Day 1 - Friday 11th September continued
So we arrived at Manchester Airport at around 7pm. This was pretty efficient to be honest. Friday night traffic on the M62 can be tough around Leeds but we breezed through pretty quickly which was great. So we got to the hotel and parked up, we were meeting Ian's Mum at the hotel before going out for dinner.
We checked in and they tried to give us a twin room...
Well I know we aren't married yet but hey what's up with that? So I smiled nicely and asked if they had a double. The lady at the desk tapped away at her computer and magically produced a double room for us. We were really pleased, it was a great room with a view of the airport.
Our view from the window was great as we could see the runway. Lol not that I spot planes but I liked watching.
So we quickly dropped the bags in the room and used the facilities, 2 hours is a long time and i'd had a can of diet coke...
We then called Ian's Mum and she was on the same floor. We arranged to meet her by the elevators... say hi to Elaine!
All of this took place much faster that it probably sounds and we were back in the car and heading out for dinner by 7:15. We had arranged to meet our best friends for dinner at TGI Fridays. It didn't take us long to get there and they were very excited to see us. This was also the first opportunity for the Mickey head wear to make an appearance. This is our friend Claire.
We checked in and were taken to our table which had balloons? This confused us a little and evidently our server who immediately came over with balloon hats and asked who was having a birthday. Well although I was about to use a voucher for free desserts that I got because it was almost my birthday (1 month away) there was no way they would know. Then I remembered I booked the table online and when it asked if we were celebrating anything (lol you would think they were Disney!!!) I had put that we were celebrating the first day of our Holiday. Lol I never expected them to give us balloon's for that. But hey it was funny
This is us all wearing our balloons. Daniel is Claire's husband!
Dinner was yummy, we had 3 courses (sorry no food porn) including our free desserts. I am a firm believer that you if you can get free stuff you should take advantage of it. It was great a free dessert
each.
After dinner we needed to take our car to the car park where we would leave it for the next 3 weeks. It was about 10pm now so it was getting late but we did not want to have to do in the morning. One of the advantages of the hotel we were staying at is that it is attached to the airport via an indoor bridge so going into the airport would be easy. It's quite an expensive hotel - the Radisson SAS, but we some how managed to get a bargain, £55 for a hotel that normally costs about £120.
We parked up the car and then had to wait for the bus back to the hotel. Here we are waiting.
And waiting and waiting some more until the bus finally came 20 minutes later. Claire and Daniel were using a different car park and were already at the hotel waiting when we got there. They ordered us some drinks while we quickly dropped off the last of our bags in the room. Yey did I mention they are our BEST friends!
We had a drink together before heading off to bed at about 11pm. We had a long day ahead of us tomorrow.