's, so I plan to fill in more details on their site to hopefully have more guests to visit.

Back from Dubai

I could probably wax on endlessly about thoughts on political or cultural Dubai, and that was only after a short one week visit. However, my purpose in going was work and then a few days on the beach. A few general thoughts:

Jumeirah beach was lovely:

However, October only begins the cooler season. Here in late Sept it was 30 C/90 F as soon as the sun rose before 7 AM and only continued upward until the sunset at 6.30 PM.

So I limited my beach time to early AM and after 3 PM. There was a pleasant breeze and the sand was soft. While you see cars in the photo and maybe 50 or so were on the beach, it didn't really seem crowded with people. In addition, there was a paved car lot next to the beach. There is a drop on the beach, so cars could only come so close, and in addition, the sand was deeper as one got closer to the water, so cars had to stay a short distance away.

The food was very international. Every chain imaginable can be found in Dubai. I saw McDonalds, Subway, TGIFridays, Pizza Express (UK), Ruby Tuesdays, and some other repeated restaurants like 'Wok Away'.

After a work week of being on the business travel and having our hosts take us to wonderful restaurants, I had to detox and eat out of the supermarket once the weekend came and I was on my own. I had asked at the hotel for the closest supermarket and was pleasantly surprised by their fresh food offerings. Everything here was packaged that morning and expired the next day and included no preservatives or chemical ingredients:

This ended up being lunch and dinner on Saturday as I had a minibar fridge in the room. From the back left: a salad with tuna, moutabal, humous, and then in the middle row were artichokes and a fava bean salad, and in front, fresh bread.

Everything together ran me about 8 GBP. Not bad for two healthy meals while on holiday.

On the frugal side, I was lucky on this trip. The flights were covered by work due to the business travel. In addition, Emirates Air was running a special deal on UK Business class tickets from the UK and issued in the UK during the 'summer season' which still includes September--two nights of a hotel on their special list was free. Utterly and completely free. So after I checked out of the work meetings, I checked into my free hotel for two nights of beach and relaxing.

From the special Emirates hotel list, I chose the Sofitel Jumeirah Beach, a five star hotel that is located outside of the city center, on the beach. Or more appropriately, across the parking lot to a public beach. In addition, the pool was down for maintenance, although there was still a deck lounge area near the pool. I had reviewed in advance online, a lot of people gave the hotel a hard time for not having a private beach, and for being across the parking lot from the beach. Considering I paid nothing to stay two nights, I have no right to complain, but I found the hotel to be lovely, parking lot and all. In addition, the hotel had free wireless throughout, which is always a big plus in my book. The biggest negative? I had only a 'side-beach view', which I knew before arriving from the literature. So I could see the beach and water while sitting on the balcony or directly in front of the doors to it, but not from the rest of the room. So I sat on the shaded balcony during those hot mid-day hours with my cool drinks from inside and my books.

I did find it interesting to be near the locals on the beach, or Middle Eastern tourists perhaps. No one gave me any hassles and someone noticed my collecting of seashells at the water and came back from snorkeling and dropped off a few for me, without a word. There were a fair number of tourists on the beach as well, they were easy to pick out by their sunburns.

While I saw their big, airconditioned mega malls, I didn't really see anything that I needed to buy. I did bring back the seashells and some sand in my shoes, however. ;-) I also tucked away the posh little extra shampoos and the like, for my occasional visitors.

While I probably wouldn't have gone on my own for holidays (primarily due to the distance of 7 hours to London), I'm glad I did get to go. As well, my liver probably appreciated the alcohol free adventure. While certain restaurants are able to sell alcohol and even the hotel had 'happy hour' where there were able to sell alcohol from 6-8 PM each night, I wasn't taking any chances in that society based on some of the stories I was hearing during the week about the government intervention into local life. In addition, I noticed that alcohol was expensive, higher than Iceland prices even which was previously the highest I've seen it, and that would have blown the frugal budget at 6 GBP for a beer. :-)

One more while I'm away - Slocombe in the window

The photo is a little tough to see, but that's Slocombe the cat on this side of the window while she is on vacation. On the other side is some other cat who is pretending to be interested in something to its left.

After another few seconds the other cat turned tail and ran. SC was mighty confused, as she was more curious than anything else about another furry being. She spent the rest of the day periodically sneaking on the counter to get to this window to peek out, wondering if the other cat came back.

Such a fierce and mighty cat she is!

(As far as inside, 12 year old lap cats go) ;-)

More from the rooftop garden - peppers

A little more pre-posting in advance while I'm away. Another winner this year on the roof was the old standby, the hot peppers:

This year I branched out a little in trying other varieties. Somehow, though, none of my scotch bonnet seeds took off, but the regular jalapenos took up the slack.

Tomatos from the garden

While I'm on the road, a little pre-posting.
Here is what I picked from the rooftop garden the night before I left:

On the road

Or rather, on the way to be in the air to Dubai. I'm rather looking forward to this trip as I just got my new law books on Friday, so I'll have a good few hours to get cracking while on the flight after I get through my work emails. Thankfully, I'm in business class since it's for work so I won't be squashed with my books.

5 AM calls rather early, but it had to be that way as Essex is on the 'wrong' side of London to get to Heathrow during the morning rush hour. So I'll be there in good time to enjoy a coffee.

Update on the crashpadder guests #1 Luisa & Peter

I've been a little busy for studying for an exam two weeks back and I'm realizing that I missed to finish the story about how it turned out with the lent out flat, and now I'm on my third guest already, so I'd better get moving.


You may recall, I had an idea to make a little spare cash, by lending out the flat. With a bit of trepidation I handed over the keys to Peter (of Luisa and Peter), as Luisa had taken a potty break on the train and then missed to get off the train as it was so crowded. However, Peter seemed harmless enough and managed to get off at the right stop with assurances that he would find Luisa again, so keys out of hand, off I went on a Friday while my corner of Essex started to heat up with incoming festival crowds.

Upon my return my flat was in absolutely pristine condition. It looked the same as when I go away to the weekend to new friend Ian's and return on Sunday, except that
1. The sheets, pillowcases and duvet cover were waiting next to the washing machine and the used towels were hanging up to dry
2. Someone left food in the fridge for me: 1 egg, some oj, candy, chocolate, doritos, salsa
3. Luisa and Peter had left a lovely card for me on the desk:






In case you're wondering about the 'funny, lovely & helpful notes' (Luisa teaches English as a second language so well written there!)--I had left little helpful post-its as their train was late. So I penned some messages, for example:

I have a collection of hotel shampoos and soaps. To make it feel more like a holiday I had set them all out in a basket, but I didn't want them to think that they couldn't use the normal ones standing in the shower, so the post-it next to them said:

• 'Use us! Pick me! No me!' (said all of the little soap and shampoo bottles). Or use the normal size ones in the shower, whichever you prefer.

Or in the kitchen, I had left a note in relation to the garbage, because the garbage area has a special key and has had all sorts of drama with people leaving it unlocked and the department of health being called out to go through any rubbish not in the dumpster, as well the key is perhaps made of sterling silver, because copies of lost ones cost 50 GBP. So the note said:

• The rubbish bin is only reachable by a series of secret handshakes and passwords and only when the moon and its comets align. Therefore, leave any garbage here or tied up on the terrace and I'll take care of it upon my return, assuming that the comets are in a good mood about getting in line!

Yeah, I amuse myself.

The big surprise to me, however, was the giftcard that was with the card. I had just assumed it was one of those little 'thank you' cards that people sometimes get over here for various promotions--like donating a marks & spencers item to oxfam gets you a 5 GBP voucher, etc. Imagine my surprise when I went to use it and found that they had put 20 GBP on it. So I will definitely be blocking the flat for their reservation next year if they come again to the festival.

In the week after the festival I've already had an inquiry for next year, someone wanting to book early, good grief.

So overall, experience #1 was a winner. :-)

packing

First for Dubai, then for a week in Germany. Fortunately it's back to the UK in between, so I'm not hauling around an extensive wardrobe.

Weather predictions for Dubai while there: above 100 F/35 C and sunny
Weather while I'll be away from the UK? around 61 F/16 C and partly cloudy, with Germany weather similar.