Labor Day Weekend

So we’re in Portland, Maine for Labor Day weekend…sort of.  We’re not actually going to be there ON Labor Day, we got here today and are leaving on Sunday.

The primary reason for this trip was to see a few Portland Sea Dogs vs. New Hampshire Fisher Cats games.  But hopefully, we’ll have time to do other things, as well.

The timing was not so good – Hurricane Earl is about to hit us up here.  It started raining during the game, it was tied in the 7th, so we left before it got really bad.  The Fisher Cats, who we were rooting for, ended up losing anyway.  I found out today that wearing a Fisher Cats jersey at Hadlock Field causes other fans to give you the fish-eye.  Just as well we left, tomorrow I’ll wear a non-baseball shirt.

When in Portland, we always stay at the Inn at St. John.  It’s an easy walk to the Sea Dogs ballpark, but it’s not in the middle of downtown.  But that’s okay, the #1 Metro bus stops right across the street, and it’ll take you right downtown, and easy walk to all of the cool stuff that the Old Port has to offer.  If you love good beer, be sure to visit Gritty McDuff’s, Sebago Brewing Company, and/or Shipyard Brewing Company.  All are in the Old Port, the first two are brewpubs, Shipyard is a brewery with a gift shop.  There is also lots of shopping and other restaurants, as well as trolley and boat tours (in season).

The fact that the Inn at St. John is NOT smack in the middle of downtown makes it an excellent value – you have easy access to the Old Port without the high prices.  Rooms range from luxury, which contain such amenities as jacuzzi tubs, to value rooms, which have shared bathrooms in the hall and involve climbing a lot of stairs. The choice is yours, depends on your preference and your budget. Pets are welcome in many rooms.

If the weather people are correct, Earl will be out of here tomorrow, and the rest of the weekend is supposed to be lovely.  Let’s hope so!

Yarmouth Clam Festival

Looking for something cool to do this weekend?  Why not take a trip up to Yarmouth, Maine, and enjoy the annual Yarmouth Clam Festival.  This takes place from Friday, July 16 through Sunday, July 18.  In addition to great food, there will also be live music, arts & craft shows, horse & wagon rides, trolley tours, and much more.  See the website for details.

And of course, there is the traditional Clam Festival parade on Friday night.  This event is so popular that people are already setting up their lawn chairs to reserve the best place to sit.

Admission to the Festival is free, and proceeds from parking and your purchases at various booths will go to support local community stuff.

So don’t spend another boring weekend at the computer, researching stuff like treatment for adult acne and the like. We’re supposed to get a halfway decent weekend, so come on out and have fun!

Learn Your Beer!

I know it’s only July, and both the Maine and New Hampshire Brewers Festivals are months away.  But it’s not too soon to order your tickets to either or both of these great events.  In fact, the sooner, the better, as they always sell out.  It’s usually best to get your tickets sometime during the summer, so you won’t be disappointed.

I actually pre-ordered our tickets to thew Maine fest at last year’s Maine fest.  Haven’t gotten my tix yet, but no doubt they will mail them out in plenty of time.  I think this year we might go to the Dinner With The Brewers event the night before the actual festival.  This will be held at the Portland Clarion Hotel on Friday, November 5.  I think we were planning to come up on Friday, anyway, and stay over for two nights at the Inn at St. John.  We would be going to the afternoon session of the festival on Saturday, November 6.  This weekend usually coincides with single game tickets for the Portland Sea Dogs going on sale.  From the Inn at St. John, we have to walk right past the ticket office at Hadlock Field to get to the Portland Expo, where the beer festival takes place.

The New Hampshire festival will be held the following weekend at the Manchester Radisson Hotel.  As with the Maine festival, there will be a Dinner With The Brewers on Friday, November 12, followed by two tasting sessions on Saturday.  I don’t think we’ll be going to the dinner for this one, because I don’t think Mike can take two Fridays off in a row.  I think we will just go to the evening session of the festival on Saturday, stay overnight, and go home the next day.  But that could change, it’s still a long ways off.

Although they will be offering special package deals which include lodging at the Radisson, I don’t think we’ll be taking advantage of that this year.  Since we always stay at the Hilton Garden Inn when we’re up for Fisher Cats game weekends, I’ve accumulated a boatload of HHonors points.  I got an email from them about “Point-Stretcher” periods, where I could redeem points for 40% less than usual at certain hotels and certain times.  I checked, and the Manchester HGI is not only included, but so is the weekend of the beer festival.  So that’s where we’ll be staying…you can’t get any better than FREE!  The HGI also has a free shuttle for guests, and last year, they were more than happy to take us to the Radisson…much appreciated since it was raining that night!

This will be the second year of the NH festival.  At this one, they have various beer tasting seminars, in addition to the regular tasting booths.  They promise to have even more of these this year than they did last year…but I wouldn’t look for anything too weird, such as the best face creams to use with your favorite beer. But they did have an interesting beer & chocolate pairing seminar, which was cool. Many people would not think about pairing beer and chocolate, but it definitely can be done, with very tasty results!

November will be here before we know it, so the time to start making plans is now!

Bob’s Clam Hut to be Featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives

Yes!  It’s true!  Guy Fieri and the crew from the hit Food Network show, Diners, Drive-ins & Dives were recently in Kittery, Maine, taping at Bob’s Clam Hut!  Complete with his little red convertible!  And there is photographic proof – I snagged this pic from Bob’s Facebook page, you can see the entire album from the taping HERE.  And here’s a local news story.

Bob’s is the quintessential New England clam shack.  First opened in 1956, it has grown quite a bit over the years.  It now includes an indoor dining room, which is heated, so Bob’s is open year-round.  You can visit their website to see pictures of how the restaurant has changed over the years.

This is the sort of place where you place your order at the window, look for a place to sit, and then wait for your number to be called, and you pick up your food at another window.  A fixture at Bob’s is “Lillian’s Window” – Lillian has been taking orders at the Clam Hut since 1986, and is a beloved presence there.  She’s a very sweet lady, she has served us many times over the years.

Naturally, you go to Bob’s mostly for their famous fried clams.  Fried seafood can be tricky, if you overcook it by as much as a minute or two, you end up something with the texture and chewability of rubber bands.  But Bob’s gets it right; their fried clams, as well as other fried seafood, are always cooked to perfection.

Bob’s also makes a fine lobster roll, which came in second in NECN’s viewer-voted “Baby You’re The Best” poll for Best Lobster Roll.  They also recently took first place “Judge’s Choice” at the Prescott Park Chowder Festival in nearby Portsmouth, NH, for their classic New England clam chowder.  If you’re not in the area to sample this chowder for yourself, fear not.  The recipe is posted on Bob’s website.

No word yet on when the DDD episode featuring Bob’s will air…so keep an eye out for it!

Should you use third party websites to book travel?

After reading this letter on Planet Feedback, the answer to that is an emphatic NO!

Here’s the letter.  If you click the above link to go to the letter on the Planet Feedback website, you can see the comments.  Pretty much, they suggest that this guy book directly through the hotel of his choice in the future.  I agree with that.

Tried to use their new top secret hotels service. They showed me a 3 star rating would be what I got so I agreed since the 3 star hotels were hotels like Embassy Suites. After I paid I got confirmation back that I was getting the LaQuinta Inn. Curious because of the other 3 star rated hotels I did some research to find LaQuinta as well as every other travel site rates it 2 stars. I called Travelocity to see why this happened. They continued with the lies that it was a 3 star hotel. Even spoke to a supervisor (over 40 minute wait) who said he called the hotel directly and they confirmed it was 3 star. At this point I just hung up. I then called LaQuinta who confirmed that the hotel was a grade C, tier 3, 2 star hotel. I then called Travelocity back since Dan had lied to me. I got to speak to another supervisor James (nearing 2 hours now) who said Dan hadn’t spoken to LaQuinta headquarters he spoke directly with the hotel. I asked to soeak to someone who doesn’t lie and could fix this lie. While I was on hold I decide to call the hotel directly and the one girl working there said she had no idea what the star rating was and neither did the other guy working this evening, confirming Dan’s lie on the first call. James comes back to the phone (15 more minutes) to tell me that LaQuinta does rate it 2 star, but the company Travelocity uses rates it a 3 star. How bogus is that? This means they can put whatever rating they want and just say its done by the company they use. James agreed that this was deceptive and attempted to contact Travelocity headquarters to get authorization for a resolution. He was denied because they use their own rating system, which in my opinion isn’t valid since the rest of the world sees it as 2 star. I then got to speak with a manager Samuel (2 nad a half hours now) who continued to say he couldn’t do anything about it. He gave me an email address (executive.offices@travelocity.com) that I could follow up with as next step.

Just give me the refund I deserve. You lied to me to get me into an agreement. If you would’ve just done the right thing from the start I would’ve just rebooked thorugh you with another hotel. Now that you’ve lied to me multiple times and continue not to resolve the lies. I just want the money back.

This guy has every right to be angry. I wouldn’t have thought that LaQuinta was a three-star hotel.  He was led to believe that he was paying for a three-star hotel, and didn’t get one.  Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with LaQuinta, but it is definitely a budget hotel, a step above a Super 8 or a Motel 6, and not what this guy was looking for.  And now Travelocity won’t give him back his money so he can book elsewhere.

I have found that you don’t necessarily save money by booking through one of these third party websites.  I used to do some online promotional work for a hotel reservations site, and at first, I was booking through them.  In these cases, I was able to choose the hotel I wanted.  However, I found it very difficult to impossible to make specific requests.  For example, the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Manchester…there was no way to request a room facing the NH Fisher Cats ballpark, and actually get it.  These rooms cost $10-20 more per night, and the third party site only listed the less expensive rooms, with a panoramic view of the parking lot.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that a room with a view of the ballpark could be mine, if I’d only book through the HGI website.

Also, neither Mike nor I are good with climbing too many stairs, and having to lug a suitcase up them makes it worse.  When we go to Portland, we always stay at the Inn At St. John, a quirky old hotel that has lots of stairs and no elevators.  I don’t think that the Inn At St. John even uses any of those third party booking sites, but if they did, we would not book that way.  When I book through the hotel’s website, I can put in the notes section a request for a ground floor room.  If I plan ahead and book early enough, I get it.  Someone at the hotel’s front desk will usually respond within the hour, confirming that we’ll be put in a ground floor room.

If you travel a lot, brand loyalty can pay off.  We stay at the Manchester Hilton Garden Inn several times a year, and once I started booking these stays through their website, I joined their HHonors loyalty program.  Each stay earns points, which can be redeemed for free stays.  The points can be earned/redeemed at any of the Hilton Family hotels.  So when we traveled to Mystic, CT, to visit the Mystic Seaport Museum, I chose the Hampton Inn there.  Not as many amenities as HGI, the main one being that they don’t have refrigerators in the rooms (but they do in the suites).  But still a very acceptable choice for a budget hotel.  The only reason we don’t stay at the HGI when we’re in Portland is that we’re usually there for Sea Dogs games.  The Inn At St. John is an easy walk to the ballpark, the HGI is not.

Another bad thing about letting Travelocity pick the hotel is that you don’t get a chance to read online consumer reviews before you plunk that credit card down.  I always try to look for reviews before booking a place we’ve never stayed at before.  There have been a few times when I could not find any reviews but took my chances anyway.  I had mixed results.  So now I write reviews, good and bad…you can read them by clicking the links at the top of this page to Yelp, TripAdvisor, and FourSquare.  I also write reviews right here on this blog.  All of my reviews are 100% honest, I am never paid to say something nice about a hotel or restaurant.

Booking through the hotel’s website can often get you discounts that you can’t get anywhere else.  The Hampton Inn  and HGI often have super-low rates, if you are willing to pay in advance.  The downside is that these rates are non-refundable, but if you are sure you’ll be able to make the trip, some great savings can be had.  We’re going up to ManchVegas over the 4th of July weekend, for Fisher Cats games, of course.  Because Manchester is not the tourist capital of the world during summer holiday weekends, and because I was willing to pay in advance, we got a room at the HGI, facing the ballpark, for just a little over $100 per night!  Sometimes, simply choosing to travel to a place where everyone and their dog doesn’t go can pay off in big savings.  Everyone seems to go up to the mountains, the lakes, or the seacoast for summer holidays, and as a result, ManchVegas is rather quiet.  Good for us when we come, that means that the restaurants and bars are not so crowded.  At least we noticed that when we were there over Memorial Day weekend!

So that’s my take on this…always book directly through the hotel to be sure you get exactly what you want, with less hassle!