Another trip to Mystic!

As you may recall, last October, we made our first trip to the Mystic Seaport Museum.  It was a nice trip, except for the rain we had while driving down there, and the really crappy hotel we had to stay at.  The thing was, we’d learned about this beer event that they were having there, and by he time I did hear about it, it was too late to book a hotel room anyplace decent that was within our budget.  The closest affordable place I could find was the Super 8 in nearby Groton, but what a pain in the ass that was!

This is a really nice place if you don’t mind trying to find it in the dark, because the roadside sign light was not turned on.  And if you are a fan of having poop stains on the sheets, well, this is indeed the place for you!  You can read all about that trip right here!

Well, you can guess that although we’d love to return to Mystic, we won’t be staying at THAT dump again!  Now, this is not dissing ALL Super 8 locations, the one in Sturbridge, MA, is just fine…we have stayed there three times so far and have booked a fourth stay for an event at Old Sturbridge Village in March.  It just depends on who is running the place, these are mostly franchises.

So, as I said in that post about our trip to Mystic, next time, I will plan further in advance, so that we can stay anyplace BUT Hotel PoopySheets.  Mike’s birthday is May 8, and it falls on a Saturday.  And by some strange happenstance, we DON’T have baseball tickets to anywhere for that weekend.  It would be, I decided, a perfect time to visit Mystic Seaport again…before Memorial Day weekend, so stuff won’t be mobbed with a thousand screaming kids.  But the weather should be okay…I hope…

I decided to first look for a Hilton Family owned property.  For one thing, they are nice, even the more budget ones, and for another, I’ve achieved Silver status on my Hilton HHonors membership, and I’d like to maintain that so I can keep earning points for free stays in the future.

The Mystic Hampton Inn & Suites is a Hilton owned property.  It’s wicked close to the I-95 exit, and only two miles from the museum.  I checked it out on TripAdvisor, and was pleased to see that reviewers rated it as the #1 hotel in Mystic.  So between that, and the fact that Hilton is a name I can trust (unless the first name is Paris…LOL), I felt safe booking it…with a special sale rate that meant I had to pay in advance, and it’s non-refundable.  But I doubt there will be any reason why we WOULDN’T go, this is for Mike’s birthday, and he will enjoy it.

So,  I expect this room to be a LOT better than the Super 8, that there will be no poopy sheets, no one brought their dog into the place and used the bed for a Toto toilet. The Hilton properties don’t allow pets or the most part, anyway, so if you are traveling with Toto or Fluffy, best to look elsewhere!

Of course, I made sure that it offers free WiFi, which it does.  How come it seems that the cheap to moderate places always have free WiFi, but the places that cost $300 a night charge something like $20 a day to get online?  It’s silly, I’d rather stay at the cheap place, as long as it’s not a scary, dirty dump!

And of course, we must remember that you can’t buy beer in Connecticut after 9PM, some places say 8PM.  We found that out the hard way the last time, but now we know better, another reason to plan ahead.

I don’t think this hotel has in-room fridges in which to store said beer, but that’s okay…we have a portable mini-fridge that we can use.

Now we have yet another reason to look forward to Spring!  Winter, winter, GO AWAY!