Stuart Little's Hotel

Although our trip to NYC was a complete blast, we nearly lost our cool due to a bad experience at our hotel.  I'm very particular when it comes to booking hotels and spend a lot of time researching places prior to making a reservation.  I use a website called Trip Advisor quite a bit and it has always paid off as the hotels are reviewed by ordinary people and their honest portrayals are generally right on.  We have stayed in amazing places in Rome, Prague, Loire Valley, etc all through recommendations from this site.

As you know by now, we're a family of four and we try to book at least a mini-suite if possible.  One may call this a luxury but with a bit of research, I find that you can get decent deals.  Having a larger room and ideally a living room and bedroom is great especially since our kids don't mind sleeping in the same room and often in a pullout bed.  Although the task of finding such reasonable accommodations in NYC was daunting, I found such a hotel on Lexington Avenue.  It had excellent reviews, was well located and for the price of many single rooms elsewhere, we booked a 2 room junior suite through Expedia.

We arrived after an uneventful trip from Paris but none the less it was late and we were tired.  We arrived at the front desk and it was quite busy but luckily we did not have to wait long.  However, we were immediately told that the hotel was oversold and that they no longer had our class of room available.  This is not what you want to hear so I gently complained that the room was prepaid and we did not want to be downgraded to a smaller room.  The receptionist left in the back for a few minutes and when she came back she stated that she would be able to get us 2 rooms right next to each other and that the next day she would have our room available and we could transfer.   Of course this was an inconvenience but I was on the verge of accepting when I believe Helene asked if the rooms were interconnecting.  She stated that unfortunately, no, they did not have interconnecting rooms!  Well with 2 young kids under 10, having them sleep alone in a separate room would not work.   Needless to say, we accepted a smaller room with 2 beds with the promise that it would only be for 1 night.  In fact she said not to unpack all our bags and that while we were sightseeing the next day, they would transfer the bags to the new room.

The next morning we indeed left to attack the day and I stopped at the front desk to let them know our bags were ready, etc.  It was a different Manager now and she stated that she was very sorry but the hotel was still oversold and there was no guarantee we could be moved.  I was floored!   She promised to do what she could but no guarantees.  We promptly phoned Expedia to explain the situation and they immediately called the hotel.  Sure enough, Expedia phoned back to say that we would be moved to our originally booked room.  When we returned late in the day though, the room was not fully ready and they did not move our bags which we eventually did ourselves.  The good news was that we loved the new room which was very large and we finally unpacked all our belongings and settled in...

That night we were all tired so we decided to order room service from the restaurant off the lobby which was considered one of the best hamburger restaurants in New York.  All went well but due to it being late and the fact that our room was in a corner adjacent to another room, we decided to leave our trays in our room rather than put them in the hallway.  We figured that housekeeping would remove them the following day.  To our surprise when we returned late the following day, we opened the door and the room was freezing.  All of the windows were open presumably to remove the now strong oder of leftover hamburger and fries.  You wont believe this but the rooms were made up however they left the trays in the room and opened the windows rather than removing them!  We phoned and we were told that no one could come recover the trays that evening because the hotel staff were having a Christmas Party!  To top it off, they told us that the best bet was to place the trays in the emergency stairwell and that they would be picked up there.   We also had to call the front desk 3 times in order to get a blanket for the pullout bed.  The second time I called, they actually told me that there were no extra blankets in the entire hotel!   But wait there's more.........

The following morning, the kids are in the our bedroom watching TV and I'm walking around in my underwear shaving which I'm prone to do.  I was in the living area when I saw this thing...dart under our hotel door and run across the living room and behind the couch.  Well....I'm not proud  to admit this but I literally screamed and jumped onto the pullout bed!!  Of course this "thing" was a fair sized mouse and it scared the bejesus out of me.  The kids and Helene ran in to understand what was going on and when I explained, it was complete pandemonium, we all went into the bedroom closed the door and barricaded the space under the door for fear the mouse would decide to follow us.  Ridiculous I know.

Well, I promptly called the front desk and explained what happened.  The worst thing is that they did not act surprised and said they would send someone. Of course, they were apologetic...hello?  Someone indeed did come and applied a big sheet of very sticky paper presumably to trap the mouse.  We saw this while peeking from the bedroom door.  He then left almost as soon as he arrived.  I phoned the front desk again and I think they expected me to thank them for the promptness of the sticky paper however I stated that we would prefer not to stay in a room with a mouse whether stuck or unstuck!  They stated, that they completely understood and that they would transfer us to a new room and to...yes, pack our bags and they would bring them to the new room sans mouse we hoped.  There we were packing all of our belongings again including everything that was in the living room while the mouse made 2 additional appearances deftly avoiding the sticky paper.

That afternoon, we come back from a great day sightseeing and believe it or not, room not ready and bags not transfered.  By this point the blood pressure rose to a rather dangerous level and I went to explain the entire saga to the Manager who did appear shocked and apologetic, promising to immediately call to provide a solution.  No call that evening although we did manage to get into our 3rd room in so many nights, this time on the 16th floor and admittedly, the nicest room thus far!

The next 2 nights were thankfully, uneventful.  After finally tracking down the manager, he offered to comp us 1 night.  Upon our return we sent a letter to Expedia to formally complain and they have confirmed the 1 night refund and the hotel has offered a significant discount for our "next stay" HA!

To top it all off...I was planning to right a negative review in Trip Advisor to hopefully dissuade my fellow travelers from staying there.  To my surprise and I have to say laughter...I saw a very recent posting from someone who was staying at the hotel at the same time as us.  Title of his review "BEWARE OF THE MOUSE"  !!  Clever rodent.

New York, New York...a helluva town!

We recently spent 5 days in NYC between Christmas and New Years Eve.  I have to say that I've had a longing to go back for several years and this trip scratched one of those deep itches! Although I grew up on Long Island and not "the City", New York is my favourite place in the world and I have been fortunate enough to live and visit quite a few.  Although it is almost a cliche, NYC has a vibrancy that is unmatched and a magnetism that draws me in every time.  

The proverbial icing on the cake was the fact that Helene and the boys (now 6 and 9 years old) were also with me and we all had a blast! It was the first time that our children visited New York and even they were super excited to go without knowing very much about it except what they see in movies and what we told them before leaving.  It came close to feeling like we never left France given the sheer amount of French tourists we overheard while there.  Clearly, the Euro-Dollar exchange rate helps and then of course there is Abercrombie....a magnet for the French (and non-French) in and of itself.  We visited the their store at South Street Seaport and dear Lord, I kid you not the lines to pay were 20-30 minutes long!  Masses of French, Spanish, American and Japanese were on a buying frenzy.  I could tell you that I'm above all of that type of "wannabe" fashionista symbols but alas, we exited with 2 fair sized shopping bags filled with clothes...hoping that by sheer virtue of wearing these clothes my "abs" would magically improve :-)

Of course, we did all the typical "tourist" attractions while there...ice skating in Rockefeller Center, horse carriage ride through Central Park and a trip to the top of the Empire State Building on a clear crisp winter day.

We also indulged in the local "delicacies"...pizza, griddle pancakes, burgers, street vendor pretzels and more!  I know, I know...not very healthy but it was a vacation after all.  

We did have a trying experience with our hotel which will certainly fill up my next post.  Looking back now it was actually bordering on the surreal but it could not and did not dampen the thrill of seeing the City again after so many years and reliving the excitement through the eyes of our children.  I cant wait to go back again!

Hello Everyone,

I have been horribly delinquent on adding new posts to this blog. I will not make excuses. I have been very busy, lots of traveling for work, busy with our house project and with the kids...like I said, no excuses!
What prompted me to post something is that I read some comments from people that I had lost touch with and that were able to find me via this Blog. I've been an internet user for over 10 years but I guess that it never ceases to amaze me how powerful this medium is. I create a blog and someone that has not spoken with me for years can google my name and, presto, there I appear with news about my life and my family (if a bit outdated)! It makes the world smaller and despite being thousands of miles away from where I was born and even further away from where I started my professional life, I'm as close as a few taps on the keyboard and a click of the mouse. Therefore, without making promises, I will try to keep this a bit more up to date.
The premise remains the same...an American in France that has now been here for a little over a year. Our house project is finally starting to take shape after many months of seemingly endless delays (but more on that to follow). Apologies to those of you that actually do check on this site once in a while but I encourage you to keep writing comments as this is what encourages me. A bientot...

Hello Again,

For those of you checking, I have not posted in quite some time. This is due to a couple of factors including a new position with my company, Motorola and a 2 week vacation with the family in Spain and Portugal. The former has caused my life to be a whole lot busier and the latter, well, other than an occasional look at my PDA, I literally disconnected from the world. No TV, no newspapers, no cellphones and the result was 2 weeks of absolute relaxation. At least as relaxing as traveling with two young boys can be anyway!

We flew down to Malaga and from there drove to a town called Benahavis along the Costa del Sol. My boss just purchased a beautiful apartment in a lovely complex that had several pools, a sauna/steam room and exercise machines and beautiful golf courses for those of you who enjoy that sort of thing. It was awesome and in a great area only minutes from Marbella and some great coastline. He rents it out via a management service by the week and I highly recommend it. I've included the website where my links are should anyone be interested.

After the week in Spain, we drove to the Algarve Coast of Portugal and stayed a week in Albufiera. Algarve is the Southern Region of Portugal on the Atlantic. I was really impressed with Portugal. The coast is stunning and very different from Spain despite only being a few hours away from where we were.

We took the time to visit most of the Western coast and went all the way to Sagres which is on the tip of the Southwestern Coast, It is known for its sunsets and as you can see, we were not disappointed! The kids were fascinated by the Sun "going to sleep".

We also took a boat ride on the Leaozinho which enabled us to see the coast from the ocean and its many caves and formations. This also allowed us to spot a couple of "hidden" beaches one of which we fell in love with called Marinha Beach. The only inconvenience was having to climb up and down a lot of stairs and Samuel, our youngest has a couple of meltdowns in the face of having to climb the stairs after a day at the beach. We managed by having him count the steps (98 to be exact)!

The people of Portugal were very kind and the food was excellent with naturally lots of fish and mostly grilled. We enjoyed the whole experience so much, we would gladly go back despite our general preference to not revisit the same place twice.

The First Sketch of Our New Home

Sketch of Front of House
Originally uploaded by Famille Zuyderhoff.

We met with our architect on Tuesday night and he presented us with the first drawings. Prior to this we spent about 2 hours with him a couple of weeks ago where he essentially interviewed us on our likes, dislikes, needs, etc. It was an interesting process as he really challenged us to think about what we wanted in an ideal home. Luckily Helene and I have very similar tastes. He is very easy going which makes things a lot easier. No criticism of our ideas, just suggestions on the positives and negatives of our thoughts. Needless to say, we were happy with the first drawings. I will post some of the other drawings soon including the interior floor plans. The next step now is for Helene and I to provide feedback and suggestions which we're in the process of doing. We will meet him again for another review next week.

France - Over Medicated?!



I have a bit of an interesting comparison between the US and France and it has to do with medicine. You're likely aware that the French system is a Socialist one where the government ensures a universal healthcare system. This causes most care to be for all practical purposes, free. This includes medication as well. One marked difference is that almost all medication is not sold "over the counter". In many cases you need a prescription for basic things like cough medicine and in all cases you need to buy all medicine at a pharmacy. I think I would like to be reincarnated as a pharmacist in France because they have some monopoly going! You rarely see one without a line running out the door. They even often have a little play area for kids inside the pharmacy due to the length of time it takes to be served. This for the privilege of telling the pharmacist that you have a headache and would he/she be kind enough to bequeath upon you a bottle of aspirin...s'il vous plait. All you children out there...forget about wanting to become an astronaut or fireman...pharmacy owner is the new 'plastics' made famous by Dustin Hoffman in the Graduate.
Anyway, my story has to do with Helene who has a fairly annoying cold that she has had a hard time shaking. I told her this morning to go and see her Doctor which already is new because I doubt she would have bothered in the US or Canada but most people here visit their Doctors for n'importe quoi (almost anything). Therefore, when in France...do like the French, non? Well, Helene (whom I remind you is originally from this fine country) called me at work laughing (so I knew she had nothing serious) to tell me she had a "likely" "sinusite" which is roughly equivalent to a sinus infection. I don't want to belittle the diagnosis but my dear God, she was prescribed no less than FIVE medications!! In case you do not believe me, I have taken a photograph of this because I could hardly believe it myself. Remember, she essentially has a cold but here is the list:

1) Nasal Spray
2) Anti-inflammatory medicine...I think like an anithistamine
3) A mucus inhibitor (I'm not making this up!)
4) Antibiotics
5) Likely the best of all...medicine to insure that the antibiotics do no damage the intestinal lining!!!

Sacre Bleu!

Tour de France
...don't blink!




I saw my first live Tour de France today as they passed through the town where we live. I was alone as the family is with my inlaws in Brittany enjoying the scorching weather we have been having. Given this was my first time, I decided to get there early to stake out a good viewing spot. I also read that they were due to pass through town at about 1:30 PM. Well I miscalculated just a bit...I wound up waiting about 3 hours for a total of (and I kid you not) 30 seconds of seeing the cyclists pass! Given today is the last day, all the riders were grouped pretty much together. Well, they pass super fast and between trying to snap a few pictures and taking a short video with my cell phone, I hardly saw anything!
That being said, it was an interesting experience. There were tons of people many who arrived well before me and sort of camped out bringing picnics and yes, lots of baguette, pate and wine! It was a glorious day and some of the best action was a couple of hours before the riders arrived when all of the sponsors zoom by throwing various goodies to the crowds. We're not talking diamonds here people but my God...it was a frenzy! Throwing themselves on these things like it was priceless gold bullion! I managed to grab a couple of things as people zoomed by in makeshift floats almost like a parade but one that goes like 90km an hour! All in all, a good day made all the better by Floyd Landis winning the tour. I've included a few pictures to commemorate the day.