As most of you know, Lori and I celebrated the one year anniversary of the day we met over the weekend. I rented a room with a hot tub at the local Marriott for Friday thru Sunday morning.
When we arrived at the hotel, we checked in. I asked if the room had a microwave and was told, yes, it has a kitchen with a refrigerator. Cool, a fridge! I figured it was one of those small ones.
We got the room key cards and headed up to the fifth floor.
When I booked the room, I saw photos of the room. It was one long room with a king size bed at one end and a sofa opposite the hot tub at the other. The bathroom was next to the hot tub. The room was $169 a night (less my $10 AARP discount for $159), which is kind of expensive, but I used points on my Marriott Rewards account to get one night free. So the room was really only going cost about $80 a night, so I figured it would be well worth it.
And was it worth it! That wasn't at all what the room was like at all.
I opened the door with the card and the room as dark. I pushed open the door, Lori walked and i turned on the light. This is what we saw.
The thing I immediately noticed was that there was no bed. WTF, where's the bed?
I walk in and look to the right and there really is a kitchen. All that was missing was the stove. It had tons of cabinets, a refrigerator, a coffee maker and a microwave oven.
We walked into the dining area and living room. HOLY CRAP! There's a table set for dinner and living room, but where's the frigging bed?
Here's the TV opposite the sofa and the desk with a telephone.
This is the sofa and a large chair and ottoman.
This is the view looking back toward the kitchen and door into the room.
I saw two doors opposite the kitchen. I looked through the first door and saw the hot tub.
It was HUGE and wide enough for the both of us side-by-side. The walls around the tub were marble.
To the left of the hot tub was the sink and toilet. All the fixtures were by Kohler and very nice.
I turned around and walked through another door into a wash room with a large double closet.
Continuing straight ahead was the bedroom. Yes, a frigging bedroom!
This is the love nest!
Your looking back out the bedroom door. Through the door on the left you can just see the refrigerator in the kitchen.
This was not just a large room like we saw in the photos on the web site, THIS WAS A FIVE ROOM SUITE! We discussed that maybe, just maybe, they put us in one of the more expensive suites instead of the $159 a night room I reserved. I didn't care and I wasn't going to ask. I figured if they did make a mistake and tried to charge me more, I'd argue when I checked out. I'd never stayed in a room this large or this nice before so I was going to enjoy it and worry about how much it was going to cost when we checked out.
We got settled and made a couple of gin & toncs for us. I asked Lori if she wanted to get room service instead of going out for dinner. I'll give you one guess what she said.
Go ahead and guess.
Your right! She said no to room service.
LOL, just kidding.
Of course she said yes. What would you expect?
The menu offered so many choices that it was difficult to decide what to get. I told Lori to order what ever she wanted, because it was our anniversary. We got steamed little neck clams in a garlic sauce for the appetizer and a spinach salad with goat cheese, bacon bits, shredded carrots, almonds and blue cheese dressing. Lori ordered half a duck with some kind of sauce and I ordered steak with shrimp scampi. All of it was excellent!
After dinner it was off to a shower and a dip in the hot tub. We'll show you a few of the less-explicit photos this Thursday for HNT. The more-explicit ones were saving for ourselves. ;-)
After the fun in the tub, we retired to the boudoir for a movie, some well deserved snuggling and a night cap. About 12:30 we could hear our neighbors showering and then retired to their boudoir for what was obviously some very HOT snuggling. Let's just say she was a screamer, so the snuggling must have been HOT indeed! LOL
The next day we slept late and hung out in bed for a while. I hung the 'DO NOT DISTURB' sign on the door the night before, so about 12:30 maid services called and ask if we wanted our room made up. Lori told them we'd be out by 2:30, so they could make up the room by then.
We went to breakfast and then went back to my house to kill some time. We decided to go to the movies while we were out. We saw the movie '
The Number 23'. All I'll tell you about it is don't believe anything the critics say about the movie. Jim Carrie was very good and we both enjoyed it.
After the movie we went back to the room and got cleaned up for dinner. The Marriott shares a parking lot with 'Red Lobster' and 'Smokey Bones BBQ & Grille'. Lori wanted ribs, so we took the short walk across the parking lot to Smoky Bones. Dinner was very good, so if there is a Smoky Bones near you, I recommend trying it out.
Then it was back to the room for....... well, you know. ;-)
Check out was at 12:00 noon on Sunday, so I set the alarm for 11:00. We got up, packed and then went down to the front desk to settle the bill. They handed me the bill and to my surprise, it really did cost $159 a night. I consider that an excellent deal and well worth the price!
In 1955 we moved from St. Petersburg to Clearwater. Here we are doing what we did practically every weekend, fishing. We didn't have very much, but one thing my father made sure of, was that we always had a boat.
These are my father's parents. If you guessed they are Polish, your right. This shot of us was taken on Christmas Eve in 1955. We always opened our gift on Christmas Eve.
I carried that air rifle around with me everywhere and almost never took off that holster.
I think my grandfather loved fishing as much as my father did. I remember the day they brought this tarpon home. It was the biggest fish I seen up to that point. All the neighbors came over to take a look at it.
This shot was taken during Christmas 1956. Miraculously, we still lived in the same apartment.
