The south end of the beach at Hua Hin, Thailand.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Hua Hin, Thailand.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Maldives on March 23rd.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

We escaped!

It's been raining pretty steady for the past couple of days. But, the only thing you can change about the weather is your attitude towards it, so we had to come up with some indoor things to do.

That's pretty easy with our grandkids. They don't mind playing indoors. Cameron (5) is in school for most of the day, and Sadie (3) is pretty easy to keep occupied.

I spent some time on the computer trying to organize somewhere to stay in the city of Brasov, which will be our second stop in Romania. Have been turned down by two couchsurfers so far, but there are still lots of options available, plus it's slow season and there are lots of vacancies at the hostels and guest houses. We don't mind paying if we have to, but just thought we'd try some of the couchsurfing options first. Also, we don't mind winging it and just finding somewhere to stay when we arrive in that city on November 5th. Hey, that's two weeks from today!

Sadie and Ruth doing some arts and crafts.

Late afternoon, we hopped in the rental car and headed downtown. Man, Friday afternoon traffic was heavy. We sure don't miss that part of city living! We were meeting our son Alex and his girlfriend CJ at a downtown pub for 5:30pm and we were about ten minutes late because of the traffic. I hate being late! 

We were joined by a friend of theirs, Brier, and then we all walked over to the Tick Tock Escape House.

I don't know if you've heard of these before, but escape rooms have become really popular city attractions. 

Essentially, a maximum of six people are locked in a room. You need to work together to solve puzzles to get clues to how to escape from the room. You have 55 minutes to do so, and there is a timer on the wall inside the room counting down.

Brier's boyfriend Chris joined us there, and so there were six of us locked in the room.

Alex and CJ with their friends Brier and Chris have all done this before. There's another one in Ottawa called Escape Manor. There are two Escape Manor locations in Ottawa, and another in Regina, Saskatchewan.

So they are experienced escapers! And they're all really smart, and they love playing games. Ruth and I were the escape room virgins, having never done this before.

But we all did quite well,  I thought. Yes, we did escape from the room with less than five minutes to spare, but it was more of a fluke towards the end because we circumvented one puzzle and then got lucky on another. If we had completed all the puzzles as we were supposed to do, I think we would have run out of time.

Chris, Brier, CJ, Alex, Kevin, and Ruth.

Lots of fun though, and it sure makes you think. A good way for a group of friends to spend an evening together.

Afterwards, we went back to Chris and Brier's place to play cards.

Today, the grandkids are going to a Halloween event, and this afternoon Ruth and I have an appointment at the Embassy of the Republic of Moldova to Canada. We'll report back on that tomorrow!

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Thanks for remembering to do any of your Amazon shopping through our links here...






15 comments:

  1. We've been seeing those escape rooms in most every city we visit. Lots of them have coupons on Groupon, but we haven't tried it yet.

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    1. If you haven't been before then we suggest you go with a group of friends where at least 1 or 2 of them have been before just because it helps to have someone there that understands the game a bit. We had a lot of fun. We weren't much help solving the clues but we were able to find some clues that aided the team.

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  2. We first learned about Escape Rooms from a young couple we housesat for in Exeter, England last year. Everywhere they travel they make certain to experience the local escape room. Thanks for sharing as I had no idea such rooms had arrived in Canada.

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    1. It would be interesting to try it in other countries but it might be hard if they are in a language that you don't understand as there are some written clues. We definitely enjoyed our experience and can see us doing this again some other time.

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  3. I've never heard of this although there is a lot I am sure I have never heard of. Sounds fun! Except for people who don't like games lol.

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    1. If you like puzzles, then we highly recommend that you get some friends together and go try one out.

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  4. I have never heard of escape rooms! Sounds like fun, if a bit stressful. Why did you get turned down by the couchsurfer hosts? They were already booked or ???

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    1. They didn't say but it is possible that they already had someone or had previous plans for the time we were asking for. It is totally up to the host accept or decline any requests at their will.

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  5. Sounds like a fun way to enjoy a rainy day.

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  6. Kevin, concerning shopping through Amazon, can you give us a heads up as to what is now happening with Amazon? I'm sure you have heard or read this week about the Russians who have cracked the "firewall" (for loss of a better word) of their website here in the U.S. and have cracked eBay's website and other lesser known websites. Before I start my Christmas shopping, as a customer, I would like to know more, and since you have more of a business relationship with Amazon, maybe they are a little more forthcoming with you regarding the hacking and what they have done to safeguard our accounts. Lately, in the news our FBI has found a US defense contractor (by their finding evidence in his home and car) who has been a facilitator of the Russian hacking, but that is like shutting the barn door after the cows are out!

    Dee
    Summerville, SC, USA

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    1. Word from Amazon is that they were never "hacked" to begin with, and there's nothing to be worried about. I've checked the internal message boards that I have access to and nobody there seems concerned, other than sales being slightly lower than normal for some people. In our experience, October is typically slightly lower than normal anyhow.

      As always, make your password difficult and change it on a regular basis.

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    2. Kevin, thanks for your help. After reading more last night, it seems there was no hacking of those websites. However, there was interference on and off all day with getting these websites to come up on-line to shopping customers, which is the problem I had; it turns out that all customers east of the Mississippi River in the US were having this problem. Amazon indicated that someone or something was interfering with their contractor's website through which IP addresses must pass. Since I'm not very computer literant, I really don't understand all that, but I do now understand that our accounts were not compromised and, as you suggested, do change our password often.

      Dee

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  7. We watched a show on TV where the people were put in an escape room. They couldn't even figure out the first clue. They had to use all three of their helps and still didn't get out. What a hoot.

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    1. It really helps to have friends that are smart and are logical in the way they think and also love solving puzzles. We can definitely see where some people would have a very difficult time trying to get out. We certainly enjoyed our time. :-)

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