The Hotel

The Westin Hotel, Minneapolis. Pretty good. The shower is nearly as big as my bathroom. A/C that actually works although it is a bit loud if I'm picky. Big tele which I have just about worked out as long as I want to watch ESPN non-stop sport; that's OK but it seems to be mainly basketball which sucks. They do take their sport seriously over here - I suppose no more than in UK but here there are 4 sports to take seriously: football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey - we're no good at sports we didn't invent as one Minnesotan said to me. Hockey and football are the big ones in Minneapolis as far as I can work out, I think their baseball and basketball teams aren't doing too well at the moment. Anyway back to the hotel. I arrived around 6.30 on Monday night to discover that whilst they had a reservation for me, no one had actually paid for it. So, after some discussion of what to do - I was totally knackered by this point - I paid over about half of my US cash to secure the room and said I would sort the rest of the stay out the next day when I got to the office. They were happy with that thank Clapton. Then the door entry card didn't work, back down to the desk, new card, back up to room and it worked. Now, totally spaced out, I went down to the bar - it was only 7.00 pm here (about 1.00am for me) ordered one of the local brew, rather nice a bit like a dark lager but not too sweet (about the only thing I have found that I can say that about) and chatted football to a nice chap called Al, who was quite happy to admit he had done rather well over the last few years; he is a lawyer specialising in foodstuffs (e-coli etc) who very kindly paid for my drinks. The conversation was "one of those" that moved, in no particular order, through what was wrong with the college sport system in the States (too much money in it as far as I could tell), why soccer or "your football" is just as skillful a game as "ours", Afghanistan and Iran (of course) and subtle differences between attorney and advocate, the rest was a bit of a blur until after a couple of hours supping and chatting I suddenly felt as if someone un-plugged me and I had to get to bed. I don't think I have fallen asleep that quickly since I was a baby. This was slightly spoiled when I woke up at around 3.00 convinced it was 8ish. I think I had discovered the famed jet-lag.