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!