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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Laughter is the best medicine when you're locked out of your honeymoon hotel!

Hi HoneyLuna! We would love to share our honeymoon story with you for your blog!

We (me and Chris) went to Ireland. I had never been out of the country, so I was looking forward to this trip more than anything. We arrived in Dublin and went straight to the "bed and breakfast" inn to check in. The employees were extremely polite and very sweet. They gave us maps and ideas of places to visit and sat down to talk to us for a while. However, they forgot to tell us about "curfew", which was when the Inn locked it's front doors. Since I was not familiar with staying at an Inn, I never thought to ask.

That night we got all dressed up and "went out on the town". I was wearing a cocktail dress and high heels. We had a great time touring Dublin. We arrived at the Inn after 12 midnight and to our surprise, the doors were locked. We rang the bell, but there was no answer. We called the Inn from our cellular phone, no answer. Since our room was in the front of the Inn on the ground level, my husband had the idea that we could crawl in from the window. "Crawl in from the window?! What is he nuts?"

I was imaging being arested for breaking and entering in Ireland. "Mom, I'm in jail in Ireland...can you come and get me?". Anyway, needless to say I gave in and we went to our window. It then starts to rain (of course). So, here I am, in the rain, with my husband up my dress trying to lift me to the window on our first honeymoon night. Needless to say, we couldn't get the window open and it was late. He put me down and we began to laugh, hysterically, at our misfortune.

We weren't in a main area and didn't know how exactly to contact a cab company or where the nearest hotel was. We begain walking down the street trying to find...something, and making jokes about what else could go wrong. Although this wasn't my ideal situation, I remember thinking to myself, "I couldn't be happier". We have no place to sleep, my high heels are killing me, there isn't a cab in site AND it's raining...and there we were laughing and laughing down the street to the point where I had to stop because I was laughing so hard.

We turned the corner and finally spotted a cab! It's a miracle! We hopped in and told the cabby our story. The cabby told us that all the hotels in Dublin were probably booked due to a convention of some sorts and we began going to one hotel after the other. All booked. After the seventh hotel or so, the cabby said "I know where to go" and took us to another hotel, where he got out with us and went to the reservation desk with us. He was friends with the person behind the counter and explained our story to him.

The hotel employee said that he had no rooms available but told us to wait a minute in the lobby. He went up the stairs and came back down sortly after. He said that he would give us the hotel "employees" room - which I assume was a room designated for employees to sleep from time to time. He said it was all he had and that if his boss knew, he would get into trouble giving away the room but gave it to us anyway. We said ok and were glad just to be out of the rain. The cabby left and refused to take any money for the drive.

The hotel employee said that the room was very small and only had a single bed...we didn't care at that point. We went up to the room, completely exhausted and soaked. We undressed having nothing that was dry to change into and squished into this single bed - and I mean SQUISHED. We woke up the next morning still making jokes about the night before and how he hogged the covers and moved around on the bed all night. We put our clothes back on, me in my (now wrinkled and still damp) dress and he in his suit. We must have looked like some pair walking out of the hotel, down the streets of Dublin! We took a cab back to the Inn.

We arrived and the employees said that they were very worried about us since we didn't not come back at the required time. We said that we had never been told of the curfew. We still wanted to see more of Dublin so went back to our room, showered, and went back out to sightsee. When we returned to the Inn later we found champagne and chocolate in our room and received a personal apology from the manager (who, by the way, did not charge us for the night).

But the best part of the story for me was that I REALLY realized I had married the right person, someone who could laugh even when the chips are down. We had a great time that night (despite our bad luck) and I will never forget it. It was the best night and the worst night all in one!

Deitra and Chris Hughes

p.s. We really loved using HoneyLuna's honeymoon registry! (http://www.honeyluna.com/)
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