HOLIDAY: Hallmark Hotel Mickelover Court (Derby)

We were looking for a January weekend away, having previously tried to do things in January and finding everything to be shutdown or being refurbished (London Museums for example). We found this hotel on Booking.com and it seemed a good deal, fairly near to home and with the flexibility of being able to cancel up to the morning of the trip if the weather was inclement. The deal became even better when we came to book and found that the breakfast which was previously charged on top was included in the price (£97).

Arriving at the hotel the first impression wasn't promising because of an overwhelming smell of chlorine from the swimming pool and being told that the lift nearest to our room was out of order, but this was soon forgotten when we were offered cake on arrival! Always a good move, if not quite as good as warm Doubletree spiced chocolate cookies....

The foyer itself was quite nice, featuring a ship-style atrium with a bar and glass lift. There were at least two wedding parties in attendance during Saturday, as the result of which we were informed that the dinner would be served in the top floor restaurant and not the ground floor brasserie. 

The room was quite nice, with a couple of chairs and a table, clean and functional if not overly luxurious. We spent a while in the room before heading to the bar for a couple of pre-dinner aperitifs. The bar was a bit drafty, but quite a nice place to sit, albeit quite busy with wedding traffic. After a shower we headed up in the glass lift to the top floor restaurant, which while having a nice chandelier and domed ceiling was rather plain and lacking in decoration. It seems from the hotel website this is usually where they hold smaller wedding parties and perhaps the room is left 'blank' so that it can be decorated for each occasion.
The menu on offer was somewhat smaller than expected from the website, but it has to be said that the food itself (gourmet burgers and chocolate cheesecake) was excellent. After dinner we returned to the bar area and made the mistake of ordering cocktails from a waitress who was obviously unfamiliar with the recipes and presented us with the two strongest cocktails ever made. The Long Island Iced Tea in particular was verging on flammable, overwhelmed as it was with the taste of Tequila... who knew that was even an ingredient? The Singapore Sling wasn't AS bad, but could still be used in fire breathing. On the other hand they were remarkably cheap at £6 each, which was a bargain considering the volume of alcohol contained within.
Feeling rather woozy (especially me since it was about a month's worth of alcohol in one night for me) we retired to the bedroom and flicked through the channels on the TV for a while before crashing out at 11:15. As usual we didn't sleep brilliantly, waking up several times, but the bed was okay and the road noise (quite significant in the day) didn't seem to be an issue.
When we woke up I didn't really feel like following through on the planned 'exercising before breakfast' idea, but since it would be a shame to leave without taking advantage of the facilities I decided to go for a swim while Rose used the gym.

The pool was quite small, but very nicely done. There was only a few people in there (which was just as well). I managed to do 50 length's in about 35 minutes while Rose used the treadmill. Then we headed off to change for breakfast. While the sausages and bacon looked nice, I was minded to steer clear and have cereals instead. It was your average hotel breakfast really. Small croissants...

I don't think we'd rush back, but for the money, it was pretty good, and the food in the restaurant was very good value indeed.

SHOPPING: Intu Shoppign Centre (Derby)

Surprisingly, given it's proximity, we hadn't visited Derby's shopping centre before. While not as big as Meadowhall it was still a decent size and being quite new was a nice place to visit. No major purchases were made although Rose was tempted to buy a limited edition £600 Jennifer Hogwood painting. We had a good look at some watches in Ernest Jones and some other independent jewellers (still no sign of the new TAG Heuer Carrera 01 unfortunately) but ultimately came away with little more than a couple of pairs of jeans and some books from The Works. Oh and some M&S biscuits.

DECORATING: Third bedroom

Started with the idea of putting up a shelf to put my QP folders, but quickly escalated into a full scale revamp. Rather liked the idea of doing the room grey (a la Wingfield House), and having a desk to use for writing and recording music, and brightening up the room after the rather gloomy purple. Also decided that I didn't use the chair nearly enough to compensate for the amount of room it takes so that went into the garage pending sale or disposal.
Started taking down the shelves on New Years Eve, knowing we wouldn't be needing the bedroom that night. Painted three walls grey (well two coats of white first, and then two coats of grey) and then stripped the wallpaper off the back wall as it was already ripped and had found some very funky paper in B&Q, but this took a long time as I felt I needed to get the walls as smooth as possible before papering.
The paper actually went on quite easily and I managed to do the whole wall with one roll (which was a result, at £18 a roll). Once I did that I paid a visit to Dunelm and Ikea in Nottingham on the Sunday morning and picked up a set of drawers, some grey curtains, a wardrobe door (desktop) and a new grey cover for the chair that's been sulking in the conservatory for I don't know how long.
The rest of Sunday was spent attaching the desk to the wall, drilling holes and fiddling with things like the hi-fi storage. Also building the drawers, which turned out to be too deep for the desk and had to swap them with the unit in the computer room, which meant I had to take that desk down, chop the frame in half and put it all back! Seriously, you could not make this up.
Needless to say by the end of Sunday night (10:50pm) it still wasn't finished... but I was utterly knackered. Four days solid DIY with a New Years Eve party in the middle of it, genius. Still, at least I didn't go back to work feeling like I'd wasted my time off.

 - - -

Work continued on the room for two more weeks! The chair in the conservatory had to be replaced and the desk was too narrow so I had to go back to Ikea again the following Saturday. I also came up with the idea of using a wardrobe rail as a conduit for hiding the speaker wires going up the wall. Then I thought I'd finished but decided that my guitar looked rubbish on a grey wall and bought some dark grey paint. Decided against this too and took it back and bought another roll of fancy paper. This meant the shelves all had to come down again and that wall needed scraping to prepare it for the paper. Finally finished on Saturday night (16th Jan!). Think it was worth it though, it looks pretty good.

89 holes in this wall alone.

On goes the fancy wallpaper.

Looks disappointing against the grey wall.

ASDA clock with TAG Heuer sticker on dial.

Much. much better!

Nice curtains and more CD storage.

Speaker wires are hidden on the right side.

All of this just to have somewhere for the QP folders!

Speaker wires are hidden in here.