Holiday Ick Express

Overall we had an unimpressive stay at the Holiday Inn Express the night before. It was pretty creepy. There was no iron in the room. Annemari investigated and found out that they had an “ironing room”. We went down to I think the basement and it was in a long narrow room. There were two or three irons and ironing boards along the wall. It was weird. The hair dryer was in a drawer in the desk, and you had to keep pressing the on button to keep it on. This hotel also kept all of their supposedly clean linens in the large brick entryway to the building. You then had to go into a foyer and take the lift “elevator) up to the next floor. There were 5 sets of doors between the entrance of the hotel and our rooms. It was insane. The hotel was right on the water, so there was absolutely no parking for our “tuna boat” (as Annemari lovingly calls our Audi). Today we visited hospitals in Liverpool and Chester, and we made our way to Leeds for the night. We met one of the UK marketing people, Jan, at the hotel in Leeds and had dinner and drinks. I work with some really nice people which makes everything better.

That night we stayed at Bewleys Hotel, which is pretty decently priced, but it had that nice hotel feel. They have an awesome restaurant. One pretty cool thing is they have cheese plates as a desert… and it is gooood cheese too. This area of the country is apparently the dairy region. The bathtub in the room was long and deep – kinda coffin like, but lovely! I nearly killed myself getting in it and then again getting out. Just like the Holiday Inn Express, there were no toiletries - they had these squeeze bottles of liquid soap attached to the wall of the shower. Also just like the Holiday Inn there was no air conditioning, and the hiar dryer was in the door. Jan told me the reason there was no light switch or wall plug in the bathroom is because their power is 220 volts and one spark could kill you. It makes it very hard to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

By the end of the day I was a bit more comfortable with driving on the left. Poor Annemari would squeal in terror and gently remind me that I’m on the wrong side. We have been having MAJOR problems with our sat nav (what we would call a navigation system). We basically don’t know how to use it.