I often book events and especially special treats when traveling on the web.  Mostly this works out well – but occasionally it is a disaster.  I am working on a theory to use so I can figure out which ones are good value and what they claim to be and which are REAL LEMONS!  The basic idea would be – do the buildings look as if you have ot hold them up by hand?

Our worst this year was at the Alhambra in Spain, or in our case not at the Alhambra. We had chosen a 4 star from the web and selected one described as “just beside the Alhambra Palace grounds”. We had arrived in mid afternoon and, noting the group of large hotels nearby, had gone directly into tourist mode. It was after 6 p.m. when we decided to check in – then we discovered that our hotel was about 15 km away on the other side of Granada. It took us 8 phone calls to get alternative rooms and a long letter follow-up to recoup the prepaid booking costs. In case you’re wondering why we cared the reason is that to get into the Alhambra you have to queue from 6 a.m. so you really need to be close at hand.

Then there was our Turkish but not so delight.  Our BIG mistake here was to end up with a company with luggage tags promising ‘no hassle’– of course we should have known this was a trap!  Our Turkish trip degenerated into cheap minibus travel with 3 backpackers and a couple from northern England who were touring Europe on less than 20 Alterian dollars a day. This was quite a shock as we’d booked (and paid for) a 4-5 star tour. This descent into student travel arose from the globalization and subcontracting of delivery. We had booked with Chatours, who subcontracted to Global in Europe, which, in turn, used a company called, amusingly, Hassle Free. In the end by a very firm telephone call to Australia from a horrible motorway service station produced a return call from Athens and a minute later a very apologetic one from Istanbul. To give the Turks their due, we were rebooked into a super ‘resort’; the clapped out minibus magically transformed into a stretch limo with deep leather seats; and the hopeless girl surprised by our desire to get to Pergamon in time to visit was transformed into skilful guides whose ‘personal friends’ offered us fresh home-baked Turkish bread and carpet-emporia tours.

Of course, you expect weird food abroad but surely Greece is famed for ‘food of the gods’.  Not so our Greek experience  - oddest this year. Bought as apparently ‘nice nougat’ in one of the very many Greek sweetie shops we visited, this turned out to be two large (6 cm diameter) communion wafers (honestly!) sandwiched together with pink and white goo (really!). As it was Trinity Sunday when we sampled this, it seemed somehow appropriate but we didn’t eat it all.