Good Times, Bad Service

As I mentioned before, my mother and Helen decided to visit us and, in turn, become our first guests ever and fully justifying the need for a guest bedroom. Unfortunately they bought their plane ticket before we moved so we had to drive down to Georgia to pick them up. Luckily Robyn’s mom picked them up from the airport s we only had to go to Milledgeville.

We spent the night in Milledgeville as we drove down after work and left after lunch the following day, but that was enough time to take them out on the lake, I’m unsure if they enjoyed it or not as they ended up sunburned and looked like they were holding on for dear life… They slept for a little bit on the drive up to Charlotte, so that made that 4 hour journey a little easier as they were still a little jetlagged. Unfortunately dinner that night would prove to be the start of a series of bad consumer service experiences as the waitress at the restaurant was getting order wrong, admittedly it was most likely a combination of Scottish people talking to a Japanese waitress but still…

On Friday they were due to travel by train up to Raleigh, but Helen didn’t bring her photo ID to the train station, so that meant no travel… So instead we had dinner at Mickey and Mooch which was very nice, but our waiter kept us waiting for seemingly minor things, like bread, refills and boxes. On the plus side, we had a ton of left over that would come in handy later on in the week.

On Saturday we drove up to Asheville to see the Biltmore Estate which took up a couple of days as we toured the entire house (as well as taking in the Rooftops tour), the winery (where we picked up more than a few bottles of Biltmore wine), and taking in afternoon tea at the Inn. The hotel we stayed at wasn’t great, it was in a pretty crappy location, which was hard to find, and for dinner on Saturday night, they served me a buffalo chicken sandwich that consisted of raw chicken…

Seriously, raw chicken!

Needless to say, we were pretty pissed about that, our compensation was another bottle of wine as I turned down a replacement sandwich.

Sunday was spent at Biltmore, but not before we literally gorged ourselves during the brunch buffet at the Grove Park Inn, on the way home we went via the outlet stores in Gaffney. Monday we drove them around the Huntersville/Lake Norman area, our bad luck continued as Lowes Foods got our online order mixed up with somone else’s, 4 bad events in the space of 6 days, not too shabby huh? Pretty much the only place we didn’t have bad service was at Biltmore.

Robyn and I had to work the rest of the time, so we left them to their own devices but I hope they had a good time. I know we had a good time being hosts…

Asheville, NC. – March 2007 (Set)

Originally uploaded by FLC.