A night at the Bolton Hotel

Back in August, our edit­or Jo atten­ded the Bolton Hotel’s Wel­ling­ton on a Plate event and enjoyed it migh­tily. In the ensu­ing inter­play on Twit­ter, the Hotel invited one of us to stay the night so that we could exper­i­ence their hos­pit­al­ity more fully. I quickly took up the offer on the behalf of the Wel­ling­tonista… and so it was that R. and I found ourselves drop­ping the kids off for the night and check­ing in to the Bolton Hotel on an incred­ibly miser­able and wet Sat­urday even­ing.

The Bolton is, as you might expect, just off the Ter­race in Bolton Street. It’s a funny area of town – very pub­lic ser­vantish – that is becom­ing more inter­est­ing at nights and week­ends as new bars and res­taur­ants open.

But giv­en the weath­er, there’d be no romantic even­ing walks in the Botan­ic Gar­dens or in Bolton Street cemetery for us. We had no inclin­a­tion to wander over to Tinakori Road to the cluster of pubs and res­taur­ants there, or up the Ter­race to find those new spots the oth­er Wel­ling­ton­istæ talk about, nor even to go for a pub meal some­where like the Back­bench­er or the Thistle Inn. And cer­tainly not a flick­er of interest in trekking uptown to Cour­tenay Place. No, it had been a long week and we wanted quiet. So how could the Bolton make a Sat­urday night indoors even bet­ter?

A lot, as it turned out.

The staff were friendly, and made sure to let us know that while they could look after our car for us, the car park next door was also a (cheap­er) option. It was good we did­n’t have to ask. We star­ted to feel that there was a bit of thought going on here and the res­ult would be quite a bit more advanced than a cor­por­ate com­muter dorm­it­ory hotel.

We’d been giv­en a lovely suite on the 16th floor with a full kit­chen and sep­ar­ate bed­room, look­ing out across to the gar­dens and that unnamed sub­urb imme­di­ately above the motor­way. I par­tic­u­larly liked how the win­dows framed a mix of tangled green­ery and stacked wooden houses that is to me a sig­na­ture Wel­ling­ton view. With the rain sweep­ing across the fore­ground it was quite pic­tur­esque. I ima­gined the sun on the green in the early morn­ing and hoped we might see just that.

With our bags down we did all the requis­ite room-explor­ing:

• “What’s in this draw­er?” – “That’s cool – it’s full of use­ful stuff like tooth­brushes, tam­pons and paink­illers”
• “What does that soap smell like?” – “Very nice – we’ll be tak­ing that spare home I think”
• “What are these wines over here?” – “Hunters! Excel­lent! We brought our own but we might need it”
• “How big is the bath in there?” – “It should fit two very friendly people”
• “How does this TV work” – “Nope, the Smart TV won’t reach Net­flix… but we do have Sky for the game tonight”
• “There’s a TV in the bed­room too?” – “Yeah but we won’t be need­ing that”
• “How do I get onto the free wire­less?” – “Here’s the code on this in-room iPad. We can watch some GoT later”
• “How do we change the air con­di­tion­ing?” – “There’s a digit­al thing just here”
• “How com­fy is this bed?” – “…Yup.”

But before we got too com­fort­able we thought we’d see what else the hotel had to offer.

Most hotels have a little gym; some have pools and a spa; the Bolton also has a sauna. We were a bit tired for a sauna and so con­ten­ted ourselves with a dip in the spa (but def­in­itely missed hav­ing a glass of wine at the same time – no glass is allowed in the pool/spa area for obvi­ous reas­ons). Relax­a­tion: achieved! After that though we were start­ing to feel a bit hungry.

We had been quite keen to try the in-house res­taur­ant, Artis­an, but that night was fully booked for a wed­ding. How­ever Room Ser­vice was (of course) still avail­able, and this turned out to be geni­us. Oth­er times I’ve stayed in hotels – usu­ally for work – I’ve nev­er really used Room Ser­vice, pre­fer­ring instead to wander out into the town in search of some­thing more inter­est­ing (and to be hon­est, cheap­er). Here, the menu was way bet­ter than that, and even though our choices this time wer­en’t par­tic­u­larly adven­tur­ous, when they arrived (in less than 40 minutes!) they were per­fectly done and very reas­on­ably priced by Wel­ling­ton res­taur­ant stand­ards.

Our room was big enough to have a small din­ing table in it so we were able to sit as adults and have our steak and hand cut chips togeth­er while watch­ing the rugby game which had just star­ted on TV. This very moment felt like a kind of low key peak exper­i­ence: we were in our home town, but removed to a little bubble of relax­a­tion where we could just enjoy each oth­er­’s com­pany and not think about any­one else or any­thing else except what was right here and now. Also, the steak was fuck­ing awe­some.

The even­ing fol­lowed on in that relax­ing vein: a just-right dessert of chocol­ate mousse / rasp­berry sorbet; and then we acci­dent­ally opened a second bottle of wine. The rest is really none of your busi­ness.

The next day star­ted slowly; but that was OK. A buf­fet break­fast was included so we went down to the res­taur­ant. There’s a lim­it to how good a buf­fet break­fast in a hotel can actu­ally be but the Bolton’s is one of the best I’ve had. No rub­bery scrambled eggs or card­board-like bacon here – they had your stand­ard full cooked break­fast but all good, freshly cooked and very tasty stuff; they had even made their own baked beans! This was just what we needed to for­ti­fy ourselves for the real­ity out­side the hotel doors.

And so we had to check out. It was still rain­ing; no morn­ing sun on Te Ahu­mair­angi to view through the pic­ture win­dows. But with the help of the Bolton Hotel we had defeated cab­in fever and could get through the rest of that rainy week­end. We’d done some­thing fun and we’d hardly needed to leave home.

Dis­clos­ure: the Bolton comped us a room and break­fast pack­age; we paid for our own din­ner and drinks. The Bolton Hotel did not ask to see this post before we pub­lished it.

The nice people at the Bolton Hotel have provided a pair of Toast Mar­tin­bor­ough tick­ets plus a room and break­fast pack­age for the night of Sunday Novem­ber 20th 2016 to give away to a lucky read­er. (Note: you’ll need to sup­ply the trans­port to Toast and back.)

To get your hands on this amaz­ing exper­i­ence, write a sen­tence in a com­ment below, telling us why YOU and a friend should be the chosen ones. Answers close at 5pm 30th Septem­ber. We’ll ran­domly draw a win­ner. Good luck!