3112

I may have consumed a little more wine that I though I did last night. Luckily, it’s a Friday and my morning is always taken with catch-up meetings with various team members. I really like Fridays because I feel this is the point where I get to work out what’s going on across the project I am working on and I have a bit of time to contextualise things: to work out if I should be doing something differently with the things I do all day long. Plus, it’s always nice to have a natter. 

Then, at the end of the day I signed-out and put my out-of-office message on.  Earlier this month I had offered to help my Mum and Dad in Spain and my flight is early tomorrow morning. I decided that the cost of a hotel at Gatwick could, at least partially, be offset against the cost of an early manning taxi. And that is why at about 8pm I got on a train that, eventually got me to Gatwick by about 8:45pm. 

I was staying at the Hilton - room 3112 - and I took full advantage of their in-app check-in and digital key. I’ll admit to feeling a bit smug as I walked past a long check-in line and went straight to the lifts and, then, to my room without having to interact with anybody.  It meant I could be down in the Garden Restaurant by 9pm and order dinner.

Since I was last here, the restaurant has changed. It seems to have been sliced in half, lost all the carvary/buffet areas. The restaurant half is now a more standard table service restaurant and the other area appears to have been turned into a sports bar. This would be OK if Hilton had erected a wall but the refurbishment budget appears not to have stretched that far and the bar and restaurant are open to each other.  In some circumstances, this might be fine but the bar was loud and it was intrusive to the people dining.  Nonetheless, the food was decent and the service was attentive so I managed to have my dinner and be back in the room for just after 10pm.