Monday, July 17, 2006

Secret shopper review: Chateau Mac

From the greeting at the train station to the personalised drop off at the airport, my stay at Chateau Mac gets a five star rating. The delightful Ms Mac is, as advertised, delightful. The charming Mr Mac is likewise charming and very well trained in refilling vodka and tonics. The children are cheeky / disarming / well-behaved / fairly well-trained (I guess Ms Mac has had more time to work on Mr Mac). Suspiciously, the middle child's absence was explained away vaguely as 'staying over at a friends'. I'm fairly certain Chateau Mac does not boast a dungeon.

Ms Mac very graciously dealt with my last minute announcement that I do not eat meat (making me instantly less popular with Mr Mac who had been looking forward to a dinner of sausages). The wine flowed and so did the conversation, touching on topics ranging from bloggers we have met, bloggers we haven't met, speculation on bloggers' lives, and so on. I believe we also talked about non-blog-related things, like the price of petrol, Harry Potter and open source programming (which got me back into Mr Mac's good books).

I was treated to the extra large mattress (there seemed to be some discussion amongst management on this) and was not forced to use the timer when showering. My stay at Chateau Mac included a personalised walking tour down to the village and a viewing of Big Brother UK complete with commentary.

The following day I took up the offer of a lunch tour to Rapperswil (renamed Slappersville by one witty blogger), incorporating such sights as the lake that Ms Mac swam across recently. The entertaining and relaxing stay was capped off with a delicious pizza for lunch, and then a quick coffee at the airport before my flight to London.

All in all I recommend Chateau Mac very highly. I had a fantastic time and am very pleased to add Ms and Mr Mac to my list of friends-who-live-in-cool-places-so-I'll-keep-in-touch-with-them-in-case-I-ever-go-there-again.

R.