Work Christmas Party?

This was our attempt at salvaging what turned into mostly a nightmare of a night!  Every year, my work throws a Christmas party and it is usually held downtown Denver at a nice hotel ballroom.  That was the case again this year and we dressed in our finest ballroom attire and started the drive down to the Hyatt downtown.  What we were met with was the craziest traffic I have ever seen and there was solid gridlock in every direction once you turned off the highway.

The final three blocks to the hotel took us almost 40 minutes to finally get to the turn to the Valet parking for the hotel.  Much to our surprise, when we made the turn we were greeted with "Parking Lot Full" sign in front of the hotel.  This meant that we had to venture back out to the absolute madness on the streets to a backup lot near the Denver Center for Performing Arts.  Another 30 minutes went by to make the mile and a half journey over there only to find the exact same issue with the parking lot being full!

Our third option was the Colorado Convention Center which took another 15 minutes to get over to and when we finally got into the parking lot, we locked eyes with a 20 person line just to register your car on the automated parking meter.  That was the last straw for us and we bailed on the entire prospect.  Since we were all dressed up, though, we decided to head to a restaurant of our choosing and skip the party and expensive, free meal outright.  The real challenge was finding anything that would take us at 7 pm on a Saturday night.  In the end, we went to a restaurant in a nearby nice hotel and at least tried to make a fun evening out of it.  At least the company was good...but the Christmas Party venue gets a thumbs down for my vote!