…and it was so much fun! This picture is the view from our room at the Hilton Garden Inn. Isn’t it awesome? Not as fancy as some of those Caribbean villa rentals that I’ve seen online, but very nice nonetheless.

The whole experience was awesome…so much excitement in the air. We got into downtown Manchester at about 2PM yesterday, just in time for hotel check-in - but it took us FOREVER to get from the Granite Street exit from I-293, to the hotel. This normally takes just a few minutes, but there was so much traffic, no doubt all due to all of the out-of town people who came for the event.

As I mentioned in previous posts, all of the seats were sold out at MerchantsAuto.com Stadium, and I think standing room was, too. The hotel was packed, as well…good thing we got there as early as we did, because when we left our room to go to the game, the lot was FULL. I assume that they have enough parking for all of the guest rooms, but who knows?

There was a guy stationed at the entrance to the hotel parking lot, who was stopping cars, making sure that the people in them were indeed hotel guests. The guy actually had a list of people due to check in that day, and he checked it against our reservation receipt. Parking is at a premium in Manchester a lot of the time, it was even more so for this event.

It was wicked hot out. The ballpark opened at 3PM, but we didn’t walk over there just yet. We’d stopped at the Market Basket store near Rockingham Park on the way, where we bought sammiches and beer. The rooms at the hotel have fridges, so we were good to go.

So we got to sit in the comfort of our air-conditioned room, and see what was going on at the ballpark. I brought binoculars, so we could see very well, even if anyone was trying to steal *our* seats.

There was a really long line on the concourse for about an hour, I think it was for the advertised autograph session with the players. I didn’t want to go and wait in the line, or sit in the heat just to watch batting practice and workouts and all…we could easily see the latter from our room. We also watched the first part of the Home Run Derby from our room.

We went out to the ballpark at around 6PM, it was much less hot by then. They had some cool stuff going on, including a wicked awesome skydiving display.

It was a great game. the Northern Division won. Also, the Fisher Cats’ own Aaron Snider won the Home Run Derby finals, which took place after the second inning of the game.

After the game, they had fireworks, and then we went back to the room. Then I sat by the window and just looked at the beautiful view of the ballpark for the longest time.

It was a great time, and the Fisher Cats and the city of Manchester did a most excellent job of hosting this event!