To Derby Anyone?

Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by Kirsty in Blog, Cities

Poi and I randomly decided to head to Derby last weekend. Why derby? Simply because it was slap bang in the middle of Telford and Lincoln. It was not a scheduled lets see each other weekend, but a complete impulse. Hopefully something we will be doing an awful lot more in two months time.

This stuff will be the death of Poi..

So how did it come about? Well Saturday morning we were still our respective towns (me in Telford and Poi in Lincoln) Poi was nursing a very sore head after a dismal performance from England’s football players. Complaining that we both had nothing to do for the weekend we started joking about meeting somewhere for the day. Before I knew it I was looking up cheap hotels in derby, train tickets and how quickly we could both get there! Brilliant, within two hours of our phone call we had met in Derby. But what the hell does Derby have to offer???

I still don’t really know! It has a lovely shopping centre which is like a maze, and a nice catherdral quarter. Unfortunately it seems that most of the shops in the town have shut up and moved to the new shopping centre which does make the actual centre look a little bare. However,  the little exploring we did do made it look like a quite nice place to visit.

Heritage Hotel - Derby

I wish I could say the same about the hotel I had booked early that morning! I definitely learnt a lesson, go and see the place you are planning to stay before you book or hand over any cash. This is more difficult in the UK where most places charge a top rate for people who turn up on the day, and so if you are looking for a bargain it is better to book online before hand.

The “hotel” we ended up staying looked more like an office block from the outside…. a very old office block. Very different to what they described on the net, so much so I really thought it was the wrong place. Once we entered, the reception looked OK, but the minute we got to our room it felt like we had been transported back to the 1970’s. So dodgy you couldn’t even drink the tap water.

and across the street.......

What made it even worse was that our window over looked a nice looking B&B! Why couldn’t we have ended up there? After getting over the shock of our room and the crackling TV – how on earth was I going to be able to watch Doctor Who on that? We headed out for the day. We ended up spending probably a bit more money than we should have but we haven’t been away anywhere in a while. We’ve been saving so much for our trip it was nice to actually do something for once. We just have to make sure when we arrive in Beijing we don’t do the same and blow all our money straight away.

I think the main lesson from the weekend, apart from we love the spontainty of deciding to go somewhere on whim is defiately check out accomadation before we ever pay any money. Obviously this won’t always be possible but at least it’s a story to tell.

Tags: UK