Continental Breakfast, Bento Basket style at Malmaison
As most of my travel blogs begin at Glasgow Airport, so does this one.
Well, kind of! We spent our first night as man and wife at the Malmaison Hotel in Glasgow city centre. I'd highly recommend it, and we're thinking of going back July '08 for our first anniversary, if we're not overseas. We arrived there just after 1am to champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries waiting for us in our room, which was a duplex, with stairs leading up to the bedroom on a balcony with views out over the city.
This is NOT the best photo of me, but the friends who were on our flight decided to highlight the fact we were honeymooners!
The staff were superb, arranging for our cooked breakfasts to be delivered to the room, which they don't normally do, and even busting open a padlock on my husband's carry-on bag: he'd left the key at our flat on the morning of the wedding, so one set of bolt cutters and a big spark later, we could get the credit cards out at last! The other option was that we'd had to have asked my Dad to come in with the key before our flight!! The continental breakfast was also fab, in a big compartmentalised basket - certainly a nice change to a boring tray!
But it was actually a rather different experience going to GLA this time, as it was just two weeks after the failed terrorist attack. Cars now aren't allowed up to the terminal building, so we were dropped off on the far side of the multi storey car park and had to haul our cases through the car park and into the terminal. The door the jeep crashed into was still boarded up and work was going on to clean the terminal up, inside and out, and there was still a slightly smokey smell in the air at the check in area. It's truly amazing more damage wasn't done, especially when police revealed how many gas canisters were packed into the jeep.
Anyway, checked in just before 12 o'clock, hit duty free (can you spot a trend in what I do at the airport?) and caught up with family friends who were at the wedding and were on our flight out to Dubai as well - they were going out to Thailand to see their son, who was teaching English near Chiang Mai. We ended up sitting in the same row as them, across the aisle so at least I had someone to talk to when Mark fell asleep. And then there was their suprise...see the photo!
Dubai bound once again - one of my favourite journeys!
