A Weekend in Norfolk.

Me and Glenn took our yearly trip to Norfolk recently. We spent a day on the Broads and stayed three nights in Great Yarmouth. If you think GY is just a tacky seaside resort, I'm here to tell you how wrong you are!

We always stay at the same B&B which is The White Lodge. This is our fourth year in a row staying here and it's easy to see why it's the number one rated B&B in GY on Tripadvisor. It's perfectly placed on the seafront away from the main hustle and bustle of the town but will only take a 15 minute walk to get to Britannia Pier. The White Lodge is in a residential area so it's nice and quiet and has plenty of street parking that doesn't require pay & display.

We stayed in the superior king room with seaview and this will be our go to room from now on. The bed was massive and I loved the art deco feel of the room. The owner Jean does an amazing job and makes you feel at home straightaway. You'll also be greeted by Diesel, the B&B's resident doggo, who is so adorable and probably Glenn's favourite part of our stay!

We ate at a couple of our favourite restaurants during our visit. The Courtyard is a fab hidden gem with only five tables so booking is essential. The food is more on the italian side with our favourite being the homemade lasagne but you'll also find seafood on the menu.

Fish & chips are a necessity at the seaside and while there are a plethora of places to get some, our reccommendation is HMS Hinchinbrook. While they do the usual battered cod, if that's not your style you can have it grilled with a garlic and cream sauce. They also do salmon fillet, lemon sole goujons and panko coated squid rings to you've got plenty of seafood to choose from. I usually go for the grilled tuna steak or the homemade battered smoked haddock fishcakes. Also on the menu are steaks, burgers, pies and chicken.

While we didn't get to go this visit, another favourite is Champagne Charlies. For a set price you get all you can eat tapas. You really need to work up an appetite before eating here to really make the most of it!

Walking back to the B&B in the evening after eating out was the perfect way to burn off the dessert calories. The north part of Yarmouth has a more relaxed vibe with the waterways and the boating lake, both of which are going through restoration work. It should be completed by Summer 2019 and I can't wait to see it.

Are you a fan of Great Yarmouth? Where have you been on a getaway recently?

Danni
x

Alton Towers Scarefest.

I love all things halloween and I'm a regular visitor to Alton Towers but this year was the first time I visited during the Scarefest celebrations. The park looks very impressive with the decorations visible from the moment you enter.

There's entertainment in the form of the Alton Ancestors who perform flashmobs every hour on Towers Street and later in the afternoon outside of Duel.
Scare zones start from 5:30pm, with Freak Show taking place on the path between Spinball Whizzer and X-Sector. Dark Apocalypse takes place in Forbidden Valley. These are different from scare mazes as they are included with park entry and include free roaming actors. Both zones can be avoided if you don't want to go through or have young ones in tow!

The three scare mazes all take place inside the ruins and a combo ticket for all three will cost you £20. Terror of The towers is suited for ages 12 up while Altonville Mine Tours: The Legend of the Skin Snatchers and Sub-Species: The End Games are both 15+. I'd definitely recommend doing the mazes, though obviously they won't be for everyone. You can also buy oark entry with the mazes included for £50 from the Alton Towers website.

The park is open until 9pm, meaning you can ride the rollercoasters in the dark. Unfortunately due to pesky man flu, we left early so didn't round to that but there's always next year!

The hotels in the resort are also decorated for halloween, with entertainment going on until late in evening. We stayed at Splash Landings for the night and had a go at Extraordinary gold before going home.

Scarefest runs the first few weekends in October and then from 21st October and finishes on the 31st.

For more information or to book tickets, you can visit the Alton Towers website here.

Eating out in Bude, Cornwall.

As soon as I've got accomodation sorted for a holiday, food is the next priority. I'll be straight on Tripadvisor checking out restaurants and making lists of where I'd like to eat. I'm just glad I have a boyfriend who is happy to go along with my in advance planning!

Bude was no different and a month before we actually set off on our holiday, I'd already booked tables at restaurants for every night of our holiday except one. So let's get into where we ate...

The Deck.
www.thedeckbude.co.uk

The Deck is located on Summerleaze Crescent overlooking the beach, so we had a great view from our table in the window. We both had ribs but they do other food such as burgers, seafood and hanging skewers. This was the only night I couldn't manage a dessert... I even had to leave some of my ribs, a fact that makes me sad as they were the best ribs I've ever had! Best meal of the holiday and no doubt my go to place if I was ever in Bude again.

Elements.
www.elements-life.co.uk

Another place with a great view, this is a hotel that overlooks Widemouth Bay. The restaurants gets busy so booking would be advisable. The only issue we had here was parking, the car park is very small but there's a free car park a few minutes up the road. Elements specializes in Italian with a good selection of pasta and pizza. The other half had steak and I had chicken saltimbocca. The dessert selection is really good but I didn't even need to look at the menu when I was told the cheesecake of the day was white chocolate and malteser!

The Bank.
www.thebankatbude.co.uk

This cute little place does tapas, but as they like to say... Cornish tapas, meaning the portions are bigger than spanish tapas. We had six dishes between us and managed to squeeze in dessert too. I had a mocktail called the sunrise and I need to have a go at making it myself, so sweet and tasted like skittles! Definitely worth booking if you want to eat here, it gets very busy.

Life's A Beach.
www.lifesabeach.info

This sits directly overlooking Summerleaze beach and does breakfast and lunch in the day, before turning into a bistro in the evening. It specializes in seafood and booking is a must! I'm not even a big seafood lover but even I loved it here. I went out of my comfort zone and tried swordfish for the first time. It's not the cheapest of places but it is worth the money.

Hebasca.
www.hebasca.co.uk

The one place I'm going to be a downer about is here. The food was okay, but nothing special. I'd say it was a pleasant meal... However, I had trouble going to sleep the evening after eating here, before running into the bathroom at 2am to throw up. Something about this meal clearly didn't agree with me, though Glenn was fine. I wouldn't eat here again when there's much nicer places to eat that didn't make me sick!

Sea Jacks.
www.tommyjacks.co.uk

Sea Jacks Restaurant is part of the Tommy Jacks hotel, near to Crooklets Beach. I believe its owned by the same company who own the Hebasca hotel but this was so much nicer! The surfer theme throughout the hotel is cute and gives out a chilled out vibe to the place. It was a really nice meal for our last night in Bude.

We went out for breakfast a couple of mornings too. The Shack is a cute little cafe, which also does lunch and is open til late in the evening too. It also does a lot of Vegan meals too.

The weir has a good breakfast selection and is a really nice setting if it's not raining when you go. (It was when we went!) It's also a pokestop if you're into pokemon go!

For lunch, we ate at a few different places. Olive tree sits next to the canal and if you're a cheese lover, the baked cornish brie is a must! It comes with a huge chunk of bread and is baked with honey, hazelnuts and roasted garlic.

Rosie's Kitchen at Crooklets beach has a massive menu and is also open into the evenings.


I've made myself hungry writing this post, my mouth is watering at the thought of those ribs!
I hope this post was helpful for anyone thinking to visiting Bude.
Don't forget you can follow me on bloglovin to stay up to date with new posts.
Bye for now lovelies!
x

STAY: Wooldown Holiday Cottages, Bude.

At the end of August, me and Glenn had a week long holiday in Cornwall, staying at Wooldown holiday cottages near Bude. I hadn't been to Bude since I was seventeen, so we're talking over a good ten years but it was just as beautiful as I remembered.

Wooldown is a family run business and sits just outside Bude in the small village of Marhamchurch with amazing views of Widemouth Bay. There are two larger cottages for families and then a further fourteen cottages that just sleep two, most of which reside in an adults only zone. No children ruining your romantic getaway here!

Let's talk about the bathroom facilities... That spa bath! I fell in love with it, and now my plain old boring bath at home just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. Another plus was the strawberries and clotted cream waiting for us in the fridge on our arrival.  We also got a goodie bag of treats for the journey home when we checked out. Such a nice touch that we've never got anywhere else.

After our week in Cornwall, Glenn decided it was his best holiday ever so it's obvious that Wooldown would be our first choice for staying in Bude again.

To find out more about Wooldown click here.

I'll be posting another blog in a few days of places to eat out in Bude because while, yes we did have a kitchen in the cottage, we did eat out for six nights out of seven!

Don't forget you can also follow me on bloglovin to keep up to date with new posts.
Bye for now lovelies!
x

STAY: The White Lodge, Great Yarmouth

A few days getaway to Great Yarmouth has become a tradition for me and my boyfriend, it's something we do every year. Last year, we discovered the White Lodge so we had to stay there again this year!

The White Lodge is away from the main hustle and bustle of Great Yarmouth but is still situated on the seafront, making it a perfect choice! There's plenty of street parking too, so you don't need to worry about that either. Last year, we stayed in two rooms over three nights and they were both done up to a high standard, a king size room with a garden view & a ground floor double.

Ground floor en-suite.

This year we had a seaview double which lived up to our expectations and more. It might be my favourite out of all three rooms we've stayed in. Double doors open to a view overlooking the old boating lake, with the beach and sea beyond that.

I definitely have my eye on the superking seaview room for next year's trip!

Breakfast is ordered the night before and there's more choice than a full english here! Eggs on toast, smoked haddock and kippers are all available and you can help yourself to toast, fruit and yoghurts.

I can't write this post without mentioning the fab owners, Jean and Eddie, who clearly work very hard to make sure each stay is as perfect as can be. The star of the show is definitely George, you cannot help but fall in love with The White Lodge's resident staffy. The amount of tripadvisor reviews that mention him are testament to that!

The rooms range from £60 to £90 including breakfast.


Over the course of our stay, we stopped for lunch at Flutterbie's tea room. They serve homemade cakes, as well as cream tea and afternoon tea. Toasties, sandwiches and paninis are available too. we both went for bacon and brie paninis to go with our white hot chocolates.

Our usual stop on our first night every year, is HMS Hinchinbrook. A fish & chips restaurant with more choice than your usual takeaway! Tuna steaks, lemon sole, calamari as well as steaks and burgers. A definite must eat place in Yarmouth, especially if you're only visiting for the day.

A new place for us to try was OG Burger kitchen, which is where the old Olive garden used to be. It's still owned by the same people I believe, with the original Olive Garden relocating to Gorleston. I really like what they've done with the menu as you get to choose your bun, patty, preferred burger topping and a side. I don't know how they cook their fries but they were amazing!

Free rock with the bill! 

I know Great Yarmouth isn't everyone's cup of tea but where you choose to stay definitely makes a difference. If you're after a more relaxing time, The White Lodge is a perfect choice. It's in the north part of Yarmouth, about a fifteen to twenty minute walk to Britannia Pier, which is where it tends to get busier.

For more information on The White Lodge, click here.

A very Titanic themed city break in Liverpool.

At the start of April, the other half and I took a little trip to Liverpool for a city break. We stayed in the Titanic Hotel which is located next to Stanley Dock. I always have the job of picking where we stay, being as I'm a "massive hotel snob." His words, not mine!

Originally I'd looked at 30 James Street, which declares itself as the home of Titanic. And yes, this post is going to mention Titanic a lot! It's something I'm fascinated by and I have a permanent reminder of it on my arm. Anyway, 30 James street is a new-ish hotel which actually resides in the old White Star Line building, something that made me very excited about staying there. Unfortunately there were no rooms available on the dates we wanted, so we instead opted for the Titanic Hotel.

My favourite thing about the hotel were all the canvas prints throughout that were dedicated to Titanic and the White Star Line. This deck plan one particularly pleased me and I spent a good while looking at all the details.

The hotel also has a spa, located below the ground floor. The spa was something we didn't get round to but is open to guests and the public to use. We did however, make use of the bath in our room. We popped into Lush on one of our days there to pick up a bath bomb specially.

The hotel has it's own restaurant, Stanley's Bar & Grill, as well as The Rum Bar. The Rum Bar also serves food and specializes in, what do you know, rum. Afternoon tea is also available. We went out to eat in the evenings, making the most of visiting a couple of chain restaurants that we don't have at home, like Jamie's Italian and Red's True Barbecue. We had room service on our last night there and if the quality of that is anything to go by, then the hotel restaurant would definitely be worth a visit.

The Merseyside Maritime Museum was a must visit on our break, having a whole area dedicated to Titanic. Entrance to the museum is free, with an option to donate money towards the museum itself. The museum was my favourite part of the trip and it has made me look forward to our Belfast trip next year even more.

I was mesmerised by the items that were found in the debris field of the Titanic wreck. To think that these items were on the actual ship and went down with her as she sank, it felt a little haunting being just on the other side of the glass from them.

I would definitely recommend looking into staying at the Titanic hotel if you're planning a visit to Liverpool, it's one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in. You can click here to find out more information about the hotel and spa.

Don't forget you can follow me on bloglovin to stay up to date with new posts.
Follow