Village Inn. It was a lovely area, right next to the harbour and we were very much looking forward to getting our room and having a little sleep. We went to check in and we told that check in was at 12 noon, so we headed off to Dominic’s works to say hello. Dominic is big in the sailing world and it turns out he was racing that evening. We also thought we were heading for Dominic’s flat so were a little confused when we turned up at a warehouse type of place!!! Dominic is a sail maker and appears to have a very chilled out working life so after a quick hello we headed back to our hotel to check in. Unfortunately there seemed to have been some mix up, we didn’t have a room and they were full! A quick phone call to Dominic who’d booked us in and he came over to try and sort it out, but the manager basically told us that we didn’t have a room as no-one had booked it. Obviously we didn’t believe him but Dominic got him to sort out another hotel for us. We finally arrived at the Hawthorne Suites,

another hotel about 5 minutes away and found ourselves with a fabulous room that was a suite rather than a general room! We arranged with Mum and Roland to meet them around 5.30 p.m. as we were definitely now in need of a sleep then a shower. It was approximately 30 seconds after getting into bed that we both drifted off into the land of nod.

After a shower, we headed down to reception. Every Wednesday the hotel offers free meals to all its guests, result! It was our lucky day and to our amazement they had a veggie option! After a plate full of food and a very jealous looking Mum and Roland we headed off back down to Alameda harbour to find Dominic before his sailing race. It was there that we met Steve and Geoff, Dominic’s friends and sailing partners. As Mum and Roland were both hungry we decided to go and get some food then head back towards the end of the race. We went for a Chinese and