Best Buy really is the best buy when it comes to appliances!

The compressor on our 15-20 year old refrigerator was getting loud and after letting it go for a few months we decided we better get a new one before we came home one day to spoiled food.

PPL Appliance Offer:
I saw a write up in the flyer which comes with our electric bill saying that PPL (our electric company) would come haul the old refrigerator away at no charge, recycle it, and give us $50. Sounds great! Going on the PPL website for further details revealed the downside to all this: you have to get the new refrigerator then find a place to store the old refrigerator for several weeks until you can get onto the PPL pick-up schedule which had very limited time slots requiring taking time off work (if you work a 9 to 5 job).

However, the website also indicated that PPL had an agreement with Best Buy to haul the refrigerator away immediately while still allowing me to qualify for the $50. Although we haven’t bought many appliances recently, our gut reaction was to go to Lowe’s. I’m not even sure we realized Best Buy sold appliances. But, since the Best Buy in our area is right next to a Lowe’s we thought …what the heck…let’s check it out…what do we have to lose?


Best Buy versus Lowe's:
It just so happened that Best Buy was having a big sale the weekend we went in. And, although they don’t have as large of a selection as Lowe’s, it was easy to find something we liked. In fact, the prices were so good (10-35% off) that we started to think about getting rid of our 20+ year old stove and 15+ year old countertop microwave in exchange for a matching set of stainless steel appliances.

Still, we went over to Lowe’s hopeful that they could do better. We had spent well over an hour looking around at Best Buy, but we left Lowe’s within minutes. No sales…and big price tags compared to Best Buy…there was no new stove or microwave in our future if we decided to buy at Lowe’s… not to mention the PPL hassle.


Delivery:
We went back to Best Buy and bought our matching appliances. They were delivered the following Saturday during the window of time we were told they would arrive and the delivery people were very conscientious …no scratches or dings on the appliances or the floor. But here comes the best part….


Price Matching and Google's Product Search:
We were told that if within 30 days the prices on any of our new appliances dropped we could ask for the better price. We went in to Best Buy two weeks later and asked the sales associate in the appliance department if any of the prices had dropped. He looked it up on the computer and told us “no” but he cleared up a misconception I had…it didn’t have to be the Best Buy price that dropped …if I found a better price in any store I could get the reduction!

Google has a beta site for product searches. Click “shopping” in the upper left-hand corner and then enter the model number of the appliance in the search field. A list of stores offering your appliance and the price they are asking comes up. We found better prices on 2 of the 4 appliances we purchased so we printed out the retailer’s webpage and took them in to Best Buy.

I expected a big hassle…things like this usually are. I went to customer service counter and within 10-15 minutes I was walking out of the store with $455.80 refunded on my MasterCard. Wow!

Then, I found an even better price on one of the appliances I’d already gotten a price reduction on…there is no way they are going to reduce it again…right??...wrong…they gave me a second price adjustment with no hassle.

I am a believer…Best Buy really is the best buy when it comes to appliances!

Don't Book a Room at Hotel Ca'Alvise in Venice Italy

Ca’ Alvise:
Address: San Marco 3673, Venice, 30124 Italy

We booked Ca’ Alvise through hotels.com for 10/6/10-10/8/10 at a rate of $189 per night. I did quite a bit of research on hotels and decided on Ca’ Alvise because it was a four star hotel on a canal furnished with Italian antiques…just my style. Bad choice…whatever you do (especially if you are American), DO NOT BOOK THIS HOTEL...you won't be staying there!

We knew we would be arriving at the hotel in the morning and emailed the hotel a week or two before our departure requesting an early check-in. We received no answer which should have been our first clue. We arrived between 9-10AM on 10/6/10 as we alerted them we would. The lady at the front desk confirmed they had our reservation and photocopied our passports. Then she quite matter of factly told us to come back at 2PM because that is their check-in time. The hotel still uses keys with room number tags hanging from them and I could clearly see five or six keys just hanging there. From her curtness with us (we might be being paranoid but it felt like the fact that we were American brought on the rudeness), we could tell we weren’t going to get anywhere arguing so we had her store our luggage in closet and took off to explore Venice.
We returned at 2:15PM and requested our room. The same five or six keys we had seen earlier were still hanging there. The same front desk clerk called the porter who loaded up our luggage on a hand truck and went out the front door. The desk clerk couldn’t shut the door behind us fast enough (literally…the door bumped into me as she was pushing it closed) as she told us we were going to their “other” building.

Five or 10 minutes into our 15-20 minute trek across Venice I knew something was wrong and started to get nervous. The porter finally pulled our luggage between the rows of tables in one of the street-side restaurants and rang the buzzer of an unmarked door. Someone rang us in and we proceeded up a flight of dark steps. The only thing you could see clearly was the art piece at the top of the steps which was a back lighted piece of pink glass with a raised figure of an overweight woman in a slightly risqué position…now I’m really nervous.

At the top of the steps, the porter took his tip and off he went never saying one word to us. The lady who greeted us saw the looks of confusion and despair on our faces and asked if we knew what was going on. We said we didn’t and she explained that Ca’ Alvise didn’t have a room for us so they made arrangements for us to stay at her boutique hotel. She also shared that Ca’ Alvise had been doing this to guests all week…carting them off to her hotel leaving her to do the explaining.

Visiting Newport, RI with our dog

Getting There: We made the mistake of following the advice of our GPS and taking I-95 through New York City on a Tuesday afternoon which resulted in a 6-7 hour drive turning into a 8-9 hour trip. Stop-and-go traffic is exhausting so as it is but we have a manual transmission which makes it all the more brutal. My colleague at work says there are alternate routes (albeit longer in mileage--now he tells me!!) to Newport and we will definitely find one the next time we go.

• Tolls: Be sure to have a lot of $1 bills and change readily available. Between the turnpike fees, tolls, and bridge charges, we spent $25-$30.
• Audio Book: At the last minute we decided to take an audio book on the drive. What a lifesaver...especially with the traffic...it helped keep the road rage at bay! It worked well that the run time was 1-2 hours less than the anticipated drive time since we wanted to talk at least part of the trip. We bought Kathy Reichs' Devil Bones and lucked out with both an author and narrator which were fantastic...a poor narrator can ruin a perfectly good storyline.

Beechtree Inn—34 Rhode Island Ave, RI: We would highly recommend this B&B even though we aren't really the B&B types. I found it on Orbitz, but I booked the room by calling the inn directly in order to get the military discount. The military discount is offered to active and former military personnel but my impression was that there is not a standard discount per se...we still paid the $149 per night (same as Orbitz) but they waived the pet fee which is $25 per night with a maximum of $50 per stay.

• Room: Our room had a firm but comfortable queen-sized bed, small but adequate closet with lots of hangers, bathtub with Jacuzzi jets, blow dryer, and an electric faux fireplace that served as a wonderful nightlight. There was no counter space in the bathroom. A thin, glass shelf below the mirror and an awkward, round, multi-tiered shelf unit were meant to make up for that but fell short.
• Internet: We had free wireless internet access which was very fast and reliable.
• Breakfast: Unlike many B&Bs, we had a choice of breakfasts each morning: eggs (scrambled or sunny side up), pancakes (plain or blueberry), French toast, or omelets (about any kind you could want). Bacon, ham or sausage and home fries were also available. In addition, you could help yourself to breads, yogurt and fresh fruit while you were waiting for your order. The first day we ordered eggs and they weren’t that great. It could have been because the regular cook was off that day. The next day we ordered French toast and it was absolutely fabulous…I stuck with the French toast the remainder of our stay.
• Dogs: Beechtree Inn was very dog friendly. At check-in we received a tote full of dog supplies: a few baggies for clean-up, a treat, a doggie towel for wiping off dirty feet, and a sheet to cover furniture if you have a dog that sheds (ours does not). We had taken our dog on two away from home trips previously, but this was the first time we were leaving him alone in the room. The other trips we kept him with us at all times. We were a little worried he would cause a commotion. Jim, the innkeeper, was very kind and told us he would call us if our dog caused a disturbance and let us talk to him over the phone to calm him down…quite kind …luckily it was not needed. Oakley, the owner’s dog, was a little territorial with our dog, but not big deal. As mentioned earlier there is a $25 per night pet charge with a maximum charge of $50 per stay.
• Location: Beechtree Inn is located in a residential area. It is very quite which is quite nice. Everything was close…mansions…cliff walk…downtown/pier…but just a little too far to walk so we drove.
• Kitchen: There is a communal kitchen on the top floor. It is very clean and equipped with a full size refrigerator/freezer, two burners in the countertop, a microwave, dishes, silverware, paper towels, etc. We took advantage of the kitchen and it worked out really well for us. Later in our stay another couple started using the kitchen as well. It was a little awkward at times given they were staying on the top floor (where the kitchen is) with small children and sort of claimed the kitchen area as an extension of their room.

Newport Mansions--We went to Newport primarily to tour the mansions.

• Preservation Society Membership: I went online and decided to buy a dual membership to The Preservation Society of Newport County (http://www.newportmansions.org/page3553.cfm). The preservation society owns a number of mansions and the membership allows you unlimited access to all of them for a year. The clincher for me was the membership is tax deductable whereas the ticket packages and individual ticikets would not be. If you purchase the membershp online several weeks in advance of your trip, you will get your permanent membership card in the mail before you leave...not to worry if it doesn't arrive in time...they give you a temporary one immediately upon sign-up online.
• The Best Mansions in the Preservation Society Stable: See as many mansions as time allows but the absolute "must sees" under the Preservation Society's perview are The Breakers, Marble House, and The Elms. All three are absolutely fabulous and you explore at your own pace with a self-guided audio tour. The Breakers is just so grand I don't even know where to start. The Marble House has an amazing gothic/church room full of religious art that absoutely fasinated me. The Elms had a conservatory that I loved and wonderfully manicured grounds to explore. Rosecliff and Chateau-sur-Mer are also worth seeing but we didn't like the tour guided tours as much as the audio tours.
• Green Animal Topiary Garden: We went to the Green Animals topiary garden which in about a half hour outside of Newport and is one of the Preservation Society's properties. It is not worth the gas. We were terribly disappointed. It was small and many of the topiaries you could not tell what they were without a guide/map. We were lucky that many of the flowers in the garden in general were blooming (astible, lupine, delphinum, etc). I don't think anything would be in bloom if you toured at another time of year.
• Belcourt Castle: Although our Preservation Society membership granted us access to more mansions than we could reasonably see in 3 days, we still sprang $30 each to go to Belcourt Castle's murder mystery night and we are really glad we did. This was the first murder mystery for both of us and we were very pleased. We were greeted the second we stepped foot in the courtyard and ushered into a large room on the first floor where an art show was taking place. We voted on our favorite artist and the evening went from there. Ultimately, the art critic was shot and killed and we needed to explore the castle looking for clues. It was fun to wander the rooms freely and at your own pace. It was a unique and fun way to tour a mansion.