Royal Treatment (Of Sorts)

At the Royal Carriage Inn in Jamestown, we stepped out of our cottage one morning and heard a strange "tok tok tok" sound above our heads. Lo and behold - hammering away to their hearts content were 2 sweet little woodpeckers with their red caps perched on a wooden beam nearby. They were pecking furiously in search of grubs hiding in the wooden crevices. "Tok tok tok, tok tok tok" non-stop. Doesn't all that knocking send vibrations up their beaks and give them a splitting headache in their little heads? They were so cute that we watched them until they flew off (probably cos I was so excited I forgot to keep quiet.)

Knock knock! Who's there?

Jamestown is where we are staying while visiting Yosemite National Park. The Royal Carriage Inn was an incredible find under the America's Best Value Inn chain of hotels. We stumbled upon it while flipping through one of those free hotel discount coupon magazines which we picked up at an IHOP in San Francisco and booked a room for US$50 a night.

Rapunzel let down her hair and it took over the building.

Scaling heights

The upper verandah - where smokers get banished into the cold.

The welcome we got at the Inn was amazing. Before we could even walk up to the main door, the lady manning the reception was already holding it wide open for us. She knew who we were and how long we were staying there before I could give her my name or reservation confirmation number. We had booked the cheapest room available but were offered the choice of an upgrade to a cottage! Fwahhhh. In our minds we were already thinking "of course take lah!" but Ash, the sweet lady, insisted on showing us both the room and the cottage so that we could make an informed decision on which one to go for.

We were brought on a tour of the inn, where Ash showed us a few rooms, all of which were cozily furnished and decorated in different ways. There was one room which had a leafy mural painted on the wall, left by a guest who was presumably very inspired by the beauty of the Yosemite area. She then walked with us outside - in the freezing cold and drizzle - to show us the cottages. We loved the cottage the moment we saw it. But being Singaporean geeks, we whipped out our iPod/Phone and were bummed that we couldn't seem to log on to the Wi-Fi as the cottages were located a distance from the main building. Four nights without Internet access is quite painful in our Facebook/Email/Blog-filled lives. We decided that we would test the connection again using our laptops and if it didn't work, we would give up the cottage for the room. Sigh.

The cottages

Ash very nicely left us to ourselves to make our decision on the rooms. We practically cheered when our lappies caught onto the Wi-Fi. Hooraay! The cottage was well-heated (VERY important to us), spacious, had lovely wooden flooring, a kitchen table where both of us could sit at when using our comps (instead of working up cricks in our necks and backs trying to make do with motel beds as table tops), a nice big fridge and freezer that was actually cold (unlike the bar fridges that had insides warmer than the ambient temperature.) Best of all, we no longer had to bathe Japanese-style cos there were instructions on how to use these weird American showers! (see older post on coffee-pot baths)

Our super spacious cottage

Did it snow in here?! So white!

Having a full kitchen was great. It wasn't fully furnished - we had only one teacup and had to microwave it 4 times each time we wanted to prepare cup noodles. But whatever we lacked in utensils, we made up on visits to fast food outlets (Taco Bell's sporks are the best!) With a kitchen, I could prepare breakfast (store-bought donuts), picnic lunches (Spam sandwiches) and hot dinners (cup noodles).

The kitchen (donuts not included)

Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi connection started to fail miserably after the first couple of nights. So after dinner, we would throw on our jackets, grab our lappies, water bottles, and a bookbag filled with atlases, guidebooks and motel directories, and shuffle out in the cold to the library in the main building. I was reminded of similar trips in my NUS days, from my hostel room to the study room located within the Hall to mug for exams. We were the only nerds going goggle-eyed over our screens with cups of instant noodles next to us and were there till 2am every night to greet every guest who returned from their tasty wine and steak dinners.

Still, we were a pair of happy campers at the Royal Carriage Inn. Throughout our stay, Ash greeted us by our names whenever we met and gave us directions to the nearest Walmart and other attractions in the area. I'm going to send the Inn a compliment and post a good review on Trip Advisor for this lovely place.

Berry pretty plants all around the inn.

More talk about Jamestown itself soon. My pics are still in the camera and I'm feeling too warm and toasty now to get the USB cable from the car to download them.

And just for the records, we've downed 2 more pints of our fav ice-cream. Now, how many flavours more to go?

Necessary for keeping the driver awake during those long drives.

Just for Dannie the Vanillazilla

written by

DanYilin on April 12, 2009 from Jamestown, United States

from the travel blog: go.

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