Wednesday

Oh, it’s been a fun packed day, this view has been a highlight - we are at the hotel we used to come to every weekend for the pool and the social fun with this view which obvs we totally took for granted. We left our city hotel, squashed our cases in the back of the cab, got here, the hotel man came to welcome us and everything. And then it went a little bit wrong because (presumably because of the squashed in cases) the car boot wouldn’t open. It took an hour and ten men to get our cases out of the car. Mr Mahmoud (the danger man, he called himself) got them out through the back seats in the end much to the delight of nine men and us. Less so of our poor driver who had a boot that still didn’t open and a ravaged back seat. At least two of the men had guns, I only suggested to us they might just shoot the boot open, happily for the driver and my mum whose case would have borne the brunt of the shooting this didn’t seem to occur to them.

Anyway, that all done, we got checked in, reassuring the desk lady that although single beds were adequate for one person to sleep in, that isn’t what we had booked. We did it v nicely and got the big beds we had paid for. Brilliantly I’m in room 321 so have spent much of the afternoon perfecting my best Ted Rogers impressions. We had lunch in front of the magnificent view then went to the pool which has, in the last 40 years, been relocated to the back of the hotel which is disappointing but is actually a beautiful pool. It’s very wonderful to be back here, we had dinner in the fancy Indian restaurant (also relocated since 1984) and all is v well.