Cocktails in The Sunset on a hotel balcony

An ex-pat balcony in a condo in Singapore, by daylight. 

There's the sunset. it doesn't last long. Catch it while you can. Catch it with your eyes, your clinking glasses, your camera.

Cocktails In The Sunset

I used to admire the sunsets from the balconies of successive condos where we rented in Singapore.

This year I've made a point of actually sitting on balconies enjoying the view for an evening break.

If you are planning a first night or last night cocktail party or couples drink on the balcony of a hotel, check out the balcony. Tell the reception in advance that you want a room with a good view. See two rooms before allowing your luggage to be sent up.

Check the balcony actually has a table and two chairs. In one hotel, our balcony had no chairs and table. I phoned and asked.

In the Pestana hotel in Madeira, while waiting for family, I wandered along the corridor to see the views from the public areas and take photos. I found the hotel was designed with balconies all along the side. So in areas without bedrooms by the lift (elevators if you are reading in the USA) the hotel has two public balconies - with tables and chairs.

The tables and chairs were to heavy and inconvenient for me to move. But I knew the hotel had spare tables and chairs. (So we could have had a third or fourth chair if we had been entertaining.)

Alternatively, instead of moving more chairs into the bedroom, we could have held our mini-party on the public balcony.

You may find they want to charge more for a better room. You might decide it's worth paying extra. If not, at very least, you can get a photo from a better room's balcony whilst there is still light.

I remember reading a reviewer's comment that the bedrooms of a hotel were kept clean, but nobody had cleaned the chairs or tables on the balcony. You could ring housekeeping on arrival and ask them to do this.

I never thought of that. I just got toilet paper and wiped down the chairs and table.

I thought, next time I'll bring my own tablecloth. An alternative is to make a clean area for setting down glasses by using the cheap coasters from the hotel bar (I'd ask the bar server if I can borrow and bring them back).

If I'd had forethought and space in my luggage, I would have packed a lightweight plastic tablecloth. Two cheap cardboard coasters won't take up much space.

What about making the balcony chairs clean to sit on? Maybe two spare pillowcases from home. (Maybe not a white pillowcase in case a hotel staff think it's theirs. If it vanishes in the wash and they offer to look for it, they'll never find it.) How about the spare pillow in the hotel wardrobe? Either the whole pillow or just the pillowcase.

I would not want my family using that dirtied pillow later on the bed. I would remove the pillowcase and/or hand the pillowcase to the people collecting the bedrooms' dirty linen.

I would not want the next people in the room to receive a dirtied pillowcase either. Even if it didn't look dirty, I'd be worried about whether I'd infected somebody with a low immune system.

So now that we have a clean place for the glasses - did I mention glasses?

Save one from the bar and carry it upstairs. Ask for Champagne or Prosecco in the hotel bedroom on day one and keep the glass.

Ask if you can keep the glass used for the free drink you get at the reception desk on check-in.

Buy a plastic Champagne style glass from the local supermarket.

Maybe buy a bottle for pre-dinner drinks on the hotel balcony. (Although I'm not a fan of drinks without food, nor drinks combined with balconies.)

On the other hand, if you drink in the bedroom or a conference room, and then go down to the restaurant, you can avoid your group crossing roads.

Angela Lansbury with Champagne. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

Madeira
We tried that in Madeira. It can save money if you are eating in a hotel restaurant. Especially if they charge for bottled water and won't give you tap water.

However, it won't save if you get inebriated and order more drinks when you get down to dinner!

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Tips For Keeping Your Second Home Spotless After It's Been Empty

Ants and Crumbs and Water
Ants. Yes, ants. Whether you are in sultry Singapore, hot all year, New York in summer, or somewhere cooler, clean up before you leave your home empty. A there week holiday, a holiday home empty, same thing applies.

Ants and insects are like humans, they like water and food. So the crumbs under or in your toaster and the water in your coffee machine are giant free food and drink events.

Ants
Get rid of them. Not use going into another room and ignoring them. I have had ants all over a computer which I used on a balcony in a hotel in Asia (I think it was Indonesia.) Eating not he balcony beside your laptop sounds amusing, until you find ants all over the table and your laptop. If you can smell the coffee, so can the insects.

Rice, Sugar, Coffee
You can find weevils and ants and insects in flour, sugar, rice, any packet. Give away opened packets to friends or neighbours. Put whole unopened packets in sealed containers - or the freezer.

Not everybody is so bothered. When I was first in Singapore, in the 1980s, I met Australian and American women at expat groups. I remember at one meeting a women told us she had bought flour from the local corner shop. When she opened it, she found it was full of insects. She took it back to the shop, expecting a refund and profuse, abject apology. But the elderly Chinese shop owner grudgingly refunded the money and said crossly, 'Why don't you just sieve them out like everybody else does?'

Termites and Freezers
The freezer is a place for killing termites in books / photo albums and dust mites in pillows.

Any problems? Pillows can turn rock hard and stick to the freezer trays. Pillows might come out wet and need drying off.

Books In Freezers
Books in the freezer inside plastic bags get water on the surface when they thaw out. I was worried that the pages would stick together. I had photo albums with plastic pages. I used kitchen paper between the books. Ideally spread them out. But the work surfaces were filled with crockery, I don't want cross-contamination, and the floor was dusty. You need to check regularly, daily, even hourly if you are a paranoid type, to see how everything is faring.

You can see why the top paid people employ full time maids and cleaners.

So, if you don't have full time cleaners, you have to clean yourself. You forget. Put it on your list. o f things to do on arrival. You'll need several hours of cleaning, but it can be squeezed in amongst shopping cooking, working or sightseeing.

Plants Needing Watering
Leave all the plants grouped in one place near a source of water, such as on the bathroom or kitchen windowsill. Then if you extend a holiday from one or two weeks to three or four you can remind the family at home to water the plants, or the house-sitter, whoever had the house keys.

Plants Which Grow Alone!
Plants can die in the dark - or grow. After my late father was in hospital for a month where he died, it must have been about eight weeks after he was last in the flat that we opened a top cupboard in the kitchen. It was full of plant life, a hidden jungle. Like Jack and the beanstalk. What had grown, not fed, not watered, hidden, in the dark, on its own?

We fought our way through it and detached it from the walls and ceiling and flour of the cupboard. Can you guess what it was? In a kitchen? The culprit was a couple of potatoes!

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher,