My husband and I had a spontaneous staycation this 4th of July week end. We were one of the thousands of families with out electricity due to the big storms that came through rapidly on Wednesday night!

I am from Florida, and you would think I would be use to these storms, but I have been away from home long enough to forget and to get scared.

WOW! I was at a meeting downtown when it hit. Driving home was a challenge, trees were down everywhere, traffic lights were out and the puddles were very large! I watched one person float his car to the other side of a puddle!

After 24 hours of no electric we decided to get a hotel downtown. Many had already decided to do the same, I was very lucky I could get us a room! One became available while I was on the phone, and I scooped it up.

We got a room at the Amway Grand, Downtown Grand Rapids. I was very flustered when I got there. My normal routine was interrupted and I was feeling out of sorts.

However, the Amway made us feel right at home, let us check in very early so we could take a shower and have some coffee.

Staying at this hotel, made us feel like we were far away from home. In time I forgot we live here and started treating this as an unexpected vacation.

Our room was on the 26th floor, with a view of the river. We were very excited as we could watch them set up for the fire works and knew we were going to have a great view for the display on the 4th!

The 4th floor of the hotel has a gym, woman’s locker room with Sana, a pool, racket ball courts and tennis courts. I spent a lot of time on the fourth floor!

GP Sports is one of the many restaurants you can dine at in the hotel. They have 2 pool tables, 2 Wii’s and a fun casual menu. We had a lot of fun at this place! Our friends would come visit us and we would either take them to the pool or the pool tables and hang out and play! I have to say having a vacation where your friends can visit is the best of both worlds!

The evening of the forth was amazing! We have never seen fire works like this before! Being so high up and right above where they were setting them off allowed us to watch the fire works explode right in front of us.

We had 6 friends come watch the fire works with us……and we all awed and ewed and clapped at the fireworks! We have never seen fireworks in this fashion.

Saturday morning we had a leisure breakfast and eventually checked out. However the good part of this it was only a 20 minute drive home!

What fun we had being tourist in our own home town! I recommend it to everyone!