Holiday Disappointment

How sad when a rather pricey weekend away is disappointing – we has this problem this past weekend. We joined friends on a late booking weekend away and although the lodge was a Luxury Tented Lodge we found it to be anything but luxury.

Dirty swimming pool, shabby main lodge area, very average food and a family tent where the toilet is in the bedroom! I could go on and on which is not the point of this as it just makes me a little more mad and that is what TripAdvisor is for (yes sadly left a not so great review)

I want to remind you all to

• check out the various websites where reviews are posted
• wonder why a venue has space for a late booking when every other place you have tried is jam packed
• wonder why the venues own website has no review saying how wonderful they are past 3 years ago
• ask questions!

Agreed my kids enjoyed themselves – the 14 year old loved the volume of food and my 11 year old loved the hammock. But that does not really a holiday alone make.

Another point – when a place is close and you have to check out at 10am you are home by noon! Not really a vacation more a spin up the drag!

Food glorious food

I have always loved food and I love to cook and bake to I have added a foodie blog to share my recipes and love of all things foodie. I like that we can create meals from a cupboard that has “nothing in it” that is more than cheese on toast so Cooking From Your Pantry was conceptualised. Do hop over and read it …. https://cookingfromyourpantry.wordpress.com/wp-admin/

Broken Everything

We have a leaky pool filter thingamajig! I discovered it when I went to reset the timer on the pool pump so that the darn thing goes off when I sleep instead of vibrating the house down! I tell the Hubby, he analyses it thoroughly – this involves staring at it wondering if he wishes hard enough it will go away/repair itself/vanish into thin air! He then declares “It is only a little leak” as if that will make it will go away/repair itself/vanish into thin air!

Now the Hubby as a full tool kit but he prefers to use a hammer and a few choice words to repair anything in the house – this has been disastrous in the past as a broken item becomes a smashed item and the kids asking my dad “Grandpa is &$^%$@! a swear word?”

Hubby calls in reinforcements (Thank heavens for the engineer/handy man/capable friend) and together they needed 100 tools, 4 trips to the hardware/pool shop, a few trips just to get away from the wives and a dozen cups of refreshment (this being mostly for the wives). 2 days, glue, silicone, vice grips, and more refreshments later, the pool is still leaking! And today I discover the water running down the road as they did not engage the doohickey properly and the month end water bill flashes in front of my eyes! I call the Hubby (who is naturally on a business trip) and he says he will find a pool guy (then asks me to call them – I refuse. I am NOT in charge of the pool! I will turn it into a rose garden! I can do that you know!) The pump is off the pool is turning green before my eyes, so I don’t look.

Then to add insult to that injury a drawer in the chest of drawers of kid 2 got so jammed I need a screwdriver to undo the runners and the runners need to be replaced – Oh Joy.

AND my 10 day old couch in the kids TV room has broken where the couch meets the ottoman part – this after it was delivered with a tear in it, replaced, with a couch with staples coming through the ‘leather’ and then replaced again. The sliver of wood holding the pieces together has split, cracked, broken whatever and my biggest kid weighs about 35kg. Heaven forbid an adult had used it! Made in . . . China? Made of China more like it.

Roll on tomorrow.