Adults Have Rights TOO...
Adults Have Rights TOO...
Eating with kids is much like eating on the beach. You tolerate it, but it becomes a survival thing instead of an experience. That's what we experienced at the Marriott...
Our first night in London, we were adapting to the travel and time change as well as the lose of a day... We had a great latte at the airport before going to the hotel. Once settled in, we had a satisfying lunch in the 'pub' at the hotel; they were able to prepare a meal within my dietary limits (no salt or fat)... The atmosphere was great, with a variety of quotes on the wall and a comfortable ambiance... It seemed the same as we had experienced four years ago.
After getting settled into our room and taking a welcomed nap (fully reclined, not sitting up), we were ready for dinner. Since it was after 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, we figured that the big dinner rush at the restaurant would have been past... Little did we know! We apparently hit the restaurant about the same time many families were returning from LegoLand with tired, hungry kids... What should have been a pleasant experience turned into a madhouse.
Kids everywhere! Tired kids... Hungary kids... Restless kids... And to top that off, the hotel only make reservations for groups of four or more (and there were plenty of the 'more' groups). Therefore, they tried to find us a table that was accessible with my walker. Initially, they placed us at a table that was right next to a group of 8 (six of them kids)... We asked for a different table and they finally found one that was up a short flight of stairs, which we took and I negotiated well with my walker...
Now the three closest tables had families of adults and kids... We thought that we were a safe distance from them, but we were wrong... Two of the families attended pretty well to the kids, helping them make their choices from the buffet, but the third was reminiscent of the Durley family from the Harry Potter movie... There was an indulged, spoiled brat between the two boys and he was climbing over everything, hitting his brother, complaining about this and that... He was the epitome of Dudley Dursley!
The parents totally ignored the misbehavior of the bratty child and only disciplined the older child when he dared to respond to the taunts and hits from the other child... These parents simply didn't care is children were there; they must have been tired from their day of trekking about the amusement park...
NOTE: While the British parents seemed to accept the misbehavior of the children, German parents paid attention to their kids at the table, playing with them, interacting with them... The German children also knew that when the parents said to stop doing something, they did so... What a refreshing change that was...
Back to the Marriott... We had been seated for about 15-20 minutes before anyone came by to take our order, even for drinks... The servers were apparently used to the occupants gorging themselves on the not-so-inexpensive buffet that they had ceased to be servers! When we finally got someone's attention, they took our order and did not quite understand the special dietary needs that I had; we explained it again and again... Finally, we got our order in, but didn't know if the chefs would know how to follow it! In the end, I got a fish dinner with broccoli and tomatoes that did not seem to have been salted... But it was an ordeal, at best...
After that experience, we vowed to not eat dinner or lunch in that restaurant again... Any remaining dinners were taken in the pub, seated in the smoking section to ward off too many kids... (It was amazing how many parents still brought their kids into that section, however.) The servers there were pleasant and used to attending to the needs of the clientele and the cooks did a great job preparing our meals... What a pleasant change.
A final word about the kids at the hotel in the next installment...
Eating with kids is much like eating on the beach. You tolerate it, but it becomes a survival thing instead of an experience. That's what we experienced at the Marriott...
Our first night in London, we were adapting to the travel and time change as well as the lose of a day... We had a great latte at the airport before going to the hotel. Once settled in, we had a satisfying lunch in the 'pub' at the hotel; they were able to prepare a meal within my dietary limits (no salt or fat)... The atmosphere was great, with a variety of quotes on the wall and a comfortable ambiance... It seemed the same as we had experienced four years ago.
After getting settled into our room and taking a welcomed nap (fully reclined, not sitting up), we were ready for dinner. Since it was after 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, we figured that the big dinner rush at the restaurant would have been past... Little did we know! We apparently hit the restaurant about the same time many families were returning from LegoLand with tired, hungry kids... What should have been a pleasant experience turned into a madhouse.
Kids everywhere! Tired kids... Hungary kids... Restless kids... And to top that off, the hotel only make reservations for groups of four or more (and there were plenty of the 'more' groups). Therefore, they tried to find us a table that was accessible with my walker. Initially, they placed us at a table that was right next to a group of 8 (six of them kids)... We asked for a different table and they finally found one that was up a short flight of stairs, which we took and I negotiated well with my walker...
Now the three closest tables had families of adults and kids... We thought that we were a safe distance from them, but we were wrong... Two of the families attended pretty well to the kids, helping them make their choices from the buffet, but the third was reminiscent of the Durley family from the Harry Potter movie... There was an indulged, spoiled brat between the two boys and he was climbing over everything, hitting his brother, complaining about this and that... He was the epitome of Dudley Dursley!
The parents totally ignored the misbehavior of the bratty child and only disciplined the older child when he dared to respond to the taunts and hits from the other child... These parents simply didn't care is children were there; they must have been tired from their day of trekking about the amusement park...
NOTE: While the British parents seemed to accept the misbehavior of the children, German parents paid attention to their kids at the table, playing with them, interacting with them... The German children also knew that when the parents said to stop doing something, they did so... What a refreshing change that was...
Back to the Marriott... We had been seated for about 15-20 minutes before anyone came by to take our order, even for drinks... The servers were apparently used to the occupants gorging themselves on the not-so-inexpensive buffet that they had ceased to be servers! When we finally got someone's attention, they took our order and did not quite understand the special dietary needs that I had; we explained it again and again... Finally, we got our order in, but didn't know if the chefs would know how to follow it! In the end, I got a fish dinner with broccoli and tomatoes that did not seem to have been salted... But it was an ordeal, at best...
After that experience, we vowed to not eat dinner or lunch in that restaurant again... Any remaining dinners were taken in the pub, seated in the smoking section to ward off too many kids... (It was amazing how many parents still brought their kids into that section, however.) The servers there were pleasant and used to attending to the needs of the clientele and the cooks did a great job preparing our meals... What a pleasant change.
A final word about the kids at the hotel in the next installment...
posted by Gerald Boerner's Blog at 8:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home