Saturday 10 December 2011

Weekend in Bath - The Sights and The Shopping

Morning! It's the weekend, yey! I hope you all have a good one! I'm running on only 5 hours sleep (I had a voucher for a PhotoBox album that needed using asap...it ended up taking me 7 hours total to make, aargh - I was up until 1.30am last night trying to get it sorted, and then again 7.30am-9am today! So glad it's done now!!) so I will be drinking lots of coffee today - we have a fun morning of Christmas decorating ahead!

Before I get tangled up in lights and tinsel...here is the last post about my lovely weekend in Bath. I've already discussed my new obsession with Christmas decorations, and I've shown you all the delicious food I ate while we were there. Now it's time for all the other things/photos that didn't fit into either of the previous posts!

I haven't mentioned the Friday part of our weekend before, and to be honest, the less said about it the better! The journey went ok - we managed to pack up the car and leave about 45 minutes after Liam got home from work. Toby went to sleep almost immediately (it was his bedtime by then), Izzy took a little while to get to sleep but then slept the rest of the way. Toby, however, woke up 15 minutes before we got to Dad's house and then, no joke, when we were literally 2 minutes away - as we were pulling into my Dad's street - he threw up everywhere. Yuck. I won't go into details. Luckily the duvet he was snuggling took most of it. Once we did finally get into Dad's house and cleaned up, I did manage to take a cute photo of Toby all snuggled up in a blanket whilst waiting for some clean clothes:


Aww, tired children! Once we got everything into the house, Liam then had to go and park the car on the other side of the city (where my Dad used to live and still has parking permits for) and then walk back. We didn't end up eating dinner until about 10.30pm...luckily I'd asked Dad to pick up a pizza for us from Waitrose! I'd fed the children before Liam had got home from work. I should have really made us sandwiches for the journey, but we thought we'd prefer hot food when we got there.

Anyway, moving swiftly on to Saturday. I'll try not to repeat myself from previous posts! On Tuesday it was my Dad's birthday, so we took his present up to Bath to give to him:


Brownies (2nd batch were for my Mother-in-law who's birthday was on Monday) and sweat bands (my Mum's idea!!). When I bought the sweat bands in the sports shop, the man checked that my Dad supported Man U...all the other teams were also out on display so not sure why he thought I would have picked up the wrong one?!!

Izzy wanted to give Dad his presents on Saturday morning, which suited me as I wasn't sure how long the brownies would keep. By the time we left on Sunday afternoon though, he'd only eaten 1 out of the 5 brownies...hmm, I clearly don't get my love of food from his side of the family!!


Once we were all dressed and breakfasted, Liam and I headed out for a couple of hours alone exploring the Christmas Market. It was so busy!


Because it was so busy, we didn't buy much in the morning. It was nice to wander around though, and we found a few stalls on the outskirts of the market to take the children to - no way were we trying to navigate through the crowds with Toby's bulky pushchair!!



When we met up with the children at lunchtime, Izzy really wanted to go on the carousel. So, after lunch, we did just that - one of the benefits of children is getting to do things like this yourself! ;)


Soon after this we went back to my Dad's house...so let's fast-forward to Saturday evening!

Liam and I went out for a meal but as our reservation at Demuths wasn't until late, we went for a cocktail first. Liam always loves mojitos!


After our drinks (we decided not to have a second one at £6.75 each!) we wandered down the high street. Liam took lots of photos of the pretty lights!


Look how quiet the Christmas Market was compared to earlier in the day!


It worked out perfectly as the market was open til 9pm so we had a chance for a proper look around before dinner. We ended up buying more that evening than we did the rest of the weekend! Lots of the things we bought are Christmas presents for people who read this blog, so I can't show you them yet, but here are a couple of the things we bought.

Some hooks for our keys. That probably sounds really boring, but Toby is constantly taking my house keys out of my bag and hiding them - last time it took me 2 weeks to find them (hidden inside Liam's big speakers that attach to DVD player?!!). So I'm hoping that if we put this up by the front door, I can hang my keys on it and stop losing them. Plus I think it looks pretty :)


We also bought a gorgeous clock for Izzy from this stall:


I was chatting to the lady behind the stall, and she was saying that her and her daughter spend the whole year making enough clocks, notice boards etc just for Bath Christmas Market! Pretty sure it was a hobby - from what she said, her daughter at least works - and they take the whole of January off, but still - what a lot of work!! Liam and I had a hard time choosing which clock to get for Izzy as there were so many pretty ones, but in the end we bought this one - love it! :)


You can read about our lovely meal at Demuths in my WIAW post, so I will move on to Sunday now (it feels so weird not writing about the food, haha!).

On Sunday, my Dad went out for a run so Liam and I stayed at home with the children whilst Toby slept. We then all went out for lunch at Las Iguanas. Where we discovered the camera battery was dead :( Lucky we have iPhones to take photos on! Again, I've already shared the food in my WIAW post, but here are a few photos I haven't posted before:

Izzy enjoyed colouring on the paper Las Iguanas provided (it was really good actually - full of spot the differences, word searches etc to keep her entertained!)...


And my Dad enjoyed colouring on Toby's nose (!!)...


After lunch, we quickly went back to the outskirts of the Market to buy the last of the decorations, and then we went to look at the river - Toby loves looking at all the birds!


This bridge is near to where my Dad used to live (and right by the rugby grounds which Dad has a season ticket for), so pretty...


And that was the end of our weekend away. After this we walked to the car and drove back to my Dad's house to load it up before going home.

Such a nice weekend, I love Bath. It's great Dad living there - free accommodation and occasional babysitting!! ;)

Have you ever been to Bath? What are your favourite cities in the UK? I used to live in Winchester, which I also love. Both Winchester and Bath have such pretty buildings and an "old city" kind of feel to them I think. They are still obviously quite 'busy', but seem more relaxed than other cities I've been to.

4 comments:

  1. Bath looks beautiful - it's my number two choice to move to if I ever have the funds to do so (somewhere on the outskirts of London would be no.1 for me).

    I do like Edinburgh but it's too bloomin' cold!

    xxx

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  2. Love the key hooks, they are so pretty. Laughed at the story of your "lost" keys, that would drive me insane ;-)

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  3. I do love Bath. The abbey looks beautiful with the Christmas tree near by.

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  4. Love those key hooks- very pretty indeed :)
    And the clock.
    I really liked Bath when we went there last year- had never been there before but it was so lovely.

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