Category: Things to do

10 Questions For (1): Jennifer Knoepfle of Better Living through Travel

I would like to introduce a new 10 Questions for: category as a sort of variant of “My Interview with”, because:

  1. I’m always insatiable curious who is behind a certain blog or website. Their “About” page or category is one of the first I use to hit
  2. It is an excellent tool for community building in the Travel Bloggers scene (Don’t forget to visit the newly started Nerd’s Eye View Travel Blogger Forum | A New Travel Community. It has over 70 members by now! [Ed: It has since the post date replaced by the Ning Based TBex or Travel Blog eXchange)
  3. It is an excellent way of introducing new Travel related Bloggers on the block to my readers.

The questions are more or less modeled after my first (and thus far only) interview by Paul Johnson who was among the fellow Travel Bloggers who inspired me to go on with what I did here at Happy Hotelier. If you’re interested scroll down on my About page. The questions also cover more or less the main areas of focus of Happy Hotelier.

Thus far I have sent out only a handful of invitations, and the response was overwhelming. So the start is promising.

Here is the first edition:A new Blogger on the block who concentrates on sharing hotel and dinner tips

Jennifer Knoepfle

10 Questions for: Jennifer Knoepfle of Better Living through Travel

1) Who Are you?
My name is Jennifer Knoepfle, I am 31 and I live in Los Angeles, CA. Although I was born In Houston, TX, I have lived in California since I was ten and very much consider myself a Californian, much to my Mother’s chagrin. By day (and most nights) I work in the music business as the Director of Membership for a non-profit organization called ASCAP. I’m no travel writer by profession but certainly a loyal enthusiast, considering travel to be my most dedicated hobby.

2) What do you like about what you do?
Not surprisingly, the number one thing I love about what I do is the traveling. My job requires me to travel on a monthly basis so I am able to incorporate my passion into my everyday life.

3) What don’t You like about what you do?
I am really lucky, there really isn’t anything I don’t like about my job.

4) You’re a Blogger at Better Living through Travel, please tell us all about the blog and your aims with it.
I decided to start Better Living through Travel as a way of sharing my experiences with my friends and family. As they knew I dedicated a large portion of my life to seeking out the best hotels in any given place, they would come to me for advice and suggestions. The blog was a way for me to organize all my experiences in a way that could be accessed by other people. Lo and behold, once I started the blog, I quickly discovered that there were many people out there (not just my friends) that found my suggestions useful. I hope to use the blog as a way to share experiences and hopefully help people discover a hotel that might be really special to them. In my humble opinion, the cornerstone of any great vacation is a suburb hotel.

5) What are the 3 best destinations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?
1. El Calafate, Argentina:
El Calafate is home to some of the most spectacular glaciers in the world. I am so thrilled that I was able to see them in person, as they are disappearing and someday may no longer exist.

2. Gordes in Provence, France:
I spent two weeks driving around Provence last year and it was a incredibly memorable experience. The south of France has such an amazing feel, so different than the rest of the country. The people are great, the landscape is beautiful and the food is delicious.

3.Chianti, Italy:
Any place that you can start drinking wine at mid-day is okay in my book. I loved Tuscany for several reasons, but the biggest attraction for me is the Italian obsession with the preparation of great food! I’ve never eaten as well as I did in those two weeks. In fact, there are even dishes from that trip that I still crave all the time.

6) What are the 3 best accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?
1. The Home Hotel – Buenos Aires, Argentina:
I just did a post about why I love this place so much. Instead of boring you with the answer twice, you can read about it here: Home is Where My Heart is

2. The Hotel Healdsburg- Healdsburg, CA:
This hotel just has a really great vibe. The rooms are ridiculously comfortable, the beds are like marshmallows and the soaking tubs are enormous. The set-up and the decor is really inviting and relaxing and all the rooms are suites, so you really get great value for the price.

3. Borgo Argenina -Chianti, Italy:
Staying at Borgo Argenina is about as close as you can get to experiencing Tuscany in the same way as the locals do. The Innkeeper is a former fashion designer from Milan who restored an old Tuscan farmhouse into a beautiful Inn. The decor is very much in tune with the region and it feels like as if you were staying in a home rather than a hotel. The owner was more than happy to give us great suggestions on places to see and restaurants to eat. She was a great guide and I am certain my trip was a success largely due to her suggestions.

7) What are your 3 most memorable food experiences to date and why?
1. The Pappa e Pomodoro at Malbhorgetta in Chianti:
Quite simply, the best tomato soup I have ever had. I must have eaten it five times on my trip. You see, when I like something, I can be rather habitual about eating it.

2. The Rib Eye Steak at La Cabrera Norte in Buenos Aires, Argentina:
Argentina is a place for steak and this is among some of the finest, maybe even the best, I’ve ever had.

3. The Lentils w/ Sausage at Pura Vida in El Calafate, Argentina:
It’s been two years and I still think about this dish all the time. I’ve tried to make it at home but have never been able to duplicate this special combination of flavors. Pura Vida is a wonderful little hole where they specialize in soups and stews. It is also one of the few places that offers a great variety of vegetarian options.

8) What are your 3 worst destination/accommodation/food experiences to date and why?
Worst Accommodation:
Ojai Retreat in Ojai, California. I had never been to Ojai before and the retreat was recommended to me. It would probably be great for some people (yoga enthusiasts or people who loved absolute seclusion) but for me, it was the seclusion that scared the crap out of me. The house is isolated at the top of a hill, very dark with hardly anyone around. Also, there were giant spiders crawling everywhere!

Worst Destination:
Cancun, Mexico is like vacationing in the worst parts of Middle America. The city has become a total tourist trap and the majority of the restaurants are chains like Tony Romas, Chilis and Pizza Hut. It was very disappointing.

Worst dining Experience:
The First Class cabin of Continental Airlines. I was on a ten hour flight to Europe and I somehow managed to get the upgrade. I know it is airline food, but I thought that the food in First Class might actually taste good. I was soooo wrong, I guess airline food is just disgusting no matter what class you are in.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 tips about the city you are currently living in?
1. Rent a hybrid from Fox rentals if you come here. You will drive A LOT.
2. Take an architectural tour when you are here. Los Angeles is home to many fantastic buildings that are worth seeing.
3. In the summer, see a concert at The Hollywood Bowl. In the winter, see a concert at The Disney Concert Hall.

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?
Nope..these were great!

Great answers Jennifer. Thanks a lot and good luck with your blog! I love what I have seen from it. Promise me not to abandon it!

Interesting you mention the Home Hotel. I mentioned it earlier and it got mentioned recently in the New Cool Hotel Rooms book of The Cool Hunter. I made a note to self to check it out whenever my travels will bring me to BA.

Finally on a personal note: You would be a great Agent at Vibe Agent 🙂 (and no I don’t get paid whatever to plug them).

Last edited by GJE on May 5, 2010 at 10:16 pm

Rotterdam City Welcomes Back SS Rotterdam

Monday August 4, 2008 the former Holland America Line (H.A.L.) Liner and later Cruise Ship “SS Rotterdam”, Dutch and Rotterdam Pride, was welcomed back in Rotterdam. There it will be berthed to serve as a Hotel, Congress Center, Theater, School and Museum, after extensive renovations. Currently the owner, a Rotterdam Social Building Society, has invested already Euro 175 Mio where they estimated it would cost Euro 25 Mio. It certainly meets some critique.

Technically it is not a Steam Ship, but a Steam Turbine driven Vessel. Anyway, it is not important anymore, because the motors don’t operate anymore. It was towed all the way from Wilhelmshaven in Germany where the major part of the renovation was done including an extensive asbestos cleaning.

Rotterdam City Welcomes Back SS Rotterdam 01

Under the welcoming consorting vessels was a spraying Rotterdam Port Authority vessel.

Rotterdam City Welcomes Back SS Rotterdam 02

Thousands of spectators on shore welcomed SS Rotterdam Back.

SS-Rotterdam-Back-in-Rotterdam-03

SS Rotterdam was launched in 1959 by then Queen Juliana. The wear and tear of 49 years of Ocean cruising is clearly visible here as the hull is reasonably dented.

SS-Rotterdam-Back-in-Rotterdam-04

Four red tugs of Kotug, a relatively small company owned by the Kooren family, proudly push and pull where necessary. It is remarkable that the Kooren Family succeeded to take over almost all towing in Rotterdam Harbor after a long struggle with Smit International. I still remember vividly when the first Kotug Tug arrived in Rotterdam years ago. They got an real grim escort from the whole fleet of Smit International. Grim, because the Smit tugs sailed so close to the new tug that it seemed as if they would like to sink the new competitor. Till then Smit International had the towing monopoly in almost all Dutch harbors and was a stock exchange quoted company with very deep pockets.

ss-rotterdam-back-in-rotterdam-05

Those with an eye for ship design claim this is a vessel with a clear line as opposed to the boxes they create nowadays as Liners or Cruise ships.

ss-rotterdam-back-in-rotterdam-05

The elegand funnels for the steam turbines are very characteristic for SS Rotterdam

SS-Rotterdam-Back-in-Rotterdam-07

I do like its silhouette!

SS-Rotterdam-Back-in-Rotterdam-08

Under the escorting vessels is the former motor yacht “Piet Hein”, currently owned by the Rotterdam Port Authority, but formerly owned by Queen Juliana and her husband Prince Bernhard. A super yacht in those days, but dwarfed here against the colossus of SS Rotterdam.

Rotterdam-Back-in-Rotterdam-09

To the left of SS Rotterdam you see a very characteristic office building called “De Bolder” (ie “The Bollard”) serving as main office for the Mammoet company that lifts and transports whole offshore installations, factories and other heavy material over the seven seas. This is located in the city of Schiedam, located between Rotterdam and the North Sea. Schiedam is famous for its Dutch Genever distilleries.

ss-rotterdam-back-in-rotterdam-10

A real Grand Old Lady with a properly curved backside.

ss-rotterdam-back-in-rotterdam-10

On its way to its last Berth. I do appreciated they didn’t demolish or sink it.

Tourmalijn

I made these photos on board of the Rotterdam River Cruising Vessel “Tourmalijn”, that in a cooperation with AD ( A Rotterdam based News Paper) had provided a free welcome the SS Rotterdam tour of 2,5 hours for those who brought a coupon that was printed in the AD. I really appreciate this clever way of marketing a news paper and a river cruise company to the advantage of the citizens of Rotterdam and elsewhere with less to spend. I hadn’t read it off course, but had to pay only Euro 5.- Kudos for this social thinking of the two companies. There were more than 1200 people on board and it was like a good party as everybody enjoyed this trip tremendously!

See for more photo’s this Flickr Account of Nell a Dutch Photographer and Blogger of High Profile.

High Five (5): Abandoned Cities, Cool Things To Do,

Gorilla High Five

Here are Happy Hotelier’s High Five (4) for:

  1. 20 Abandoned Cities and Towns by Weburbanist…a real horror story about abandoned locations with nice photos and a Digg Hit.
  2. 50 Things To Do Before You Die. Self explanatory.
  3. Cool Things in Random Places. In line with the previous find: Quirky things to do.
  4. Delicious Baby with a delicious list of female travel bloggers….I’m inclined to make a list of male travel bloggers…
  5. Market in Maastricht. A colorful post by an expat about visiting the market in Maastricht, which is a very good Dutch travel destination in itself, although many foreigners believe Amsterdam is the only city you have to visit in The Netherlands.

About Happy Hotelier’s High Five
Happy Hotelier’s High Five is a meant as a gesture of appreciation to fellow Bloggers who blog about travel and are sometimes referred to as members of the “T-List” or other interesting Bloggers or Web Personalities.

The arms are usually extended into the air to form the “high” part, and the five fingers of each hand meet, making the “five”, hence the name, although Happy Hotelier’s High Five will always be a left handed one.

I will not publish it on a scheduled date. I will publish it each time when I have found five persons or sites or posts that I deem worthy a High Five. It even may imply me echoing old news here.

The Category Tag here on Happy Hotelier is High Five.

If you want to draw my attention to a post, please use the Contact Page or give me a message at Twitter

About The High Five Logo

I borrowed the photo of a sculpture from Lisa Roet, a sculptor born in Australia and currently living and working in Melbourne, Australia, because one of the main items on my passport is that I miss a big chunk of my right thumb, so my right hand is much alike that of an ape:-)

Bicycle Film Festival 2008: Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague Mayor: Be alert for 2009!

Bicycle-Film-Festival-2008

I was busy, on the road, looking after our hotel guests and trying to revamp my other Blog, Chair Blog, therefore a little less attention here.

The revamping of Chair Blog is sticky: I went backward and forward with the theme and am back to square 1: Same old Misty theme, but a lot of more posts thanks to a nifty Tumblr inspired WordPress QuickPost Plugin. At the same time Chair Blog was accepted by Woopra. Hence I have decided to terminate my Tumblr activities and fade the Tumblr posts out by gradually deleting them and incorporate them into my main blogs…. My main problem with Quickpost is that my provider somewhere hides the MySQL database of WordPress in a way I can’t figure out…have to dig much deeper into PHP/MySQL. In addition I have to find a way to present photos in a consistent way… Maybe a reader has some clues for me.

In the meantime, rather than hiring writers as I see some of my fellow Bloggers do, I am trying to get my two daughters – Yes! Happy hotelier is also a Happy Father! – FilmGirl and DanceGirl, the former works at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the latter works at the Holland Dance Festival, involved here as they do travel a lot and could have a lot of content to offer..to no avail at this moment. I know they are sometimes readers here and hope they take the bait.

So I came across Bicycle Film Festival, a festival I wasn’t aware of, but that FilmGirl probably knows of. Quite interestingly it is featured in many cities: 17 in total acros the world, and probably a cheap thing to do in these miserable economic circumstances.

I am curious why we here in The Netherlands, as one of The Bicycle Countries don’t feature it. Therefore: Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague Mayors be alert to get the 2009 edition in house!
Via Living in LA Without a Car

2008 Cinedans Amsterdam

I have been invited to have a look at the Cinedans premiere in Amsterdam tonight. Cinedans is an International Dance Filmfestival, dedicated solely to films that have a connection with Dance and held simultaneously in three Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht.

Find more videos like this on Cinedans

Dance for All

The opening film is quite interesting. It is a film about the South African Dance for All project started 17 years ago to bring dance to Cape Town Townships. An amazing tale of white dancers from the Capetown Ballet Company who started this project long before Apartheid was abolished.

Philip Boyd, a former principal dancer with CAPAB (now Cape Town City Ballet), founded Dance for All in 1991 as Ballet for All. This was to build on the legacy of Cape Town ballet chief David Poole, who started teaching ballet in the townships of Cape Town in the mid-80s. Ballet for All began its life in a classroom in Gugulethu with 34 children participating. These numbers quickly multiplied and with the recruitment of more dance teachers, Boyd expanded the programme to include a diverse range of dance forms and in 1995, Ballet for All became Dance for All.

Today DFA runs an Outreach Programme of daily dance classes in ballet, African, contemporary, musical theatre and Spanish dance for over 700 children and youth in the historically disadvantaged communities of Gugulethu, Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Samora, Athlone and the rural areas of Barrydale and Montagu. Beyond teaching dance, these classes promote the personal development of the children by encouraging their creativity, self-discipline and confidence. DFA’s students receive first-class training from a talented and diverse teaching team.

The film showed lessons by Philip and Phyllis Spira and their students and how the students gradually grew to professionally trained dancers culminating in the formation of DFA’s own profesional youth dance company, creating full-time employment for six of the previous year`s Senior Training Programme graduates in November 2005, that has toured several countries already.

Unfortunately Phyllis Spira died a few months ago. We were happy to learn at the after party that one of their senior students who had left DFA to take dance lessons in Switserland and had been offered a second year of now sponsored training in Switserland had decided to return to DFA to take over Phyliss’ position as a teacher.

About Phyllis Spira:

Phyllis was accepted into London’s Royal School of Ballet when she was just 16. Within months she was a soloist with the Royal Ballet Touring Company. She returned to South Africa in 1964, having turned down an invitation to dance with the legendary Rudolph Nureyev and, a year later, joined Capab (later the Cape Town City Ballet), where she remained for 28 years.

After retiring from performance, Phyllis devoted her time and energy to Dance for All, which was founded by her husband Philip Boyd. Her understanding of young people, her sense of values and her wisdom made her contribution immeasurable. A pragmatist and a realist, she was often both a voice of reason and a pillar of strength. A remarkably humble and caring woman, Phyllis was a wonderful role model and inspiration to so many of the children whose lives she touched. Dance for All will strive in its daily work to live up to her extraordinary legacy.

Phyllis received South Africa’s highest civilian award for excellence, the Order of Meritorius Service Gold (1991). She twice received the Nederburg Award for Ballet, while she also won the Lilian Solomon Award and the Bellarte Woman of the Year Award for the Cape (1979) and was named a member of the Order of Disa (2003) for her contribution to ballet and its development.

Why I was invited? Not as Happy Hotelier. It was closer to home: as proud and happy father of DanceGirl who helps with organizing Cinedans.