Training Day - Part #2: A Lesson in Colorado Towns

House-Keeping:

Straight after breakfast it's time to start on house-keeping; although check-out isn't till 11am, many people leave early to head to the slopes one last time, or get a move on the road, which is good for us because the sooner we start cleaning the sooner we're done. After house-keeping we get the rest of the day off until prepping starts for happy hour at about 4:30pm.

Click pictures for larger view

There are eight guest rooms in total (plus the owner's room and our room), so it's a pretty big place, bigger than your usual B&B, although it doesn't feel that big. The stairs are a little troublesome - there are three levels in this house. The first room we started on was Breckenridge, on the top floor at the end. All the rooms are named after towns in Colorado. At first I thought they were named after ski towns in Colorado, but a little more research into these place names and I found it wasn't quite so.

A little trivia for you - and us, so we remember, because we need to know which room is which:

• ASPEN: This room is the most luxurious, it's actually a suite on the first floor at the front of the house. That is why they named it Aspen - after the up-scale ski town. It's also the first letter of the alphabet and the first room in the house.  It has a king four poster bed in a big room with a bay window and a big bathroom with a huge spa tub as well as walk-in shower - making it handicap accessible. There's also a closet and another little room connecting the bathroom to the bedroom in which there is a desk. I love the chaise lounge (right) in the bedroom (which is not in the professional photo below).

• BLACKHAWK: is the next room, located at the top of the stairs on the first floor (second floor if you're American - so confusing! I just call it the middle floor instead), and this town is not a ski resort. But as I mentioned in an earlier post, this is one of the early places where gold was discovered back in the day. Being the second room, it also starts with the second letter of the alphabet. It has a fire place, a double bed, and a single bed too. Most of the rooms have the basin separated from the bathroom, and in this room the basin is located in the alcove containing the closet area. The town Black Hawk is located near Central City - and so are the rooms of the same name.

The professional photo above, and mine, right.

• CENTRAL CITY: was so named for three reasons: it starts with C, it is close to Black Hawk, and it is the middle room on this floor. Remember it was the city with the nickname "the golden mile" for all the gold being extracted there (no ski resort either). It has a fireplace like Blackhawk, and while it's not very roomy I think it's really cute. The closet space is located by the door, and so is the bathroom as you can see in the professional photos below.

• DURANGO: is located at the end of the hall and quite spacious but doesn't have a fireplace. It's not one of my favourite rooms but it's pretty popular with guests (Chase thinks it's because it is the least Victorian-looking of the rooms!). Durango itself is not a ski town either but there are a few ski resorts in its vicinity. One in particular, is quite popular, but when you know the name of the resort you'll understand why they didn't name this room after it:

          Purgatory.

Professional shot above, and mine with the new bedspread looking to the bathroom

All of these rooms on the middle floor are located on the back side of the house and have back entrances like our room (which is located on the other side of Blackhawk) with a little patio, which is a nice touch and also allows the guests in these rooms a private entrance. Besides our room on this floor, the owners, Greg and Laura's room is located above Aspen. Though it's not for guests it also has a name: Vail, and has the same layout as Aspen.

• TELLURIDE: Now we go up to the next floor, the top floor, and this is the first room on this level. Now the alphabet theory deviates to no specific order, but Telluride is a ski town, and though upscale this room is not a King room, or particularly more special than any other rooms. It does have a cute little alcove with a single bed though, and the bathroom is one of the biggest.

Both my photos, the professional ones don't do it justice

• KEYSTONE: this is another ski town, and in fact, all the room-names on this floor are taken from ski towns. I hadn't heard of this place before, and that's probably because it was founded solely as a ski-resort in the 1970s near Breckenridge. It has two queen beds and is priced as a King room. It is located in the far back corner of the house and is a very big room. It also has a bathroom like Telluride and also has a connecting door with Telluride. (Photos taken by me).

• BRECKENRIDGE: is a cute end-room with a gabled roof with a big window centred between it. It has a large closet with sliding doors, and a cute love-seat that folds out into a single bed with matching ottoman. It is just the right size, with a generous 2-room suite bathroom area. This is another of my favourite rooms, but I don't know whether this has anything to do with the fact that it was the first room we cleaned (My photo, left, professional photo, right).

• STEAMBOAT: is the last room and is another king room. It is named after Steamboat Springs, the town and ski resort, which is nicknamed "Ski Town USA" for producing more Winter Olympians than any other town in North America. Steamboat is also where the first ski-jump was demonstrated. It is located above Aspen and Vail at the front of the house, though its layout is very different and while a King room, its namesake is not particularly luxe. The bedroom is large and really nice, with recessed window facing out over the Divide, but the bathroom is a little cramped, laid out long and narrow into the roof. Nevertheless, it's another of my favourite rooms.

All rooms have huge flatscreen TVs and their own bathrooms. We also supply robes, lotion & shampoos, and bottles of water with glasses on a tray. There's a lot to remember when cleaning the rooms but it's not really hard work. Though who knew I'd be cleaning for a living (I'm not really much of a housewife!) but then give me money and a nice location and see what you can get!

We also provide a daily made service, in which we "fluff" the rooms of guests. This one we still have trouble remembering to do, but I get satisfaction in tidying up the room for guests and picturing what they'll see when they first walk back in the room after they've twisted up all the covers and trashed the room and seeing it all neat and tidy and the bed looking inviting with the covers turned down. What's more, an unforeseen benefit I hadn't realised - tips! They don't always tip, but when they do its very exciting, and the usual amount is $20!

Training Day - Part #1: The Big American Breakfast

Our first day on the job at the B&B began the very day after our arrival. It was a training day. Laura, Greg's wife and partner in the B&B, still hadn't returned from working with their boat in the Caribbean but Karen, the intermittent Innkeeper, was there to show us the ropes.

BREAKFAST:

Breakfast prep started at 7am. That wasn't too bad, I had been expecting worse. We did set our alarms for 6am just to make sure we were on time - though it's not like we had to factor in commute time!

The Inn styles itself as a Luxury B&B and in keeping with that they serve a full gourmet breakfast. For them, that usually means four areas need to be covered: there must be an egg, there must be a meat, there must be a bread and there must be a potato. Phew! But before all that, first they serve a fruit plate which we plate up and have ready on the table as a kind of place marker. I really like this idea, and the fruit plates look very smart and delicious.

Immediately I felt a little out of my league. I would have to learn and perfect the Great American Breakfast. For starters, potatoes for breakfast are a VERY new concept for me. I couldn't imagine eating potatoes for breakfast. Then again, Americans would NEVER imagine eating baked beans for breakfast as us Aussie's do. Also for me, breakfast is about grains - and nowhere on that list do they mention a grain. There were also no particularly healthy options, except the fruit plate. But on my outings to Cracker Barrel, a old-style southern eatery, it all seemed pretty customary.


I don't know about how other people in Australia go about their breakfast but in our family, big breakfasts like this were only made on the weekends. What do Australians usually eat? As far as I know, cereal (including the traditional Weetbix) and toast (yes, with vegemite!) generally. The big Australian breakfast consists of eggs and bacon (for Americans, that's more like a Canadian bacon with more meat than fat) or grilled sausages, as well as grilled mushrooms and tomatoes and, of course, baked beans. In Australia it is becoming more common to go out for breakfast, though in America with the multitude of breakfast institutions, such as IHOP, Denny's and the aforementioned Cracker Barrel it's habitual. But it's not just for eating out, the Big American Breakfast, it seems this is pretty much the norm EVERY DAY in most households. I know Chase's dad cooks scrambled eggs and sausages and sometimes even biscuits (scones) for breakfast every day. I'm amazed.


So anyway, while Chase and Greg were organising the fruit plates, Karen and I got started on the potatoes and the eggs. Today we were scrambling the eggs, and "hashing" the potatoes - not quite the patties you see at McDonalds, but instead we diced the potatoes irregularly, skin on after pre-cooking them in the microwave, and added some diced onion before frying it all up in a pan. They'll most likely become mushy but that's part of the "hash". As you may have guessed, Hash is a very vague concept, it's whatever you prefer really. It's traditionally a "leftovers" dish, not unlike Australia's Bubble and Squeak, Sweden's Pytti Panna or, as I understand, Austria's Bauernfrühstück. It seems every country has one. Quite delicious of course - but not for breakfast! Especially accompanied by tomato sauce.

Back in the kitchen, the sausages were taking care of themselves in the pan. Here's another variant in American breakfast: sweet sausages, and in this case, maple flavoured sausages. Americans love their "salty sweet" combination of flavours. Me, I'm not into it at all; I don't mix my sweet and savoury. I have read that that this combination is an important component to cooking; that's what makes Asian cooking so phenomenal, but it's subtle.

I think we did English muffins that day. Ok, I forget as I'm writing this behind schedule (what's new?) but who really cares? Any bread is pretty fine by me, I love it! Especially when it's pre-buttered and toasted in the grill (American's say "broil", I don't like it, that word makes me think of poaching and sounds gross!)! Real bread in America is lacking, like Australia, but the variants on bread, like English muffins, biscuits, cinnamon rolls and bagels, make up for it.

Coffee: Americans love it - but by "coffee", I mean purely filtered coffee. It's probably a better way than the way we do our instant dried coffee in Australia, but unless it's made strong, for me it's not very good. The B&B's coffee is not too bad, and first thing in the morning, it's even better! A key morning objective for us is to keep that coffee jug filled and keep the coffee flowing! That term "bottomless cup" is not just a catchy tagline.

Guests are offered breakfast between 8-8:30am. A pretty short window really but with so many guest rooms it's kind of imperative otherwise you'd be rushed off your feet for hours. As it is, we didn't get finished with breakfast until 9:30 (well, we did stop to eat; a great perk of the job - eating the leftovers! And by then, don't you know I was ravished! Those maple sausages didn't even taste that bad!).

The breakfast room is in the vestibule before you come in the main door. I really like this area for breakfast with all the morning light and the view of the mountains coming through all the big windows. This part of the house is quite new, it was only completed about a year ago. Before that it was just a small portico. Of course, in winter it's a little harder to keep warm but so far it's manageable with a few space heaters.

While I was comparing breakfasts I found a great page on breakfast around the world, with matching photos. If, you're interested, click on this link below (I'm liking the look of the Morrocan breakfast...):

50 of the World's Best Breakfasts

From One Extreme To The Other: The Continuing Story

So yes, we're becoming Innkeepers and uprooting to a new place and situation again. And we're taking another leap of faith even if Puerto Rico didn't turn out quite like we'd expected. But you have to take risks to get to where you want to be, and we've lived and we've learned, and for sure, this time we won't be taken for the same ride.

We began to feel that was happening to a certain degree quite quickly in Vieques, bet a security deposit and the lure of a long-term house-sitting reference reeled us back in when circumstances screamed at us "run, run now!" (Those feelings were confirmed by the drama we had in retrieving our deposit at the end of our assignment, but by that time we finally learnt how to play the game).

Winter Park Chateau B&B

This time will be different because nothing is going to hold us back from running if we need to. Firstly, not much money invested to get there, just a cheap plane ticket from Alabama. Secondly, we've met the husband, Greg, of the husband and wife team that own the B&B, and spoke to Laura, the wife, on the phone. The feeling we got from talking to them both was a lot different from the one we got from contact with the owner in Puerto Rico (but which we brushed aside for the excitement of the experience). Thirdly, we're actually going to be making some money - a little bit different from the bumming around we've been doing, or were supposed to be doing. In Vieques we were supposed to work only enough to cover room and board but it turned out to be a little more on the work and a little less on the board at times.

This new endeavour is actually going to yield us some dividends, along with room and board - plus benefits. The experience is going to be really beneficial to us in the future; this is a direction we've been wanting to take for a while. With all the couchsurfing and hosting we've done, we decided meeting people and making sure they have a good time was a lot of fun - and why not get paid for it! This job will entail looking after, or helping to look after, all aspects of the Bed and Breakfast (B&B): from playing host, to handling reservations, to house-keeping and cooking breakfast. Nothing we can't do (if I can handle those early morning starts!). We'll get great experience and be able to decide if it's as good as it sounds.

And if it doesn't turn out as expected? We can always get the hell out of there!

We may not know what we're in for at the B&B in terms of living conditions (but we're told we get out own area with bedroom and bathroom, and there is even a kitchen, a balcony and cable TV!), work conditions (approx 40hrs a week between the both of us) or general fit with the owners who will be there a lot of the time, but we will know the town and area we are going to live in this time; and that's big, because in the case of Vieques, pictures can lie.

Chase, my husband, knows Winter Park and the Rocky Mountains very well; he lived there for a while during his single years and has always revered it as his favourite place on Earth - besides New Zealand. We've tried New Zealand (earlier this year, and I starting blogging about that too here), which was awesome but turned out to be wrong timing, so now it's a great opportunity to try Colorado together and see what that holds for us.


New Zealand, another mountainous place

We're are excited about living in a town we know will be lovely despite the weather (me) or because of it (Chase). Okay, so I'm not really a fan of the cold, but I'm drawn for a number of reasons that will help make it more enjoyable: first of all, the frustrating cold can be forgotten once the first dusting of picture-perfect snow hits the ground turning the place into that clichéd, but true, winter wonderland.  

Aspen, 2008

Secondly, Chase tells me it's a dry cold, which when the sun is shining (as he assures me it does often), it won't bite at you, like say, an Alabama winter, or even an Australian winter. It doesn't get nearly as cold in Australia, for sure, but it feels it and then without snow it's just dreary. And did I mention not having to leave the house to go to work! None of that freezing-your-butt-off while cranking the car in the morning and trying to scrape ice of the wind-shield. In fact, we shouldn't even need a car, at least during the winter with the free resort shuttle running all over town and almost everything in walking distance anyhow.

The other reasons to head here are more obvious: a picturesque mountain setting and complimentary architecture, and the lure of hiking and seeing wild animals in the summer.

And after spending 6 months in the tropics I'm ready for a change - a big change. Holidaying might be fun in the tropics, but living is no easy task. Mosquitoes, bugs, dripping-sweat heat, rust, mould, hard-as-a-brick sugar and chips that soften within minutes of opening! That is not fun.
But while Winter Park and Vieques are worlds apart, they have some similarities. Like Vieques, Winter Park is small and tourist-driven, and both have aspects of isolation.

But how both places address each of these similarities, I'm confident to say, will differ exponentially!

Firstly, the people of Vieques didn't seem too thrilled to have visitors despite them supplying most of the only real income coming into that little island. Winter Park's economy is also based around vacation and adventure, which I'll delve more into in a proceeding post, but tourist-focused or not, we'll definitely be in America now - the land of overwhelmingly diligent consumer attentiveness (commission anyone?), and whether genuine or not, I'm looking forward to being in a place that seems happy to see people and willing to go out of their way to help you. (I must add, we did experience that a little more of that on the mainland of Puerto Rico, but Vieques is a parallel universe).

 

Similarly both towns have barriers that make it hard to get in and out, but while for Vieques it is the sea, for Winter Park it is the mountains. Unbelievably enough, the mountains have proved an easier barrier to break than the sea it seems. While it should be very easy to cross the 8 miles (13km) of water that separates Vieques from the mainland, the boats became almost non-existent by the end of our term there, 7 out of 8 vessels having worked their way into disrepair; and even the one boat left working seemed to be a gamble as to when and where it went (having to also service the other nearby island of Culebra). While it was quicker to fly (the ferry chugged slowly across the straight in no less than an hour one way), flights were also cumbersome, expensive and had limited seating.

Thankfully, the road has already been explored and carved from Denver to Winter Park up through those precarious mountains; now a luxurious four-lane highway, not quite a 2 hour drive, separates the two (snow forbidding). And if you don't have your own car, there's Amtrack and even a bus service to the town.

I do feel a sense of claustrophobia enclosed by all those mountains, but knowing Denver is in easy reach makes it bearable. Also, I'm sure I won't get that fish-bowl feeling I had on Vieques - for starters, so many more shops and so much more variety: cafes, restaurants, a library, even a movie theatre! And most importantly: fresh produce - something surprisingly lacking on that tropical island we just came from.

So I'm ready to try this new venture and see how I like it. Come find out on my all new rocky-mountain-high adventure!


*Author's Note: Spelling is Australian English, for those that think there's u's where there shouldn't be.

From One Extreme To The Other: The Story So Far

Here I go again, on another adventure, and I'm going to try to blog about it (hopefully more consistently than the last one!).

So as my Puerto Rican Island Life comes to an end, luck has us striking off in a completely different direction. We are now moving up several thousand feet into the sky and will be enduring the polar opposite lifestyle in wintry Colorado. We will go from a hot, remote, tiny island off of the coast of Puerto Rico, called Vieques, to a cold, mountainous, civilised society in the middle of the United States.

On the move again

 If you read my Puerto Rican blog (which you can find by clicking on the link above), you'll know that I wasn't the biggest fan of that region, and the tiny island of Vieques in particular. It was hot, it was primitive, it was ugly, and the people were somewhat unwelcoming (not to mention a complete lack of customer service).

But all in all it was a good experience, as any experience truly is, and a unique experience. We were glad to get the hell out of there but will look back on it with fond memories. We will remember all the good times we had, and the friends we made. We will miss those three mischievous dogs we fell in love with, and we will take the bad as learning experiences hopefully never to be repeated.

Here's a recap:

We took a house-sitting assignment in Puerto Rico in May 2011. It turns out it was on this tiny little island off the mainland called Vieques, which until then I had never heard of. We lived on a 14 acre property outside of the main town of Isabel Segunda on a steep hill. We had a small orchard of tropical fruits and took care of the grounds and dogs. If it had've been just that it would have been terrific. But this was Vieques, and nothing on Vieques goes according to plan.

Things broke down, things stopped working, and things just came flying at us like the hurricane that capped it all off (yes, we even experienced a hurricane; nothing too major, but enough to scare our socks off and ruin any comfort we had left!). Cars, mowers, electricity, water, even the drive-way, soaked in rain and mud, ceased to work. There isn't much on Vieques to amuse oneself unless you love beaches (but even then it can get old), and eventually, our best means off of the island, the ferry, stopped working too. But we met friends that changed the whole outcome of our stay to something great. We could count on each other when our cars broke down as they all eventually did, and to have a dinner party, a pool party, or an excursion, as we frequently did to forget our troubles.

Chase and Auggie, the big Rottweiler, became best of friends (see below). Jasper, the little cute terror was always around to play or else was off chasing lizards, and feeble old Oprah kept mostly to herself but when she was around she could be counted on for a big happy smile-unless it was raining! They kept us sane when we were stuck up on the hill.

Nutty Island, as our Aussie friend Peter nicknamed it, doesn't come up so bad in photos and even looks quite interesting, and to be honest, a week's vacation might be alright there; the beaches were breathtaking - if only they weren't a bitch to get to. But unless you want to shell out $400/night at The W Resort, expect to rough it a little.

Take a peek, and judge for yourself:


Of course, what is life - and me - without food! I threw in a few shots for Chase and my friends who endured my constant food snaps!

Friends make life more enjoyable and the people we met made our stay in Vieques what it was. Our first new friend was Ali and his cute little dog Ozi, who we couchsurfed with in Old San Juan. He was so hospitable and enjoyable to hang out with, and we enjoyed getting to know him. Of course our Vieques inmates, Paul and Jodie, and Peter and Jan, became like our family and support during good and bad, and I'd like to pay extra tribute to them here.

Peter was always making pizzas and pizza ovens. Thanks to him there are a chain of pizza ovens scattered around Vieques which will be an enduring legacy to his time in Vieques. I'm sure Jan and Peter both will be remembered for years to come! They persevered in teaching the locals the Australian Way, whether they liked it or not (including a sketchy game of cricket), and still couldn't pronounce 'Fajardo' when they left! Paul and Jodie supplied us with a great hang out spot at their guesthouse La Finca (right), and a great many memories of food, laughs and Chichaitos (a hard, but cheap rum drink with a translation I'd rather not repeat here). Their benevolence even sparked a horde of cats to contend with!

So that was our stay in a nutshell. Stay tuned to my Puerto Rican blog as I continue to play catch up on all the weird and wacky adventures we had!

What's next?

Winter Park Chateau Bed and Breakfast! We're going to be Innkeepers!