Bagel Belly Blog

Worcester

Made it to Worcester in pretty good time. Kudos and thanks and hugs to the fine folk at Thrifty Car Rental who gave me a free upgrade from a Punto to a Peugeot 307. Incredibly nice car, cruises nicely on the motorways. I won't tell you what my journey time was for the 200 mile journey, but let's just say my average speed may have exceeded the national speed limit ...

This is my first time in a Travelodge (though I've stayed in a fair few different hotels and lodges by now). A few initial thoughts: not enough power plugs. Only one in fact. What to plug in ... laptop? Phone? Kettle? No-one should have to make that choice.

Presentation is very much in the style of the Ibis chain: wardrobes without drawers, utilitarian. This place is a little cleaner and newer than the Ibis hotels I've stayed in though.

Next: the bar/cafe. Nice to know they have one, but the menu card in the hotel room does not list the hours it's open or whether room service is available. Missing out on some money from Mr Savory there, folks.

And of course, the obligatory final moan: where's the wifi? Or even the wired? Just to tempt me there's a CAT-5 cable running from the wall to the TV's set-top box. But the only "consumer" port is a modem socket on the back of the phone. Gah! And it's 30p/minute too. I don't think I'll be using it, I'd rather give my life savings to Vodafone. Mind you, I might just unplug the TV in a minute (laptop battery needs feeding), so I'll try the ethernet port out of curiosity ...

Update: hahahah! The TV works with the set-top box unplugged. And the ethernet socket is totally alive and totally handing out connections to anyone! I'm one very happy bunny. Time to fire up Skype and bypass those 30p/minute phone charges :-)