Seriously, what did we expect?

After all, everytime I'm going to a Salsa congress in the UK and I tell people where it is, they raise their eyebrows and ask

"And why would you want to go there?"

Follow up:

Well, the last time was the Salsa UK congress at Butlins in Bognor Regis, and in retrospect I'm not surprised everyone was laughing at me ... The congress itself was great, but the location ... oh dear.

My flatmate actually put it bluntly, but quite rightly in asking

"Why are all these events held in the armpits of the country?"

Back to Blackpool though ...

Flying with Ryanair is an experience in itself, which is why I like to call them cattle carriers; but what kind of customer service do you expect if you pay 2p for a return flight, excl. taxes?

Blackpool International Airport is a shed located at the side of a highway, that they close off on both sides everytime a plane arrives. Or at least that what it looked like. I wouldn't have been surprised if they had handed out parachutes and asked us to jump out when the pilot slows down a bit ...

Conveniently, the Grand Metropole Hotel was only a ten minute cab ride away from the airport costing a whopping ?9 to get there. While the name of the hotel includes the word "Grand", the state of the decor left no doubt that it had seen better (grander?) days ... 100 years ago! Cheap flights to the Costa del Sol and Ibiza have probably done great harm to coastal towns like Blackpool.

Still, there was something charmingly quaint about the hotel, with its creaking floor boards and peeling wall paper. Looking forward to our sea view hotel room, we were greeted by a pleasant odour, which suggested that a chain smoker had lived in the room for the past 25 years. Who knows, maybe the maids used it as their smoking room. But OK, that's nothing that can't be solved by keeping the windows open for a while.

While making our way through Blackpool past groups of lads of various states of inebriation, we were wondering what to do as to not get into a "Oi, wot you lookin' at mate" situation. Just avoid eye contact and you'll be fine ... you sissy ...

Nonetheless, The Winter Gardens made up for any discomfort felt on our way there and certainly was the most stunning venue for a Salsa congress that I've ever been to. The ceiling of the main ballroom must have been around 20m high and as opposed to the rest of town, was oozing with history. It's easy to see why the main ballroom dancing competitions have been held in here for years.

The event itself was well organised with workshops taught by excellent and world renowend teachers, loads of dance space on perfect, wooden sprung floor and not to forget some amazing performances by groups like Swing Guys and Tropical Gem.

Having free passes thanks to my website, made us far more picky about which workshops to choose and the fact that we all had to work on Monday, stopped us going through a Marathon dance weekend, which would have left us sick and tired by the end of it. It was quality over quantity ...

Did I say quality? Certainly not our humour, which was dominated by the toilet kind ... who could ever think I'm too serious? I have hazy memories of our Saturday Night Fever impressions on the dance floor, almost starting a food fight at the hotel and generally not stopping giggling over pretty much nothing at all.

Well, our version of "Don't Cha" due to comments about yoghurt and it's uses was hilarious, but a bit too dirty to be published here. ;)

Overall a good weekend, but trust me, I was very happy to be back in London in my own bed and four walls. Not that Blackpool isn't nice ... err, who am I kidding? Blackpool is minging! There's just no denying it. But all the friendly dancers (except "the Machine"), but especially Natalie, Pete and Silja made it a great weekend overall ...

I'm sorry if I've offended any Northeners ...