About this time of the year I start to look back over my posts to review what has been going on. One of the things that I like to do is to take a look at the search questions that seem to bring web-surfers by the site and take a look at some of the more bizarre and unusual.
One of my most successful posts is about the day I attended a Buckingham Palace Garden Party and I get lots of odd Google referrals about this one. This year my favourite just has to be – “do I get expenses to attend royal garden party?”
Let me take a moment here to explain. Just to be invited to a Buckingham Palace Garden party is a bit special in itself and believe me there is going to be a lot of expense involved – new suit, new outfit, overnight stay in London, taxi fares etc. and most people would gladly deal with this just to be part of the occasion so I have to say that expecting the Queen to pick up the bill sounds rather republican to me and whoever asked this should not have had an invite in the first place.
Next up, I really like this one – “what did the captain wear on the Titanic?”
I visited Belfast recently and went to see the Titanic Exhibition and Museum. It was a super place and I recommend anyone to go there and I think what I learned on that visit may just well help here.
Around the exhibition there are lots of pictures of Captain Smith in his White Star Line uniform so I am forced to conclude that except when he went to bed and most likely put on a pair of pyjamas that this was his favourite form of dress. Another thing that I can be certain of is that Captain Smith didn’t wear a lifebelt because after the Titanic struck the iceberg he went down with his ship and drowned!
This being a Travel Blog I often get advice requests and this year I have picked out these two related topics – “What to do in Croatia if it rains?” and “Will I need my umbrella in Burgos?” I am not a weather expert of course but then neither are most of the people who claim to be – has anyone ever seen an accurate TV weather forecast? Bearing this in mind my answer to both these questions is find somewhere to shelter and then let me remind everyone – it doesn’t rain in bars.
When I travel to Europe I rather like hiring cars but what I don’t like is the hassle of arranging car insurance. I have had a lot of trouble getting past the car rental clerk and taking possession of the keys so I am well able to answer this next one – “how much is gravel protection and sand and ash protection in Iceland” and the answer is quite a lot, probably more than the daily hire rate for the vehicle.
Sixt in Iceland have come up with a brilliant wheeze. I thought that I had purchased fully comprehensive insurance but the desk clerk told me that cars suffered so many stone chips because of the gravel roads in Iceland that this had now been excluded and could be purchased at an additional cost of €9 a day under the description ‘gravel damage’ and just to be safe I agreed to buy it.
Then it became almost surreal when he explained that further cover was available at €10 a day for volcano damage. Volcano damage – WTF?
Upon enquiry he told me that if a volcano explodes it can generate enough heat to strip the paint off the car and that this was not covered either. Well, I considered this for a moment and came to the conclusion that if I was close enough to an exploding volcano for it to strip the paint off the car then it was almost certain that I was likely to be in a lot of trouble and great personal danger and the last thing that I was going to be worried about as my flesh melted into a puddle of grease was the condition of the paintwork on the hire car (gravel chipped or not) so I sensibly declined the offer to purchase the additional cover and quickly paid up just in case he next tried to sell me snow or rain insurance in case the car got wet!
I can always guarantee something cropping up about Ryanair and cheap flights.
I first wrote on this subject in 2009 and it immediately started getting hundreds of hits and then in 2011 it just stopped completely. I reviewed and reposted it and changed the title from the specific ‘Travel Tips when Flying Ryanair’ to the more general title that it has now and hey presto the hits started coming again. – Travel Tips when Flying Budget Airlines.
My favourite this year is “Ryanair seat 08f” which, to be honest is way to specific a request for me to be able to deal with and provide a satisfactory response.
Sex always crops up of course because it is estimated that well over half of all web searches are about this subject. This is an odd one though – “penis shaped door knob”, who for goodness sake is likely to type that enquiry into a search engine? Interestingly however I once worked with someone who used the office internet to make the enquiry ‘knobs and knockers’. She was restoring an old Welsh Dresser at the time and although her enquiry was completely innocent she had some explaining to do to the IT section when she received the unexpected results of her search.
Not being an anatomist I am not an authority on penises and not being a manager of a Home Depot I am not an expert on door furniture of any shape but I did visit the Penis Museum in Reykjavik and this is probably close enough to have recorded the visit to the blog.
I am going to finish with this one and because I simply do not have the answer I am going to ask you all out there if you can help – “Does a dog die if it doesn’t have sex?”
Here are the previous posts in this series of weird internet searches…
Have Bag, Will Travel 
Very nice post, this one, Andrew! Yes, I’ve had a visit from a searcher for ‘buildings that look like penises’ Probably your door handle guy, who’s moved on to interior design.
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There are some odd folk around Richard!
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Hey! Here it is. It’s as though I summoned it, since I just replied to your comment only a couple hours ago and said I was going to come to your blog to look for the latest post on search phrases.
You had some good ones this year! Who is crazy enough to expect reimbursement for attending tea with the Queen? As if. The penis museum reminds me of a movie I saw called Margaret’s Museum, which features a penis in a museum, and also features the lovely Helena Bonham-Carter.
Your story about the car hire insurance is the most remarkable to me. WTF is right. Makes one wonder if they’re making up the story and playing on a tourist’s imagination of just how exotic Iceland is. Good on you for not shelling out for heat damage or swarms of locusts.
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Iceland car hire is bad. TripAdvisor and other review sites all give it a real slating!
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Now there are some interesting questions! As you know the Iceland rental car action will always be my fave. Oh wait there was that turtle in the elevator. 🙂
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I love these odd search terms but thanks to Google’s privacy policy they are getting fewer and fewer. Mostly now I get ‘unknown search terms’.
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You hit this one out of the ballpark, Andrew, to use an old American baseball analogy. Fun. Your best advice: “It doesn’t rain in bars.” One further thought, since you raised the issue. I was staying in the town of Ubud in Bali during the 70s at a rather unique hotel that had sticks and a knocker outside the door of each cabin. That were uniquely designed to make a noise that called the specific staff assigned to the cabin. Each stick was designed as a penis. I asked, but could only get a grin. –Curt
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Thanks Curt. I just knew someone would tell me that it is possible to find penis shaped door knockers!
I love how this place stirs the memory. In 2011 we went to to Haugesund in Norway and stayed in a hotel where all of the rooms were named after a famous movies. I wanted the Gladiator suite but had to settle for Shane (one of my favourite films btw) and was very glad that we didn’t get Rosemary’s Baby which was right across the corridor!
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Just about anything that is possible will be found somewhere in the world. 🙂 Good choice on Shane, but it might be interesting to check the background of the folks who chose Rosemary’s baby. I’ll bet the info would be a head turner. –Curt
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HaHa!
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This post is the most entertaining, funny, AND informative one I’ve come across here, Andrew.
I do indeed scratch my head at some of the Googled queries. Who asks some of those odd questions. 😀 😀 😀
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I love it but as I have said elsewhere the source material is drying up thanks to Google privacy policy.
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Drat!
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As for your last question. As near as I can tell, my pup hasn’t had sex and she’s past seven years old. You may have seen how frisky she is in my last post of her romp on the beach.
ps… she’s far too polite to try to hump visitor’s legs or other appendages.
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Gunta, you make me laugh! If she is 7 is she still a pup?
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She’ll ALWAYS be a pup to me! So happy to have provided a laugh. We all need one on occasion! 😀
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Congratulations on assisting oddly curious internet searchers for the past nine years. Now you’ve gotten me curious as to how to search for the search questions on the different search engines. I wonder if I enter that search question, will it lead me back to your blog?
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I have tried that and it doesn’t so how did it get here in the first place?
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