Reviews, Tripadvisor and other comments....

In my last post I asked if you wanted to hear reviews and details of places I visited, even if they were freebies. Got so many good comments that I thought I'd do a whole new post in response to what you said.

Nearly everyone wanted the details, so I'll be happy to provide them in future, though I agree with LL Cool Joe that what I love, others might hate, and vice versa. As for Tripadvisor reviews. I agree with Muriel (MuMuGB) and I don't trust them. I've read so many plain old lies there and I know for a fact that some people earn money writing reviews to order.

It's also a bit of a burden on owners, who can be victimised by bad reviews. Or they might be too focused on the reviews, and lose sight of other things, like the apartment where I stayed last time in New York. It was the basement and was like a cave with no natural light.

But hey it was a basement. Still, there were annoying niggles, and two serious problems, one of which could have been dangerous.. The owner's main interest was in whether my problems would affect the good Tripadvisor review she hoped I might do. She made excuses for them, but strongly hinted she'd compensate me for the problems if I gave her a good Tripadvisor review. I wasn't interested.

As for that spa ... I interviewed the owners and they'd taken so much trouble. They read over 200 books on all aspects of their plan before starting building and spent a fortune on customer feedback, and everyone except me loved it. Truth was, it was me, not the spa that was the problem. So I shut up about feeling lonely, bored and homesick, and concentrated on what the owners had worked so hard to get right - and what was really pleasing their customers. 

As for the Cornish farmer's wife, I contacted the letting agency suggesting they tactfully spoke to the owner as I felt her attitude might spoil peoples' impression of her nice cottage. The agency didn't reply to me, forwarded my letter directly to her and she contacted me spitting nails - oh, was she mad with me for even suggesting that she might have room for improvement.  That didn't encourage me to recommend others to stay there, so I didn't mention her cottage at all in my piece. My job isn't to take revenge. Anyway, maybe she has regular customers who don't mind being spied on, and don't use the toilet much... :)

The hotel where I stayed in Aldeburgh was the Brudenell (click here for its website) . Aldeburgh is still a fishing town, surrounded by enormous flat marshes, along a coast which is constantly being eaten by the sea. Every year it has a big cultural festival. Years ago, before we even had kids, T went up to record it for the BBC every year.

.... and I'd stay with him and his mates in a rented cottage in the town. The top producers always stayed in the Brudenell. ENVY. But our turn came round at last!

The Brudenell is not "grand", although it's comfortable and priced accordingly. It's several Victorian houses knocked into one. fronting the shingly beach and a tiny no-through-road.

It has an attractive seasidey decor, and well trained, friendly helpful staff. I got up early and was the first visitor at breakfast.

A nice terrace, and a top breakfast, excellent coffee, home made meusli, good toast, top smoked salmon and scrambled egg muffin, and the sparkly sea.

Aldeburgh's a small town, with interesting and quirky architecture. The hotel is at the southern edge, and just a couple of minutes' walk took me into the marshlands where I spotted a couple of swans on their nest with their cygnets.

The lunch was Aldeburgh's White Lion Hotel - here's the website. It feels comfortable, airy and cheerful but you can tell it's old. This fireplace dates from the early 17th century in one of the function rooms.

It was a set lunch (with lots of options) at £10.50 for two courses. Before my home made ices, I had salmon and dill sausages with local asparagus and terrific fries. I'd never had fish sausages before but they were so good.

You can just see some magnificent grilled herrings in the background which T. had. The White Lion organises all kinds of "foody" events for local people, and it's a hotel too - the receptionist was turning people away because they were full.

The self catering house was in Southwold, north of Aldeburgh. Southwold has a lighthouse, Adnams brewery (which you can tour) but to me the best thing is an updated traditional pier which houses a collection of extraordinary amusement machines called "Under the Pier Show." Click here for more - it's crazy. unique and fun. Here's a radioactive sweet I won on the pier.

It's not really radioactive, (I hope)

The house is called Marston House (click here for the website) a 1920s house in a fairly ordinary residential neighbourhood. But it is really near the sea and the pier, had a trendy, cheerful decor. I kept wishing we'd had the kids with us because it was just perfect for families - they even provided buckets and spades. Once again, very well modernised with lots of books and games and maps and local things to do and quirky little toys to play with, and very comfortable.

We had a few niggles during our stay and the pier (who handles the letting) couldn't have been more helpful in putting them right. In fact, I liked it so much I enquired about renting it for a week and going there with the whole family. But they were booked solid all summer. I can't say I was surprised.

To finish, let me give you a review somewhere in Suffolk where we had a family reunion - and this one we did pay for. It's called Potash Barns and it's a collection of old barns and outbuildings. You can rent the whole place, as we did, or just stay in part of it.

Yeah, weather was awful, and it was all "rain and mud and 'sheeps' " as one young member of the party said. But that wasn't their fault, and even so, we did love the barns, and they weren't overpriced. There's an indoor games room, kids' playground, meadow, pettable farm animals, a wheelchair-and-dog friendly lodge, Agas in the kitchen and lots of medieval timbering. One of the rooms had a huge skylight, almost like a glass ceiling which would have been wonderful if the clouds had cleared long enough to see the stars! Wish I could show you photos but my family don't like being put on the blog, so you'll have to take a look at the website - the pictures look accurate.

So there we are, reviews all round.

And in future, I'll mention places sometimes if I feel they are worth it. But, as so many people suggested, on the whole I won't go into details about places I dislike. Even those apartments were probably better than most in Manhattan. At least I wasn't sleeping on a park bench.