Monday 24 October 2016

Road tripping and New Kennels


What did you do this weekend?  I went to Hogwarts!  Ok, I went on the Warner Brothers Studio Tour in Leavesden, Watford but you know, close enough.

Mark and I are a bit run down with colds right now so as long as he’s feeling better I will hijack the cute pictures he managed to take and fill up a post on why you should stop what you’re doing and go on the tour!

In the meantime I thought I could keep a note of the day before when we drove up to Watford, so that I’d not have to get up early on tour day.

On the Thursday before we travelled Mark ended up needing to stay late at work for a meeting…….. and then we got stuck in really bad traffic.  So by the time we were on the road home we knew we wanted to treat ourselves to some carry out Chinese food and not have to bother about finding something in the freezer.  Unfortunately the first place we went to didn’t take a card, “that’s ok” I said, “let’s just go to the normal place”, except they don’t take cards either and the cash machine next to them was broken….  Fast forward to a trip into town to get money and Mark making a phone order to speed the process up and I was munching into my delicious salt and pepper chicken in less than half an hour.  Not exactly the peaceful start to ‘our anniversary trip’ I envisaged.
leaving work in the dark
By this time it was about 9 so we decided to do a quick tidy up and then head straight to bed.  When we eventually got up on Friday (alarm free!) Mark started packing our things whilst I packed Daisy’s belongings and then went for a short walk with her.  We managed to get into the car pretty quickly and dropped her off at her new ‘kennels’ in Devon.  We’re now putting her to La Dee Da Dog which is a home boarding option for those pampered pooches who haven’t seen in the inside of a regular kennel.  Actually it works out a lot cheaper than half of the kennels I looked up, and although they did look fantastic, Daisy’s not used to them so we didn’t feel it was appropriate for her.  When we found Dee we were very happy with her big garden, comfy chairs for pups to lounge on and kind nature.

With Daisy waved off we headed onto the road, well I say road, but there was a slight miscommunication and the tickets weren’t picked up so after that little detour and a trip to Tesco we were on the road.
just a wee snack for the road
I picked the Watford Mercure hotel to stay at because 1) it was the second cheapest hotel at £55 for a very large family room 2) it had a pool which would keep us entertained when not at the studios. 3) they accepted taste card at their own restaurant 4) free parking.  As this was supposed to be a super budget trip we more than happy with what we got.

We got to Watford really quickly and were pleasantly surprised that it was very easy to find our hotel, we parked up and went straight into the reception who checked us in no problem.  We found our room which happened to be near to the pool and planned on jumping right in, except for there was a swimming class and anyone not involved could only use the Jacuzzi, steam room or sauna.  After faffing about for an hour and hoping in and out of the things we were allowed to use we eventually got in the pool for half an hour before deciding we were hungry! 

We decided to just eat at the hotel because we couldn’t be bothered going out and we found that they were on taste card so we might as well use a 2 for 1 deal on it.  I had a burger and then sticky toffee pudding and I don’t remember what Mark had, but he did like it.  When our bill came they knocked off about £21 so it was exceptionally good value.
sneak peak
All in all it was a very easy trip and I would definitely recommend the hotel as a great cheap and cheerful option for anyone visiting the Warner Brothers Studio in Watford.  Can’t wait to write up about the actual tour now, I desperately want to be back!