Our anniversary falls at the end of Febrary, and we commonly make the effort to get away “somewhere#” for a couple of days, leaving our helpless children to eat pizza and Chinese.
(# In the manner of Berwick-on-Tweed, rather than say, Lanzerotti).
In my online search for accomodation, I am “helped” by todays more sophisticated webpages:
Order the properties by price (low to high), this perfectly reasonable instruction immediately hides all the prices.[click link for price]
Moving swiftly to a different page:
“2 nights £126 [price for total stay]” which following the link reveals; “price £356”
After several such links I am begining to lose faith (although sometimes the price was less, it was never the price shown).
It looks like Edinburgh may be the favoured destination, and I’ve been here before, so I decide to search instead by “properties with parking”. One previous stay the parking was an underground garage, rather like a James Bond villian hideaway, which also required two 26 point turns once inside the building, that’s after negociating the bins used to conceal the entrance.
After that experience, I always look a little further into what “parking” actually means, and I discover in most cases ; “there is a street somewhere nearby (in one case 1.8! miles away) where you can park for free – if you are lucky enough to find a space” . This is not really what I’m looking for, since, while we have gone before by train, the extra connection to Kilmarnock and the level of unexpected cancellation, do nothing to encourage public transport.
Luckily my wife steps in with a likely Airbnb. As she will have the last say anyway, I just set about booking. I assume that she is aware the advertised price does not include a further £60 surcharge (for “Cleaning”) – maybe they all do? I’ve never booked with Airbnb before.
Alas I must now “register”, vaildating my phone number, then validating my email, then validating may password (and again, #bOrodino1817 was not sufficiently unique). I also need to supply my photo and my “government ID” , and my address is “not recognised”(for some unknown reason). Losing the will to live, I locate the least like me photo I have on file, and mutter darkly about how we fought WW2 to avoid having to carry ID papers.
It turns out my passport might have done (if were not expired), as might the drivers licence (which I almost had revoked), otherwise I would need to move abroad to some dictatorship where I actually get a government ID card (no your gas bill will NOT do). Leaves me wondering if I would have been barred from Airbnb if I had lost my eye (and thus my license), and my mind wanders off down the rabbit hole of, “…sues Airbnb for disability discrimination”.
It really feels like this should be less work…
Next week on IaDL : It’s”V” day…….
I am aware that (the battle of) Borodino was in 1812- that’s the point.
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 