Remember my post about looking into bed and breakfasts?  We finally picked one, Seventh Heaven, and made plans to stay last Friday and Saturday night.  It ended up being a fun adventure that just didn’t work out as planned. 

Here is a general picture of a B&B since I forgot my camera, lol.

Friday

It only took us about an hour in traffic to reach Seventh Heaven, so we successfully checked in around 6:30pm Friday evening.  We then spent a quick hour looking around and moving our luggage into our room.  We were immediately impressed by the size of the shower, lol.  And then we started distracting ourselves by checking on the furniture and decorations since it was obvious that they were bought in auctions and had some fun looks.  But then our stomachs reminded us to go eat and we found an Ihop a few miles away.

When we returned, we jumped into the Jacuzzi for an hour or so (I tried the pool but it was a bit cold).  Then we each got to bask in the giant shower while the other of us caught up with their work emails, lol.  We ended up heading to bed around 11pm.

Saturday

We headed down to breakfast around 9am Saturday morning and very much enjoyed it.  It was a simple but delicious and filling 2 course meal – yogurt and fresh fruit followed by whole wheat pancakes and breakfast sausage.  Then we headed outside.

We spent about half an hour on the tree swing and visiting the chickens.  Then we used the two little ponds to play around with the one-person kayak and 1-2 person paddle boat.  That was actually really relaxing even though we worked up a sweat.

But by noon, we were hungry again and ventured out for food.  If any of you are ever on Highway 290 at Cypress Rose Hill, eat at Alicia’s Mexican Restaurant.  YUMMY.  And the portions were gigantic, so we had leftovers for dinner too.  Then we grabbed some champagne and OJ from a grocery store next door and made the 10 minute drive back.

By that time, the slight drizzle in the area had turned into a full out downpour.  So we happily played a few games of pool on the table in the games room on the second floor.  We kept the blinds open so we could watch the rain ping off the roof of the patio.  Eventually, we moved from pool back to our room to watch a little tv while catching up on emails again.  Yay for cable and Wi-Fi. 

Around 4pm, I started craving my leftovers.  So we moseyed back downstairs, grabbed some free coffee and hot chocolate, and had dinner on the patio while watching the rain and lightening off in the distance.  Laura, the lady handling everything, noticed us hanging out and offered us some wine.

She joined us with a bottle of Merlot (we sipped but moved onto Mimosas since it wasn’t our fave) and we chatted a little bit before hearing a loud bang, like a small cannon.  Yay, the transformer blew.  Yay again, Centerpoint Energy’s automated system isn’t working any we can’t reach anyone.  So all 8 of us guests and Laura ended up on the patio and enjoyed her wine and our Mimosas while we watched the light outside fade.

Cutting the Adventure Short

Around 9pm, my younger sister suggested that she and I could go to a movie and see if the power would be back on when we get back.  We let Laura know that we’d be back in a couple of hours and drove off to use my Groupons for a 10pm showing of “Scary Movie 5″ (as stupid as expected).  But when we returned around midnight, the power was still very much dead, we still couldn’t flush the toilet or take a hot shower, so we packed up to leave.  I tried knocking on the door to the room I thought Laura was in, but no one answered.  I tried calling the B&B’s phone number, but it came back with a busy signal.  So we left a note explaining the situation along with our room keys and drove the 45 minutes home.

Overall, the time we had there was awesome with only a few small annoyances like a 5 year old with an Angry Bird picture craze that taped them all over the bottom floor.  And the lack of a backup power generator that most hotels would have had.  But we were close enough to our home not to need to “rough it” unnecessarily because of severe weather issues like fried transformers.    So like I led with, it was a fun but short adventure. 

Cost

For the room we chose, the 2 night weekend minimum would have come in at $388, but I heard back from Seventh Heaven about our payment stuff Monday morning.  We’re being charged for a 1.5 day stay instead of the full 2 days.  So our total is coming in at about $287.  I was expecting to only be charged for 1 night since we couldn’t flush a toilet or use any amenities after 6pm on Saturday (so our whole stay was about 27 hours), but apparently check out is at 11am and I only said nice things out loud while I was there, so it was a battle I lost.  I don’t think I would have complained out loud even though I know better now…it just seems to rude to whine about stuff that can’t be changed.

Oh well, $287 for a new experience.  My sister and I will be looking into other options next time though.  I don’t think we’d be welcomed back anyway since I listed all of the little issues in my email replies, and now they seem offended (and sort of think I am a liar now since it was new-to-them complaints…sheesh).  My first note was really, really sweet since I thought they would have already come to the conclusion that not having a generator for a rural B&B was unacceptable.  But nope.  In the end, I should have just kept all complaints to myself and moved on with life since I doubt they will even see any of it as constructive criticism – just whiny stuff.  Especially since all of the other guests apparently paid in full Sunday morning and checked out.  I don’t understand that at all…we didn’t sign up for camping.  Oh well, I guess that’s life.

Have you ever had a vacation that just didn’t go as planned?  Anything like this?