Four Days of London

At the beginning of October 2009, I was in London for the first time. The vacation took four days. Originally we went there to see Porcupine Tree, Opeth and Dream Theatre live, but once we were in London we wanted to take as much as possible from it.

The Hotel

We stayed at “The International Hotel Britannia” all the nights. It was very cool that it offered 20% off for staying for four days (that was basically the reason why we were there for four days, not for three). It was also cool that girl at the reception was Lithuanian, so we got a better room Other advantages: good connection with the city using DLR (Docklands Light Railway) and London Underground services, many international people in the hotel, what gave a very cozy and friendly atmosphere. Pizzeria and room service 24/7 (haven’t used, though), pool, spa, gym (haven’t used these as well, but we just were in town all the time) and whatever a four star hotel should have. All that left me imagining what a dull life those serious businessmen have, if they don’t have anyone to go out to town with and pour some culture into themselves in the countless museums, theatres, exhibitions or pour some English ale into their stomachs in the countless English pubs. Instead of that, they stay at the hotel. Creepy.

Also, we were offered to upgrade to a room with a Jacuzzi and free access to all of hotel’s facilities. We refused, because that would have cost 120£. Well, if we would have agreed to have breakfast at the hotel (which would have cost 27£ each day), then the upgrade would be only 12£, but we thought that’s not a good deal for us, especially that we were planning on seeing London, not the hotel.

Ok, now it’s time for hotel curiosities. I was wondering, how a not so good room would be like, because from our room’s window we could see the DLR (what was cool) – and also hear it (which wasn’t that cool). And DLR goes about every three minutes, also at nights. Good that we were all tired after days full of impressions.

Other curiosities were about water. When we came back to our room after Dream Theatre and Opeth, we heard water running in the bathroom. And yes, in the bathroom there was cold water left running all the day while we were out – the bathtub was half full already, and it even wasn’t plugged up. We for sure didn’t leave the bath like that – but could have chambermaids done that? Weird, weird, weird. Furthermore, the next (and the last) morning it got a bit annoying – no hot water. Sunday morning everybody’s checking out and taking a bath before leaving, I guess – but no hot water in a 4* hotel is a bit of no excuse.

Porcupine Tree at Hammersmith Apollo

Sold out! It was a bit weird at first to listen to the concert while sitting, but later we got used to that. Porcupine Tree is not really that kind of music you could headbang to and jump around and scream and so on during the entire concert. Sitting actually fits, and quite well. Sound was a bit too loud during the warm-up band’s performance and at the beginning of Porcupine Tree there was a bit too much bass, but later it got just perfect. Lot too loud, not too silent. At the end of the concert people were applauding standing – it was really such a good concert.

There was one very nice moment in the concert, when the lead singer asked if there’s anybody in the hall who were seeing Opeth the next day. Several people raised their hands shouting (including us), and then he asked to give best wishes for Mikael Åkerfeldt, the singer of Opeth.

After the concert we went to a nearby snack bar to get something to eat before going back to hotel. I got cod and chips and it took a while for me to finish eating (I eat slowly), but during that time we could hear a fan of Porcupine Tree speaking stuff about them to his friends. He was so passionate.

Opeth and Dream Theatre at Wembley Arena

What can I say – it was a very, very good concert. Sadly we were a bit late, so we didn’t see the first band and half of Big Elf performance. They were ok. “She got me blindfolded” haha .

Opeth – goooood. They were playing the more brutal songs of theirs to differ themselves from the rest of the bands. Yeah \m/

Dream Theatre – also good. They were headliners of the concert, so they got a bigger stage with three screens and all the fancy stuff. The cool moments: at the beginning of the first song Mikael Åkerfeldt ran on the stage and growled several lines. Later there was a drum solo, first only by Dream Theatre’s drummer, but then he exclaimed that the drum kit was too big for him alone and started calling out drummers from other three bands. So at the end they were four playing one drum kit. Pure awesomeness, I must say.

After this concert we were discussing with Anders, that we see no reason for Opeth not to be headliners, as both of us find this band better than all-praised Dream Theatre. We’re not saying that DT is not worth their name – we’re just saying, that Opeth is better

The recent Dream Theatre video contains some behind the scenes shots of this concert, watch it!

Airport

Firstly – it starts to annoy me, that airport officers get confused about my old green passport, back from those times when Lithuania hasn’t been part of EU yet. The date is written there in format “dd mm yyyy”. And everybody looks at the first number, 06, and says that my passport is no longer valid, although if they looked just two more symbols to the right, they would find 2012.

Second – *censored* terrorists. I’m not afraid of flying at all, but I’m afraid to get stuck in the security gates because of some minor issue. For example, that rule for liquids not to exceed 100ml. So you can’t even bring water to the plane – you have to buy that behind the security gates, where it costs at least twice as much. And I usually carry more than one lip balm with me – so, if I forget to take one out/don’t find it in my bag, I might be interrogated and what not. This is something that really gives me nerves in airports. Not to mention being touched everywhere if the metal detector detects something. And that super fancy new X-Ray machine – wonderful, anyone can see me naked. This gives me creeps.

London in general

-          I really enjoyed, that one can buy a snack-pack of fresh fruit almost anywhere. I wonder if this is part of some governmental “Eat more healthy food” campaign, or is there demand for healthy snacks? This saved me from eating junk food, which is usually unavoidable when travelling.

-          During our stay probably all the museums and galleries were free to enter. We took an opportunity to visit Tate Modern.

-          Camden Town is surely one of the reasons to go to London. It’s like an alternative universe, where it is always 70s – 80s.

-          Greenwich – this town (?) reminded me of Vilnius very much. Architecture, university, nature and modern buildings on the other side. Greenwich market is also remarkably good – one can find almost anything there.

-          “Look right” written on the roads. Yes, left side traffic is very confusing.

-          Metal pub “The Intrepid Fox” – took a while to find it, even longer to leave it. A super cool metal pub. Just why is the music so damn loud in all the English pubs? When you need to shout to your partner and your ears start hurting – it’s too loud. Don’t they know it?

-          The banks of Thames are ad-free. That’s wonderful, I must say.

-          Madame Tussaud’s museum. Quite fun, but we didn’t know half of celebrities. Maybe we need to buy a TV.

-          I heard a terrible advertisement on the subway. Something like: “Feel ugly? Have a plastic surgery at our hospital. Call now to book your appointment!” CREEPY!

-          We are weird tourists that didn’t go to see Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Windsor Castle and went to Trafalgar Square only by accident.

-          English food. Not the best kitchen in the world, really…

-          Mind the gap!

~

I’ll be visiting London again in April. Again, for Opeth

~

Li’l update: photos from this weekend getaway are to be found here.

How Do They Handle the Luggage?

I guess many people don’t feel too secured when giving their luggage for airport to handle, especially if there’s something precioussssss inside, and what you aren’t really allowed to take with you on the cabin. I can fully understand them.

(Yes, that’s yet another grumbling post about my experiences )

This happened when we were flying home from our holiday. I was (un)lucky enough to see the process of getting luggage from the plain on to the luggage wagon. The bags are simply thrown around. It almost hurts to see them. (I saw it happening in CPH.)

No wonder that when we came home, I found all my stuff in a bag wet and smelly. What happened was, that a can of Corsican beer simply opened and all the liquid leaked out. A bag of original Corsican cookies also opened up and all the delicious goodness turned into crumbs.

The question is, with how much force one has to hit a can, so that it would open/explode/break into pieces? Please try this at home and tell me your findings

The Big Vacation, Part 2.2: Italy

I was in Italy last year, and I really didn’t think that I would be there again only one year later. But Anders wanted to meet his colleague, an online buddy Lorenzo. So – hi again, Italy!

Our ferry arrived to Livorno in the middle of the day. This time ferry wasn’t that fancy and foot passengers (us) had to leave the ferry together with all the cars. Eek. The seaport was no better. We were following the signs for the cars to get out of the area, but at some point we were stopped by an officer and he called us a taxi. Isn’t that cool? We drove to the railway station and didn’t see anything amusing on our way. At a railway station we took a train to Florence.

Florence

There are many people, who say “Florence” as it would be the best place on Earth, a dreamland. However, we were not super amused – maybe our minds were still blown off by Corsica, or maybe because we aren’t that interested in antique art. We did find beautiful buildings and statues and looked at jewelry on Ponte Vecchio, but it didn’t impress us much. Then we stumbled upon Savoy hotel and remembered that one friend recommended it very much for its especially good cocktails. We gave it a go. I ordered “Angel’s face” and I have to admit that I haven’t tasted anything like this before. This cocktail has a very particular taste. It is made from apple cognac, peach liquor and calvados. Only alcoholic ingredients, what was I thinking? Also we were served a little snack. It was olives, salty almonds and some fried puffy balls with olive-meat (?) filling (maybe somebody knows what it is and can tell me the recipe?). It was so delicious.

Alcohol made us hungry, and we started looking for a restaurant. It was hard to find one which wouldn’t be completely packed with people. But once we found one, we found a good one. Our waiter had a big paunch and was singing “Yesterday” all the time. He was so funny. And the food we ordered was really delicious. Sadly, I didn’t write down the name of this restaurant.

We stayed at “UNA Hotel Vittoria”. If there’s one word to describe this place, it’s “funky”. It’s decorated in a very particular manner, and I guess it’s not for everyone’s taste. But we liked it. Actually, the first time we stepped in, the first moment I was a bit worried that this might be gay hotel, because the guy at the reception was smiling and looking at Anders in a very weird way. But once I noticed more traditional couples in there, all my worries went away.

No matter how cool this hotel would be, there were things that probably weren’t thought through properly. It took a while for us to figure out how the lights and the shower work. But that was ok, because we were not in a hurry and actually had some good time. The biggest drawback is that in the breakfast area all main surfaces are made from hard materials, which cause a terrible echo. I wanted to run away from there as soon as possible. And also they didn’t have big cups for tea.

Other than that we really enjoyed our stay there. I’d recommend it to anyone who is tired of traditional hotels and is not afraid of seeing oneself in the mirror while taking a shower Oh, I also should say that we forgot to turn off the air conditioning before going to sleep, so I was freezing during the night. Ironically, a few days earlier I was complaining about the lack of air conditioning.

The next day we didn’t have much to do before our train to Bologna left, so we went into a shopping street. Anders bought two T-shirts, Superman and “1up” (from Mario), and I got a Vespa tank top, earrings with Jack Skellington and other earrings with hearts and bones. Oh, also we bought an Opeth patch. Sometimes I like shopping. Sometimes. We also noticed a lot Americans there. I guess they heard legends about shopping in Florence and decided to check if they are true

Speaking about shopping, quite close to our hotel there was a gothic shop, “Black Eden”. Anders had a hope to find a studded belt there, but no luck (as well as in that shopping street later). Are they out of fashion or what?

To sum up about Florence, I’d say that it’s a nice town, but not as special as others say (aren’t I weird?).

Bologna

Here we met Lorenzo. He’s a cool guy. Together with him and his wife we did a little bit of sightseeing.

Asinelli Tower. A long way up the stairs and then a beautiful view on the city.

Santo Stefano – Seven Churches. Impressive.

Then we had a big Italian dinner at some restaurant. It was once again proved, that if all the cooks around the world would be Italian, the world would be a better place.

This time we were staying at “Best Western Hotel Maggiore” (not giving a link, because their website… is not so good). They failed and prepared the room for only one person. We didn’t bother much, because we stayed only one night anyway and we had our own towels. And their breakfast was very delicious. They had big cups for tea.

Although my description of this city is brief and absolutely not thorough, I liked it (the city). However, there’s not much greenery in this town, so I probably wouldn’t have liked it if I had to stay longer.

And I have to say “Grazie!” for Lorenzo and Miroslava for their hospitality

Milano

It was the second time for me in Milano, so I already knew several things there. For example, that with one ticket you can go around metro as much as you want, until you get out. This was very useful, because at first we took the right line the wrong direction.

Our hotel was probably the highest class of all that we’ve stayed in during this vacation. There was a bellboy who took care of guest’s luggage. This hotel had two towel sets for both of us, but for some reason only one bathrobe we don’t really need that anyway, so it’s not a problem. And also there were ashtrays on both sides of the bed (both of us are non-smokers). Oh, the hotel name is “Hotel Carrobbio“. They serve very delicious breakfast; I even got a whole teapot of tea

On our way to the cathedral square I did some shopping at “Triumph”. Then we went on top of Duomo di Milano, which was quite disappointing for me, because much smaller area of the roof was open for visitors than the last year (and last year it was one of the best things through the entire journey). But Anders had fun there, so it’s ok.

Then we had to wait for half an hour until the restaurant that we were supposed to go would open, so again we went to the shops to do some shopping. Found nothing – either we didn’t like the fashion or the prices were sky high.

The restaurant we had our dinner at is “Di Gennaro”, which is very close to the Duomo (see on map). Last year our travel guide recommended it for us and it was really good. So, I was dining at the same place as last year and was even sitting in almost the same place It was so good. And then when we were already full we noticed some special tourist menu, apparently traditional Italian dinner at the last page of the menu card. Oh well. Next time

After this we went out to search for some pub, recommendation of which Anders found somewhere on the Internet. We found it, had several cocktails, had a good time, found out that they don’t accept credit cards, paid with our very last cash. Then all happy we went back to our hotel and next day discovered that it was some other pub, not the one we were searching for, LOL. Anyway, it was good, and it’s called Memphis.

Last hours of vacation we spent in a park which is near Milano Nord Cadorna train station. It was nice.

What can I say about Milano? It seems I really like it (although last year I hated it and only the roof of the Duomo fixed the day). We were not like real tourists there; it was more like feeling the spirit of the city… And it felt like home. Yay for Milano!

(photos of the whole trip are here)

- the end -

The Big Vacation, Part 2.1: France

The next day after landing in Aalborg airport, early morning we were there again. This time we were flying to France, Nice.

Nice

Nice welcomed us with sunny weather and French language. First ten minutes, while we were looking at maps and trying to figure out how to reach our hotel, it was very nice and warm. But it eventually got terribly hot, so we hurried towards our hotel as fast as we could.

We stayed at “Hotel Excelsior”. It left a very good impression to us. The lady at the reception was speaking pretty good English and marked the main tourist attractions for us on the map. Hotel had an elevator, and our room was nicely conditioned (it showed 18°C). We dropped our luggage and went out to explore the town.

Nice is a very beautiful town. Narrow streets, palm trees and amazingly blue water. However, it has a terrible parking problem. Those people, who say that Vilnius has a traffic problem, should go to Nice. (Although later I realized that most of the places we’ve visited during this trip have this problem.)

We had lunch at a nice French café “Le Circuit”, which is near a little roundabout that has a little fountain in the middle, close to the shopping area (you can see it here). Our waiter was speaking fluent English and the meal was delicious as well. But I don’t remember, what we ordered

Later we went out to explore the town. What caught our attention was a huge waterfall on the top of a huge cliff. After a little bit of going around we found the entrance to the park and started our way up. It was so amazing. A wide view on the town and bright blue water. Finally we reached the waterfall, where we could cool down after all the heat.

It was sunny, but with a breeze and water drops it wasn't hot

Then we went down to town again, to find a nice souvenir market. I bought a piece of hand-made olive soap there. I’m starting to think that I’m a soap maniac

Later that day at some point we returned to our hotel, where we found out that 18°C is actually very cold. Turned the heat up and went out to try that turquoise water. Unfortunately, the beach was made solely out of stones and rocks. My feet, that are used to sandy Baltic Sea beaches, didn’t approve that. Water was also maybe a bit too warm, so you can almost swim in it forever without cooling yourself down properly. Other than that, it was fun swimming when the sun was already down and the sky was all dark.

Dinner we had at some random restaurant, because, ironically, it’s very hard to find a French restaurant open at evening hours in Nice (or we were looking in wrong places).

We refused to have breakfast at our hotel, so the next morning we were out in the town again, searching for a place to eat. We stumbled upon “La Villa Borgia”, which offered breakfast combo for up to 10€. There I had two crêpes with sugar, espresso and a glass of orange juice; my man had a croissant instead of crêpes.

After this breakfast we moved on to find our ferry to Corsica.

What else I can say about Nice:

• OMG the prices. The same numbers one sees in the Lithuanian menus, but here everything is in Euros (1€ ≈ 3,5 LTU)
• So many Russians, that some restaurants write on their windows “We speak Russian!” in Russian. I guess it’s good to be Russian here
• Everything that you think of Southern France is true (but some of them do speak English!)
• It’s such a beauteous town.

The Ferry

We were using “Corsica Ferries. Sardinia Ferries” service. The ferry was so fancy inside, that we were going around looking for second-class rooms. We failed

Most of the time we were sleeping because of that smooth rocking of the ship. Later we found out that there’s a swimming pool on the top of the ferry, so we went up there and took a dip. This was followed by a little snack and Corsican beer.

The journey took so long, that we reached Bastia only when it was already dark.

Frankenstein Anders in the ferry pool

Bastia

We were staying at “ Hotel Central”. The first moment I was shocked, because it didn’t have an elevator, air conditioning and the old guy at the reception didn’t know a word in English. (Here I must say that Anders probably has some telepathic abilities, because somehow he managed to communicate with all the people who spoke only French). But it wasn’t that bad (the previous hotel had probably spoiled me ). That old guy took my bag and brought it all the way up to the third floor. The room was especially lovely decorated and had a little balcony. The fan was enough for keeping the room not too hot. Bathroom supplies had ginseng and were very good for me. The only problem was, that the bathroom’s door handle was too close to the casing, so I’ve hit my fingers. Other than that, the hotel is really lovely and cozy.

In the morning we had breakfast at small café – bakery “Ronde des Pains” (see location on Google maps), where Anders had to show his telepathic abilities again. After this we found Hertz and picked up our fancy-pantsy Renault. Let the tour around Corsica begin!

Corte

The first stop. There was a little trouble finding a parking space, so we had to park outside the town and go in there on foot. We walked around a bit and moved on – we’ve hit this town on siesta time. It was insanely hot and only a few places were open. We had a little lunch at a restaurant which is on the opposite side of the street than the local university. It was good.

Bonifacio

If you could go to only one place in Corsica – let it be Bonifacio. I was amazed by its stunning beauty. Such a cozy town, with lots and lots of stairs (I love stairs, they always give something special to towns).

Oh, did I say that Nice is an expensive town? I take back my words

We had dinner at “Da Sergio” (see on the map) restaurant. It has local goodies and special offers – everyone will find something to fit their taste there.

The lovely town of Bonifacio

Propriano

It took a while to find our hotel there, we even had to ask locals for help. We left our car on a top of some hill, next to a church, because we just couldn’t find the right road and our GPS was dead. So we picked up just a few things from the car and went two kilometers on foot, at the same time trying to figure out which road to take the next day.

So there it was – our hotel “Roc e Mare” (careful, website with sound). It really was on the shore of the sea and it had its own beach. The room was comfortable, breakfast included and overall impression of it was very good. But in the morning, during breakfast, we noticed, that most of its guests were old people. That was a bit embarrassing at first, but ah, who cares?

In the morning, when checking out, I suddenly realised that our room didn’t have air conditioning and there was no elevator. I guess they’re not necessary for comfort after all

On our way back to the car we had an opportunity to observe this little town in day light. It has a very nice sandy beach and the town is really cozy. Most of the streets are one-way; and we had to take a road towards Ajaccio, that looked like a parking lot at first, to reach our hotel (and go towards Ajaccio). Now that we found it out we were able to continue our trip.

That evening we came back to Bastia to spend one more night in there and the next day we took a ferry to Livorno.

Things that happened on the road, and everything else about Corsica:

• One really shouldn’t refuse to take insurance when driving there (like Anders wanted to do; luckily, he agreed). Roads are quite steep, very curvy and sometimes there are animals grazing on them. At first we saw a cow, which was eating grass all relaxed in a narrow 60 cm line of grass between a road and a cliff. Then we saw a girl riding a horse on the highway. Then we saw a family of wild boars (or was that pigs?) sniffing the asphalt. After seeing all that, we joked, what would be next? Next was two ibexes (or were they normal goats?) suddenly crossing the road. But that was not over yet. At some point we took the wrong turn and on that road were LOTS of all kinds of grazing animals. And they really didn’t mind the cars; for example, there was a cow standing right in the middle of the road looking at us like “what? I know that you can go around”.

Cows on the road

• That fancy-pantsy Renault had some super cool distance to other objects detector installed. It was quite useful while trying to squeeze that big car into not that big parking space, but it totally failed to measure distance to a trash bin in a gas station. Both car and trash bin weren’t damaged (although that trash bin made quite a noise when falling down), but there was a lot of laughter from my side. Later we almost hit a rock in a small parking place on a highway; at the moment the car stopped, it realised that it has to make some sound and it was a very sharp “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!!!”. There was only about 20 cm left to the rock. Good thing I noticed it first and started screaming “STOP!” like crazy. This time it wasn’t very funny. And this time we were really happy, that we had insurance.

• Policemen in Corsica are really friendly and helpful. And they speak very good English. When we were thinking, how we could get the car back on the road, they stopped by us and asked if we needed assistance. Oh yes we did One of the policemen drove our car further away from that rock and wished us happy holidays. Merci!

• There are wonderful beaches in Corsica. One we noticed next to town of Porto and had great fun for a while jumping in big waves. It was also pretty cool diving for Anders in Vallée du Tavignano.

Splash!

• There also are quite a lot of cats in Corsica, but they were not into letting people pet them. However, when we stopped in Porto to get some food from the supermarket and after that decided to get some snack in the nearby café, there was a very beautiful, slim kitty begging for food from all the customers. I shared my clamshells with it

• If you would run out of gas in the middle of the night, you’re totally screwed. Gas stations here work only from 7 to 20, and during the night serve as an additional parking space.

• There are lots of billboards along the bigger roads. I guess one can see a similar view in USA.

• Traffic problem. Narrow maze-like streets, lots of cars.

• Corsica is an expensive place, but it is so beautiful.

• A little book of French would come very in handy. Silly us decided to save on this one and go around knowing only two words in French – merci and merde. Haven’t used the second one, though

• Seaports are really not meant for foot-passengers.

I guess that’s it again – and hopefully I’ll write the last part about Italy soon. Bullet points of this theme still suck are annoying.

My First Blog Post || Adventures in LT

There were two reasons why I decided to write a blog. First of all, one of my greatest teachers, Bo Oelkers Heilberg, said that each of us has to have a personal website where we would promote ourselves as professionals of a field (hospitality industry in this case). And that the easiest way to make a website is to write a blog. Simple. But I didn’t hurry to do that at once when he said this. I waited for a strong cause… And I got it.

I spent my Easter holiday together with my boyfriend in my home country, Lithuania. I was very keen on showing him the Western part of Lithuania – Klaipėda and Curonian Spit. We were planning to spend two days there, so we needed to find a ho(s)tel for one night’s stay. However, it seemed that you can only book hotels of four stars via booking sites. Spending a night in there would cost probably half of our holiday budget. There were, however, some smaller hotels with lower prices as well, but just for my own interest I decided to search for places for accommodation in Lithuanian websites. And in Klaipeda Tourism and Culture Information Centre I found a list of all ho(s)tels in Klaipėda region. There were probably twice as much of them as you could find in any booking site.

After evaluating all the candidates to hold my and my guest’s peaceful sleep for a night, I chose hotel Rūta, which seemed to be a good value for money. I didn’t care much that it’s located not in the centre of a town, since public transport is not a problem. Also it was one of the few which you can book via major booking sites – it showed that they were taking their business seriously (or at least more seriously than some others). Sadly, I don’t own a VISA, so I booked a room for two by writing an e-mail. Memorised the address and looked the location up in google maps. So far everything seemed to be just perfect.

Adventures began early morning in Vilnius train station. Our train was late 20 minutes because of locomotive engine crash. When we finally started moving, the stations in which train would be stopping were announced – and there were much more of them than normally taking that route. Oh well. My bad, that I didn’t pay attention to the duration of a journey when looking for times of departures.

We arrived to Klaipėda about 2 pm (or 14.00 in 24 hour time format). In my reservation e-mail I wrote that we are going to arrive at 15.00, so we still had an hour to find a hotel. We found a bus stop, went to place at about 14.45, found the street… and no hotel at the given address. We started searching the area for a building that would look like a guest house, or a sign of a hotel – nothing. It was just a creepy district, built in soviet times. 15.00 came, but I didn’t receive any call from the hotel (I gave them my phone number when making a reservation). I didn’t have theirs, because I really didn’t think it was necessary – I was in my home country, I knew the address and an approximate location of the hotel, and they had my number.

After a while we decided to come back to the old town of Klaipėda and find another hotel. I called a friend, who helped me and recommended Litinterp – a guest house in the centre of the town. It was a bit more expensive than the “lost” one, but it looked really cozy and comfortable. It was one of those old houses – all wooden and having that special spirit inside. In the morning we found a basket with simple breakfast outside the door of our room. I must say that accommodation at Lititnterp is really worth the money one pays.

To sum up the adventurous start of our holiday, I can define these problems in the tourism sector of Lithuania:

1. Lack of publicity. Most of small accommodation sites are listed only in the Klaipėda Tourism Center’s website – but quite a lot of people choose to book via booking sites, because there they can see feedback from guests. It is natural for people to go to a place which has good reviews and avoid those with the bad ones; they would also most likely choose a place which has some feedback instead of the one which hasn’t got any at all.

Feedback is useful not only to the customer, but to the service provider as well. People might feel bad when criticizing face-to-face; however, at most cases they feel free to share their negative experience anonymously on the internet. If the service provider would screen all the comments on the Internet, that would help to define good and bad sides of their service and of course to improve it.

I can’t see big reasons for accommodation owners not to go public on the Internet. A) Maybe they prefer to do things the old-fashioned way. B) Maybe they think that word of mouth will do all the work. C) Maybe they’re not targeting international market – but it’s just plain stupid thing to do at the moment, since in the situation of economic downfall everyone wants to save some money and are looking for cheaper alternatives. This means, that richer people from Western world will exchange their vacations at fashionable and expensive sites to vacation in cheaper countries, for example, Eastern Europe. The other reasons for not going into Internet might be D) the fee that an accommodation site has to pay to the booking service. But if other ho(s)tels do that – why can’t they? Also, E) most of the small premises are probably owned by people who grew up in soviet times and cannot speak foreign languages well, therefore they stay local and avoid facing the unknown. This is probably the worst attitude in business. Times are changing, all kinds of technology are surrounding us and those who don’t take advantage of that will definitely fade away during time. F) Taxes in Lithuania for hospitality business are much higher than in most other countries, but this is a different topic.

2. Lack of customer relationship management. I didn’t get any reply to my reservation email – so I assumed that reservation was made, otherwise they would have informed me. They haven’t called me even though they had my phone number. They never contacted me after all of this to find out why we hadn’t arrived. They didn’t put up a map with their location or clear description how to find them. We were standing in front of the building of the given address – not only it didn’t look like a hostel (people from Eastern Europe will always recognize a block of flats of Soviet times), there were absolutely no signs of a hotel as well. In other words: absolute FAIL. Calling me and sending a taxi would at max have cost 20 LTL (~ 6 €), while for an accommodation I would have paid ten times as much. Sending an e-mail with a clear description and a map or having that in their website / booking website would cost almost zero.

3. No company websites. Well, almost none. Litinterp has one, as well as some bigger hotels outside the town – but what about others? Websites these days are like business cards, they show company’s face. If all those accommodation providers would have their websites, they could tell about their business much more than address, telephone number and (not all of them!) e-mail. Advantages of having a website are pretty much the same as being listed in a booking site – most importantly, customers find such business to be much more trustworthy. Let’s imagine such situation: you have to choose from three pretty much the same hotels. One is listed in a major booking site, but does not have its own website. The second one has a website, but is impossible to book via a booking site. And the third one has both attributes – a website and a possibility to book via booking site. I can bet my 13 DKK, which I have in my wallet at the moment, that you would choose the third one.

Conclusion? Yes, hospitality business is in a bad situation at the moment in Lithuania, but it is unfair to blame everything on big taxes. There is a lot of room to improvement, so it’s enough to cry in the corner like emo.

I guess it’s enough for the first blog post.

P.S. If you’re interested, you can check out photos from these holidays here.