As I've mentioned in most of my previous reviews, I got married last year, and as is traditional, my bridesmaids organised a boozy night out on the town to celebrate the end of my freedom. We'd been to York for my best friend's hen do in September '05, so we decided to go away for a weekend again. After discounting the usual trip to Blackpool in fancy dress (do that every Feb for my mate's birthday - brrrrr) and realising that the standard "hen weekend" package providers really weren't worth it , we started to look for a suitable city break… but didn't want to spend too much or retrace our steps from previous trips, which narrowed down our search criteria!

Liverpool? No, we'd been to Liverpool for a friend's birthday less than 3 months before so we didn't want arepeat of that night.

Chester? My husband-to-be would be working that night in Chester, and much as I love seeing him in uniform, I'm guessing any pals who'd not met him would see me snogging a copper and assume I'd got off with a strippagram!

So that narrowed it down to one - Newcastle!

Then she rang the Copthorne Hotel, who told her that yes, they could get three to a room (a twin room with a camp bed), and they wouldn't need to take a deposit unless we wanted 4 or more rooms. They quoted her a price of £135 per room per night, so for 3 to a room, £45 each ain't that bad. It didn't include breakfast, but with it being right on the Quayside, yards from the Sunday "market," it wouldn't be hard to find a van selling sausage butties. And we got to use the Waves leisure club (more on that later) for free. So she emailed me the link to the website and I got on the phone and started calling up my pals, to check their availability for the weekend we wanted.

PPP called the Copthorne again to cancel the provisional booking of 3 rooms that we'd made, and request a twin room for me and her. They told her the only one they had available that weekend was an executive room that would be another £50 - then she pointed out (in a conversation that should have lasted 2 minutes but in fact lasted for 20, including the time it took to fetch the reception team manager) they'd been holding the 3 standard rooms for her, could she not just have one of those without the camp bed? Oh yeah! Course she can! This is quite probably the ONLY problem we had with this hotel, except trying to find the entrance (but that wasn't their fault as Newcastle City Council had closed the usual access road the day before)

The main lobby is rather fantastic, with a lift to the car park on the immediate left as you come through the main doors and the lifts to the rooms just beyond that, and the reception desk on the right. It's a light, bright space, mainly due to the super high atrium ceiling and the massive floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto the Tyne. Even on a miserable rainy day, it looked awesome. The lobby is split level, and beyond the lift area you go up a couple of steps to a carpeted area with big squishy leather sofas, tub chairs and the big open fireplace, which wasn't going during our visit on account of all the children kicking around for the wedding that was going on.

Check-in was a breeze, there were two staff on the desk all the time, and before long we were zipping up onto the first floor with our little wheelie cases, doing our bestest impressions of cosmopolitans girls about town. The room was simply decorated, with dark pinkish wallpaper, dark wood furniture, and floral curtains and bedspreads. French windows led out onto a balcony overlooking the river (all of the rooms have a Tyne view, which makes the other side of the hotel, as seen from the top of Tuthill Stairs, look a bit odd as there are no windows) and we had a great view of my favourite Tyne bridge, the swing bridge (when we lived in Newcastle when I was younger, my dad would take us out once a month while mam recovered from having two squabbling brats round her ankles. If we came into town on the metro, we'd finish the day eating ice cream and waiting for the swing bridge to open. Easy to keep northern kids occupied, int'it?)

We hung up our glad rags, shoved our bikinis on under our clothes, and went in search of the leisure club. At reception, we'd enquired where it was, and she'd said "it's right opposite your room!" And it was, literally. We went through the door and down about 18 flights of stairs to the ground floor (under the lobby), showed our room key and were given two towels. This is where we started to feel a bit disappointed. The towels were clean but very tatty, and as we went through to the ladies changing rooms, we avoided the puddles of water and big clumps of wet hair on the floor. After chucking our clothes into a locker, we went through to the pool area, which although it's small is well thought out, with troughs of tropical plants to perk it up a bit. And it needed perking up - the walls had been painted a lovely sunshine yellow, but unfortunately this appeared to have been done in about 1612 and never touched since - big flakes had come away, revealing the plaster underneath. There were 4 sun loungers along one side of the pool, and 2 white plastic patio tables and assorted chairs on the other, all looking a bit tired, but at least there was a Jacuzzi! There are also floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the Tyne, and it was a lovely feeling to swim to the edge of the lovely warm pool and look out onto the grey rainy weather - until the big packs of early drinkers started walking past on their way up to the bars of the Quayside, and we suddenly started feeling a little exposed! We spent a little more time in the steam room and sauna, then wandered back off up the 18 flights of stairs to our room. Except it was only 4 flights, really.