Thank you to the Manchester Crowne Plaza

I took the Baroness away for a night in Manchester last weekend as an early Christmas present. She's been mentioning about staying in nice hotels for quite a while now (a number of years...) and I thought it was about time I actually pulled my finger out and booked somewhere.

After asking around on Twitter about where is nice (but not too pricey) to stay I got a response from @CrownePlazaManc asking for their hotel to be considered. After a number of tweets and some review checking on TripAdvisor (#5 out of 129!) I booked a room at a very favourable rate especially as it was for the Saturday before Christmas.

We arrived mid-afternoon on a very snowy Saturday to a nice new looking hotel just a few minutes walk from Manchester Victoria station. Upon check-in I was even more pleased with the deal as we received a complementary room upgrade to one on the 'club floor' - the top floor of the hotel with stunning city views and access to the 'club lounge' (read as free drinks and snacks).

Our room was excellent, very spacious with a very large comfortable bed, two easy chairs positioned by a massive window overlooking the city (you can clearly see The Angel pub in the photo).  The bathroom was very classy with robes and slippers too with both a shower cubical and a bath which is not that common.

By now the Baroness had the biggest smile on her face ever which meant the whole thing was well worth it! We took a wander around the Manchester Christmas markets and when we got too cold we went back to the hotel to get ready for our evening out in town. It was past 6pm so the 'booze fridge' in the club lounge was available so we were able to enjoy a couple of cold beers as we got ready.

The hotel's location couldn't have been better as we had a couple of hours to kill before our meal and the super Marble Arch pub was no more than five minutes walk away. I sampled the Manchester Bitter, Lagonda IPA & Dobber and all were in tip-top form - absolutely divine!

This was then followed by another five minute walk to the Bem Brazil restaurant (the northern quarter one) where we had an excellent Brazillian 'meat-fest' - the waiters just kept bringing more and more tasty spit-roasted meat until you couldn't move! After that we wandered slowly back to the hotel where we collapsed into the massive bed full & happy and had an excellent night's sleep.

I would like to say a very very big 'thank you' to the Crowne Plaza hotel in Manchester for a wonderful weekend, without them the weekend just wouldn't have had the same Christmas sparkle that it did. My hat goes off to you Crowne Plaza - you really did pull out all the stops for the Baron! :)

P.S. If you ever need a room in Manchester get in touch with @CrownePlazaManc and see what they can do for you, oh and don't forget to say the baron made me do it!