As you round the point from St. Margaret’s Bay into Mahone Ba,y the ocean can be sightly rough even on an otherwise calm day.
It seems like every time we think about a perfect day that we’d like to bottle up to take out at a later date to relive, we’re on a boat. The first one we can remember was a day of sailing in the British Virgin Islands, the only time in her life when Patty sat at a bar (on an otherwise deserted island – Norman Island to be specific) in a bikini! A couple of years ago, we rented a boat and a captain and motored along the French Riviera, glass of champagne in hand.
This past week, as we near the end of summer, we’re traveling closer to home. Armed with a picnic and a full tank of gas, we motored our 24-foot Chris Craft out of our cove on St. Margaret’s Bay in the Halifax region of Nova Scotia. We headed across the bay and rounded the point of land the separates St. Margaret’s Bay from Mahone Bay and headed toward the tiny village of Chester. More of a summer refuge for both Americans and Canadians who can afford the fabulously large, east-coast-styled clapboard dwellings, the village is on every tourist’s travel itinerary as they make their way along what is known as the lighthouse route on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Seeing it from the water, however, always imbues it with a different kind of charm.
The Chester waterfront dominated byt the pub-like “Rope Loft” restaurant.
After Chester, we made our way along the coast and into Marriott’s Cove that is home to the South Shore Marina and one of our favorite out-of-town restaurants, The Galley. We pulled in to top up our gas and then were off to Oak Island. Yes, Oak Island of the buried treasure fame. Situated just on the shore that is connected to the island with a causeway is the Oak Island Inn and Spa. Rather than pull into here for lunch, we dropped anchor just off the mysterious Oak Island and had a wonderful lunch in the sunshine.
Just after lunch it was about time to head home thinking that we’ll remember this day next winter when we’re gazing out a window to see the snowflakes dancing on the dock!
The iconic “three churches” from the water in the village of Mahone Bay itself.In Nova Scotia, when they say a cottage is “on the water,” you had better be more specific!Houses on the Chester peninsula.
So, we’re in the process of planning a three-part winter trip to flee the Canadian winter for a while in early 2013. We are already booked on our first Seabourn cruise aboard the Seabourn Spirit, and since it leaves from Barbados and ends in St. Martin, it only seemed natural that we’d book-end the cruise with vacations in Barbados and then St. Martin. Can’t wait! But, trying to find the right hotel or resort in which to spend a week or so in each place has proven to have eaten up more time than any of our numerous hotel/resort choices in the past. It occurs to us that it’s at least partly because (a) the resources we have now are almost too-much-information; and (b) the ratings systems are so inconsistent and even, dare we say, capricious.
The view from the Ocean Grill in Grenada: Air Canada Vacations was our choice for booking this holiday — and it was a good one!
Let’s start where we usually start: namely our favorite hotel aggregator. That would be Air Canada Vacations. We have tended to use ACV in the past because we’re AC frequent fliers and can accumulate points by booking hotel packages through them, even if we’re not actually booking an air-hotel and/or cruise package, all of which can be done. We have also often found that the package rate is better than booking hotels on their own (and we have absolutely no interest in those aggregators like Hotwire where you pay in advance and don’t know exactly where you’ll be staying – you may be able to save money that way, and we’re sure that many people enjoy this. We don’t.). We had a great find in Paris a few years ago. In fact, we have booked our Barbados hotel through ACV.
We wanted to experience The House on Barbados and it happened to be among the ACV offerings , and advertises with that enticing descriptor that we love so much: “adults-only.” The rate was competitive and booking this way allows us to put down a deposit and then pay the whole thing in advance (with cancellation insurance, of course). That way our entire holiday is paid for before we go, a feeling that we truly enjoy. But trying to find a hotel in St. Martin was a different thing altogether.
To date, we are still not booked for that week of vacation, since somehow our first choice hotel on St. Martin, La Samanna, does not seem to be available any longer (according to our travel agent, and this despite the fact that today when we surfed over to the ACV site, it’s still listed). So, we’re left trying to decipher the hotel rating systems to figure out where we’d like to stay.
Air Canada Vacations has their own rating system, and it does not necessarily reflect the systems by any other organizations, or countries for that matter (some countries, predominantly in Europe, have their own rating systems).
This explanation is helpful, but the way they rate is not the same as how others rate and we’re left scratching our heads.
One of the important considerations in deciphering rating systems is the rating organizations’ reason for doing the rating. Are they trying to sell hotel rooms? Are they a travel advice service only? Or, as is the case so often now in this excess of information age, are they simply allowing people to post their own reviews from which an overall rating is then created?
Air Canada Vacations, and others like them, have a vested interest in having these ratings clearly establish certain parameters in the minds of consumers. If they are wrong, or misleading in any way, not only will the customer not book that hotel again, the customer is unlikely to book any of their hotels again. But, of course, sometimes customers disagree with the rater, or have a particularly bad experience that might not be the experience of the majority of others.
Then there are the ratings that are assigned by third-party organizations like Forbes. They are not in the business of selling multiple hotel rooms, so their ratings are often viewed as more objective. They have things like anonymous inspectors and consistent criteria that provide you with what is likely to be an overall more accurate rating than, say, customer-generated ratings. For a very good explanation of rating systems, read the CN story The Dirty Truth About Hotel Ratings.
We have been reviewing hotels and restaurants on TripAdvisor for a while now, and we do use customer ratings, but recognizing their limitations, we do take them with a grain of salt. We’ve discussed this before, and the overall ratings that come out of customer reviews are often baffling to us. It seems that we are not looking for the same things as many of the reviewers (who are predominantly from the USA, by the way – and this makes a difference).
Other customer-generated ratings are published in magazines and on web sites as “readers’ choice” ratings or awards and are even more peculiar since anyone can vote and that anyone need not have ever traveled to more than that single hotel or been on any other cruise line to make a judgment about ‘favorite.’ But that’s a different story.
The bottom line is that to the discerning traveler, hotel rating systems are useful, but need to be taken into consideration only with an array of other information you have available to you. So, where does that lead us in our search for the perfect spot to enjoy St. Martin? Exactly nowhere at this stage. We’re still looking!
The Ritz Carlton at Half Moon Bay in California is set on a rugged bluff overlooking the Pacific and is part of Marriott’s loyalty program. We stayed here last year.
We’re just back from a brief summer holiday. As usual, we traveled via our usual airline (in whose loyalty program we have been ‘gold elites’ for the past several years) and stayed for a few days in our usual hotel chain (in whose loyalty program we hold ‘platinum’ status – ostensibly much better than gold status). We also spent several days in another brand of hotel. This coupled with travelling at the peak of the summer season (is it not possible to prepare for the inevitable airport security screening even if you don’t travel often?) has led us to a few interesting observations and questions about airline and hotel loyalty programs.
For years now, or ever since the advent of the travel blog, travel writers have been weighing in on these loyalty programs, and this includes polls about the best frequent-flyer program and the best hotel loyalty program. There are also myriad awards for the best of these programs. The trouble with these polls and awards is the same problem exhibited by those readers’ choice awards we have discussed before in relation to cruises: that is, anyone rating the programs probably doesn’t have experience with more than one or perhaps two such programs, so how can there be any kind of useful comparison? No, it’s a matter of trial and error for the discerning traveler when selecting and participating in these loyalty programs. We’ll use our own programs as anecdotal evidence.
We’ve both been loyal Air Canada Aeroplan members for well over 20 years. Our reasons for selecting this program are the following:
Our air travel inevitably begins or ends in Canada since that’s where we live.
Air Canada, despite its many detractors, is a safe, solid, clean, reliable airline.
Air Canada belongs to Star Alliance which is both the oldest and largest airline alliance in the world. This means that we can get to practically anywhere in the word and still earn Aeroplan points.
We believe that you should never set foot on an airplane without being a member of its loyalty program – you should earn points on every trip on the off chance you ever accumulate enough to get some of their perks – which we’re getting to.
Whenever you travel on a cruise line, you are either automatically enrolled in their loyalty program or offered the opportunity to join. Their ‘perks’ require a completely separate blog post!
We have also been members of the Marriott hotel chain’s loyalty program for many years. Our reasons for selecting this program (although we do belong to others for those odd occasions when there are no Marriotts around or we want to try a new experience) are as follows:
We ended up at a Marriott in down town Toronto one time many years ago when our first-choice hotel was fully booked. The staff at the Eaton Centre Marriott on Bay Street was so fabulous that we never went back to our old favorite. From the time when our then-eleven-year-old son started training at the National Ballet School until he graduated at eighteen (five years ago) and beyond, we have stayed there seven or eight times a year. We have also stayed at Marriott Hotels all over the world, and their staffs never cease to amaze. They must know a thing or two about staff training and nurturing!
What we’ve learned since then is that it’s easy to redeem Marriott points and we’ve done so happily for many years. They have been particularly handy when travelling with an adult offspring or two to cover the costs of the extra rooms in expensive cities (like Paris!).
As above, we believe that you should never set foot in a hotel that is part of a loyalty program without being a member.
All of that being said, we have lately begun to wonder about the erosion of the so-called perks that follow from being a loyal member of such a program.
Just last week as walked through the terminal at Pearson International Airport in Toronto we were accosted by an American Express sales person who wanted to ‘sell’ us his credit card. One of the perks he mentioned was access to Maple Leaf lounges, the lounges owned by Air Canada to which we have access as gold elite members of Aeroplan.
Then, as we entered the concierge lounge at the Toronto Marriott for breakfast to find there was hardly a seat in the place, we wondered about this perk, too.
So, we asked, when is a perk not a perk? Our answer is simple: when everyone has it. And so this is our conundrum with these programs. So many credit cards have especially airline perks like lounge access and priority boarding as ‘benefits’ that it seems there is almost no one left who doesn’t’ have these ‘perks.’
If you’ve ever been in an airport business-class lounge when there have been several delays or cancellations, you know that it’s like the black hole of Calcutta. We had the most dreadful experience of these lounges several years ago in Frankfurt (the Lufthansa lounge). We had actually paid for our business class ticket, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of everyone else in there – and we’ve been in in there under those circumstances ourselves. How do we know they weren’t flying business class? Because when you get on the plane with everyone else who has that perk, you can see where they’re sitting.
And of course there’s the priority boarding ‘perk.’ Over the past two or three years, it has become increasingly clear that half of the travelers today seem to have this perk. Have you seen the race to the priority lane the minute they make the boarding announcement? This is, of course, really a race for bin space. There’s nothing worse than being last on the plane only to find that you may have paid top dollar for your seat but there is no bin space left for your measly little carry-on bag since someone has stuffed an enormous wheelie above your head.
Our message here to airlines and hotels: Before you offer someone a perk, you better make sure it really is one!
We have now moved into phase two of our advance planning for winter travels to come. As this past long, hot, summer weekend drew to a close, we checked our email and found that our travel agent, Angela, has been hard at work (as usual) trying to find us the perfect hotel accommodation to book-end our February 2013 cruise. But, it needs to be said that discerning travelers will want to be flexible in their planning.
Art on board the Regent Seven Seas Mariner in Montenegro. It was a great trip, but not a ship we want to revisit this winter in the Caribbean.
When last we visited this topic, we had pre-booked a cruise from Rio to Buenos Aires. Well…that’s now a memory. When we began to drill down into the cost, and whether or not it was really going to fulfill our desires for a South American holiday, sadly, we had to conclude that it didn’t. We had wanted to cruise on Crystal since we have yet to try it on our trip through the luxury cruise lines, but we weren’t able to come up with a single suite on the cruises we want even this far in advance. Angela went right to the source, but to no avail. That’s proof positive for us that advance planning is essential. So we booked on the same itinerary on another line. This time we were able to book the suite we wanted on Regent Seven Seas cruises. Which we’ve already been on. Twice. And it was on the Mariner. Which we’ve been on. And it was OK, but not an experience we need to repeat yet. So many cruise ships, so little time! So we moved on to plan B.
Plan A for cruise planning always starts with an itinerary we want, at a time when we can get away. Plan B starts not with the itinerary, but with a cruise line. Our second choice was Seabourn. The February time frame when we need to take a dip south is a bit challenging if you’re trying to avoid the Caribbean as we originally were. However, what we were really trying to avoid was repeating a series of islands that we’d already visited – either for a day on a cruise ship, or for a longer stay. What we found was the Yachtsmen’s cruise in the Caribbean that takes in small ports that the larger ships can’t reach. After all, the ship we’re now booked on, the Seabourn Spirit, has a grand total of 204 passengers. A yacht, indeed! So, that and the airline booking was phase 1 – phase 2 is a bit more challenging at this time of year since it involves finding the perfect hotels in Barbados
We were considereing staying at The Crane in Barbados again – but at this time of year, the prices they’re offering for February are out of this world and not worth a return.
and St. Martin where the cruise begins and ends. That might sound easy, but when you’re trying to be discerning and the hotels haven’t really formalized their winter season yet, you can easily fall into the trap of paying too much for those 5 and 6-star properties. So, we’re going to wait.
From time to time people will ask us why we don’t just wait until the cruise lines start pushing the winter cruises that they start to discount later in the year. “You’ll get more bang for your buck,” they tell us. But they’re wrong – unless you think that something is of value just because it’s cheap. We don’t happen to take that view.
There’s an analogy to shopping for clothes. If you always wait until everything is on sale, you’ll never really get what you want – and you’ll always be ‘settling’ for what’s left. If you don’t like something enough to have bought it at full price, most times, you shouldn’t buy it on sale either. Buy something just because it’s on sale hardly demonstrates discernment – but if it’s n sale and you love it, then that’s great! Sadly, that happens only once in a while. So, for the big-ticket vacation planning, get out there early and start turning your dreams into reality!
Tips for early planning:
Start by figuring out where you want to go.
Then decide how you want to get there.
Determine your budget – and shop within it rather than lower.
Keep an open mind.
Don’t book something just becasue it’s on sale!
Set a deadline for when you want all of the final bookings complete.
Be prepared to put Plan B into motion if necessary!
The Discerning Travelers 
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