birthday weekend part one - get a room

Well, I am now (even accounting for time zones and everything) 31 years old.

Since my last two birthdays were spent working (one building a shed at my parents' house, and the other watching movers pack up my stuff), I guess Bob decided to do this one up big. He took off from work on Friday, and we did our best to make plans.

I was pretty ill from a cold, starting Monday, and ached and didn't rest well, etc. But by Wednesday, when I got the news about Friday, I was feeling a little bit better. So, to make a long story longer, I started looking stuff up online. I saw that Nottingham was having a "Robin Hood Pageant" and thought it looked interesting. From what I remember of Nottingham, and what I've read in Wiki and hotel reviews, etc, it's not easy to get around in. So we thought it would be just wonderful if we got a hotel room with free parking included in town. Not as easy as it sounds. But I finally found one on Priceline, and booked it. Except, it wouldn't process my card. So really, I didn't book it. But I tried. With my old card and my new one. 4 times each. So I went through the English Heritage partner site, and booked it.

Then I went to Google maps and got our route. I went to "print" and "maps" and adjusted each step's map so it was exactly how I wanted it. I even had a side trip thrown in. Then I clicked "print" and my printer spit out 9 blank sheets of paper, with just the google address on the bottom. Okay. Lord? So I said well, let me print my room reservation info. As it was printing (it worked fine), I got an email from the hotel. So I went to look, and it said, #1, my credit card was declined, and #2, they didn't have any rooms with a sofa bed as I'd requested. So I wrote back and said sorry and thanks but no thanks. SO here I was.

I just left it for awhile and figured we'd find something to do.

Thursday night we tried to look a little, but were still having mental cloudiness.

So Friday morning Bob said he'd really like to go away, so we tried again. I'd seen ads for LateRooms.com and thought I'd try it. They had a place near Derby for 39GBP per night, about 1/2 of what we'd looked at the day before. Bob said, "book it!" and I did. He printed maps (it worked); I found things to look at on the way, and the children packed the suitcase. We left the house about 10:30am.

(Now it's breakfast time, so I'll have to do my story in parts.)