The Westin

My Chew & Chat mate Tom phoned earlier in the week to suggest a meet-up this evening, and who was I to say no.

We met in his place for an aperitif or two and then walked over to the Westin Hotel, where we ate at The Exchange restaurant. It was a pleasant experience, with excellent, friendly and efficient staff and reasonably good food (my French onion soup was the star of the show), but things were spoiled by intrusive 'background' music. We told them as much on our way out and we didn't really think that they got our point, since all we were told was that it was meant to be like that, since Friday night is such a night, a night that actually involves having a DJ in the restaurant (indeed, we got the impression that we were lucky it wasn't the usual DJ tonight). They definitely considered it an attraction rather than the turn-off we found it.

We went up to the rather nice atrium after the meal, thinking we might have a cocktail, but they don't serve cocktails there and we would have needed to go downstairs to The Mint bar for that. We preferred to stay where we were and just had a couple of pints. I'd already missed the last regular bus by the time we finished there, so there was nothing for it but to go across to Doyles for their late-night service. Great craic there, as usual. I got the 3:00 am NiteLink home.

Need I state the obvious? This is the atrium in the Westin. It's a pity about the noisiness of the image, but I was pleased to get anything at all really, since I shot it blind with the camera on its back on the table in front of us and no way of seeing what the camera was seeing. (I was tempted to make this another kaleidoscope, but resisted the temptation.)