Week before last my hubby suggested we go to Philadelphia for the weekend to see the Buffalo Sabres-his favorite hockey team, play against the Philadelphia Flyers. We had a great time at the last Sabres game and we’ve always had a great time in Philly.

HAD being the key word….

Our 2-½ hour trip started out great. Until we got to downtown Philadelphia and our GPS starts “recalculating” on our way to our hotel, the Marriott Downtown, whose address is on MARKET ST. Between our IPhones and our part-time GPS, we get to MARKET ST. We park our car in the driveway for the hotel, unload our belongings, all the while waiting for valet to show up. On our way inside, we see a tiny little sign that says “Valet and Registration entrance on Filbert St”. FILBERT ST? Isn’t the address of a hotel supposed to be where the FRONT DOOR is?

IN MY NEUROTIC MIND IT IS.

While I stand in the lobby with all our stuff, hubby drives around to FILBERT ST to have the car parked. When he gets there, guess what…. the valet man says the lot is FULL even though there’s no sign, but yet, if you’re staying at this particular hotel, you are required to valet park with them for 42 bucks a night. Between our part-time GPS and his IPhone, Hubby ends up finding a parking lot a couple blocks away for “only” $31 per night.

The lobby is a huge circular area with registration on the complete opposite side of the MARKET ST entrance. When we get to the registration area there isn’t a bellman in sight. After hubby got back from parking the car, we checked in. Hubby had made online arrangements directly with Marriott and requested extra pillows and towels. When hubby asked the hotel rep if there were would be extra pillows and towels in the room, the rep said we would have to call housekeeping when we got to the room. Hubby asked him if his request had shown up on the reservation and whaddya know… it was there. But WE had to call housekeeping? uh-uh! Not a great impression so far. ~sigh~

Our next stop is for supper at the HARD ROCK CAFÉ. We sat at a table for two at the end of the bar behind a large column. To get there we have to squeeze through all the people, their coats and bags, in the narrow walkway. The table is right against a wall. We were hungry so we decided to stay and order. As we’re drinking our beer, we realize there’s NO AIR flowing whatsoever. More people have come over to stand at the table behind us. Then a couple comes up to the bar and stands between our table and the people sitting at the bar. Then it hit me-I start getting hot and sweaty, my throat felt like it was closing, and my heart rate was going crazy. Can you say CLAUSTROPHOBIC ANXIETY ATTACK???

Later that night when we’re going to bed, we realize we have THE WORST pillows. EVER. They were half the size of a regular pillow. They had less than half the comfort. ~sigh~

Saturday morning Hubby goes down to the Starbucks in the hotel to get me some coffee while I’m getting ready. Isn’t he awesome? I was a lost, anxious, sleepy girl WHO NEEDED HER MORNING COFFEE!! Only having 3 Starbuckers to take care of a line out the door of the hotel just wasn’t working. He loves me, but probably not wait-in-line-for-an-hour-for-a-grande-upside-down-caramel-macchiato-with-extra-caramel much. We ended up walking to Dunkin’ Donuts instead, just so they could almost get our order wrong. You gotta keep an eye on those Dunkers!

After our cuppa-joe, we went shopping at the King of Prussia mall. The mall was awesome, but getting our GPS to stop “recalculating” was another story. Did they just finish construction and move the roads around, just for fun? We ended up on a rural road out in the middle of nowhere. We consulted our IPhones and used Google maps to get us just a little ways down the road and over the highway. ~sigh~

Saturday night was the hockey game. We took the subway to the arena. While we were waiting about 20 minutes for our train, we found out that the express train was really the local train for that night, and local was the one we needed. So we walked over to the express train for our local service. ~sigh~

After all that, the game was so much fun! Our Sabres won 3-2. And Hubby got us perfect seats. We were in the club section with its very own bar area. Our waitress liked us, of course. We were able to see all the sticks trip the feet, the fists hit jaws, and the blood fall on the ice, oh and of course, all the pucks go in the net. Nothing like going to a fight and seeing a hockey game break out! (I stole that from the couple sitting next to us.)

Even though we started out having a bumpy road, we had an excellent weekend just because we were in it together. ~sigh~