Pleasant Surprises

Camden has been asking to go swimming a lot lately.  With her doctor's appointment scheduled for early Wednesday morning, we decided to make an "event" of it and Priceline a hotel for Tuesday night in Indy.  We always do a 2 1/2 star since they usually have a pool and free continental breakfast.  I put in a fairly low price and was pretty confident on the few hotels we would probably get...all fitting our desired objectives.  Sure enough, not a minute after "submit" the message flashed..."Your bid has been accepted."  Followed by..."and we've upgraded you to a 3 star."  Okay, normally that is a reason to be exceedingly happy.  But I knew immediately we could be in trouble.  Sure enough - great hotel, but no pool and no breakfast. UGH!

Since you're locked in (and believe me I called to see if we could argue that fact since it was an upgrade I didn't ask for), we made the most of it.  I did a search for indoor pools in Indy and discovered there are actually options (good to know for the future), but on a Tuesday night, they were more limited than we liked and we decided to do something else.  I found a great indoor playplace (next post) where Kevin and Camden met me after work.  We played for about an hour then checked into our hotel and headed out for dinner.

I had also researched "kids eat free" deals in Indy, but we weren't thrilled with our choices either.  We ended up at Chili's because Kevin and I love their chips and salsa.  Camden made friends with the little girl in the booth next to us.  They colored and fed crayons to the turtle statue and entertained all the waitresses.

When we got the bill, we were pleasantly surprised to find that Tuesday is "kids eat free" at Chili's.  Sometimes, things just work out! 

Speaking of which, the hotel ended up being a very pleasant surprise as well.  No they didn't have a pool, but they did have AIRPLANES.  We were at the Radisson at the old Indy airport.  All the planes fly overhead to land at the new airport.  As we parked, the first one went over and we all squealed in delight.  We stood outside for a few minutes watching.

Our room ended up being on the "right" side of the hotel to watch them the rest of the evening.  This was really about another hour before bedtime (and Kevin heading off to work), but Camden sat in the window and watched and cheered them on the entire time.

I have a few great videos that will hopefully be posted soon (they wouldn't upload last night).  Camden just really couldn't get enough - the sounds, the lights, the closeness of it all. 

She woke up in the morning and immediately jumped out of bed and ran to the window to watch them again.  She didn't even realize how close we were.

We are planning another hotel stay at Easter, so we'll get to swim in the not to near future, but this Priceline "error" was a nice blessing in disguise.