Still finding time to have fun!

Grand Mer Hotel

Last year, in December, at the Army-Navy annual football game, I won an overnight stay at a luxurious hotel. We have been to a few beautiful hotels here on Okinawa, and loved every each of them. So we were extremely excited to spend a night in a dog-hair-free (Bobby-free), clean and gorgeous place, being pampered, treated like royalty and just spoiled to the bone. That's what we experienced each time before. We were in for a huge surprise. When we arrived at the hotel we were already suspicious. There was no valet at the door. There was actually nobody at the main door, and nobody in the main lobby, and the main desk was deserted too. The hotel looked nice, large, clean, but kind of empty. Rob unloaded the bags, left me behind, and went to park the car in the underground parking garage. As I was waiting for him to show up, a receptionist silently appeared behind the desk with a smile on her face. She tried to pretend like she was there the whole time. But she couldn't fool me! Rob came back and we asked for our room. The lady gave us the key, pointed out the elevator and when we turned back to thank her, she was gone (again).
We carried our bags to the room, which was nice, large, clean, and had a big balcony. It was just so quiet everywhere! We didn't meet any other hotel guests at the lobby, nor the elevator, and not even on our floor. Weird. But we were together, happy to get away from the latest moving troubles, and decided to have fun.
Later, about seven o'clock, we went downstairs for dinner. This huge hotel offered only ONE restaurant and one cafe. The restaurant was empty and yet, we had to wait about fifteen minutes for someone to take our order. This was really fun! Rob was now grinding his teeth (yes, mom, he still does it!). Finally we ordered our food. We both had clam-chowder as a starter, which was served in a bread bowl, and since it was really delicious, we got excited about the main meals. I am not sure how to put it....hmmm.... but I think the main dishes, my steak and Rob's plate of seafood were the worse meals we've had in years. I mean it. It was just plainly disgusting. I can't remember the last time, if ever, I've had such a bad tasting steak in my mouth. I just couldn't eat it. I switched plates with Rob and he ate my steak. I barely touched his seafood; it was pretty much as disgusting as my meal, so he ate it too. After all, Rob is a Green Beret and can eat anything. It's all about surviving.

The next morning Rob was sick.

The hotel had a little store with drinks and chocolates and stuff like that. We wanted to buy some water and drinks. But there was no cashier. This place was totally empty. We walked around the main lobby with a few drinks in our hands, but didn't attract any attention. Rob, after cursing some, and then some more, went back to the restaurant and returned with our waitress, who was also the cashier at the store, bartender, and served at the cafe.

Oh, and the next day's breakfast was just terrible!!!! I am not kidding!

It might seem like an awful experience, but we actually did have fun. We made the best out if it and kept laughing at the overall weirdness of the situation. It was good, and since the most important thing was the company and not the setting, we enjoyed it!

So, here are the pictures from our stay at the hotel.

So I am posing... so what? it's my blog! And I just got my new pair of shoes!!! Aren't they gorgeous????

Looking for a cashier to pay for the drinks....

That's the place where they serve the worse food on island!!!!! Yuck!