So, I’ve spent the last week on ‘holiday’. By that I mean taking a break from life, not getting sun stroke in Magaluf! Although, I wouldn’t mind a bit of sunshine.
Michael (my boyfriend) decided earlier this year that he wanted to try Day Zero, where you undertake 101 tasks over 1001 days. He was originally going to start on New Year’s Day, but due to some procrastination pushed back to the 17th March, his birthday, so he could get a complete list together of things he wanted to achieve. You can read all about it on his website here.
A pleasant side effect of Michael doing Day Zero is that we’re not short of ideas of things to do, so our holiday started out with a 12 hour drive to Heathrow Airport via Oxford Services, to pick my Dad up after his 3 month trip to America. I even made a “Welcome Home Dad” sign! Once we’d picked him & his 4 suitcases up, we dropped him off to catch up on some sleep and spent the rest of the weekend in South London.
Over the course of the weekend we make a great start on the Day Zero list, with Michael letting me pick some new clothes for him as part of his ‘Renew my wardrobe’ challenge. We also tried lots of new food, and some wine which is another item on the list. We left London on Monday to head back to Blackpool in time to see Derren Brown that evening.
I’ve been looking forward to the show for months. Michael bought me the tickets last July for my birthday, and needless to say the wait was worth it. I’d heard good things about the show from a couple of other people who’d seen it a few weeks before in Manchester, but it absolutely exceeded all expectations. Even Michael seemed like he enjoyed it, despite being convinced it’s all set up with stooges!
The next day we set off mid-afternoon to head to Windermere, where we had booked a Living Social deal to stay at a hotel for a couple of nights. The hotel we stayed at was called the Cedar Manor, and it was absolutely lovely. Despite some mixed reviews on Trip Advisor, I have to say we were delighted with our stay. The attention to detail provided by the owners just made it all that more special, not to mention the beautiful rooms, gorgeous views and modern facilities. When we were leaving, we were also told that their interior designer had been honoured with an international award for the work done in the room we stayed in, and their recently renovated Coach House. I’d really recommend anyone headed to the Lakes to stay at this place. Whilst it is a bit pricey, the food & welcome make the prices worth paying and I’m sure Michael and I will be back there in the future.
Whilst we were in Windermere, we managed to tick a couple more things off Michael’s Day Zero list, we bought 2 local varieties of fruit wine in the off license and tried a bottle of white wine with our dinner on the second day, but unfortunately neither of us enjoyed it, and we gave 2/3s of the bottle away to a couple on a neighbouring table who seemed completely baffled by our random act of kindness!
On our last day in Windermere we decided to go to the Lake and take a boat trip. I’m glad we saved it until last as it was a real highlight of the trip. We managed to catch a beautiful warm but wintery day, with clear blue skies which gave us an amazing view of the surrounding mountains. Michael and I took about 400 photos, which I’m sure will eventually be deleted before I upload them anywhere!
After spending a couple of days in Windermere (and ticking W off of the A-Z of places challenge on Day Zero) we came back to Fleetwood where we were all set to spend the last couple of days of our holiday chilling out and basically watching TV when I saw a tweet from a friend saying she was watching Cirque Du Soleil!
I’ve wanted to see Cirque Du Soleil for quite some time, and have talked about it once or twice with Michael but it’s always been prohibitively expensive as it’s always on in London! I couldn’t believe it when I saw it was on in Manchester, and after a quick check of the bank balance we decided to go for it and try and get tickets. Much to my surprise we picked up two tickets for the Saturday Matinee, where we also somehow managed to have excellent seats!? Plus we ticked another thing off Michael’s Day Zero list!
After Cirque Du Soleil we went for something to eat in the city and ended up at Rice Bowl, which is a lovely little Chinese restaurant near Victoria bustling with friendly and efficient staff serving some of the tastiest morsels of food I’ve ever eaten!
And that’s about it. I genuinely can’t believe how much we’ve packed into such a short space of time, without feeling like we were busy or rushing all the time. The only down side is that I didn’t take any sensible shoes for walking around the Lakes & Manchester and appear to have hurt something in my foot two days before real life starts again, but C’est La Vie!
Lally.