Amazing Wedding, Awful Hotel… Part 1

This is the first chance I’ve had to write about my experiences last weekend. It’s been a busy week but if I’m completely honest it is mainly to do with the fact that I found an amazingly addictive free game on the Apple App Store and have been glued to my iPad every night after the kids have gone to bed. Anyway, moving on, this post will be split into more than one due to the eventful weekend we had and how much I’ve got to cover. I don’t want to bore you too much so apologies if I do, I just want to share my experience in full…

Last weekend we went to Manchester to attend a wedding. It was a bit more special to us than just a wedding though as it was Holly’s cousin that was getting married and she had asked if our little Laura could be her flower girl. This meant that she got to wear a beautiful dress and walk down the aisle with the bridesmaids. It was also the first wedding I’ve been to in over 10 years, apart from my own, of course.

So, Friday came and with the car packed with suits, dresses and all things to make us look beautiful, we set off. The journey was a bit crap as we hit some traffic on the way which added about half an hour on and it absolutely chucked it down for most of the ride. Anyone in the UK will know that this was inevitable as the weather over the last month or so has been abysmal here what with flooding and torrential downpour all over the country. Spray on the motorway is horrible, it’s worse than driving in fog and your lights don’t do a thing. We did eventually get to Manchester and amazingly it had stopped raining by then.

The hotel we were staying at didn’t have a car park of its own so we were instructed to drive straight to a multi-story nearby which the hotel offered a discount for. They advised us it was a 5 minute walk to get to the hotel. This was only true if your name was Usain Bolt. We had two young kids, a pushchair, 2 suits and a dress inside a dress cover, two luggage bags and our coats. It did not take 5 minutes. I had to stop to rest a couple of times and by the time we got to the hotel I thought my arms were going to fall off, they actually felt like they were floating up slightly when I put the bags down. When we got to the entrance of the hotel we were greeted by about ten steps. Wonderful, just wonderful, I thought. I just about had enough strength left in my arms to help Holly lift the pushchair up the steps and into the lobby, oh how I envied Laura sat so snuggly in her pushchair!

While stood in the queue waiting to check in Holly looked at me with that ‘look at what I’m looking at but not too obviously so it’s clear that we are looking’ kind of look. I’m not sure if you know what I’m talking about or even if such a look exists but if not, Holly just invented it. I casually looked around to find what she was getting at when I started noticing that there were a lot of people dressed in women’s clothes, with women’s hair and women’s makeup… but they were not women. This was confirmed when the “woman” in front of us got to the reception desk and spoke in a deeper voice than me. It was doubly confirmed when the receptionist finished their conversation with “Thank you, sir”. Now, I’m not prejudiced, the fact that I was surrounded by transvestites really didn’t bother me. All I was thinking was, are we in the right hotel? I’ve never seen so many transvestites in my life! There must be a convention on or something that has attracted them all.

From then on is when our hotel experience started to go downhill…

Initially, there was confusion over the room booking. We asked for a family room with a double bed, a single bed and a cot. This had to be checked in the office out the back rather than on the computer in front of the receptionist. After much toing and froing the receptionist finally gave us the key card to a room and asked us to pay. As this was part of a block booking for the wedding the rates were reduced but we still had to pay £200; £100 per night. I did wonder how much their normal rates were.

Our room was on the 4^th floor. The lifts were out of order. This meant that we had to either wait in another queue for the one service lift at the other end of the hotel or use the stairs. Holly’s family were gathered in the hotel bar just off the lobby so we congregated with them first to delay our dilemma. The mother-in-law offered to watch Liam and Laura while we took our stuff up to our room. I don’t like lifts at the best of times and neither does Holly so we opted for the stairs. It was actually more challenging than we first thought but we did eventually make it to our floor. We entered the room and saw a double bed and a single bed but no cot for Laura. We were just about to ring down when someone knocked the door and brought a travel cot in. That was the first issue sorted.

Next was the room layout. There were three steps in the middle of the room so the one end of the room was slightly higher. Not the best idea when you have a 16 month old toddler. The double bed was on the lower half, near the door and the bathroom, while the single bed was on the upper half, next to the windows. Is this really what they call a family room? We thought that seeing as we wouldn’t be spending much time in the room we’d put up with it, the windows did have locks on them and only opened so far.

It was only when leaving the room and walking back to the stairs that I noticed how nice it looked when peering down. Now, don’t be fooled by the luxuriousness of these stairs and the chandelier. It’s just an illusion to make you think it’s a lovely hotel when you first walk in!

We went back downstairs and mingled with Holly’s family for an hour or so before dinner. We had planned to go to the hotel restaurant for dinner; they served a carvery or you could choose from a menu, or so we thought. This was not the case. When we got there it turned out it was just a carvery. I don’t particularly like roast dinners and considering we would most likely be eating one (or similar) at the wedding the following day I really didn’t fancy one that night. The only other option was the pizzeria (that wasn’t really a pizzeria) next to the restaurant. I love pizza, but Holly doesn’t, however, she was nice enough to agree to go there so we left the restaurant hall.

This was one of the biggest mistakes we made all weekend…

There were two couples sat eating when we walked in so it was very quiet. The waiter had gone into the kitchen as we walked in so we chose a table and sat down. The waiter finally came back out so I went over to ask for a highchair for Laura. Even though he’d been in the kitchen for about 5 minutes, knowing we were waiting, when I said “Excuse me”, he asked me to wait a minute before walking over to the till and writing something on a little piece of paper. Only after that did he acknowledge me. He brought over the highchair but the tray, which Laura has to eat from, was disgustingly dirty. I thought, it’s ok, he’ll wipe that in a minute. But he didn’t. I had to ask for a cloth so we could clean the highchair.

Next came the food, they didn’t have a children’s menu so I ordered a large pizza, just cheese and tomato, with garlic bread and nachos as sides to share with the kids. Holly found a steak on the menu (which made it not really a pizzeria) so she ordered that. While waiting for the food the kids got a bit restless. After all, they were hungry and tired, and they’d spent a rather long time in the car that day. We tried our best to keep them quiet when really I wanted to the join in with their whining. The waiter brought the food out and at first it looked and smelt amazing. It did not taste that way. I really can’t express how bad this food tasted; I would rather have eaten ten carvery’s that this shit. The nachos were just about ok, I mean you can’t really go wrong with tortilla chips, but the cheese on them was tasteless and like rubber. The garlic bread was like eating a scouring pad and the pizza was very similar in that it was like someone had mixed washing up liquid in with the tomato sauce. I couldn’t understand how it tasted so bad. Holly’s was no better because her thick cut fries weren’t cooked enough and were hard in the middle while the steak was extremely gristly. It was so bad that even the kids didn’t really touch anything other some of the nachos. However, I was so hungry and tired that I just rammed it in and tried to ignore the taste. I didn’t have the strength to complain and with the kids moaning I just wanted to get back to the room and have some sleep.

The meal cost us £34, it still hurts to even say that.

The kids were asleep in no time and Holly relaxed on the bed reading on her Kindle. I took this opportunity to pop to Tesco and grab a bottle of wine. I then made use of the one good thing our room had, a spa bath. I filled it with water and added some of the kids’ bubble bath as this is all we had with us. I poured a glass of wine and sunk into the bath before hitting the ‘On’ switch. It took a while and made some funny noises then suddenly the bubbles started and it was so bloody loud. Luckily it didn’t wake the kids up; I think they were too exhausted. After about 10-15 minutes I had to turn it off as the bubbles were starting to flow over the edge. Nevertheless, it was the best part of the day and helped me relax enough to get some beauty sleep in before the wedding.

To be continued…

Getting Used to Blogging… I’ll Get There in the End!

Today my man flu is still in full swing. In fact, my nose is worse. My wife, Holly, seemed to be convinced that it was hay fever and made me take antihistamines, which surprisingly enough… did absolutely nothing! This did make me feel temporarily better as it proved that she is not always right. Just most of the time! I soon deteriorated when I remembered that I was still suffering from man flu and it was nothing to do with the pollen floating around in the atmosphere.

Work was a bit better, however, as I was able to lock myself away in an unused room with the excuse that I don’t want to infect everyone else. The fact we all work in an open office made my boss happy to oblige. This meant peace and quiet, no phones or people popping in with computer problems and I could actually get a lot of work done even though I felt ill.

I popped home during lunch to see the family because the kids are also a bit poorly and my 4 year old son, Liam, had his first visit to the ‘big’ school that he’ll be starting at in September. Luckily, the nursery is on the same site and literally next door so it wasn’t too much of a change for him and he said he loved it. He had to go back to nursery in the afternoon too so it was a long day for him as he’s only used to half days.

My 15 month old daughter, Laura, however, was not so happy. She was sat in her highchair, having thrown her lunch all over the floor, and was now crying. No, not crying; whingeing and moaning, loudly, with a face full of snot. I picked her up and she stopped. After Liam had gone to nursery I had a short 15 minute playtime with Laura, the usual stuff; tickling, throwing her about, chasing her around, and she was happy and laughing. After being back at work for 30 minutes I get a text message from Holly…

“What the hell is wrong with this child?”

To which I reply, “She wants me!”

My poorly little girl wants her daddy. At first this made me smile but unfortunately I was stuck at work and Holly would have to persevere. I suggested taking her out for walk so she would hopefully fall asleep in her pushchair. Almost an hour and a half later I get another text telling me that she has finally gone to sleep!

I love my family more than anything, but I don’t think I could cope with being a househusband! I don’t know how Holly does it. Coming to work is like an escape for me, and even though sometimes I feel like putting my head in my hands and crying, or smashing something (or someone!) up depending on the day I’ve had, I’d still rather be there than at home all day.

Once I did finally get home, all was ok again but it was about to change… We have a small tactic we play with Liam where we say we are going to beat him at doing something when he doesn’t want to do it. Whether this be running up the stairs to bed, going to nursery, or going to the toilet. This evening it was eating our dinner. I was, of course, the winner; Holly came in a close second while Laura came third (although half of her dinner was on the floor). This meant that Liam was going to be last. What a mistake it was to point out this fact. We had to listen to half an hour of screaming and arguing that Laura was the loser and he was the winner. I think we need to revise this tactic and use it wisely in the future!

Luckily, however, by bed time he had calmed down and did go straight to sleep. Laura did not! I tried walking her to the shop but she sat bolt upright in her pushchair and refused to go to sleep. I did get a tub of Ben & Jerry’s out of it though so it wasn’t all bad! She has now finally gone to sleep and with the way I’m feeling, I’m going next.

So that was my second post, rather long and detailed when reading it back but I’m sure I’ll get better with time!

Good night…

My First Post (how original!)

Maybe it’s because I’m new to blogging, maybe it’s just my inability to plough right in to things, either way I really felt like I needed an introductory post despite reading that it’s actually more popular to just start blogging as if you’ve been doing it for months. So here it is! Unfortunately, however, after spending so much time thinking of a blog name and choosing a theme and adding a picture (why do they give you so many options!?!) I am going to have to keep this rather short as it’s late and I feel pretty crap. I have a cold, a sore throat and a headache. Basically, I’m on the way to being hospitalised with the deadly man flu any day now.

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for almost a year now but I never knew what to write about. I still don’t really but I thought ‘what’s the one thing I know more than anyone else about?‘

My life…

It will probably be rather boring but at least I’ve started the ball rolling and have accomplished one of my ambitions; to start a blog. So it’s here that I will write about my everyday life, the events that happen – good and bad, my job, the joys of parenthood, the joys(?) of marriage and, from time to time, my thoughts and opinions on things I feel strongly about or happen to be on my mind as I blog.

Anyway, short and sweet I know, but it’s nearly midnight, I’ve got work in the morning, both kids are a bit ill (not as bad as me, of course, nothing is worse than man flu) and my eyelids feel like they have glue on them. I promise to write a more lengthy and (hopefully) interesting post tomorrow.

Night night