HOLIDAY: Lincoln

 

For our 30th wedding anniversary we decided to spend the night away in Lincoln, something we hadn't done for over 5 years (staying away overnight!). Perhaps revisiting the Doubletree Hilton in Lincoln wasn't the best place to do this as last time we tried to stay there we ended up coming home at 2am due to a noisy air conditioning unit. Which is a shame because it's a nice hotel and so convenient having the Electric Bar cocktail lounge and Marco Pierre White restaurant all under one roof.

At least you know you get a cookie, and we devoured ours on arrival even though it hadn't been that long since we'd been to Bunty's tea room, but hey it was a long time until dinner!

The room was nice, though the beds weren't the most comfortable (as it transpired) and the sheets ending up being very noisy meaning that you couldn't move for fear of waking each other up. Honestly they might as well stitch together some dried leaves if that's the effect they're going for.

I noticed the sink was leaking too, but I waited to tell them until the next morning as I couldn't be arsed to move room and I didn't want them sending people up to the room to fix it.

We arrived earlier and parked down the road in the multi-story car park, then headed to Bunties to grab lunch before visiting the museum. However, when we arrived Bunty's was shut, even though it should have been open. I looked on their Facebook page and it said 10:30am but there was no one home. So, irritated, we wandered down the hill and headed into a converted chapel called 'The Rest' where we had a rather mediocre bacon bap. Nice bacon, but the cheapest, whitest, 10p bap you could possibly imagine. Semi-satisfied we left and ventured further down the hill and investigated the Art Gallery (where some small children had been brought to cry, inevitably).

There were a few interesting things on display here, a few nice artworks and clocks, but I have to say Grayson Perry's ceramic vases were a bit shit. Well, a lot shit actually...

Having 'done' the Gallery we headed across the road to the Museum where there was a series of Grayson Perry 'tapestries' on display. They were quite interesting/good, but they looked less like tapestries and more like oversized rugs to me, but I guess that's semantics.

After that we headed back up the hill in the hope that Bunty's had somehow miraculously opened in the meantime and lo and behold it had! Our joy was palpable and we had two very nice cakes (lemon and vegan chocolate) before having a quick scout around the town and collecting our cases and heading to the hotel.

As expected the cocktails and meal were excellent, albeit my 'Apple Pie' cocktail was a bit much on top of the sticky toffee pudding I had already eaten. I preferred the Pornstar Martini mocktail I had before dinner if I'm honest, though it seemed a bit mean to give me a soda water chaser instead of the Elderflower cordial I had last time.

We returned to the room and watches the first half of 'The Exorcist' before attempting to get sleep. Well that didn't work and we managed probably two hours sleep between 5 and 7. I wish we'd just driven home like we did before, I'd have happily had two mocktails... but no, we tried, we failed and then we had breakfast - which was okay.

Rather than just driving straight home we had decided to visit the Grantham 'designer outlet', which I can't help thinking was a little bit misdescribed.... Bicester Village it is not. It is where old people go to buy end of line clothes, pillows and other stuff. It's not even particularly cheap, honestly. But I was excited to pick up the first Lindt Santa of 2023. All in all, we returned home very tired and a little underwhelmed.

At least Bunty's Tea Room delivered (eventually) and the meal and cocktails were excellent, but in future I think we'll save ourselves the cost of the room and buy our own cookie.