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In an earlier post, I outlined day one of my NIN based holiday, and I've got a few spare minutes before I collapse into unconsciousness, so I thought I'd finish off with a bit about day two.
I left off previously having returned to the hotel for the night at some point between 11:15pm and midnight... at that point I gave myself a bit of a wash and pretty much collapsed onto the bed. However, I was still to adrenalised to sleep... so I sat up reading "The Last Temptation" - not anything religion related, but the comic set that accompanied the Alice Cooper album of the same name.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
izzy_stradlin happened to have it in her bag. I'd not read it before, but then I hadn't realised it was written by Neil Gaiman & Alice Cooper, with art by Michael Zulli... It was a quite interesting and macabre tale of a mysterious showman, and a grand guignol theatre show in a theate that isn't usually there. I rather liked it.
Then I tried to sleep. I say tried because, as is usual for me, I utterly failed. I never sleep well on my first night somewhere other than home, but I usually at least get enough rest that I can function the next day, and a few hours of sleep in fits and starts. That night was no exception. I reckon I got the equivalent of three hours sleep and about another four of reasonable rest.
I was woken up by a lot of noise out in the corridor from around 7am, though. and eventually had to give in and get up at 8am. I had a bit of a wash and a bit of a shamble around in the room before getting dressed, occasionally looking out of the spyhole in the door. It looked like a bunch of... stage techies? I did wonder if we'd happened to stay in the tour hotel for the gigs or something, but it was a bit upmarket for road crew... no pet beetles or botulism hotpot on the menu, for example.
At around 8:30, I decided to go and get breakfast. We'd had the do not disturb sign on... it was actually a switch by the door that lights up a "do not disturb" sign in red outside, rather than a door hanger. On my way out for breakfast, though, I leftizzy_stradlin still mostly asleep in the room. The housekeeping lady I bumped into in the corridor asked if she could go in and clean, so I told her no because my girlfriend was still in there. She said okay and went off to do a different room. On my way downstairs, the vestibule by the lifts was full of the techies who'd previously been outside my door, along with rather a lot of professional HD digital video cameras, monitors and lighting kit. Apparently they'd booked the whole floor for filming. Nice of the hotel to tell us!
Whilst I was eating my breakfast, I recieved a text message fromizzy_stradlin telling me that she'd reapplied the deadbolt (meaning I was totally locked out, even with my keycard) after somebody we later determined was one of the film crew had let themselves into the room. They'd realised their mistake and left pretty sharpish, but still - they'd let themselves into a locked and occupied room with the do not disturb sign lit. Presumably, they'd been given a master keycard for the floor, seen me leave for breakfast and assumed I was done with the room.
I made my displeasure known to the hotel. Regrettably I didn't manage to turn that displeasure into money off the bill, but I did have two member of staff getting into a panic and getting on the phone to staff on that floor. Apparently the manager went to have words with the film crew. It seems that for the previous night, most of our floor was occupied by film crew, who were due to start early in the morning and didn't know that some rooms had had people swapped into them... like ours!
Other than that, the hotel was really nice. Probably won't stay there again, or if I do, I'll mention the past events and see if I can get a free room upgrade or something.
Anyway - after that we ambled outwards to East London. Near to Stepney Green station is a place called the East End Thrift Store, which is down a dodgy alleyway and unless you know about it, you;d never find it. It's a vintage clothing store where pretty much everything is under a tenner. Some things are more, but still looked pretty reasonable on price. The store itself is a complete dump, but it's full of racks of clothes, in amidst which are some things that are actually rather good. There's a lot of things that are of vintages that we wish time would forget, but a fair bit of good stuff too. I came away with a bargain new waistcoat that I needs a bit of work on the buttons (either find a matching one, replace them all or move the bottom one to the top spot) andizzy_stradlin came away with a slightly less bargain but still not bad pair of denim shorts.
After this, we returned to covent garden to finish the shopping we'd run out of time for on the previous day, then wandered along Neal Street so I could pop into Forbidden Planet. Naturally, I overspent. I picked up the new "Powers" collection (which is pretty mighty - it's back on form, certainly) and the next two collections of "Y: The Last Man", one of which I'll probably read shortly.
We decided that enough was enough at that point and returned home to collapse.
Thus endeth the two day NIN based holiday!
I left off previously having returned to the hotel for the night at some point between 11:15pm and midnight... at that point I gave myself a bit of a wash and pretty much collapsed onto the bed. However, I was still to adrenalised to sleep... so I sat up reading "The Last Temptation" - not anything religion related, but the comic set that accompanied the Alice Cooper album of the same name.
izzy_stradlin happened to have it in her bag. I'd not read it before, but then I hadn't realised it was written by Neil Gaiman & Alice Cooper, with art by Michael Zulli... It was a quite interesting and macabre tale of a mysterious showman, and a grand guignol theatre show in a theate that isn't usually there. I rather liked it.Then I tried to sleep. I say tried because, as is usual for me, I utterly failed. I never sleep well on my first night somewhere other than home, but I usually at least get enough rest that I can function the next day, and a few hours of sleep in fits and starts. That night was no exception. I reckon I got the equivalent of three hours sleep and about another four of reasonable rest.
I was woken up by a lot of noise out in the corridor from around 7am, though. and eventually had to give in and get up at 8am. I had a bit of a wash and a bit of a shamble around in the room before getting dressed, occasionally looking out of the spyhole in the door. It looked like a bunch of... stage techies? I did wonder if we'd happened to stay in the tour hotel for the gigs or something, but it was a bit upmarket for road crew... no pet beetles or botulism hotpot on the menu, for example.
At around 8:30, I decided to go and get breakfast. We'd had the do not disturb sign on... it was actually a switch by the door that lights up a "do not disturb" sign in red outside, rather than a door hanger. On my way out for breakfast, though, I left
izzy_stradlin still mostly asleep in the room. The housekeeping lady I bumped into in the corridor asked if she could go in and clean, so I told her no because my girlfriend was still in there. She said okay and went off to do a different room. On my way downstairs, the vestibule by the lifts was full of the techies who'd previously been outside my door, along with rather a lot of professional HD digital video cameras, monitors and lighting kit. Apparently they'd booked the whole floor for filming. Nice of the hotel to tell us!Whilst I was eating my breakfast, I recieved a text message from
izzy_stradlin telling me that she'd reapplied the deadbolt (meaning I was totally locked out, even with my keycard) after somebody we later determined was one of the film crew had let themselves into the room. They'd realised their mistake and left pretty sharpish, but still - they'd let themselves into a locked and occupied room with the do not disturb sign lit. Presumably, they'd been given a master keycard for the floor, seen me leave for breakfast and assumed I was done with the room.I made my displeasure known to the hotel. Regrettably I didn't manage to turn that displeasure into money off the bill, but I did have two member of staff getting into a panic and getting on the phone to staff on that floor. Apparently the manager went to have words with the film crew. It seems that for the previous night, most of our floor was occupied by film crew, who were due to start early in the morning and didn't know that some rooms had had people swapped into them... like ours!
Other than that, the hotel was really nice. Probably won't stay there again, or if I do, I'll mention the past events and see if I can get a free room upgrade or something.
Anyway - after that we ambled outwards to East London. Near to Stepney Green station is a place called the East End Thrift Store, which is down a dodgy alleyway and unless you know about it, you;d never find it. It's a vintage clothing store where pretty much everything is under a tenner. Some things are more, but still looked pretty reasonable on price. The store itself is a complete dump, but it's full of racks of clothes, in amidst which are some things that are actually rather good. There's a lot of things that are of vintages that we wish time would forget, but a fair bit of good stuff too. I came away with a bargain new waistcoat that I needs a bit of work on the buttons (either find a matching one, replace them all or move the bottom one to the top spot) and
izzy_stradlin came away with a slightly less bargain but still not bad pair of denim shorts.After this, we returned to covent garden to finish the shopping we'd run out of time for on the previous day, then wandered along Neal Street so I could pop into Forbidden Planet. Naturally, I overspent. I picked up the new "Powers" collection (which is pretty mighty - it's back on form, certainly) and the next two collections of "Y: The Last Man", one of which I'll probably read shortly.
We decided that enough was enough at that point and returned home to collapse.
Thus endeth the two day NIN based holiday!
