my favourite bit is when you've just arrived at your hotel, and reception *insists* on sending someone up with you to your room to help with the bags.
LOL, you must stay in some fancy places when you visit, Yvonne. I've stayed in some nice hotels -- business-quality when I was traveling a lot for work, as well as some upscale big city hotels for pleasure -- and while I've had the occasional place ask if we wanted help, I've never had anyone insist.
But I do understand about the not having small bills when you arrive somewhere thing ... I've run into that with valet parking and I agree it's embarrassing. What my husband and I have done on rare occasion (like after the guy saw that we had a baby and offered to squeeze our car into the officially full valet lot anyway) is taken the guy's name then come back fifteen minutes later with his tip, after getting change at the front desk.
As for dealing with changing sales taxes when traveling from state-to-state, Americans deal with that, too, on our vacations, but really, tax rates are really so similar in the grand scheme of things, that it's not considered a big deal here. Most states run in the 4-6% range, with a few states (like California) running more. I just generally figure on 6% and if it's less, I'm ahead of the game.
And the vast majority of states don't charge sales tax at all on unprepared foods (though that doesn't generally apply to vacationers anyway, unless you are renting a condo and plan to cook for yourself, etc.) If anyone is interested on checking them out ahead of time before their next vacation, I found this chart by googling on
"sales tax rate by state" .
But back to the poll question (how many tangents can I go off on?), I've gotten a kick out of all the "food phobias" out there. For me, I'll eat anything mainstream (and I consider squid to be mainstream -- calamari, anyone?? YUM!) and I'm generally willing to try something unusual, though I draw the line at things like brain and eyeballs and that stuff. In general, I don't like organ meats (never heard the term "offal" before; learn something new every day), though I grew up loving liverwurst and a Polish sausage called "kiezka", which I learned in adulthood is a type of blood sausage. By the time I learned what was in it (my dad said my grandparents used to make it in their basement when he was growing up, ROTFL), I was hooked and didn't care as long as I got my share at holiday breakfasts. <g>
Beyond the kiezka, the most unusual thing I've eaten has been rabbit -- which I found too gamey-tasting for my preference -- and cuttlefish (ordered in Italy when none of us spoke the language, so we just kind of guessed at the menus every night <g>), which at first icked us out when the server brought it (tentacles everywhere!) but when we finally screwed up our courage to try it, we found it was one of the most delicious things we ate during the whole 2 week trip).
I guess this is proof that kids who were picky eaters can grow out of it.
Kathy
