Scattered Thoughts . . .

We seem to have started a tradition when it comes to dinners while out of town for the train show and especially so on the first night of our annual train show weekend. It took a few years to get to this point however.  Truth be told, we didn't really know what to expect the first year we attended this particular train show. That first year, Sheila, Adam and I left home at around 6am on Saturday morning... arrived in Springfield when the gates to the show opened... waited in traffic to enter the immense parking lot... waited in more lines to buy tickets and actually enter the first of four buildings housing the show... made our way through the four buildings and walked around the extremely crowded show all day... then drove back home that evening. It was a verryyyy loooonnnnnnggggggg and exhausting day!  Not only was that a long, exhausting day but we knew that just one day at this show was not nearly enough time to see everything. This show is big... I mean BIG. I've

For those of you who visit TripAdvisor before booking hotels and such (as I do), I felt I should point out something I recently noticed which affects the overall ratings of any hotel listed/reviewed in TripAdvisor. Let me preface all of this by saying that I think TripAdvisor is just awesome!  It is the best tool for any traveler.   We recently stayed at La Quinta Inn in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Overall, our stay was "fair" but there were enough problems to warrant looking elsewhere for rooms for our next visit to the area.  While I was reviewing the reviews for La Quinta in TripAdvisor to see if maybe I missed something when choosing this hotel, I noticed that many of the good reviews for La Quinta were rather short and each seemed to be the same length as the other.  Each of these "5 Star" reviews were around 50 words. Hmmm... that prompted me to look more closely... At the bottom of each of these short "5 Star" reviews is a line that states

As most of you already know, I am still trying to recover from an overly busy December as well as from our recent trip to Springfield, Massachusetts for the Amherst Railway Society's annual train show.  I am still so exhausted that I am having great difficulty thinking clearly.  Trying to focus on any one thing has proven to be impossible.  There are a lot of things which I would love to be doing but simply can't find the energy to even think straight. In the meantime, I spent a few days writing a review for Trip Advisor about our stay at La Quinta Inn & Suites during our train show weekend.  I was just notified that the manager of the hotel wrote a response to my review.   A partial view of one of four buildings housing the train show... Overall, I feel the manager's response to my review is acceptable and nice. That alone may indicate something positive about this hotel. He didn't give me any lame excuses as we have seen from other hotels. He didn't g