Sunny Weekend

Hello! Have you all had a lovely weekend?

My weekend started with more Mississippi Mud Pie...

I was channelling memories of our honeymoon with this chocolate and cherry breakfast!

I was worried the rest of the day wouldn't be able to live up to this lovely start, but it did pretty well! ;)

My Dad was visiting for the weekend, and took the children to my Grandparents' for lunch. Liam and I made the most of the peace and quiet by going out for lunch ourselves. I started with a latte...

and then had goats cheese and caramelised onion on toasted sundried tomato bread...

and some chips to share with Liam...

This lunch was tasty, but I was a little annoyed. The goats cheese dish was the only thing on the menu that was vegetarian, it was marked as vegetarian on the menu, but when it came out it was drizzled with pesto that wasn't mentioned on the menu. And let's face it, in the little town I live in, the pesto probably wasn't vegetarian. I still ate it - the pesto was mainly on the tomatoes which I don't eat anyway - but I did mention it to the waiter when he collected our plates. Mainly so that they could either change their menu, or just not put the pesto drizzle on the next time. He said he'd check in the kitchen and came back into the room - but not up to our table - and just kind of shouted at me "you're ok" with a thumbs up sign. That annoyed me. I didn't make a huge deal about it or anything, but it just felt like he was really dismissive. Meh. We still had a nice lunch, it just irritated me a bit.

Rather than spend money on dessert, we walked home and had (another) big slice of mud pie. This stuff is so good! This was my piece which, admittedly, is rather huge...but Liam's was even bigger! I'm jealous of his ability to eat anything and everything without gaining any weight! ;-)

The children both had a nap when they got back from spending time with my Dad, so Liam and I got to sit down with our chocolate cake and watch a whole DVD in peace...bliss.

For dinner, I was lacking energy and inspiration so Liam went to Waitrose and bought some ready meal curries. They didn't have my usual cauliflower curry or lentil daal so Liam got me some aloo gobi saag (potato, cauliflower and spinach) plus the usual rice and naan. He did also get me chana masala but I gave that to the children - I don't do beans or chickpeas unless they are mashed/blended!

Yellow but tasty!

*****

Today has been mainly spent outside. We did a quick shop in Waitrose as soon as it opened, and then Liam to Izzy swimming while I stayed at home with Toby. I'd planned to take him for a little walk, but he was mega tired/grumpy, so he went for a nap and I got to spend time in our sunny back garden painting my toe nails! Bliss - definitely appreciating the child-free moments this weekend!!!

Once Liam and Izzy got home, we had lunch. I'd been looking forward to these for a while - crisps & dips!

Toby didn't quite manage to wait for the others to get back before he got stuck in...!!

His favourite was the sour cream dip, Izzy and I love the guacamole and Liam had no choice loves the salsa - perfect!

After lunch we headed back outside for a walk - it was too sunny not to really! Izzy took her scooter...

Rare photo of me for no real reason...

Playing down by the river...

We didn't walk too far as we'd chosen not to take Toby's pushchair, but it was nice to get out and stretch our legs.

Now we are all having a sit down before thinking about cooking dinner, getting everyone ready for the week ahead etc. This weekend has gone slower than most, but the two days still always go by too quickly!

What have you done this weekend? Is it spring yet where you are? Hopefully I'm not going to bring the bad weather back by saying it, but I wore flip flops today, yey! Definitely a sign that summer is on it's way to me! :)

Day Three - A Gaudi Great Day

Morning! Bit of a naff title for this post, but it is true - yesterday was a great day! (& centred around Gaudi for the most part, obviously)

I knew that the food troubles of Tuesday would be forgotten when I saw there was chocolate cake for breakfast! I completely failed at getting it out of the cake stand in one piece, but it still tasted delicious nonetheless. With a custard pastry, because you can never eat enough sugar at breakfast (!)...

this chocolate cake (despite appearances!) was amazing - I sometimes find chocolate cake too dry, but this was a layer of sponge, with a layer of chocolate mousse, topped off with a layer of chocolate ganache. So good. Also super rich, so my second plate just consisted of fruit - melon and tinned peach halves...

As well as the usual two coffees and fresh orange juice that make up my honeymoon breakfasts. I love buffet breakfasts! Liam on the other hand struggles to eat enough - because I'd been writing these posts and then going back to the room to wake him, he'd still be fast asleep and then eating breakfast 20 minutes later. That wouldn't be a problem for me, but for him it meant he wasn't hungry - he even missed out on the chocolate cake!! So today, he is sitting beside me as I type this, in an attempt to wake up enough to eat enough food to last until late lunch...we'll see if it works soon! My stomach has been growling for food from the second I woke up so I definitely don't have the same problem!

Anyway, back to Wednesday. After breakfast we headed to the Metro to go to La Sagrada Familia - an amazing church designed by Gaudi. We had a 30 minute wait to get in, but it was so worth it...this building is spectacular! Liam took literally hundreds of photos, but I'll just show some of the many highlights...

The Front Door - "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread" in 50 languages

I'm so glad this computer is quick at uploading photos!! This is just a selection of the photos we took, there was so much amazing architecture to look at, so many details.

After we left La Sagrada Familia, we headed to another of Gaudi's well known works - Parc Guell. We were advised to enter the park from the top so that we could get a view over the city. Unfortunately it was quite cloudy yesterday, but it was still pretty impressive...

and the view over the park...

Before walking down into the park, we ate some lunch - a cheese and salad half baguette...

and we shared another cheese baguette once in the park as these were so tiny!

Obligatory couple photo...

I'm making the effort to get at least one photo of us together each day, as usually one of us is behind the camera. This photo was taken by setting the camera up on Liam's rucksack and using timer mode!

Gaudi's amazing architecture was evident in the park too, so here are some more photos...

And there we go! Sorry for the photo overload in the post - we just saw so many things yesterday that I wanted to record as many as possible! Almost done now though!

After leaving Parc Guell, we went back on the metro to the hotel for our late-afternoon nap! No sweet treat yesterday afternoon (sob!!) but I did nab a few of Liam's cookies.

For dinner, we asked the hotel for another recommendation, and I'm so glad we did - dinner was great! It was a little bar/restaurant called Tallers 76. It served tapas, which is what we'd planned to have, but in the end we were both drawn to the pasta part of the menu. Drinks first though, I ordered a sangria...

but ended up switching and having Liam's mojito - why I keep telling myself I like sangria when I hate red wine, I do not know!

For main, I had the vegetable lasagne...

This was delicious, lots of courgettes, onions and mushrooms, and a balsamic glaze on the plate which was mopped up by bread!

As this place had such good food, and the prices were really reasonable, we decided to treat ourselves to the first dessert of the holiday. I had an orange creme caramel...

Amazing! So orange-y...the perfect end to a great meal and a fantastic day! :-D

And with that, it's time for breakfast - I'm absolutely starving whereas Liam is "just starting to get hungry"!!!

Have a great day everyone! We're off to the beach to relax today I think, before a boat trip this evening :)