A very long day out in Nottingham started with a trip to the Mansfield Outlet store. Here we replenished our stock of Molton Brown Blue Maquis and also visited the Lindt shop where we bought some pick and mix to supplement the supermarket available Lindors in our Christmas bowl. While we were there I fished out my 'Loyalty Card' which had two spaces left on it. The guy on the till ticked those two and told us we were now entitled to a pick and mix of any 16 chocolates. We were super surprised by this as we thought the loyalty card would get us a tiny Santa worth 50p or something. An excellent surprise that one!
We then headed into Nottingham where Rose had booked an 'Alice in Wonderland themed VR Escape Room experience at the Meetspace VR place out the back of the shopping centre there. We had a quick wander around the shopping centre first and then headed off to the centre. On arrival we were shown to some sofas and asked to wait - to pass the time I played a very old motorbike video game which was quite amusing.
Eventually we were shown into our room and met our guide 'Bo'. She was very friendly and patient with us as we explained that we had never done any VR before and had very limited experience of escape rooms. The headsets were a bit uncomfortable to start with and the hand controls took some getting used to, thankfully the first part of the game was very simple - just finding some chests on different levels of a building and taking the keys to a padlocked door. We still needed help, as we are plainly mentally retarded.
The next part of the game involved finding hats at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and using them to set clocks to release the door to the next part of the game. This was the most utterly confusing part, set in a cave with glowing mushrooms and a big glowworm in the middle. The aim (we eventually discovered) was to pick up a mushroom and take it somewhere else to eat it. But I either seemed to drop the mushrooms or (holding them in front of me so that I could see if I had dropped it or not) ate them prematurely.
Eventually, with much help from Bo, we made it to the next part of the game where we had to play croquet... but we ran out of time before we could even get started on that and so that was the end of that. To be fair, Bo even gave us an extra ten minutes cos we were so unspeakably useless, which was kind of her. I really enjoyed it, but it took a bit of getting used to. Rose was feeling a bit nauseous by the end I think, the VR can be a bit like that.
After this we headed off to 'Be At One' for a cocktail. We tried to go to a 'Be At One' in London once, but we couldn't get in... unfortunately it was a bit of a let down. The place was downstairs and looked great with colourful booths etc. It was happy hour so 2 drinks for the price of one. We decided to have two pina coladas, but of course they didn't have the stuff to make those so we had to choose something else. I don't quite remember what it was called, but it was nothing special and it came in a pint glass full of ice. Ten minutes later it was watered down to the point where it wasn't even as good as it started so we decided to forego a second drink. What a shame.
Finally we headed off to the Crowne Plaza hotel where we had booked a table for dinner. We got there about an hour early and after getting changed in the toilets we decided to have a drink in the bar. The bar was surprisingly busy for a Thursday evening, and the bar was clearly understaffed (and some of the staff they did have were being trained). We got our drinks eventually, well, kind of... Rose's wine didn't have any soda in it and I'm not entirely sure I got diet Coke, but whatever.
Eventually we traipsed over to the Swatch restaurant and that was very nice indeed. We both had a lovely burger garnished with bacon, etc and Rose had a kind of Frangipane thing for pudding while I had sticky toffee pudding. The chips could have been a touch hotter, but overall it was really nice and I would definitely go back. We just need to find a cocktail bar that isn't shit!
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