Today was an extremely long day. It began not quite at 6:30, as I'd planned, but, rather, an hour later. I went downstairs and ate a standard hotel breakfast: a petite chocolate muffin, a croissant with jam and butter, and a mocha from the coffee machine. And I couldn't pass up on the sausage and scrambled eggs, obviously. I think it was the first time I've eaten eggs in a VERY long time! Tasting them made me remember two things: one, that they are actually quite tasty, and two, that they are very easy to make. So I will be buying eggs when I get back on Wednesday!
I think I ate more today than I have ever eaten in one day so far, because from breakfast we took the bus to the Bristol Record Office, and I lunched there on baked potatos and tuna mayo with salad, complemented by a strange sort of drink called Fentiman's Dandelion and Burdock botanically brewed soda! After lunch we watched some of the films they have on record, and looked at a selection of artefacts. From there we came back to the Holiday Inn, where Jheri gave her presentation from high school on something we'd been talking about in the bus, one of the 9/11 conspiracy theories! Then I, Nermin, and Daniel decided to walk - in the drizzle - to Nelson Street, which is apparently where some of Bristol's famous street art is, and which is also right next to Bristol's shopping quarter. After a fruitless attempt to find something buy-able in the shopping quarter, I returned to our predetermined meeting place, about ten minutes early. The meeting place was a store right next to a cafe called Cafe Amore or something like that, and obviously I couldn't resist going inside.
That is how it came to be that Sarah discovered the scrumptious cheesecake which calls itself "Pecan and Toffee Vanilla Cheesecake". It was a good day for Sarah. She enjoyed eating the cheesecake.
The cheesecake was a small stand-alone cheesecake, round and perfect on it's own, (and far bigger than a normal slice of cheesecake!) Delicate toffee squares and dainty chocolate flakes perched atop a voluminous vanilla round, all settled elegantly on a biscuit base. I had intended to just walk in and have a look, but I would like you to show me someone who could walk past such perfection and not stop and eat it.
Fortunately, Nermin had had a similar idea. I found her already at the till. So she, Daniel, and I sat down at one of the dark wood tables and ate our treasures. Well, Daniel didn't eat anything because he hadn't ordered anything, for some untold and unfathomable reason. And I think my platter looked far more soul-satisfying than Nermin's, because she had tea and a rectangular flapjack (which are very different things to the things we call flapjacks in Zimbabwe!), and I had a foaming, chocolate-sprinkle-covered cappuccino, paired with the magical cheesecake I have already described. We were both happy though, so I guess that that's all that matters! The cafe was glorious - dark, cosy, decorated with old metal advertisement boards, like one for Sunlight Soap and another for Cadbury's Chocolates. It was one of those places that I have been searching for all over London, and has contributed to the fact that I think I may like Bristol more than I do London!
We walked back home in the rain, and I somehow managed to get my socks and shoes wet. Rather than walk with wet shoes, I took the only sensible route one could take: de-shoeing and going barefoot. To be fair, it wasn't very far that I had to walk barefoot, but still, we had to stop at one road and I was able to splash around whilst we waited for the light to turn green for us!
I dried my socks on the heater, and then decided to put on a skirt for dinner (not to eat!) instead of the shorts I'd been wearing, which meant that I could use the socks as temporary handbags, because my bag had also got wet! I may actually adopt socks as a permanent hand bag because they are so convenient. They fit everything you usually need to fit in a small handbag, and they also act as a great and practical camera cover if you forget your case!
We went to an Indian restaurant for supper tonight - MORE FOOD! I nibbled on the starters we ordered for the table, mainly poppadoms because they were near me, and then gorged myself on a fabulous type of naan bread I hadn't ever had before! It has coconut in it, and is almost like a sweet tea-time bun type affair, except it looks like naan! I paired that with two big bits of chicken from one of the dishes, because I wasn't brave (or naive) enough to try the spicy lamb or the spicy okra. Also, re: okra, I think I just can't reconcile myself to the thought of eating something called "okra". I really dislike the sound of that word. (Although maybe I should learn a lesson from the clotted cream ice-cream!) I had a strange but wonderful dessert that could have featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a hollowed out and frozen lemon filled with a superbly sweet but also somewhat sour sorbet. Strange, bright, delicious.
After dinner, four of us decided to stay in the area and try out a local pub. We searched for a while, eventually settling on one called 'The Old Duke', where there was "live music". Now, Bristol is a seriously artsy city, and so live music doesn't mean a pop music band. There was one man playing the harmonica, another the piano (without music! That always impresses me so much!) and another the guitar. They switched up the piano player and the singer, and it was all jazz and blues music! The pub itself was beautiful, bursting with colour and posters and a culture of jazz history.
The door in the bathroom had a sign on it saying "Please be careful: this plumbing is OLD."
My only problem is that there wasn't much space to move: there was a good group of people there, varying from our age to ancient! I'm sure some of those people have been going there since they were my age - 70 years ago!
Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell by now, my claim to having eaten more in one day today than I have any other day is not false.
muffin, croissant, sausage, eggs, potato, tuna, salad, strange soda, cheesecake, cappuccino, poppadom, naan, chicken, sorbet
I am full and content.
Tomorrow we do a boat tour of Bristol Harbour and ports, and then I think we might visit another museum, and after that we catch the train home!
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